February 14, 2016: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
A few days ago on Ash Wednesday, folks were going about their daily business, only to look up from their phones to see people with ashes on their forehead. More than one person told me that the reaction was – first puzzlement, then a momentary pause, and then…wait, what? It can’t be. Didn’t we just finish Christmas? Time sure flies sometimes.
Yes folks, it is Lent – already. It is hard to believe. And with it, we get this delightful blast of arctic air. I am so happy to see so many of you able to bundle up and get here today, because your presence here warms us all.
Now some folks look at Lent like it’s a rewind of New Years, were failed resolutions get a fresh start. Didn’t keep to the diet thing? I’ll give up chocolate for Lent. But Lent isn’t about giving up at all. That was never the point. Lent is about something far more important. It is about preparation and grounding, hunger and nourishment. And all of that is not for itself alone, but to be renewed in our relationship with God. Lent requires us to listen – not to the world around us, or to our own small voice, but to God.
As St. Paul writes in the epistle from Romans we heard this morning: “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart”
And so I found this week’s news remarkably timely.
Now, you all know by now that I am a bit of a geek. I love science and technology. Over the last few months we have had some amazing science news which just made the whole universe seem like a great big interstellar wilderness of potential discovery that it is – a new planet found, comets explored up close, and now…a chirp.
That’s right – a chirp. A small sound bite that will likely be considered one of the most important moments of sound ever heard. And it was heard and seen actually by not one, but two independent laboratories in Washington state and Louisiana. It was the sound of a gravitational wave.
Dennis Overbye, a science reporter for the NY Times, put it this way “A team of scientists announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. It completes his vision of a universe in which space and time are interwoven and dynamic, able to stretch, shrink and jiggle.”[1]
About now, you might be thinking – sure, that’s cool, (and of course, I’m thinking – I wonder about time travel???) – but what, you might ask, does that have to do with Lent or with our scripture readings today. What has science to do with faith? Well, the thing is, science and faith are very much alike, really, and perhaps that is why many scientists grow in their faith the more they pursue their craft. As one commenter on the Times article said, “Scientists don’t prove theories “correct”, they just discard doubt with new evidence. That’s the beauty of science – nothing is certain, it’s just that the probability of it being wrong becomes increasingly lower with mounting evidence.”[2]
I like that comment, because faith is never about proving something as fact, but about our heart, mind, and soul sensing mounting evidence of something profound about the nature of existence. And the way in which we sense what is and what is not is through listening – not only with our ears. We will question it, push against it, search for answers…and we should. Sounds a lot like what scientists do.
So with all that in mind, let’s look at the gospel today because it is perfect for the opening of Lent. Jesus, following his baptism, goes out into the wilderness for forty days of fasting. He is preparing himself for the journey ahead, a road that he knows will be difficult. And he begins to hear what the gospel writer says was the devil trying to test him. The tests are designed to entice Jesus into forgetting who he is…or really, to redefine what that means for him. Each test seeks to have him define himself apart from his relationship with God, and each time Jesus chooses to define himself by that relationship.
Now the funny thing is, the one testing Jesus uses scripture – knows it well – and yet, Jesus knew that even though the words were correct, something was not right about what was being said.
Oh if only all those who quote scripture were speaking truth…but, we certainly know, and this gospel is making clear, sometimes those who quote the bible are speaking anything but truth. For far too long, people have used this sacred text not to spread the message of God’s all abiding love, but to declare some people unworthy – to support slavery, to support gender bias, to support homophobia. They were quoting scripture too.
The theologian Eberhard Jüngel once said something along the lines of “I am increasingly less interested in whether you believe in God, than what kind of God you believe in.” Both Jesus and the Devil character quote scripture, but only one of them is speaking something that resonates in our hearts about God and what God wants for us.
“The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.”
Yes, the words were scriptural but they just didn’t have the same feel. It is like the way Einstein once said when asked to describe his theory of relativity, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour,” he once declared. “Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity!” In this case, Satan in the gospel was bringing on a whole lot of stove heat. And Jesus knew, that didn’t feel quite right. God should feel more like someone who you like sitting beside you.
Okay, easy enough…but is it?
Much of the time, it isn’t so much about trying to discern what words are resonating in our heart, but about hearing them in the first place. We get so caught up in our day to day to-do lists, career objectives, and material matters, that life becomes a series of goals, rather than a transformational journey of coming to know who we are and what our life is really about.
There’s a story about a young but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Zen Master: ”If I work very hard and diligent how long will it take for me to find Zen.” The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years.” The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty years.” ”But, if I really, really work at it. How long then?” asked the student. ”Thirty years,” replied the Master. ”But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” Replied the Master,” When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.”
We are distracted. We are so busy, so plugged in, so focused on what we have, what we don’t have, what others have, that we can’t seem to filter out what is real and what is not. We are so full of all this noisy stuff, we have no room for anything else. Our eyes are no longer on the journey God hopes for us, but on some elusive “destination” we perceive as the goal.
Lent gives us that chance to empty ourselves for our journey ahead…our journey that is our life. A life in which we need to pay attention – not to some materialistic goal, but to the path itself, in much the same way our Zen student needed to do – because it is the path that is important. It is where we are at this moment that needs our attention. Maybe that is why Jesus, before beginning his life work, went out to the wilderness. He wanted to empty himself of all that would distract him from being able to hear the voice of God within his heart.
Now I know, it isn’t like we don’t all have calendars crammed with appointments for us, for kids, for work. But something Martin Luther said always comes back to me. He said, “I have so much to do today that I shall spend the first 3 hours in prayer.” Okay, perhaps a bit overboard, but you get the picture. The time we take to center ourselves, to listen to God, is time we need, not time wasted. And Lent offers us that reset – that returning to a place of quietness that we need in order that we might also hear the voice of God that is near our lips and our heart.
To do that, we have to be remove the clutter and listen – listen not only with our ears, but with every part of our being. And see, that is why this gravitational wave experiment was so awesome and the result so timely for us in Lent. Because the thing about the experiment, which went on for a long time, despite folks who thought the whole idea was crazy, is that the project was created to do just what we want to do in Lent (no not spend decades and millions of dollars). The LIGO project was set up because these gravitational waves, which are distortions in space and time, would be too faint to be heard by the time they reached Earth. No traditional sort of device set up only to listen could possibly filter out all the other Earth noise. And so this project, set up on two locations, was created to listen in other ways – to catch the wave, in a sense.
At each LIGO location, there are two 2.5 mile long tubes set up in an L-shape. Knowing that gravitational waves are the result of space and time movement, they created a way to listen for it. The NY Times put it this way “A disturbance in the cosmos could cause space-time to stretch, collapse and even jiggle, like a mattress shaking when that sleeper rolls over, producing ripples of gravity: [or] gravitational waves.” So the experiment was set up to sense movement – to feel the wave – in a sense, no matter how small a force it might be by the time it reached Earth.
Now, if you ever had a garage opener you can kind of understand what they were trying to do. Garage openers work because there is a beam of light that runs between two sensors. If someone accidently hits a sensor and knocks it out of alignment, the opener won’t work. LIGO was hit by the wave – it was moved – it felt something, and because it was tuned to listen for whatever sound that would be heard when it was moved – it heard the wave. The chirp heard round the world.
We have to listen for what moves us too – for the gravitational wave of the Holy Spirit – and to do that, we must shut out all the noise around us and listen with more than our ears. Jesus is showing us a model of relationship, or perhaps relativity, with God that is based on humility and service, rather than power and pride, that is the life we are meant to live. A life that is always there for us, if we stop and listen to allow this truth to enter into us – to soak into our very being.
This Lent, may we open our hearts to hear the Word – to hear the Spirit waiting to enter in. And when we do, we will feel a jiggle too – in our hearts – in our very being – a wave that will move us.
Move us to shake off the yoke of indifference.
Move us to compassion for those who are poor.
Move us to righteous anger against injustice.
“The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.”
And we will know it by the way it feels. The Holy Spirit will always feel like the person who makes the hour go by like a minute.
After all, life is about relationship – with God, with one another, with ourselves.
I suppose Einstein was right – it really is all relative, isn’t it.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click here:
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html?_r=0
[2] Raj Govindarajan of Washington, DC in a comment posted on the NY Times website in response to this article.”
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
February 14, 2016
Last Sunday After The Epiphany – Year C
1st Reading – Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
2nd Reading – Romans 10:8b-13
Gospel – Luke 4:1-13
