Sermon November 28, 2004
“Sacred Time”
Douglas Adams, in his novel, The Dark Tea Time of the Soul, suggests that there is a spiritual
realm that exists parallel to our own.
His spiritual realm is populated by dysfunctional Norse gods, who move
back and forth between the two realms by turning just the right way, an movement
that allows them to slip unimpeded between the domain of the gods and the human
dimension. He suggests we could all
move as easily between these realms, if we only knew how to twist our bodies
just the right way.
It’s all rather silly. The idea that people or divinities can slip from one reality to
another by simply shifting their bodies in a certain way is ridiculous, but, of
course, the author means it to be.
At the same time, Adams does touch upon a problem that
haunts religion. How do we experience
the divine? Is there any way in which
the divine and the human can interact?
And if there are contacts between the human and the spiritual realm,
where and how do they occur? It might
be helpful to divide the question into two parts: how does the divine communicate with us and how do we experience
the divine?
Every religion has its own ideas about how the divine communicates with us. Christianity used to focus heavily on dreams
and visions. In fact, Tertullian, an
early church leader, says that many of the people who converted to Christianity
in the first centuries of the Christian era, converted because of dreams. Today, of course, most Christians would say
that God has spoken through the Bible and if you want to know what God has to
say, read the Bible. In fact,
Christianity closed the door to revelation, over the objection of people like
Tertullian, almost 2,000 years ago.
On the other hand, mystics of all persuasions still
believe in visions and dreams and apparitions.
I can only speak of my own experience, and I have to
admit that for me, the divine rarely uses such dramatic devices. The urgings of the divine are just that,
urgings, something I feel somewhere deep within myself.
Certain things that I do just feel right or just feel
very wrong. Sometimes I just know the
direction I should take and off I go, and other times I just feel an inner
voice saying, “No.” Sometimes I know
it’s time to act and sometimes that inner voice says, “Wait”; that I need to stop, do nothing, and let
life unfold. I am reminded to be
patient, that the path will become clear.
I hate those times, because I don’t know what will happen, I just sit
there feeling a little pregnant, like something’s about to happen, but I don’t
know what. I wait to see what life brings
my way.
This hearing is not some intellectual process. I don’t analyze my options. Nor is it an emotional response. Plans made in anxiety and anger are almost
always disastrous. In my experience
hearing the divine has less to do with thinking and more to do with feeling
where I’m to go and what I’m to do.
This is not an easy thing to do and its not an easy
thing to learn to do. Several years ago
I had a student at Le Moyne whose work was really superior. She decided to do graduate work in religion
and applied to different graduate programs.
She was certain that this was what she was to do with her life and I
felt that she was well qualified.
Then she was rejected by all five schools where she
had applied. When she came to me to ask
me what she should do, I told her that she had to decide whether these
rejections were a sign that she should do something else with her life, or
whether these rejections were obstacles that she needed to persevere through
and keep pursuing her dream. The truth is, sometimes what we learn as we fight
for our dream is as important as the dream itself.
She asked me how she would know the difference and I
told her that she would have to feel it.
Then, of course, she asked how she would feel it. I told her she would have to learn to hear
the voice within her, but that would only happen when she was willing to set
aside her intellect and her anxiety about the future and let herself
listen.
To hear the Spirit within is possible
only when something happens in our hearts.
It is a movement we make within ourselves, a kind of mental gymnastics,
a twisting of the mind and heart. It is
opening our minds to hear a voice deeper than our own.
The same is true of experiencing the
divine. It takes an abandonment of the
intellect, a suspension of our judgment.
It is opening ourselves to the possibility of being touched by the other
side.
This is not something that comes
easily in our scientific, rationalistic world and it’s not something we are
terribly comfortable with.
About fifteen years ago, my wife and I
were scheduled to have dinner with a friend of mine and his new girlfriend,
someone neither my wife or I had met.
The night before our dinner I dreamt that I met her and asked her what
her name was. She replied.
“Daphne.” I didn’t think much about it,
and thought less of it when we met her and found out that her name was actually
Kim.
But in the course of our conversation over dinner I
happen to mention my dream, and when I told her that in the dream she called
herself “Daphne”, her mouth fell open. She told us that Daphne was her father’s pet
name for her when she was as little girl.
Here was something very strange. My friend Joe didn’t know her childhood
nickname and there was no way I could have known it. So what did we do with this impossible event? Well, there was an awkward moment as we all
realized that something had happened that we could not possibly explain; then we
changed the topic and never mentioned it again. It just didn’t fit our idea of reality, and we were far to
committed to being rational to allow ourselves to think about something that
violated our idea of what can and cannot happen.
It’s hard to be open to possibilities we have already
decided are not possible.
When
it comes to experiencing the divine, most religions recognize that certain
times and places can be filled with divine presence, that there can be times
and places when contact between the realm of the sacred and the world of our
everyday existence take place. Most
ancient worship sites traced their roots to some sort of encounter with the
sacred that had taken place at in that place.
Anthropologists who study religion
speak of these times as “sacred time” and these places as “sacred space”.
The idea that there are times or
places where the divine and human realm draw near to each other and touch is a
very ancient idea and one that is virtually forgotten in today’s world. But maybe there is something in this idea
for us, a way to open ourselves to the spiritual.
Since we began the service with the
lighting of the advent candle, signifying the beginning of a special season or
time, it seems appropriate to focus on the notion of sacred time today.
So what is sacred time? In the ancient world people believe that there were two types of
time; profane or regular times and sacred time. Sacred time were moments when the divine was particularly
present, when the power of past events, events in which the divine had acted,
was again active in the world.
For instance, most ancient religions celebrated a New
Year Festival. They believed that the
creative power that first formed the world, was released once more through the
celebration. That power renewed and
sustained the world for another year.
Likewise nature-based religions believe that each
spring festival signified the release of the fertility of the gods, their
life-giving power, into the world; bringing the new growth of plants and
animals.
Sacred times could also be related to historical
events. When the Jews celebrate
Passover they don’t say, “our ancestors were slaves in Egypt.” They say, “We were slaves in Egypt.” In older times they saw themselves as
participants in events that happened thousands of years ago; traveling, if you
will, across time and into an event that happened in the distant past, each
year feeling the power of that event.
We have lost our appreciation for sacred time. New Year’s Day has become a time for
resolutions, which are rarely kept; but few cultures still see the dawn of the
New Year as a time when the world is renewed.
The liturgical year, whether it be the Jewish year
that retraces the significant events in Israel’s history, or the Christian year
that follows the life of Jesus, or the Muslim year that traces the life of
Mohammed; are seen to today as history lessons, not as opportunities to
actually participate in the events they commemorate, to relive them, to
experience them once more as a reality.
You might ask what the advent candle we just lit has
to do with sacred time? Well, in early
Christian thought they saw Advent as a time to prepare for the birth of Jesus. Not just to remember it, but to actually
wait for it to happen again, spiritually; to experience again the entrance of
the divine into the world.
This ancient mentality is pretty much absent today,
and has left only traces upon the various religions. Most traditions have forgotten the nature of sacred time, and
treat their holidays as simply a time to remember some past event.
But have they lost something by intellectualizing away
the nature of these moments? By
treating them as memorials and not as times when they can once again enter into
a sacred event, once again experience its power, once again be touched by the
divine. Have they lost something when
they gave up the idea of sacred time?
And what about for us? When we light the advent candle are we preparing ourselves to
experience the birth of Jesus, to be touched once again by the divine bursting
into the world?
I suspect most of us light the candle because we are
anticipating Christmas: a time for
family and friends to gather, a time for giving and loving, and a time to share
our hope and joy.
So do we as Universalist Unitarians have sacred
times?
Well, what about our own service; what about when we
come together for worship? In the
ancient world any religious service, any time set apart, could be sacred, a
point of contact with the divine. Is our service sacred time?
We certainly set it apart. And not just by scheduling it for 10:30 Sunday mornings. We set it apart with music. We have a prelude and a postlude. They are mirror images, a musical
enclosure. These kinds of enclosure are
found in almost all religious ritual and mark off time as sacred.
Our prelude and postlude are a musical parenthesis
that is designed to mark off this time as sacred; as a time that is unique in
nature.
That’s why it is important that we have a prelude and
a postlude and that they are similar; times of music, of quiet reflection,
times when we direct our thoughts inward; but we must also not forget that
historically they are portals, points when we enter and exit sacred time.
But is this time really different from
normal time? Is the spiritual more
accessible? Can we be touched by it
here in a way we can’t be at other times?
I’ll tell you a secret. Theologians don’t like the idea of sacred
time. They are much to intellectual for
all that. They say, “God is everywhere,
so how can there be moments when God is more present,” and, “God never changes,
so how can there be times when God is present in a different way?”
But now I’ll tell them a secret. I am always my daughter’s father, but there
are times when we are far apart and there are times when we are sitting across
the table talking. Our relationship
never changes, but the nature of our interaction does. Sacred time isn’t about changing our
relationship to the divine; its about changing the nature of our interaction.
Can our time together on Sunday mornings be sacred
time? Can it be a time where we can
experience the divine in a unique and different way?
It may be true that the divine fills all things, that
it is within all things, that it
resides within our hearts. But are
there times when we can be open to it in a different way, when we can
experience it in a different way?
We can, I think , if we want to. We can we can get out of the way and let it
happen. The Prophet Mohammed said that
if a person takes one step toward Allah, Allah will come running toward him or
her. The Rabbis say that if you open
your heart even the tiniest amount, God will flood in. All religions believe that the divine is
something we can experience, if we let it happen.
And all religions agree that what prevents that experience
are the roadblocks we put there.
Roadblocks like deciding that an encounter with the divine is
impossible, or that we aren’t holy enough, or that we don’t understand enough,
or that the divine is to distant or to impersonal to be touched, or that it
depends on our effort.
Part of the Buddha’s genius was to realize that people
were designed to be enlightened, that if they could just clean out their mental
and emotional garages, enlightenment was parked outside in the driveway, just
waiting to pull in.
To experience the divine, we must step aside: step
aside mentally, step aside emotionally. We must make that strange internal
twist; that opening of our heart.
Today we are gathered together in a time set apart, in
a sacred time, if we want. The experience
of the sacred is not something we can control or make happen. The Spirit is free, and goes where it
desires. But while we cannot will the
divine to touch us, we can open ourselves to it.
The world is pregnant with the divine, waiting to be born,
waiting to emerge. Are we ready to
receive it? Are we ready for sacred
time?