Monday, October 6, 2008

WorldWide Communion

THE INTIMATE MYSTERY

Here is a question for you… Is there a difference between “Believing in God” and “Knowing God?” I think the distinction is huge, and I think that we can get to the heart of it when we understand belief as a process of the intellect, and knowledge as a process of the heart.

Look at the example of being a professional baseball player. First and foremost you have to learn the rules. You learn more and more, you come to believe in baseball fully to use our term form above – and you learn how to do things, skills with running and throwing and how to have explosive start up running speed so you can get from base to base as quickly as possible – you get what I am saying, you acquire all the knowledge you can about baseball – but does that make you a professional athlete?

The answer to that is no – you become a professional when you begin to have intimate knowledge of the game – you know baseball so well, you love it so much, that it is completely a part of you. When you get to know it like that, no matter what happens during a game you will instinctively react properly – each of your actions will be in tune to the game, and you will be a pro.

This is the distinction that Paul is trying to make in his letter to the Philippians. This is what Paul calls “Knowing”. Just in case you hate sports enough that you tuned out the example above, think of it this way. When we fall in love with someone we can decide to learn everything there is to learn about him or her – and that helps us to a point – but it does not change us in any way, nor does it increase the love we have for them. In fact, often the more facts you learn about another person’s life, the less inclined you are to like them.

It is when you come to “know” them that the love increases. You know why they are angry, and so you feel it with them, you know what they would like for their birthday without asking and you do it, you know why they tell you not to drink any more coffee and so you switch to decaf… that sort of intimate knowledge is different than what you might call “book learning” and it makes all the difference.

Right in the middle of his letter to the church in Philippi; Paul writes passionately that he wants to “Know Christ.” That he wants to become so close to Christ that what Paul does, he does out of love, and respect, and understanding for the message that Christ not only taught, but also lived. This is the type of faith that he, and we aspire to.

What would it mean to know God intimately? It would mean that we would understand why we should love everyone around us and just do it out of reflex, like a professional athlete would. It would mean that we would come to accept that God made everyone important not just me and so we would truly try to get to know everyone around us just as intimately – and that would change everything. Knowledge of another, when it is so much a part of us, changes us – we cannot help it.

If any of you have ever had a long-term relationship with another person you might know what I am talking about. Can you think back to before you met them – can you remember what your favourite food was, or what you liked or disliked. Now if you are like me, some of those things did not overlap. My wife was a vegetarian before I met her. Now trust me, I had never had a meal without meat. Now I eat vegetarian dishes and she likes BBQ ribs. It sounds small, but this is the point, my love for her, our getting to know each other so well, changed both of us, we could not help it.
So as we get to know God, as we come to have an intimate relationship with God – things about us will change as well.

Now keep all that in mind, but I want to throw a wrench into my own sermon. I had a theology professor, Doug Hall. He is a rather famous, rather imposing older gentleman who taught us in dark oak paneled rooms with a slight German accent. And every now and again he would say something that would completely surprise you, and make you stop and think. One morning he was talking to us about breakfast with his wife, who he had been married to for 50 years.

He told us that every morning he sits there with a coffee and gazes lovingly across the table at Rhoda while she reads the morning paper. And they will engage in polite chitchat about things in the paper, things in the neighbourhood or the school – and every couple of days, Rhoda will say something that Dr. Hall had never heard her say before, make a comment about something that he did not even think she cared about… the point being, even though Dr. Hall has spent a lifetime getting to know this person across the breakfast nook from him, he never will know her completely – a part of her will always remain a mystery. And, Dr Hall told us with a smile, that is why I love her.

So there you go – we need intimate knowledge – but intimate knowledge will never eliminate mystery… and part of us needs that mystery. We do not ever really want to know everything, we do not want to understand someone so completely that they would never surprise us in any way – life is about searching for new truth, new understanding; and life is also worth living because that mystery keeps it interesting. Sometimes we need to let the mysterious remain a mystery.

I have come a long way around to the point of telling you that I have no idea what happens when we celebrate communion. It is a mystery to me. There is some sense of intimate knowing, we ingest the blood and body of Christ, at least symbolically, but there is also a sense that it is something that is happening beyond our explanation – that God is at work in some way we cannot understand through this simple act.

We need this – our spirituality needs both intimacy and reverence.

And so I can say two things at once; communion is a meal in which we: friends, family and neighbours come together and eat together and we sing and laugh and talk and we build that basic connection between us. But a the same time communion is a meal we share with a God we never truly see or understand, it is a sacrament in which what matters is being broken and poured out which points beyond the ordinary to some great sacred mystery.

And when it comes right down to it, I do not need the facts. I do not need to understand exactly how it works – there is something mysterious about this act that connects us all.

And I have seen it work in different ways. I have seen people who were so angry with each other they thought they would never talk again united by sharing a small glass of grape juice and a piece of bread. I have seen children be made to feel part of a community that they never imagined; I have seen different denominations all of a sudden remember that we are all part of the same family. That is a part of knowing God so intimately that you let this meal remain the mystery it was meant to be.

That is the difference between believing that God might be out there, and knowing that God is right here.

Amen.