Sermon for The Last Sunday After Epiphany

Luke 9:28-36

February 14, 2010

The year is 1992, the Summer before seminary. Mary, Margie and I are in a little beach town in Mexico for a week’s vacation before the big move, and we have settled in. Hammocks, no glass in the windows of our room, just curtains that rise to the ceiling in a light breeze. Lazy. And Margie has been noticing the guy who sells horse rides all week. Each day he arrives with a few horses and picks up some tourists for an hour’s ride up the beach and today is her day. When the young man arrives today it’s her turn. “Wanna go for a ride.” Such a big smile.

Margie and I ride up the beach with our guide until the village is out of sight. Margie, who is 10 and has ridden a few times still needs a bit of watching. I ride enough to manage as we make our way along the edge of the surf. The young man who owns the horses is pleasant and friendly to Margie, which means a lot to me. His long hair, dark skin and silver jewelry mark him as part of an away-from-home adventure. We ride north, and he is leading another horse whose rider we will pick up in the next town.

She is fifty maybe, and waiting on the beach with a man. She gives him a little kiss and lets our guide help her onto her horse. Together the four of us continue along the scalloped edge of the Yucatan peninsula, one beach after another. Tangled trees and deep blue ocean separated by a line of sand, and we travel that line.

The woman we picked up hasn’t spoken a word. She is riding, looking ahead, sitting very straight in the saddle. She has ridden before. I am keeping an eye on Margie, whose horse occasionally develops a mind of its own. The young man sees me looking back at my daughter and says, “I will check on your daughter, you stay with her,” meaning the woman who is riding on ahead.

Having been assigned, I ride up alongside the woman and try to start a conversation. “Do you speak English?” I ask. “French,” is the one word answer to my question. That word and the fact that she never took her eyes off the way ahead, let me know that I would hear no other words, and that was true. And still, in the next moment, I caught a glimpse into her life, as through a window, and I knew I had seen something important I would never have any chance of comprehending.

She and I were well ahead of the others, she was riding a few yards ahead of me when the guide called out that it was time to return. I stopped and waited. The French woman stopped and did not turn immediately. She just sat there looking up the beach, savoring the setting, the day maybe, and then she brought her hand up in front of her, made a fist and brought it down just a bit in the kind of motion often accompanied by the word, “yes!” She paused a bit longer and owned that moment before turning her horse for the ride back.

I knew as we rode back that I had seen only a piece of a story, a story I would never know.

And so I said nothing in those days about what I had seen.

It is funny, as I was writing down this story, the images came back to me. I saw the horses and the guide and Margie at ten, and the woman’s sign of triumph--at least that is what it seemed to me--I saw all those things. One of my first reactions to the experience of that ride, even then, had been to associate it with the gospel story for this last Sunday of Epiphany. I carried for some time the feeling of having been only an observer, an incidental participant in a mystery that could not be conveyed. I tell you the story today, and in fear that it will seem thin or silly or too much about me and my projections, I was tempted to qualify the telling by saying, ‘you just had to be there,’ but I won't do that.

I tell the story, not because it is about Jesus or Elijah or Moses, but because it speaks to me of experiences, images, occurrences we are not sure what to do with--experiences whose meaning we may only be able to guess and about which we are likely to remain quiet. We often experience more than we tell. We may keep to ourselves experiences that challenge our take on reality, or that we think others will not easily understand or accept. And, if we are reluctant to tell others about such experiences, what do we end up telling ourselves? I love the line--I understand the line-- “they kept quiet, and in those days told no one anything of what they had seen.”

We all experience such moments. A sunset, the sight of a child playing, learning, discovering. We say it all the time, “you just had to be there.” We say nothing at all about other moments. We witness an act of kindness that makes us question our own compassion and we are likely to have to ponder that for a while. A kind word at just the right moment can soften our crust, change us, but only after we have carried the experience long enough to let it sink in, to let in work on us. And those are simple everyday kinds of experiences. What about the other things we aren’t eager to discuss?

A couple of Wednesdays ago in the Corinthians class, we were talking about Paul having had a vision of Jesus and referring to that vision as his experience of the risen Christ. I was intrigued by the idea that if a vision of the risen Christ counts for Paul as a resurrection experience, then maybe we could all have such experiences. Someone asked, “have you ever had a vision of Christ?” “Well, not exactly,” I said, and then proceeded to speak very carefully and a bit hesitantly of moments of intuition, and insight and connection in which I have thought Jesus to be at least somewhere nearby. I was surprised even as I was answering, at my own hesitation to speak of such things. You can guess, of course, what happened. As soon as I had told a bit of my story, someone else told a bit of their experience of similar things. Another person stayed after class to tell a story. Oh the stories we could tell if only we would. Prayers answered, conscience awakened, strength found to make it through difficult times, moments of deep peace in the middle of turmoil, the little voice inside that tells us to move, change, grow, try. We don’t often have much to say about such things, we may even dismiss them. What if they are not only real, but reality itself breaking into our lives. I believe these moments we keep to ourselves are often nothing less than the Spirit of God working on us, working in us, completing the work of creation begun so long ago.

Our bishop noted recently that while the number of parishioners on church roles is increasing, the number of people attending services each week is getting smaller. I have been thinking about the bishop’s question as to why more people don’t attend church. I have been wondering why someone would want to participate in a faith community, not because I don’t know some time-honored answers to the question, but because I am not sure my answers would mean anything to someone not already invested in the Church. One answer I might offer to someone who has never been a part of the Church is that in this place, one can ponder the experiences that are difficult to talk about. This community, with its liturgy and lore, provides a setting and a language for reflection on those moments when we have hints of a larger, unexamined reality, a reality of which we are a part and that is a part of us. I would like to tell that person approaching the Church also that in the community of faith you will sometimes hear stories from the people around you that sound familiar--that let you know you are not alone. I would have to tell them though that they would need to be present for a while and listen closely to hear such stories. I would say that here we understand that sometimes you just have to keep silent, telling no one what you have seen…….I would make sure they know that, and I would tell them what may be the best reason to be a part of this community. I would tell them that in this place we look forward to the day when all the stories will be told and to a time when the real won’t seem so strange. Amen.