Last month we learned of the death of an American literary figure whose body of work was tiny, but influential, and whose greatest claim to fame was that he did not want to be famous. J.D. Salinger was an interesting man and subsequent articles in The New Yorker have opened me to the idea that this recluse of Cornish, New Hampshire is to be admired for his steadfast refusal to believe his own press. His practice – like that of Greta Garbo – flies in the face of a society obsessed with celebrity and overlaid with “reality,” talk and programs that pass for “news.” Yet, such recluses, or any desire for a modicum of privacy, simply excite the paparazzi to greater exploits! Yet, God decides not be Deus absconditus – the hidden God – but to reveal Himself plainly and how do we react? Well, most of us are as skeptical as if someone came to us to report a sighting of Elvis lunching in the Village.

Today we have heard of the Lord’s self-disclosure to three different people: Isaiah, Paul and Peter. Each encounter was different, but shares common elements. First, in each case the one who encounters God is overwhelmed by the reality that God is so different, so other than we are. The absolute classic work describing this, in my mind, was written at the turn of the last century by Rudolf Otto. In The Idea of The Holy Otto described what he called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans – the mystery at once overwhelming yet fascinating. A good example is what we read of Isaiah’s vision: “….I saw the Lord high and lifted up.” Along with the realization that he is a sinful man dwelling among sinful people – one who needs God’s very touch in order to be what he is called to be. Paul’s encounter knocks him off his horse – both literally and figuratively – taking a persecutor of “the Way” and turning him into its first theologian and evangelists for the non-Jewish world. But it involves his losing what he thought was his sight in order to regain it and move beyond physical sight that was spiritual blindness to a new way of seeing. Peter is brought to his knees – humbled in more ways than one – and made to realize that his fishing days are to be changed, because now he has been caught by God. He bids the Lord depart from Him, but instead is embraced and transformed.

Second, those who encounter the living God understand that God wants to be known and not just to them, but to others. Isaiah hears God speaking “whom shall we send and who will go for us” and responds, “Here I am, send me.” Paul takes up work he never thought he would, as does Peter; educated Roman citizen and coarse fisherman become two names locked together for millennia. Paul’s powerful words remind us that this is what we’re supposed to be about. “For I handed on to you what was first handed on to me….” The point of the encounter is that we are to pass it on.

So, how are we to understand these encounters for ourselves? I came across something in a commentary that I found particularly insightful. It seems that John Calvin in his reflection on Isaiah’s vision saw the action of the angelic agent taking the coal and touching Isaiah’s lips to purify him had a sacramental dimension. The coal was an instrument to mediate grace, serving as a “visible sign of an invisible grace,” which is how Calvin (following on St. Augustine) understood the sacraments. Could it be that the encounter continues here in these moments of worship? That in this place, where we break open the Word and receive simple gifts carrying more meaning than we see on the surface, that we can say, with Isaiah, “I saw the Lord”? Could it be that here, at this time and this place, each of us is being encountered, confronted by God and being asked how we are “passing it on”?

The encounter with God is not to bring us guilt, bind us in shame – though, alas, that is what the Church has managed to do over the ages – rather, we’re to be liberated to be the people God created us to be. While there may be what seems like yawning chasms, veritable Grand Canyons, between us and God, it is that very same God who stands next to us, in the midst of this place, in the midst of this people, even within us and bids us to know Him and be known by Him. Isaiah simply opened himself to God’s touch, to God’s word, knew the fulfillment and knew, too, what it meant to be a cooperator with God.

I came across something in a little publication I receive called Synthesis that I simply want to share with you in entirety. I don’t think I could improve on it. These are the “three Gs of following” and go right along with how we are to cooperate once we’ve come to the reality that God is God and that we’re not. Here they are:

1). Go to church. More and more, it seems that people are less and less often going to church. Everybody is under a time crunch, and suffers from over-commitment, as we all know. So Sunday becomes the only morning to “sleep in” for a busy-bodied populace. The kids have ball practices to make and soccer games to play. There are weekend trips to take, from camping to college football. Then there is the N. Y. Times to read, and Meet the Press to watch, and then the NFL Today to take in. Others say the minister is boring, or the service is too long, or I just don’t like what is happening in the Church these days. These “excuses” serve the purpose that underlies most of what is really going on: what M. Scott Peck, M. D., in The Road Less Traveled called the “freedom of uncommitment.” Admittedly, some people say that going to church does not make you Christian, any more than standing in your garage makes you a car. But this sounds like pap. The whole idea that “I’m very spiritual; I just don’t go to church” also sounds weak as water. I would like to see just one person whose faith has grown deeper and deeper, whose discipleship has grown stronger and stronger, by playing more golf on Sunday morning.

2). Give significantly. The standard for giving, at least from the Old Testament, is the tithe—the first 10 percent of the “harvest.” This is not a “law” but a benchmark. People of faith—of following faith—aspire to live on 90% of their income. This is not to earn God’s approval. Obligation belongs to the Fall. Necessity appears after Adam breaks relationship with God, and tries to “get right with God” by obligation, by fulfilling a list of “dos and don’ts.” God deals only in gifts, Jesus teaches, not in “wages.” The character of God is “uncalculating generosity,” as the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Laborers in the Vineyard testify. And it is with this God-like heart of “uncalculating generosity” that we, as followers of Jesus, are to give of our time, talent, and treasure. As followers, we are to be “faithful” not out of necessity, but gratuitously, as an act of praise and thanksgiving. [Episcopal] Bishop Charles Von Rosenberg of East Tennessee once made the following statement in the context of calling out givers to a new camp and conference center for the diocese. He said, “If you want to know what people are like—ask them for money. That, more than any other indicator, will tell you about their faith commitment and their character.”

3). Give up grudges. Let’s face it. Jesus could have been one of the greatest “grudge-bearers” in religious history. His early childhood was completely messed up by Herod (Mt. 2:13). His kinsfolk tried to restrain him in Nazareth, saying he was “out of his mind” (Mk. 3:21). Later the synagogue congregation tried to lynch him after a sermon (Lk. 4:29). Religious leaders from Jerusalem claimed that he was in league with the devil (Mk. 3:22-27). Jerusalem, the City of God, rejected him, even though Jesus would have gathered the city to him as a hen gathers her chicks (Lk. 13:34). The cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum dissed him as well (Lk. 10:13-15). Given this kind of hardship, the ministry of Jesus could have been a three-year whine-a-thon. What he suffered from the disciples who deserted him, the religious leaders of Jerusalem and the officers who had him mocked, scourged, and crucified could have made Jesus curse his
executioners rather than forgive them. But forgiving love, in the image and likeness of the “Father in heaven,” characterized the “mind of Christ” until the end. That the world was given
Easter—and not holocaust—after Good Friday is the supreme testimony to the grudgeless nature of God in Christ. That the Church has become one of the most grudge-filled, resentment infested places on earth is scandalous. What a shame, what an anathema to the Lord. Following Jesus means to lay down grudges. The desire for “rightness” has to be superseded by our desire to take in God and God’s righteousness if we want to follow Jesus “on the Way.”
—HKO [from Synthesis for February 2010]

There is practical, lived spirituality, which begins after we’ve stood in awe and heard, “whom shall I send and who will go?”

Today through Word preached and Sacrament received – literally passed along in this context – God’s presence is real, if we have eyes to perceive and hearts to receive. We encounter the Holy in the ordinary elements of bread and cup, which take on a new and deeper meaning. What we do here touches us so that we might be open to what God is calling us to do: to be followers of Jesus and to “pass it on” by the words we speak and, even more importantly, by the lives we live. That “it” is the wonder of relationship with God and a renewed relationship with those around us. Christ is among us – as our friends in the Eastern Churches say – and now, pass it on!