Having a human experience

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on June 22, 2008.

The General Ordination Exam, or GOE, is to seminary what the bar exam is to law school. After years of preparation and study and the jumping through of hoops, some simple, some flaming, you have this one last hurdle. It lasts three days. There are questions on all areas of theological study; scripture, history, liturgy, ethics, theology, and the ever popular “coffee hour questions.” These are the questions that one might encounter at random from a member of the church or a visitor. The trick is that little did we know, even these questions are evaluated by category. For example, one question the year I took it was something about St. George, the patron saint of England. The questioner was someone who had come from a church that made a big deal about him and celebrated St. George’s Day and why didn’t we? I gave the kind of answer you might expect. I said that I wasn’t really familiar with the tradition but if she were willing to bring the idea, with some structure to a larger group, we would see if there were interest and by the way, thank you very much for the idea! To me that’s the appropriate response to that kind of question. Unfortunately the test reader wanted an historic answer and didn’t like it – said I obviously didn’t know my church history very well.

But the coffee hour question that really got me into hot water was from a recent widow who was struggling and wondering just where was her husband now?” Now I’m not sure just which category this was supposed to fall into but I took it as a very real and as it turns out, it is a very real question and so I answered it with pastoral concern for the woman asking and said that none of us knows for sure and that there are several schools of thought beginning with the traditional image of pearly gates, clouds and harps where people where people do…I’m not sure what. I said there are also people who talk about the immortal soul, that part of us that does not die continuing on in some form. That was the one that made some heads explode – heads of people who had some power over my path to ordination. They were horrified that such a Platonic idea – an immortal soul – could have so corrupted the necessary appropriate doctrine of Christianity. The answer they were looking at was that when we die we cease to exist until the resurrection when poof, we exist again and then are raised. I don’t remember how I tap danced around them but at least I didn’t get expelled but ever since I’ve wanted to go back and say a few things to them, starting with Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel that we should not “fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” I’d also like to remind them of collect in our very own Book of Common Prayer in the prayers for the deceased in Burial service. “Grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of thee, he may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom.” And then I would put the book down with vigor and say “See!” It’s probably a good thing I won’t have that opportunity. But it is an interesting question as to why there are those in the church who are afraid of the idea of a soul that existed before birth and continues to exist after death. Frankly it’s a lot more in keeping with how we have talked about things and with a whole lot of this world’s teaching.

Last week I shared with you the exhilarating sentiment of Teilhard de Chardin that we are not human beings in search of a spiritual experience but that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. That’s spiritual journey stuff and today we are celebrating the acknowledgment of that journey and all that it entails as we baptize little Blake Herman. Now Blake is an interesting child, he is the product of a family that is half Episcopalian and half Hindu. That makes Blake a bridge between two traditions that at first glance are quite different but just below the surface they have much in common beginning with the belief in one God. That God in both religions is understood in various forms. For Christians we celebrate three persons of the one God in the Trinity. Hindus believe in one God in many forms; Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as well as others. But the greatest opportunity for conversation is reincarnation. The soul journeys from the eternal spirit through the realm of the material world and seeks the way back. Different incarnations bring different lessons and learning. The ultimate goal is reunion with – one could easily say reconciliation with – the ultimate source.

The Episcopal Church’s relationship with the idea of reincarnation is intriguing. There are two main books written on reincarnation from the point of view of Christianity, one was written by Geddes MacGregor, an Episcopal priest and Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at USC. Other books on the subject have had back cover endorsements by The Rt. Rev. Bennett Simms, retired bishop of Atlanta so there are serious voices in our tradition that have been willing to consider out loud the possibility that church teachings may be incomplete when it comes to the idea of soul and its journey.

To my way of thinking the main difference between traditional Christian doctrine of group resurrection at some time in the future that only God knows and reincarnation is that in Christianity outside of having faith, we are passive in our journey, the return to full relationship with the divine is done for us and happens to us. Early voices in the church, particularly Origen of Alexandria in the 2^nd century, who is considered one of the most brilliant minds of the day, taught that we evolve spiritually and toward that time when “God may be all in all” to quote 1 Cor. It was that teaching that every thing would return to God, no matter how far astray one’s path might go, or great the sin that church authorities didn’t like. Salvation just wasn’t going to be any fun if God loved Judas and even Satan enough to allow them to return also. So by the year 500, Origen and other like him were sufficiently silenced that reincarnation became the “R” word and we lost the ability to talk about our soul and its journey and whether or not this life is all we get.

Well, I want to be curious about my spiritual journey; I want you to be curious about yours. I want to know who Blake is and what’s in store for him. The challenge for Rayna and Chris is that they will want to protect him from all manner of difficulty, from the very things that will help him growth, from the very things that his soul’s journey may require. The uncomfortable truth is that it is Blake’s trials and challenges that will be his greatest teachers. Sheltering him too much will be to do him a disservice. Emily Dickinson had something to say about what a spiritual journey might look like.

Far from love the Heavenly Father

Leads the chosen child;

Oftener through realms of briar

Than the meadow mild,

Oftener by the claw of dragon

Than the hand of friend,

Guides the little one predestined

To the native land.

Whatever has brought Blake to this moment and however his journey unfolds, if we help him to know that he is indeed that spiritual being having a human experience, then he will never lose hope, he will always know that he on his way to something greater and the trials along the way will not overcome him. Today he enters into a community that has faith in the one who lights the way for our pilgrim’s progress. In him we are assured of life beyond this one – how exciting!