Where Are Our Bethels?

RCL Proper 16A

17 July 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

+ Creator of the heavens and the earth,

may our eyes see your face;

may our ears hear your voice;

may our hands touch your presence;

may our mouths taste your goodness and

may our noses scent the aroma of your grace.

         When I was the curate at Christ Church Denver, I took an extended engagement as a house-sitter for a friend who had gone off to graduate school leaving a three-bedroom home behind.  While she was away, she met a Baptist minister who needed a place to stay in Denver for two nights a week for three months.  I agreed and he used the spare bedroom at the house.

         Our paths rarely crossed given our schedules, so we had few opportunities to chat with one another.  But one evening our stars aligned and we sat at the dining room table and chatted about many things.  What I remember most about our conversation was our very different views of the world around us. 

         He saw creation as being under the control of the forces of evil and the church as a place of safety, a refuge from a world that had fallen into decay.  I, on the other hand, thought of creation as God’s handiwork, marred and scarred by human sin for sure, but still a source of revelation, full of places and moments when we catch in the present a glimpse of God’s promise and our future.  To me the church’s role was not so much as a refuge from evil but as a witness to creation as the arena of God’s creating, redeeming and sanctifying activity.  Sometimes our role is to say to others whose sight is obscured or misdirected, “Did you see that?  Over there!  Surely God is in this place and we did not know it!”

         Now our friend Jacob is a man in trouble in a situation that can only be described as precarious.  He has swindled his older brother --- twice --- and is on the run to find some place of refuge.  As he flees, every rock, every bush must appear to be a possible place of ambush.  Every person he meets on the way must be a possible assassin.  This is not a safe world for Jacob.

         Exhausted by his flight Jacob falls to sleep and dreams.  His dream reveals to him the deeper truth:  every place, every time is sacred space and sacred moment.  All of creation is what the ancient Celts called a ‘thin’ place where God’s presence is merely a breath or a glance away from our perception.

         He then does what religious people have done for thousands of years:  he marks the spot with some stones to say to one and to all, “Here I have experienced the presence of the living God!”  But Jacob’s stones, only meant to be a reminder of Jacob’s encounter with the living God while on his journey of self-discovery, evolve over time to become a sanctuary. 

         Human beings need sanctuaries, but we can lose sight of the potential sacredness of all places and all times if we restrict God and God’s activity only to these enclosed spaces and defined times of worship.  If we do this, then we actually help those forces of evil that seek to distort and destroy the works and creatures of God.  We try to tame God; we try to enclose God and end up giving over too much space and time to those who oppose and fear God and God’s purposes.

         Sanctuaries are useful places, but they outlive their usefulness of they come to be seen as one of the only places God is present in creation.  When this happens, it is as if a milestone, a trail marker, becomes the destination rather than pointing the way for the weary traveller.

         We treasure our places of worship and so we should.  In these places we have heard the word of God proclaimed and shared the bread and wine of new life.  In these places we have been baptized and married, celebrated happy occasions and mourned our dead.  But the Word proclaimed here is not meant to be contained within these walls.  The bread of life broken and the wine of new life poured are not meant to be consumed only at this table at this hour.

         Our buildings and our worship are dependable signs that point us out of the doors and into the ‘thin’ place which is Vancouver or Richmond or Surrey or wherever we may find ourselves.  In that ‘thin’ place we are called to help others discover that where we live and work and seek leisure are Bethels, ‘houses of God’ where God awaits us and is working in us and for us.  Surely God is in all these places and all these times and we often do not know it.

         Paul writes that all of creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God (Romans 8.19).  Let me say that God waits with eager longing for the children of God to discover the sacredness of the whole of creation and to discover that God is present in every place and moment --- if only we would open our eyes and hearts to see and feel this presence.

         As we leave worship today, let us be aware that God’s thin places are all around us, just waiting for us to point to them and then enter into them.  May we, like Jacob, discover the many houses of God that surround us and point us towards our promised home.  Amen.