Sermons

May 15/05

The Heaven We Don’t Believe In

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

Acts 2:1-22 Pentecost

Sometimes I almost feel ashamed to use the word Christian because of what some have said and done in the name of the word. This is no truer than when I hear those describing themselves as Christian who speak about the destruction of the world and the salvation of the few, with terms like ‘rapture’.

We are followers of Christ and Christ said that no children should be kept from him so we know that no child, whether baptized or not, will be denied access to Him and to the Kingdom of Heaven that resides with him. We are all, in a sense, children when it comes to God and we know that neither powers nor principalities will keep us from God.

We are followers of Christ and Christ said, "Judge not". So that if there is a judgment and justice system, that the Bible tells us that there is and that God alone administers, we don’t have a clue what it is. We will never understand what it is. We will never know who’s in and who’s out. We will never know that because we have been called to "Judge not!"

We follow Jesus Christ and Christ said "The Kingdom is among you." He said you can find heaven in a mustard seed so we know that what we call heaven is not reserved for those who are dead but is part of life right now.

I saw this incredible film last week and I wanted to share a few things from it. It’s called "What the ‘Bleep’ Do We Know?" There’s a wonderful physicist in that film, among others, Candace Perken, who apparently holds a patent for modified peptides and teaches at Georgetown, a well researched and well respected teacher who tells this story.

She said that when the first ships came from Europe and landed on these shores the native Americans could not see them. Now,not that they didn’t notice them because they happened to be doing something else that day but that they looked right at them and could not see them. Their neural pathways would not allow them to see them. Our neural pathways work on the basis of what we’ve seen before. We accrue knowledge that way. We add on to what we already have experienced and if something happens so far out of our experience we can’t ‘see’ it. We literally cannot see it, hear it, touch it, or experience it.

This covers all miracles it seems to me. The natives couldn’t see anything coming toward them but the Shaman in the tribe, she saw the movement on the water and she knew what water looked like. They all knew that. She knew from the movement on the water that something was approaching them. She watched and she prayed and she meditated until she was able to ‘see’ for the first time the boats and the strange people called Europeans that got off them coming and landing on their shores and then she turned to all her tribe’s people and taught them how to ‘see’ the Europeans and their ships as well. With a little bit of practice they got it down. Isn’t that wild?

Now another professor on the same show, a guy named Jeffrey Satinover who teaches at Harvard, a psychiatrist as well as a physicist, says that in the laboratory they can show one thing in two places at the same time. This is not the matrix folks! This is reality, one thing in two places at the same time. In other words you can look through a microscope and see these two little dots of light, it’s the same light, but in two places at the same time. What he says is strange is that we can’t fathom that. We could go into that laboratory and we could look at one light in two places at the same time and we’d wander off and have our lunch and live our lives as before and it really wouldn’t impact us very much because we can’t really fathom that what we’re seeing is possible. We can’t even get our minds around such a possibility. Isn’t that amazing?

Another thing – Fred Wolf, another physicist in the same film speaks about how scientists have been looking for the center of consciousness, the observer that we talked about last week as being the presence of the Holy Spirit with us. They have been looking for this in our neurophysiology, in our biochemistry. They’ve been looking and looking and they cannot find it but since Heisenberg they know that that’s really the only reality and they can’t find it. This, all of this that we perceive, is just collective illusion. This, all of this, is simply neural pathways that we’ve collectively laid down over time so that we end up agreeing on the same lie. The only thing ‘real’ here is the consciousness that perceives it, the observer that watches it, ‘that’, in you and me, we all share and that, guess what, even physicists are now calling ‘God’.

You know it’s only taking a few thousand years to catch up to what the mystics knew a few thousand years ago. Physicists are sounding like mystics now. That’s pretty astounding! Now the question it seems to me is, "Why can’t we perceive reality, ‘really’?" "Why can’t we see miracles?" "Why can’t we walk on water?" "Why can’t we see disciples piling out of a little room and speaking all the languages of the world even though only a moment ago all they knew was one?"

I think there’s a very simple answer and it’s a one word answer and the answer is fear. The only thing that exists other than love, is fear. Now think of those disciples in that room. They were a frightened bunch. They knew what had happened to Jesus, the one that they followed. They knew he was tortured and killed. They knew if they came out of hiding the same thing would probably happen to them. As it turns out they were right.

Think of all those rooms in our world. I was thinking of them this morning as I was coming here, all those rooms where people huddle in fear afraid that someone, some soldier, some policeperson, will kick open that door and drag them out. Think of all of those rooms even in our own city where people huddle, maybe with a bottle or a pipe in front of them, frightened to come out. Think of all those rooms where children lie at night, frightened that someone will come in and mess with them. Think of all of those rooms of fear and then think of your own fear and what keeps you from walking out of your own rooms of fear, rooms perhaps of your own creation.

Let me tell you about my fear. This morning I got up and I was frightened that I was going to be late. I call it the ‘fear fog’ that we all walk around in. I was already in it when I woke up. I woke up and it was only 5:00AM of course because I’m anal, I’m early, I’m just a little squirly but I was still frightened that I was going to be late and I was particularly frightened I would forget to pick up Crystal because I told Crystal I would pick her up. She might be left stranded standing on a corner. Then when I did pick up Crystal I was frightened I was going to be late coming to Church and not have enough time to do all the things I have to do before the service. Even before leaving to pick up Crystal I also stood on the scale. Oh frightening moment because of all the things I ate yesterday that I shouldn’t have eaten and that would be translated into little numbers on a dial. And then coming here….well let me tell you what it was like last week when I spoke at the Social Planning Council of Kingston about homelessness both spiritual and ‘real’. On the way to Kingston because I didn’t know these people my mind immediately went to fear. I thought "What am I going to say?" and "How am I going to say it?" "They’re going to hate me!" I said to Gil, who was driving, "What if I stand there and just start to cry?" So part of me every Sunday thinks that. "What if I just stand up in front of them and start to cry?" Now there’s a core fear! That you just stand there and the words elude you. There’s the fear about what you’re thinking as I’m standing there, "Boy has she gained weight!" "I could preach better than that." "I absolutely disagree, she’s absolutely wrong about that." Or you’re just making laundry lists in your heads and planning what you’re going to be doing the rest of the day. We’re not even at noon yet!

Then I’m frightened that the sound system won’t work for Phynix and then after that I’m frightened because we might run out of chicken and there might be 80 people at dinner instead of 60 people at dinner and then and then…and that’s only the conscious fears because then there’s the unconscious fears, you know those primal childlike fears, the little child inside all of us that says "Nobody loves me!" "They’re all going to abandon me and you all hate me!" "At the end I’m going to die!" There’s that fear too. Then there are the meta fears. The world’s going to end. There’ll be an atomic war. Look at all those stockpiles. Or we’re going to pollute it so that our grandchildren don’t have a place to grow up in. That’s the average day.

Now something in that room on Pentecost spoke somehow through all of those disciples through all of that accumulated historical and actual, real, fear and allowed them not only to overcome it but to do miracles in overcoming it, to invent new worlds, if you will, to speak new languages. When we hear passages like this by the way, this prophecy of Joel, this is the disciples speaking not about some apocalyptic reality but then and there. It was there that prophecies would be spoken and dreams dreamed. When we speak about heaven we’re not speaking about the future biblically, we’re speaking about right now. "If only we had ears to hear" said Jesus and "Eyes to see" heaven would be right now.

Here’s a thought, what if we all behaved ‘as if’ everything we say in Church is true. ‘As if’ it is possible for a first century Jew to rise out of a grave. ‘As if" it is entirely conceivable and actual that disciples ran from a room and spoke all the tongues of the world. ‘What if’ there is a God, that source of love that inspires all of us and makes all things possible and that that source of love is in control of all things that happen, all powerful, almighty, all loving, all forgiving? ‘What if’ that’s a reality? ‘What if’ we could walk on water if we only believed? ‘What if’ the entire world could be transformed into a complete and utter utopia? ‘What if’ we could solve all the world’s problems together, homelessness, hunger? ‘What if’ we could do all that? ‘What if’ we acted ‘as if’ we could? ‘What if’ we acted ‘as if’ all of our prayers are answered? ‘What if’ we acted ‘as if’ there were absolutely nothing to fear? Can you imagine that incredible day, that would dawn upon us if we acted ‘as if’ this very moment is a complete and utter miracle of grace?

Now remember the example that I gave at the top of this little meditation about those ships that came before us that we couldn’t see ‘cause we’d never seen anything like it before, imagine what that world would look like coming toward you, a world that we have never imagined or seen before. We could already see the stirrings, the Holy Spirit marking if you will. We can hear the first murmurs of that world. Here at Pentecost that world is born again.

What is a Christian Church after all, because Pentecost is the birth of the Church? A Christian Church is the place, Pentecost tells us, where people live without fear. That is what Church is; before Church, fear, after Church, no fear. We gather every Sunday and other days to learn how to see, hear, taste and smell just such a world.

Amen