“Close Encounters of the Holy Kind”

A Sermon by

Rev. Robert M. Hardies

All Souls Church, Unitarian

Washington, D.C.

Sunday, 1 February 2009

I’d like to share as our reading this morning a famous story from the Hebrew bible, a story about the prophet Elijah.  Now the prophet Elijah was a prophet in a difficult time, let’s say; a prophet to the people of Israel during a time when they had broken their covenant with God, when they were disobeying God’s instruction that they live together as a people.  And so, Elijah had a lot of work to do as a prophet.  Some of you may be familiar with times such as those.  Persecuted and despairing, Elijah fled to a cave in the wilderness in search of God and, in the first Book of Kings, Chapter 19, it says this:

Then the word of God came to Elijah saying, “What are you doing here,

Elijah?”  He answered, “I have been very zealous for God, for the Israelites

have forsaken their covenant, thrown down God’s prophets with the sword

and I alone am left and they are seeking my life to take it away.”  And the

voice said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before God, for God is about

to pass by.”  Now there was a great wind, so strong that it moved mountains

and broke rocks in pieces.  But God was not in the wind.  After the wind, an

earthquake; but God was not in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake, a

fire; but God was not in the fire.  And after the fire, a still, small voice.  And

when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in a cloth and went out and stood

at the entrance of his cave, to listen.

It was a cold and dreary morning in Portland, Oregon, dreary as only a Pacific Northwest morning can be.  And I’d arrived at work before dawn to finish a grant application that was due later that day.  I was working at the time at Habitat for Humanity.  Not long after I arrived, at about 7:00 a.m., the office doorbell rang.  The office was, of course, closed; the secretary still home in bed, and I was on a deadline.  Better, I thought, to just let the doorbell go.  But for some reason, I answered it.  On the doorstep stood a woman dressed in the white uniform of a food service worker.  Behind her, on the street, an old grey Chevy idled, spewing fumes into the cold morning air; the breath of three small children fogged up her car windows.  I greeted the woman and asked what I could do for her.  “I’m sorry to bother you this early,” she said.  “I picked up one of your applications to be a homeowner, to get a Habitat home, but my little girl, she, well, she chewed it up and I was hoping to get another one.”  I remember thinking to myself, “I’ve heard the one about your dog eating the homework, but never heard the toddler excuse before.”  A little frustrated by the interruption, I nonetheless went looking for an application for the woman and, as I did, she began to tell me her story.

It turned out she lived in the worst housing project in Portland.  You know how each city has that one housing project whose name is synonymous with the intransigence of poverty and government’s inability to help.  That’s where she lived.  I knew from reputation that it was infested with rodents and teeming with drugs.  She told me she’d already lost her oldest boy to drugs.  “I don’t want to lose another,” she said, glancing back at the drowsy children in her car.  As I listened to her story, I searched and searched for an application, but I just couldn’t find one.  I apologized and I asked her, I said, “Please, come back later during office hours and someone can help you.”  “Oh, I don’t think you understand,” she said.  “My kids and I are desperate; I need to get in a home.  I am not leaving here until I get my application.” 

Somehow I knew by the tone of her voice that the final word had been spoken on that issue and so I reluctantly grabbed the phone and I called my coworker, waking her up.  She told me where the applications were and I handed one to the woman.  She thanked me and was turning to leave when she paused in the doorway and looked me in the eye.  “I just hope this works out,” she said.  “I’m working as a line cook in the hospital, trying to make things better for my family and, you know, I work so hard that my hands,” – she looked down at her hands – “I’m a lady, but these hands are so hard and calloused, they feel like a man’s hands.  Here,” she said, “feel my hand.”  She gave me her hand and I took it, swollen and cracked.  And for a moment, we stood there, silent, her hand in mine.  I despair now that my words will fail to fully capture what happened in that moment.  But some deep connection passed between us as we held each other’s hand.  It was an experience both intimate and transcendent and, in that moment, in the depth and mystery of that moment, I felt a love take hold of me and not let go.

Not long after that encounter, I decided to go to seminary, in part to understand what happened the day that Jeanette Robinson put her hand in mine, to try to find words to describe what passed in between us.  I was afraid that if I couldn’t understand it, if I couldn’t talk about it, that somehow I’d lose that moment, lose that experience.  It would slip through my fingers.  In seminary, I did learn some words that might describe that moment.  I learned the word “epiphany,” a sudden, divine insight.  I learned “revelation,” a privileged communication from God.  Both words captured some part of the experience that I’d had, yet they seemed a little, a little grandiose, frankly.  A revelation is a kind of thing that gets painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Epiphanies are dramatic accounts that get memorialized in the stained glass windows of the great cathedrals.  This, after all, was a simple exchange, a handshake between two people on a front stoop in the Portland ghetto.

Then, one day in my Hebrew bible class, I came across this story of Elijah, the story I read earlier, and learned that Elijah was also confused about the nature of this kind of encounter.  He went out into the desert, you remember, looking for God and the wind came along and it moved mountains and it broke rocks and Elijah said, “Certainly God is in the wind.”  But God wasn’t in the wind.  And then the earthquake came and he said, “Of course, God is in the earthquake,” but God wasn’t in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake, a fire, and Elijah must have thought, “Well, God came to Moses in the fire in the burning bush; this must be God.”  And it wasn’t God either.  And, after the fire, a still, small voice.  And in that intimate moment, in that quiet moment, God spoke to Elijah.  After the wind, an earthquake; after the earthquake, a fire; after the fire, a still, small voice. 

I think we often make the same mistake that Elijah did.  I think we sometimes believe that -- call it what you will, an epiphany, a revelation, a transcendent experience – we believe that it needs to come in some extraordinary package:  parted sea, earthquake.  We’ve been conditioned to take our religious experiences like our fast food --  super-sized, dramatic, big – when the truth is that the holy more often engages us in a still, small voice; in the extended hand of a stranger.  And the danger of our super-sized expectations is that we might actually be standing in the presence of the holy and not even realize it.  The danger is that right this very moment, God might be whispering to us and we are not hearing it.  The danger is that when we approach our dear friends and say “How are you doing,” we are not pausing long enough to really listen to their answer, to allow for communion to take place. “After the fire, a still, small voice.”

Martin Buber called these experiences of intimate communion “I-thou encounters,” when one being encounters another being on the common ground of their infinite worth and dignity.  In India, both Hindus and Buddhists use the greeting “Namaste,” which means “the divine in me greets or honors the divine in you.”  I went to seminary in search of words to describe the experience that I’d had with Jeanette Robinson, but I think the best words came to me from my colleague, Jackie Lewis, who’s the pastor of Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village in Manhattan, a multi-racial church.  Jackie will be preaching here, actually, at the end of March.  Whenever Jackie hears a story like the one I told you this morning she likes to say, “Friend, it sounds to me like you had a close encounter of the holy kind.” 

You remember the movie, don’t you?  Close Encounters of the Third Kind, about a man who keeps having strange sightings and run-ins with UFOs and other alien life.  I hope you don’t think it irreverent of me to say that I like Jackie’s phrase better than any of those other words I learned in seminary.  Because it’s been my experience that we often walk away from these holy encounters feeling a lot like we do coming out of a movie theater after a good science fiction film.  You know how when you come out of a good science fiction movie and you’re kind of scratching your head because you’re not exactly sure what just happened, but you also feel as though you’ve learned something, that you’ve had kind of an “aha,” during that experience, some insight.  And that’s a little bit like how those moments are for me.

Looking back, I realize that my obsession with understanding my encounter with Jeanette Robinson kind of missed the point.  Because they reveal new layers of meaning and reality, close encounters of the holy kind do leave us scratching our heads and wondering what it’s all about, but the point isn’t really to figure it out or to put a label on it or to give it a name.  The point is to experience it, to feel it, to feel the connection, the communion, the love and to allow the experience to change your life.  To allow the experience to change your life.

Here’s what I believe.  I believe that the spirit of life is ever-present, is always near, and that a close encounter of the holy kind depends on us being differently attuned, depends on us noticing, depends on us giving reverent attention and getting in the habit of seeing life at a different level.  Fifteen months after Jeanette Robinson and I met on that cold winter’s morning, she moved herself and her children out of the projects and into a new home that she built together with Habitat for Humanity.  We threw a big party on a summer’s day, a rare treat of a day in the Pacific Northwest when the skies were clear and the snow-capped peaks that surround Portland were out in strong relief against the blue sky:  Mount Hood, Mount Adams, the flat-topped St. Helen’s.  At the party, Jeanette and I laughed as we told the story of how it had all begun, about how her daughter had chewed up her first application and how she had stubbornly come looking for another at seven in the morning and how her determination had broken through my indifference.  We didn’t get all theological about it; we just told the story of that encounter and how it had led to this blessing, this celebration. 

And in the end, that is my faith about such encounters:  it’s that they lead to blessing.  When we live our lives in tune with the holy, when we can feel the subtle rhythms of the spirit, when, beneath the din of modern life, we can hear the still, small voice of God, then our lives will be filled with blessing.  And what’s more, our lives will be a blessing to others and to the world.  For the love and the strength and the solidarity that we experience in these moments sustain our commitment to all that is good and true and beautiful in this world.  May we all be so blessed.       Amen.