Close Encounters

(of the “Worship” Kind)

Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here!”

 (Luke 9:33b)

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on Transfiguration Sunday, February 18, 2007

Soren Kierkegaard relates a parable about a community of ducks waddling off to duck church.  The duck preacher spoke eloquently of how God had gifted ducks with wings, an unmistakable token of divinity. “With such wings,” the duck preacher said as the sanctuary began to reverberate with the quacking of ducks anticipating where the preacher was heading, “with such wings, there is nowhere we ducks cannot go, no God-given task we ducks can not accomplish.  Why, with such wings, we ducks can soar into the very presence of God!”  So stirring was the duck preacher’s sermon that the enthused congregation now filled the sanctuary with the quacking of duck “Amens!” 

At the conclusion of the service the ducks filed out of the duck sanctuary toward their homes, politely congratulating the duck preacher on his inspiring message, the duck preacher receiving his congregation’s compliments with nods and smiles of pride.  Then they all, preacher and congregation, waddled back home, just as they had waddled to church that morning.

The parable’s lesson is obvious.  Too often we worshipers, after having felt lifted into the very presence of God through worship -- simply, routinely, waddle home.  Unchallenged.  Unchanged. 

Occasionally, though, something happens.  Serendipity.  Unplanned.  Unrehearsed.  Uncontrollable.  In the midst of the ordinariness worship, a Close Encounter, a Close Encounter of the “Worship” Kind.  You recognize my title, of course, from Spielberg’s classic 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The theme, not unlike our own on this Transfiguration Sunday, is one of Extraordinary Contact -- glimpsing, touching that Something Other which transcends everyday experience.  Close Encounters of the Worship Kind can no more be controlled and manipulated than Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  These are unplanned and unrehearsed, resulting in unexplainable contact with the Transcendent. 

We may wonder why worship happens so mysteriously, so unexpectedly.  We may wonder why it occurs here and not there, why it occurs for this person and not for another.  But experience tells us that encountering God in worship is a mystery not to be explained, but only described. 

Isaiah did just that, describing his Close Encounter of the Worship Kind.  For Isaiah, in the midst of the ordinary, worship happened.  Profoundly.  Undeniably.  Powerfully.  Many scholars suggest that this was not a private time of meditation for Isaiah but the very public setting of the annual Enthronement Celebration.  If so, if Isaiah’s experience was in a public setting, one wonders if other worshipers had the same vision? 

Probably not.  How mysterious that two persons can hear the very same music, the same prayers, the same sermon -- one of them utterly transformed by the experience and the other unmoved.  What makes a worship service a profoundly Close Encounter with God for one person while remaining routine for another – just another day of waddling?

It’s a fair question.  Yet, before we talk more about Close Encounters of the Worship Kind that are beyond the ordinary, let me say a word to affirm the power of routine.  One might think from my opening parable that I’m suggesting that “waddling” is a bad thing.  Hardly.  At least these ducks had the commitment to waddle to church in the first place!  Other ducks chose not to. 

Routine is, to a large extent, what worship is all about.  Truth be known, there is magic in waddling, power in habit, God in the midst of the routine.  It is with the power of routine that God invested Shabbat, every 7^th day, as a routine pattern through the centuries and millennia of Jewish history, a routine pattern with unique potential for a Close Encounter with God. 

There is power in routine – and I don’t demean that fact by reminding you that sometimes, some glorious times, into the midst of the routine God becomes manifest in a way far more clearly, far more powerfully, than usual.  At that moment one’s soul is touched with the transcendence of God in a unique way that doesn’t happen routinely -- doesn’t happen every time the choir and the acolytes enter the sanctuary, doesn’t happen every time the scriptures are read the word preached. 

There is a certain routine-ness in worship that is to be lauded.  Every worship service is not intended to be magical.  For all we know, Isaiah never had a repeat performance of his glorious revelation.  In fact, it’s almost certain Isaiah never had another experience anywhere approaching the magic of this moment.  The revelation experienced and recorded in our text wasn’t something he sought, but something he was given, just as the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration didn’t go in quest of the vision they had on that mountain.  It was, rather, a gift.

Nor should our worship services necessarily feel compelled to go in quest of new visions, striving to make each worship service a performance more dramatic than the last, as though through our efforts we could command the un-commandable.  Let us work hard to achieve excellence in our worship services.  Let us strive for xcellence in music and liturgy and symbol and message.  But let us not assume that our excellence results in profound openings of the heart and mind.  Radical in itself is the idea that God can and should be experienced in the ordinary, for it is in the midst of the ordinary that Close Encounters of the Worship Kind occur.  Still, what could be more natural, that when a Close Encounter of the Worship Kind occurs, we long to feel it again, finding ourselves trying to duplicate the environment and the circumstances in which once we encountered God. 

An example.  I’ve always associated incense burning in the church to “high church” Roman Catholicism.  Worshipers in a rural Bible Belt church don’t smell much incense in church.  Incense in the sanctuary, I always thought, is the mysterious property of highly ritualistic churches.  But were you aware that the origin of incense in the church was not high church, but very low church, and I mean VERY low church?  The mundane beginnings of incense in church were due to the fact that the aroma in the temple was not conducive to worship.  This was especially true of early Christian meetings in caves, barns, and stables.  The incense, quite simply, had the function of doing battle with barnyard odors. 

When the church moved up to finer places of worship, incense was retained because it had become synonymous with worship.  Many people, having known a Close Encounter with God accompanied by incense, forever would be reminded of that special moment every time they smelled the incense.

Is that strange?  Of course not.  The same principle is in operation as you think of your favorite hymns.  Most of us are fond of hymns not entirely, or even mostly, because of the words or the music, but because certain hymns have a power to remind us of our own Close Encounters of the Worship Kind.  A hymn has the power to transport us back, perhaps to a memory of church as a child, perhaps a memory of mom or dad singing, perhaps a memory of a special moment in which God spoke to us.

In our church liturgy, Transfiguration is immediately antecedent to Lent.  Epiphany does not leave us on the mountain, anymore than we are left in the sanctuary after worship.  Just as we must leave the sanctuary to waddle back into life, the disciples, and even Jesus, came down from that mountain, a component of the Transfiguration narrative not to be glossed over.  “On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain . . .”.

Yes, on the mountain, everything changed.  Just for a moment the mundane was transformed into a glorious vision.  Peter blurts out, “Master, it is good for us to be here.”  I can imagine him reasoning, “Lord, this is a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, so let’s make three symbols of this moment – you, Moses, and Elijah.  We’ve been touched by the Infinite, by the Mysterious.  Undeniably.  Powerfully.  Let’s stay here forever!  Can’t we go past noon, just this one Sunday?”  It’s an understandable wish for those whose souls are, at that moment, uniquely receptive to the movements of God’s Spirit.  “Forget the Finance and Administrative Council.  Forget the leaky roof and the various patch jobs.  Can’t we, just for a while, shut down all business but worship?” 

Ah, but Peter learned that revelation is a gift to be cherished, not a possession to be horded.   Like the manna in the wilderness, unique revelation is a gift which tends to lose its flavor if we don’t use it at the moment given.  In fact, like the manna, it tends to rot and stink unless we use it and release it.

Bishop William Willimon has done extensive work studying clergy in the United States.  One of his particular areas of interest and expertise is what he calls clergy killers – why so many are leaving ministry, and why so few are attracted to ministry.  A major clergy killer, he reminds preachers, is this gap between our momentary, stirring mountaintop visions and the grubby sociological reality of the church in the valley with its needs.  How do we keep at it?  Noting that nearly 300 SBC ministers are fired every month, Willimon wryly notes that, “Most of us pastors are not interesting enough to get fired.  We get depressed.  Heavy with sleep, somewhere between seminary and retirement, our eyes grow heavy, the original vision blurred, we doze off in mid-conversation, burn out, brown out, black out . . . What is the pastor’s main ethical challenge?  Don’t flatter yourself,” he says, “It’s not sex, its constancy.”  In other words, pastors must find enough mountain experiences to fuel the necessary waddling without nodding off to sleep.

There are moments in our lives that stand still in time, when all the frantic hours and years surrounding them have blurred into an obscurity of grayness.  These moments remain vivid in our minds, luminescent spots in time, our burning bushes.  In these moments, moments of gift interrupting the ordinary, breath stopped, mind stopped.  We had a Close Encounter of the Worship Kind.  

Have you experienced such a Close Encounter?  Perhaps it was a sermon.  Or a song.  Perhaps you were in private meditation. Or in public worship.   Perhaps it was the power of liturgy well-attended.  Perhaps it was the sacred moment of the sacrament as you took the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  Or was while you were driving in your car alone.  Or perhaps a silence-filled walk through the woods.  Perhaps it was vacation, a moment when the rest your body and soul so much needed seemed momentarily to help you clarify, to triage the needs of your body and soul.  You fill in the blank.  A sanctuary?  An image?  A memory?  A closing of the eyes to breathe a prayer of newly recognized thankfulness?  But whatever sparked it, this Close Encounter of the Worship Kind was so powerful that you felt yourself dissolve into beauty, lifted through waves of light.  It was as if a thread of light flowing through the moment pierced you deeply, enchanting your soul, connecting you to a higher realm.

No words describe the pinnacle of Epiphany you felt.   Words anchor experience, but that place, known alone to you, is wordless and ineffable.  In one light-filled moment you are changed forever, uplifted to new possibility.  You come away feeling, knowing, that you are incredibly loved, divinely embraced, a feeling which invests your life with meaning.

And you say with Isaiah, “Here I am, send me!”  Then . . .

. . . you waddle home.  But in your waddling, sometimes, unbeknownst to you, your soul has taken wing.

 

Sources and notes:
The opening illustration and inspiration for this sermon came from the excellent, “Duck Preachers in Duck Churches,” a sermon by G. David Yeager, in HOMILETICS, Volume 10, Number 1.

“Come on Down,” an essay by William H. Willimon in The Christian Century,  February 10, 2004.

“Through Beauty,” an essay by Rebecca Robison in PARABOLA, Volume 27, Number 3 (Grace, Fall 2000).

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