In Such Moments

 

(On Living the “Abba Zeh” Life)
 

“This is my Son, the Beloved . . . Listen to him.”

(Matthew 17:5b)

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on Transfiguration of the Lord Sunday, February 3, 2008

Volume 2 Number 31

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

(Visit our website at www.fumcmh.org for more

sermons/devotionals and information about FUMC Mountain Home)

 

Rabbi David Aaron tells of walking with his two year old son when, seeing something fly by and settle on the branch of a nearby tree, the little boy exclaimed, “Abba, zeh!” (“Daddy, that!” ).

 

Rabbi Aaron saw the bird his son was pointing to and said, “Zeh tzippor,” meaning, “That is a bird.”   As the boy repeated, “tzippor,” the rabbi felt good to have taught his child a new word.  Soon, another bird went flying by, this one of different size and color, coming to light on the ground rather than in the branches of a tree.  The boy said, again, “Abba, zeh!”

 

The rabbi smiled and replied, again, “Zeh tzippor.”  But this time Rabbi Aaron noted obvious confusion in his son’s eyes.  How could these both be tzippor (birds), these creatures which he could plainly see were so very different one from the other? 

 

The child’s instinctive disappointment may have something to teach us about our adult way of knowing, that we cluster things in categories, a useful process which, however, comes with a risk of diminishing our wonder at the rich variety in the world around us. 

 

From ancient times, though, humans developed the ability to categorize, to make lists of like objects.  Indeed, in the Genesis narrative of human beginnings, Adam is given the task of naming, a listing of all of God’s creatures.  And so we humans still do.  We make lists.  It’s who we are.  Archaeologists have gathered much knowledge of the ancients from their lists of cities and kings, flora and fauna, diseases and medicines.  And we follow in our ancestors’ footsteps, developing categories by which we label all our discoveries, our minds functioning as existential filing clerks, taking each new thing, and filing it into existing categories.  The peril comes when we stop seeing beyond our categories, stop looking at the individual thing, stop seeing “zeh,” the indescribable “that.”

 

Let’s recall the Abba zeh! experiences of Moses and Elijah, Jesus’ companions on the Mount of Transfiguration.   In the wilderness, Moses experiences a wonder that could not be wedged into existing categories, a bush burning yet not consumed.  For Moses it was an Abba zeh! moment.

 

In Such Moments, Moses may have, listening, heard God say, “That?  Oh, my child.  I am, that!  I am THAT I am.  Moses, my child, I am zeh, I am THAT.  I am Wholly Other.  You are on the Journey of Becoming, still asking what you will become tomorrow.  I am not Becoming . . . Any Thing.  I am Being, itself.  I am beyond your categories of experience, beyond your labels and your lists.  If you point to me and say, ‘Abba Zeh,’ know that I am, That.  I am THAT, I am.  Despite your education in Pharaoh’s court, your vast experience of the world from the pyramids of Egypt to the nomads of the desert, your language knows no categories by which to place me side-by-side with an equal.  You can’t fit me into a list!  I am above all lists.  I transcend all your categories.  To whom will you liken me and make me equal?  To whom will you compare me as though we were alike?”

 

Like Moses, Elijah also had an Abba, zeh! wilderness experience.  Fleeing from Jezebel, Elijah retreats into a cave.  1 Kings 19 describes a succession of experiences.  First, a great wind. “But the Lord was not in the wind.”  This wind, though mighty, Elijah could place in existing categories of wind and storm.  After the wind, an earthquake.  “But the Lord was not in the earthquake.”  This shaking Elijah could squeeze into existing categories of human experience.  After the quake, a fire.  “But the Lord was not in the fire.”  This fire Elijah could fit into his lists of earthly experiences.  And then, “a still, small voice.”  At last, Elijah’s Abba zeh! moment.  Wrapping his face in his mantle, he went to stand at the entrance of the cave.

 

In Such Moments, Elijah may have, listening, heard God say, “That?  Oh, my child.  I am that.  I am THAT I am.  I am that Voice.  You have heard my voice, in the unexpected way, and you have recognized the Extraordinary in the Ordinary.  You have recognized in this voice, this soft sound of shimmering silence, something that you cannot fit into your categories of hearing.  You have opened your ears to listen to God.”   

 

Today is the Last Sunday of Epiphany, the disciples Abba zeh! moment, when Peter, James, and John saw Jesus transfigured on the mountain, shining in the brightness of his glory, a sight for which their Galilean experience could provide no categories for comparison and understanding.  Like children, upon the Mountain they entered a time of Unknowing, an Abba zeh! experience, a new and glorious Epiphany from which to learn.  

 

Children possess an eye for the daily Epiphany, a certain capacity to see pure uniqueness where we see bland sameness.  We adults have a niche for most everything.  Children know better.  They know that they don’t know, and in their Unknowing, the absence of existing categories creates an openness to wonder which allows their spiritual pupils to go through life fixed at fullest expansion, stuck at widest port, ready to gobble up light.  Children live in a constant state of Epiphany.  We adults are amused at an infant, surveying each object – even a hand or a foot – as if never seen before, surprised by wonder in the ordinariness of daily living.  Epiphany calls us to see, to really see, the Extraordinary dimensions of Ordinary life, to live by wonder.

 

Perhaps this is why Jesus calls a child, placing the child before the crowd and saying, “Unless you become as this child, you will not experience the Kingdom of Heaven.”  In other words, the Kingdom of God is all around us, in each moment, but our eyes can become jaded to the wonder.   

 

I suppose we never outgrow the desire for such moments of awe that transcend existing categories.   As we grow older, it simply takes more to be classified as extraordinary.  So, we seek out experiences, exotic destinations, where we expect to experience something truly out of the ordinary, to feel again the rush of our childhood’s everyday, Abba zeh! moments.  We sense innately, I think, that we need these moments to be complete as human persons.  

 

In the Transfiguration, the disciples had an Abba zeh! moment.  There were simply no lists into which they could fit this experience.  Established categories of space and time were blurred.   The veil between past and future was lifted, so that Jesus is seen with figures from the Hebrew’s past, Moses and Elijah.  One can imagine the disciples saying, Abba zeh!

 

In Such Moments, the disciples may have, listening, heard God say, “That?  Oh, my precious children, my disciples, I am, THAT.  I am THAT I am.  I am that Voice that calls you to listen.  I am THAT Light that shines in the darkness.  I am THAT glory that brings salvation to the world. I am THAT.” 

 

Perhaps you’ve experienced an epiphany moment – a moment that leaves you Unknowing, yearning to Know how this sense of peace, of sudden and inexplicable joy, seems to have flooded your soul, leaving you to say, Abba, zeh!

 

In such moments, you may, listening, hear God say, “That?  Oh, my precious child, I am, THAT.  I am THAT Light that breaks into your life in times of darkness.  I am THAT Voice that calls you to hear.  I am THAT I am.  I am that Peace that fills your soul.  I am that love that moves you beyond yourself.  I am THAT.” 

 

Our best spiritual teachers lead us to know that Abba zeh! moments are all around us, right here in the day-to-day ordinariness of life.  We can see them, if we condition our eyes to see beyond the surface of the ordinary.  The is the Abba zeh! life, to live with an eye to observe the truth of what Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”

 

 Sources and notes:

The spark of inspiration for the development of this sermon was an essay by Rabbi David Aaron, “Living an Extraordinary Ordinary Life,” found at www.jewishworldreview.com.        
  

 Several helpful thoughts were found in Bishop William Willimon’s sermon “Transfiguration” in Pulpit Resource, January - March 2006.