Our “In-Between” Place

(Let’s Make a Mezuzah Moment)

Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD alone. 

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul, and with all your might. 

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart . . .

and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

(Deuteronomy 6:4-6, 9)

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 25, 2006

First United Methodist Church, 605 West Sixth Street, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

Entering a house or a gate in Israel you will find a long rectangular piece positioned where you might expect a doorbell, which is called the Mezuzah.  I often point out the Mezuzah to pilgrims in the Holy Land, which can be made of very expensive materials or merely of olive wood and plastic.  The really priceless thing, though, is not the materials from which the Mezuzah is made, but the words inside the cylinder, a small piece of parchment rolled into a tiny scroll, on which are written two texts from Deuteronomy (6:4-9 and 11:13-21), one of which we read this morning.  The opening words constitute Israel’s most famous monotheistic affirmation, the Shema, “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one Lord, you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”  Both passages conclude with the commandment, “Keep these words in your heart, and write these words upon your doorposts and on your gates.” 

 

Both texts also include the words, “You shall recite them to your children when you are at Home, and when you are Away.”  This Home-and-Away reference creates an image of a movement from “Here” to “There,” a reminder to the Jewish person that as they make transition between “Here” and “There,” they have a higher calling upon their lives, an imperative to recognize and acknowledge the Divine Presence — no less at Home than when Away, no less Away than when at Home, no less “Here” than “There.”  The Mezuzah at every doorway and gate is a way of modulating the merely mundane matters of life, our transitions from one place to another, into sacred significance.

When I say we should Make a Mezuzah Moment, I don’t mean to suggest that we go out and purchase Mezuzahs for home and office.  Rather, I mean that we should recognize that a sacred canopy has been cast over our lives, even in the most mundane of our day-to-day living.  The Mezuzah, in other words, is a way to sensitize us always to God’s presence. 

It’s important to note the Threshold environment in we find the Mezuzah – not in the middle of a room by one’s recliner or television, but always at doorways and gates, indicating our need for God especially at the Threshold places of our lives.  Threshold experiences are our “In-between” Places, liminal zones of transition in which we are, for the moment of crossing, neither fully “Here” nor fully “There.”  In the Threshold, we are In-Between, making transition from “Here” to “There.”  The Threshold is a place where we recognize our vulnerability, causing us to increase our craving for God’s Presence while in the midst of uncertain change.  Whether those Threshold moments of our life are welcome or unwelcome, we sense that we are moving into Terra Incognita, uncharted territory, leaving one place and going to another.  In that Threshold moment, we discover contradictory emotions -- our fear of this new place abounding, even as the spiritual energy bubbling from new opportunity surges. That this vulnerability of the Threshold is universally understood is seen in cultural expressions such as hanging a horseshoe or a rabbit’s foot above doorways, a sign of the nearly universal recognition that Thresholds are serious business demanding respect. 

For example, consider a wedding.  The thrilling Threshold moment comes when all preparations are at last complete, family and friends assembled, prelude music concluded as minister and groom and attendants and flower girls and ring bearers have all assembled at the altar.  At precisely that moment, when all is at last made ready, the bride and her father appear, moving over the Threshold, a crossing into the sublime which causes the entire assembly to rise to their feet as the music becomes more majestic.  As the bride steps across the Threshold into the sanctuary, she might whisper to herself, “How awesome is this place.”   And the place is awesome, not merely because of decorations and guests, but because in this place she begins her journey into uncharted territory.  Are her feet still firmly planted on earth, or is she experiencing a bit of heaven in the recognition of a Higher Calling?  She knows this, that one aspect of her life, singleness, is forever past.  The new reality which she now enters is so momentous that it deserves this Threshold ritual of recognition, an _expression of our yearning for God’s blessing and Presence in this Terra Incognita of married life.

I love the story of Jacob’s Ladder in the book of Genesis, Jacob dreaming of a ladder connecting heaven and earth, upon which angels were Ascending and Descending.   It was a Threshold place between heaven and earth, an In-Between Place which moved Jacob to say, “How awesome is this place, none other than the gate of heaven, the doorway into God’s house.”  It was an In-Between Place for Jacob, who wasn’t sure if his feet were still firmly planted on earth as he experienced a glimpse of heaven.  For Jacob, it was a moment, a place, when earth and heaven seemed to connect, and he was privileged to stand at the Threshold. 

So we make Mezuzah Moments at precisely those Threshold places in our life when heaven seems to embrace us — birthing moments, healing moments, forgiving moments, loving moments, silent moments, connecting moments, defining moments, fork-in-the-road moments, even, and perhaps especially, dying moments, when our movement from “Here” to “There” crosses a Threshold, awakening us to another, spiritual, dimension of God’s Presence.

The Mezuzah, then, is a way to sacramentalize life, Home and Away, Here and There.  Making Mezuzah Moments is an attempt to live momentously, to capture life’s moments in a way that says, “God is Here, and God is There.  Wherever life takes me, God is.”   Perhaps the art of life is to get the message in the mundane, to know that the Kingdom of God is not out there Somewhere, but around us, among us, within us.  The Mezuzah acknowledges this, calling upon us to relish the wonders of small scale epiphanies, of everyday events.  The beauty of spiritual life is to make every moment a Mezuzah Moment, to know that life is Here, not Somewhere Else but all around us, in a succession of astonishments.

And now, we – pastor and church – find ourselves in a doorway, an “In-Between” Place.  It is uniquely OUR “In-Between” Place.  To mark this moment with ritual, I want to quote several paragraph from my sermon to First United Methodist Church of Warren on March 19, fifteen weeks ago, when, unexpectedly, the cabinet’s appointment to Mountain Home was announced both in this sanctuary and in Warren.  Let me now ask our ushers to open the middle doors of the sanctuary as I quote from that sermon:

Today’s announcement has informed us that something shared between us in a pastor/parish relationship will soon come to an end.  The sanctuary door is always closed during our worship services.  Today, I have opened it, and set up a table and chair, upon which is a chalice of wine.  Those of you who have shared in the two Passover Seders which I’ve lead here at First Church will recognize the symbolism of Elijah’s Cup.  During the Passover Seder one chair is left empty, one cup of wine untouched, waiting, in faith, to welcome Elijah upon his return.   

 With this symbolism I mean to suggest that, in our lives, we too must open the door to the Unknown.  In our journey “From Here to There,” we do not fear the temporary sense of disorientation, for we know that whatever is behind the now-opened door, whatever is rushing into our lives, whatever mysteries the Unknown future holds for us, God is There, his love for us not diminished.

 

There are moments of change in life, when the sense of having lost our way is profound, moments when a sense of dislocation emerges – a sense of being In-Between, of being stuck in the Threshold between “Here” and “There,” of having left one place in our lives behind, but not yet being ready to arrive anywhere else. Pilgrimage, you see, implies a certain willingness to be, for a while, neither “Here” nor “There” . . .

 What is, in our lives, on the other side of those doors which we leave open to the Unknown?  When I walked through the Threshold of that open door for the first time on a Sunday morning, four years ago, I felt a profound sense of dislocation.  For me, it wasn’t my pulpit, not the one I had grown accustomed to over the past four years.  These faces upon which I looked were not the ones I had known and loved so deeply just thirty minutes down the way, in Fordyce.  I sensed that I was In-Between, stuck in the Threshold between the “Here” of Fordyce and the “There” of Warren, having left one place behind, but not yet being ready to arrive anywhere else.   To be sure, pilgrimage (not to mention, Methodist itineracy) involves a willingness to be, for a while, neither “Here” nor “There.”  

 And, I suspect, there was a sense of dislocation in you, the congregation of First United Methodist Church.  “Who is this new appointment from the bishop and cabinet?  We don’t know him, nor do we know IF we can know him.  He’s an unknown quantity.  What quirks of character will show up next week, next month?”  Together we felt, and that profoundly, a sense of lostness. But you, sensing that lostness in me, extended to me the chalice of joy.  In sharing, we learned to rejoice in the gift we had been given, walking together into the Unknown territories which these past four years have held for us and, once there, we became Something Else, Something Other than we had been.

 We experienced a certain lostness then and, now, we will know it again.  Soon enough, I will walk through another opened door, look upon other strange faces, which I know, as happened here, will soon become familiar to Sherry and to me, and will just as soon become beloved.  And you will look upon another robed clergyperson come through your open door.  And I rejoice in knowing this – that you will lift to that one, as you did to me, the chalice of joy . . .”