Three Paths (Audio 10 MB, right-click to download)

Three Paths

Ezekiel 40:1-4

^NRS Ezekiel 40:1 ¶ In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city was struck down, on that very day, the hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me there. ² He brought me, in visions of God, to the land of Israel, and set me down upon a very high mountain, on which was a structure like a city to the south. ³ When he brought me there, a man was there, whose appearance shone like bronze, with a linen cord and a measuring reed in his hand; and he was standing in the gateway. ⁴ The man said to me, “Mortal, look closely and listen attentively, and set your mind upon all that I shall show you, for you were brought here in order that I might show it to you; declare all that you see to the house of Israel.” (and following which describes the Temple)

If you Google Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple, which I did this week, - I was looking for pictures - the things you come up with are amazing. A lot of it is the very same authors who write about the Revelation of John. I don’t mean the sensible scholars, you understand. I mean the people who are trying to predict the future. They call it the Third Millennial Temple. It has a nickname. It is not in the scripture. The Third Millennial Temple. There is a theory out there that if we could only build this temple just as Ezekiel has it planned then the restoration will take place and that will be what will bring the Second Coming.

Fascinating idea. Reminds me of Springsteen’s line, “Took month long vacations in the stratosphere where you know its really hard to hold your breath.” Why read Ezekiel? Why should we read it? It’s a long time ago – 2437 years ago – and a few days - that he wrote this. Why should we bother to read it? It is certainly not written in our terms.

My answer to that question is that I believe that all humans share a common experience of the Divine. Ezekiel shares our experience of the presence of God. He needed to find language to describe it and this was the language he chose.

He chose this language to open up our eyes and the eyes of the people around him to the presence of God and what it meant. We need to live into that presence. That’s why I bother to read it. It is part of the conversation. And because at the very heart of this vision is the work of human hands, the city, the beauty that is created when the presence of God is at the center allowing the creative energy of love to work through each and everyone of us and create something wondrous and whole.

At the center of this vision is a world of Shalom and peace; where the fabric of human relations is knit together in one piece; where there are no tensions and strains; where trust in one another is complete. The center of this vision is a world where justice exists, which means that each person is able to live up to his or her potential. At the center of this vision is the possibility that when you sit quiet with yourself those things that disturb and distress you will be no more. Those things that you push away from yourself because they are things that you don’t like or you feel fall short of yourself – those things fall away.

This is the vision of Shalom. I think every single person in the room would long for that vision. Long for that reality to take hold of their lives, to take hold of our lives together so that we can be complete and whole. So it is that I look at Ezekiel’s vision and what it might have to offer us in this world 2400 years later.

One of the nice things about all the people on the Internet who take this seriously in another way is that they are very dedicated. They are will to draw schematic diagrams.

Now this is Ezekiel’s vision up there. It doesn’t really look like the presence of God, but this is all symbolic, all numerology, the way these things work. I would like to point out: here is the East Gate, another gate on the South and another gate here on the North. You have these three gates coming into the outer court. Then you have three more gates going into the inner court. Then when you get into the central place where you will be made pure enough to be able to walk into the real presence (this is where God lives, right here - H)

Three paths into the Holy. Each one of them becomes one because by the time we go into the presence of God it is one path that takes us there. That is what I see.

That should not seem that unusual, really - to those of us in the Christian faith because all the time we talk about three paths into the Holy – called the Trinity. This is not a doctrine that has a lot of attraction these days because it doesn’t make a lot of sense the way we sometimes describe it. But we talk about the Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, or the First Person of the Trinity, the Second Person of the Trinity, or the Third Person of the Trinity. These are three moves, three portals, into the presence of the Whole God. The Whole God. It does not make a lot of sense, but it is, nevertheless, how we try and describe the mystery we call God.

So we talk about the Trinity, three portals, three paths into the One. Just like those three gates moving into the one path, into the presence of the Spirit. That is the presence that provides us the strength and the creative power to make the world whole, at peace, settled. It shouldn’t surprise us too much that the Christian faith has come up with the Trinity – where Trinity has been revealed, the three paths to God, because when we relate to the world around us and that inner place within us which relates to all that is, we relate from three perspectives. It is built into our linguistics. We relate in the third person – it. I look at it, something on the outside – that is the third person. We relate in the second person, that is you and I – the I, Thou relationship - there is a connection between us. And we relate in the first person – we relate to ourselves as the I Am, I. I would like us to consider that those three perspectives are the same three perspectives that are open to us by the three gates moving into the one in that temple, by the Trinity, by our own practice.

Yes, I am talking about Spirituality. Spirituality is sometimes, in this congregation anyway, put aside because what it means is those people on Wednesday night who sit around with their feet flat on the floor and say Ommmm. That is what spirituality is?

That may be what one path of Spirituality is, but it is not the whole thing. I know a number of you read Scientific American. You are on a spiritual path. I know a number of you investigate history. You are on a spiritual path because you are looking at the creation in the Third Person. It is a third person path. You are studying, trying to understand what is happening around us. You are trying to understand and get a grip on the beauty and wonder of creation when you study Sociology, the way communities gather together, the way they meet; politics; when you study the history of the universe from the big bang to the birth of a child; when we contemplate that and seek to understand it we are on a third person path and all we need to do is attend to the wonder and beauty in the midst of it. It is the presence of God. That is the Third Person path. It allows us to understand that we sit in the midst of something that is becoming more perfect and whole. It is what moves us to celebration. It is what moves us to sing. Our imaginations.

But as we recognize that it is an It, the creation around us, the wonder and beauty we see in nature, we also recognize that we must have a relationship to it. This is the Second Person.

I know that historically the way Christians have talked about this is that we talk to God. That is a good thing, but since we don’t really think of a God “up there” over the dome we need to understand that we are in communication with all that is, with the power and strength of God. If I look at you and see the presence of God in each one of your eyes then by establishing relationship with you I am on that second person path. If I recognize the patterns and movements in the world around me and seek to respond to those in some way, I am on the second person path toward the presence of God. There is no magic.

This is a path that develops over time. We respond to our sense of what God is revealing to us. We are formed by that effort.

Though I recognize at the same time that there are things that get in the way of my becoming close and connected, of my having a communal connection with all that is around me – with the presence of God, the second person path into the presence of God requires Examen, confession; it requires us to examine the ways in our life where our “I”, our ego, is keeping us from connecting to all that is, keeping us from moving into a world that is just and complete. It is a path that moves us to become moral beings, ethical beings, working toward that wonderful, complete whole, the perfection that becomes more perfected: a Second Person path into God that is asking us to grow more whole.

First person. That is one where we sit in silence. Know why? Because we want to remove our thoughts, all of those things you worry about, all of those things you beat yourself with and concern yourself about. We want to remove our thoughts, we want to remove the feeling we have in our body, let it all fall away until finally all that is left is what is essentially you, that has always been there, always observing, always alive, always has been - called a non-dual state of mind.

I will be honest. I have not reached a place where I have had that sense, but I have reached a place where I can see where it might come from. It is a place where everything falls away and you realize that you are infinitesimally small in the midst of it all and you are also infinitely large, encompassing it all. You are the beauty and wonder of the creation that surrounds us. You are the beauty and the wonder of the creative word of God, I Am.

First person, the movement into the presence of God. I and the Father are one. And Jesus invited us into that relationship. If the ego, the I, runs around and starts saying, “I am God,” we are in trouble. But if all of that has fallen away we come to the recognition that the essential, large self within us is connected and from there we can say, “I Am.”

Third person, second person, first person. If I am going to move toward the doctrine of the Trinity I recognize that I cannot do one of them, because one of them will always lead me into all of them.

If I start in the Third person I will recognize that I am a part of all that is beautiful and get to the First person, or I am going to move to a relationship with it in the Second person. In the Second person I am going to move toward the Third and I am going to move toward the First. If I start with the First I am going to move toward a recognition that I am in communion with all that is. I am going to recognize that it is beautiful and wondrous and worthy of celebration. (I know – the mind starts to spin. And that is why it has a right of truth to me. Whenever I talk about the Trinity, my mind spins.)

That is really what the diagram is about. Three gates. Three opportunities. By the time we get here the paths have come so close together they are just one path into the presence of the One that can make us complete and whole.

Every one of us is a Spiritual Being. Many of you do not want to sit and just be at peace, letting everything fall away. I resist it myself. But as I spoke of those three paths into the presence of God, could you identify one that you feel you are moving on? Are you fascinated with the world around you? Do you love to study and open your heart to the presence of God within? Do you recognize that you are in a period of personal growth where you need to connect with the world and remove the blocks that are in the way of your closeness to everything that is? Is it a place where you need to serve, to touch the presence of God in the eyes of the faces of God all around you? Or is it a place where it is time to let the other things fall away so that you know what your true base and home is?

It is not a question of choosing one path and putting away all the others. It is a question of walking the path you are on and letting it lead you into the others so that you can then be absorbed into the absolute truth, the wonder, the love, the logos, the creation.

My question to you is this: What path are you on?

Bittersweet (Audio approximately 10 MB, right-click to download.)

Bittersweet

Ezekiel 2:9-3:3

^NRS Ezekiel 2:9 I looked, and a hand was stretched out to me, and a written scroll was in it. ¹⁰ He spread it before me; it had writing on the front and on the back, and written on it were words of lamentation and mourning and woe. ^3:1He said to me, O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. ² So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. ³ He said to me, Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.

As I was saying it rained yesterday. It rained! It is the first weekend in May and it rained and this is Marin and it is just wrong. What made it especially wrong is that it rained on the day of Carol Hovis and Chris Highland’s wedding. Carol Hovis is the executive director of Marin Interfaith Council and Chris, as many of you know, has worked with our homeless population off and on over the years. They had this wonderful wedding planned. It was beautiful. They were going to be in the midst of the gardens at Green Gulch. I don’t know if you have ever been there, but this is an extraordinary place. They were going to have this beautiful outdoor wedding. It rained on them.

At a party on Friday night. not really a rehearsal dinner because with Carol, she is not going to rehearse anything. Carol was trying to put a good face on it. You know how she cares about everybody and what is going on in the world. She said, “We need the rain, so I’m trying not to be disappointed.” Trying, but not succeeding, you understand.

We were all a little disappointed. Disappointed because it rained, but the facts are that human beings do get disappointed because rain does indeed fall upon us. It is not necessarily just that wet stuff that comes out of the sky. There are other moments that we get rained on. Some of those moments make us more than a little disappointed. Some of those moments make us much more uncomfortable, disturb us on the inside in ways that a little disappointment might not.

Think about when people lose a job. What are the things that go on inside their heart? Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes they are absolutely furious. How could the company, if they have dedicated their life to it, at this moment, decide they are not needed anymore – despite economic reality. So sometimes it is anger. Sometimes it is a sense of guilt - “I have not lived up to my responsibilities.” When we lose a job sometimes we’re afraid, sometimes we are angry. Sometimes we are guilty.

Rain. There are moments when we are enjoying a community of friends and one of those friends might betray us. In the midst of that betrayal the community is pulled apart – the fabric of friendships, the closeness that we felt begins to get frayed. Incomplete. No peace. Sometimes we feel crushed. Sometimes we feel angry. It’s raining.

There are moments when we aren’t feeling well, or moments when we are dealing with chronic pain. When somebody is in pain and somebody is hurting, what happens? They affect the people around them. It rains in our life. Life can be difficult enough, I mean to tell you we try and do everything we possibly can to get away from that discomfort we feel. We do all kinds of things to get away from the discomfort we might feel because the rain is coming down upon us. So, if we are hurting, maybe we just don’t want to hurt and we spend a lot of time taking drugs. Maybe more than we need and we get to run away from the pain we have.

On the other hand, doing that is like we are putting four stakes in the ground and putting a tarp over us to keep the rain away. The only trouble is that the rain comes down, fills the tarp and eventually you have this whole pool of water that is ready to come crashing down on your head.

Sometimes we deny things that are particularly bad. Sometimes when people lose their job they go on and spend money like they always did, almost as a kneejerk reaction, a denial that things are as bad as they think they are. They don’t want to feel the pain of having to cut back.

Sometimes after a betrayal, we are afraid to enter into relationships, to go ahead and confront the difficulty and betrayal. When nations try and do whatever they can to keep their constituents from feeling any pain, the world becomes a very unjust place. Wars are fought for economic concerns because politicians that are running the wars are following our orders. Right? We are the ones that elect them.

Because we don’t want to feel pain.

It rains on us and we put that tarp over our heads and the rain keeps coming and keeps coming and the deluge is about to happen and Ezekiel knows something about that and maybe we do too. That is the moment for Ezekiel. That is why Ezekiel needs to eat that scroll full of dirges and woes and horror. That is why he has to eat that and speak to the people: “Israel you have been running from the rain too long. Unwilling to accept the grief that comes. Unwilling to accept the fear. Unwilling to live through it and trust the creative power of God to bring you from one place to another.” Instead, you’re holding that tarp, filling up with water, waiting for the deluge to come. That is what Ezekiel had to say. You can’t run from the rain forever.

We would like to think we could. In fact, if you want to know the truth, I talk to a lot of people who won’t come to church because they’re mad at God because they think God ought to stop it from raining. Why won’t God stop it from raining? I don’t know, but it rains and denying that fact pushes into a place where it rains on us all the more.

Here is the interesting thing about these woes and dirges, these horrifying things that Ezekiel needs to preach to people of Israel - as they have created an unjust society where people are not cared for, where the creative power of God is ignored. What happens to Ezekiel is that he takes a scroll full of those things, puts them in his mouth and, of all things, it tastes sweet. As though to say if we are able to digest the difficulty, the trouble, the anger, the fear of those things that churn us up on the inside, if we are able to digest that, the presence and creative power of God takes us from that place to a place that is very sweet, very hopeful, very full and very beautiful.

It rained yesterday. As a result the ceremony needed to be moved inside, into the Zen-do at Green Gulch. This meant that everybody in their dress-up or not so dress-up garb had to take off their shoes because no shoes in the Zen-do. So we took off our shoes and went in. The place is beautiful; old wood framing, a nice wooden floor. A platform is surrounding the room. There are cushions and kneeling stools for people who have sat and meditated there for thirty years. We put some chairs in the middle with an aisle and sat enjoying ourselves and enjoying one another as we were getting to know one another.

It was amazing. There were Jews, Hindus, members of the Wiccan faith, Buddhists, Protestants, Catholics, people who do not necessarily identify themselves with any one group. There we were all in this one room. There was quite a buzz, quite a lot of talk and then we hear this gong from outside and without anyone saying anything we all got quiet. It gonged again. It got quieter still. Then we heard some bells. In walked the clergy. Multi-faith clergy, all together to celebrate this wedding and while all of this is happening the rain is pouring down on the roof. So close and real. Then the bridesmaids came in. Women of some substance. Beautiful dresses. Barefoot. How perfect. Then the bride and groom came forward and committed their lives before this group and we felt close. Following the ceremony we went to another part of building and began to do a dance together. All of us joined. It rained. And I am really glad it did.

It was sweet. I am not saying that it wouldn’t have beautiful and fulfilling in the garden, but it was sweet. Of course, for me to compare that wedding and its small disappointment and transformation to the things that are happening in your life, to fears that you have – I don’t mean to belittle them. It is not all that difficult to believe that God could transform that wedding from the outside to the inside with some kind of sweetness, but how about your life?

The good news the scriptures talk about all the time is that God can transform any situation from that bitter taste to a sweet taste. In fact, it is the nature of God to move from sickness toward health; to move from sickness sometimes toward a wonderful and beautiful death; to move from a place where we are afraid to a place where we feel secure. This is the nature of God’s work. There is not any situation that is too much for God’s creative power.

But, of course, that is hard to believe, especially when we are in the midst of it. If I were to take a poll in this room some of you would say I’m crazy. “God cannot transform my situation, maybe somebody else’s, but not mine.” Other people would say, “I remember a time when I felt lost. The Spirit of God did bring me to a sweet place.” That is why we meet together as a group of people. That is why it’s difficult to be spiritual, but not religious, and all on your own. Because at those moments of struggle, at those moments when it is raining on your life we need to be with the people who remember, who can sit with us, who can be with us, and who can remind us that God is a god who brings the sunshine and the sweetness to life.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to our church.

Throne on Wheels (Audio approximately 10 MB - right-click to download.)

Throne on Wheels?

Ezekiel 1:1-28

^NRS Ezekiel 1:1 ¶ In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. ² On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), ³ the word of the LORD came to the priest Ezekiel son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was on him there. ⁴ ¶ As I looked, a stormy wind came out of the north: a great cloud with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually, and in the middle of the fire, something like gleaming amber. ⁵ In the middle of it was something like four living creatures. This was their appearance: they were of human form. ⁶ Each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. ⁷ Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot; and they sparkled like burnished bronze. ⁸ Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. And the four had their faces and their wings thus: ⁹ their wings touched one another; each of them moved straight ahead, without turning as they moved. ¹⁰ As for the appearance of their faces: the four had the face of a human being, the face of a lion on the right side, the face of an ox on the left side, and the face of an eagle; ¹¹ such were their faces. Their wings were spread out above; each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies. ¹² Each moved straight ahead; wherever the spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went. ¹³ In the middle of the living creatures there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among the living creatures; the fire was bright, and lightning issued from the fire. ¹⁴ The living creatures darted to and fro, like a flash of lightning. ¹⁵ ¶ As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them. ¹⁶ As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl; and the four had the same form, their construction being something like a wheel within a wheel. ¹⁷ When they moved, they moved in any of the four directions without veering as they moved. ¹⁸ Their rims were tall and awesome, for the rims of all four were full of eyes all around. ¹⁹ When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them; and when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. ²⁰ Wherever the spirit would go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. ²¹ When they moved, the others moved; when they stopped, the others stopped; and when they rose from the earth, the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. ²² ¶ Over the heads of the living creatures there was something like a dome, shining like crystal, spread out above their heads. ²³ Under the dome their wings were stretched out straight, one toward another; and each of the creatures had two wings covering its body. ²⁴ When they moved, I heard the sound of their wings like the sound of mighty waters, like the thunder of the Almighty, a sound of tumult like the sound of an army; when they stopped, they let down their wings. ²⁵ And there came a voice from above the dome over their heads; when they stopped, they let down their wings. ²⁶ ¶ And above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form. ²⁷ Upward from what appeared like the loins I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all around; and downward from what looked like the loins I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a splendor all around. ²⁸ ¶ Like the bow in a cloud on a rainy day, such was the appearance of the splendor all around. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of someone speaking.

I was a little guy when Kennedy and Nixon had it out at the ballot box. Little enough that at Halloween that year, just before election day, my mother and I decided it might be fun to make my costume; I went as a voting booth. We made sure we had an equal number of Kennedy and Nixon stickers on the box so as not to offend anyone. We were post-modern even then. I remember how much fun it was. People loved that costume. They would tease and kid me as I went through the neighborhood. They would count to make sure there were an equal number of stickers, or maybe one more for their guy. I got lots of candy. It gave people a lift at a time that was a little tense. That was good.

Years later during the election of Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ross Perot, we lived in Virginia and I was taking my stepson out. He didn’t want to be a voting booth. The group of parents that went out always went out in a costume, so I decided to go as a voting booth again. I put stickers around and evened them up, but I did something a little different. I cut slots in the box and taped bags in back of the slots so people could vote with their candy. I had a very different experience. People thought it was very odd. They were very uncomfortable. The people who were voting for George Bush stood back from me to put candy in the slot. The people who voted for Clinton put candy in the slot, but somehow it didn’t seem right for them. The people who voted for Perot stuffed the ballot box.

I wasn’t home. Didn’t feel like home. When I was in seminary in Virginia that didn’t feel like home either. I’m not complaining about it, I loved my experience at seminary, but I’m from New Jersey. In New Jersey we argue. If somebody says, “I’m right and you’re wrong” you say back, “ No, no, you’re wrong and here’s why.” You expect them to come back and say that. Well, in Virginia if you say, “I’m right and you’re wrong,” they say, “Oh, you’re too forceful.” I wasn’t home. Nothing wrong with Virginia. Virginia is a lovely place, but it wasn’t home.

Debbie and I moved to Maryland when I got my first call. From just below Washington, D.C. to just above it. It was a huge difference. It was as if we were with our people. It felt much more comfortable. We could talk about things that interested us in ways that we didn’t feel we could in Virginia. It felt a little more like home, but not quite. After Debbie passed on I moved to Princeton New Jersey – back home – for just a year. That is where I got to know Barbara. We got married at the end of that year. It felt like home. I noticed because it didn’t feel like home to Barbara.

We would be in a diner in New Jersey and Barbara would say something like, “Well, that waitress was rude.” I would say, “What are you talking about? She was just wasn’t interruptive.” She didn’t seem rude to me. Just normal. The other thing that was very interesting about New Jersey to me was that I could feel the cadence of the traffic lights. I knew when they were going to change. It really did feel like home.

Then we drove out here and we have made home here. We have family here. We have this community here. We have work that we believe is important for us to do. We feel settled in. Our son is being educated and has friends here. We feel at home here. We feel settled. There is something about feeling at home that allows you to feel settled, secure, like you belong somewhere – at peace.

Human beings seek to go home. We don’t feel comfortable when we are far away. From Dorothy to Odysseus. We’re always on the way home. In that place where we feel peaceful, secure. It is not just a question of your physical circumstances either. Your home life can be seriously disrupted when your relationships at home don’t work. My father used to talk about being home in Philadelphia. Home in Philadelphia, with twenty or twenty-five cousins within three blocks of him. It was an extended family. If he wanted to learn how to build something, it never occurred to him to go see his father, he would go see his Uncle Horace. If Uncle Horace’s kids wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument, they would not go to Uncle Horace, that’s for sure. They would go to my Dad’s dad. A beautiful extended family. When my father and mother left Philadelphia to take a job in Tarrytown, New York, his mother said, “Julian, I imagined that one day my children might die before me, but it never occurred to me that they would leave Philadelphia.” Home disrupted.

It is a shame because that home we have is also an easy place for faith to exist. When you are feeling comfortable you don’t always have to be reaching out to God. There is a cadence to life. You come to church, you go home. You come to church, you go home. There is an ease to it. But when that sense of peace and security begins to dissipate, when either relationships begin to falter or your health begins to falter or your body begins to get old, those things can disrupt that sense of peace and security that we have. We don’t feel we are at home. Then it is a little harder, isn’t it? Then faith gets a little bit harder.

When we are at home, God is just there, but when we are away from home, pushing the edges, disrupted, that is when we need it but it is oft times far away. From Dorothy to Odysseus we look for home. From Dorothy to Odysseus we also have home disrupted.

Sometimes the disruption feels continual. I have a little niggling worry about my home - will we always be able to have this home? Looking for security. Many people are suffering the disruption of their lives and a sense of home because of economic downfall. If we are not worried we should be worried about whether our home planet can sustain human life.

Is our home going to be threatened? Is our nation secure, this homeland we have? That is when we will need the faith, when those things begin to get undercut. That is when the fear begins to take hold. That is exactly what the people in Ezekiel’s community were feeling when he spoke to them. I have told you the story of the exile before. They were in Jerusalem, two tribes. God’s people. God lived in that house, on that hill, the center of their city, Jeru-Shalom. That is where God lived. God even had a seat. It was an ark. He sat on top of the angels that were on top of the ark. God lived there. If God of all creation lived there, then certainly they could never be defeated. Yet the Babylonians came, the Babylonians besieged the city and eventually destroyed the city and tore down the temple.

They took all the leaders – the artisans, the bankers, the royalty, the priests, the prophets, anybody who was anybody – they exiled them. They took them across the desert all the way to Babylon, by the river Chebar in Babylon. Ezekiel had traveled with them and was as homeless as the rest of them. Life was completely disrupted. That is when lament began. Psalm 137, By the Rivers of Babylon, There we sat down and there we wept when we remembered our home town of Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs and our tormentors asked us for mirth saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of your home town, Zion.’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land far away from home? If that doesn’t do it to you, we can go with Eric Clapton. But I am near the end and I just ain’t got the time and I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home.

That’s when we feel like God is far away, but that is the moment that Ezekiel had been waiting for. That is the moment that Ezekiel had trained all of his life for. Ezekiel had continually looked to the presence of God and had wanted to understand what God’s creative power could be about at any given moment. So, Ezekiel was not shut down in that place. Ezekiel was not torn down in that place. He did not feel empty to the presence of God. He opened his eyes and saw this vision.

So, OK, it was a little strange. Truth be told, I don’t want you to think that I think that Ezekiel, this prophet, had this vision that just appeared to him. You know, the story says, “I looked into the Heavens and they opened and I saw this vision.” That is a little like “Once upon a time . . .” That is how you begin a story about a vision. I am not saying there was no visionary aspect to it, but there are many archetypal symbols here, and dream stuff, but this is a constructed vision. It has things in common, not only with the Old Testament, but with visions of God throughout the Near and Middle East. For one thing, the wind came from the North. That is where God always came from for the ancients. God comes from the North. The wind came from the North and “there was fire, and there was thunder and clouds . . .” This is theophany, the presence of God he was describing.

The power and the strength of God was moving. Then those strange creatures that came with the presence of God were in human form – except for the wings and the four faces. But what did they have? The face of a human being. Somebody that was conscious and aware; somebody that could connect with the presence of others and the presence of God. They had the face of an ox. One that could be strong and resolute and steady. The face of a lion; the great king, the monarch who could take action and move out into the world that was secure. The face of an eagle; the one who could reach up into the Heavens and look into the world from God’s point of view.

This is what the Sprit of God brings to the people who are far away from home. The Spirit of God brings a strength and ability to act, a consciousness that allows us to be full and connected with one another and with God; allows us to get the perspective that God may have on the situation we are in when we are far away from home. The presence of God offers this kind of strength.

You can’t escape it. It is on gyroscopic wheels in the sky. God does not live in the house on top of the hill. God moves around. Everywhere you go there is nowhere you can escape the presence and the love of God, no matter what, no matter how far you get away from home. A sense of home, security and peace inside. The presence of God is surrounding you, giving you strength, wisdom, consciousness and connection one to another. That is the vision of hope that Ezekiel had, and many others have seen that vision too.

But he didn’t pull it out of thin air. He had worked at this. When he was at home he trained himself, spent his time, learned how to be a prophetic voice. He had opened his life to the presence of God so that when that time came, his faith would not fail him. His heart could be open and he could recognize the strength and power of God.

Nancy Wiens said this morning at the 8:30 service that there is an old song about Ezekiel seeing the wheel way up in the middle of the sky. I was fascinated with one of the verses I had not remembered. There was a wheel inside a wheel. One wheel was Grace; the other one was Faith. Those two wheels working together. It is our faith that needs to be built so that we can be sustained when we are far away from home.

That is what we are doing here in this congregation. We are looking to build and strengthen our faith so that when the time comes and we feel far away from home we will not be far away from the powerful spirit of God. That is why we worship Sunday after Sunday. It is why some of us meditate. It is why we sing, so we can break out of ourselves long enough to sit in the presence of God. It is why we study and seek to understand the ways of God in the world in the past, the ways of God in our own lives. It is why we give of ourselves and work in this world, serving other people. It is why we come together in a group of people; so we can sustain one another, challenge one another, remind one another that we cannot possibly get so far away that God does not have the strength and the power to bring us home. It is a challenge, isn’t it? Because the vision proclaims the hope and the love of God, but demands from us a commitment to open our lives to it. A training of our lives to become more and more connected to the Holy One.

I am teaching a preaching class at the moment. I am teaching it with Veronica Goines, pastor of St. Andrew in Marin City. The two of us were giving a lecture last week: What’s it like to preach to the same congregation 44 weeks a year? That is different than going from one congregation to another to another. Veronica was telling us that at the end of each sermon, she invites people to come forward if they have been challenged or wish to commit themselves to the Spirit as the Spirit has spoken to them during the sermon. We are not going to come forward, but while Denise plays for a time I am wondering if, in your own hearts, you might take a step of commitment, resolve to move further into the presence of God, further into a community that supports you as you do it. That nurturing presence can, always and forever, drive you all the way home.

Would you hear what the Spirit is calling out to you in our church.