Here and There

With our flashlights we trudged up the many hundreds of irregular stone steps to the top of the mountain and tried to stay out of the wind as we waited for the dawn.

After that amazing sight and experience we were faced with descending all those same stone steps, this time in the light.

Mercifully, no one in our group turned an ankle, because the only way down would have been for us to carry such a person.

Then we entered St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of the mountain.

In due course we were permitted to go into the monastic church, through the carved wooden doors that were put in place during the time of the Emperor Justinian in the 6^th century.

We stepped into something quite different.

When our eyes adjusted from the sun outside to the mysterious dim light inside, we began to pick out the icons which bear the images of saints and martyrs, and the icons that tell the Bible stories; the icons that point the way to Jesus.

The icon of the day is on a stand right in front of us, others are on the icon screen in front of the altar, still more on the wall and the ceiling.

One is literally surrounded by the images of the saints across the generations of the church.

We are there with the whole company of heaven.

And to think that we were standing just where visitors and worshipers have been standing for 1,800 years and praying with some of these same scenes.

This is not a museum; this church holds a living, active faith community at worship multiple times a day, every day, for 18 centuries.

What can visitors such as we were do but utter our prayer of thanksgiving that we were privileged to join that ceaseless round of praise for even a few minutes.

It was a touch of heaven.

Then there were the mundane problems out getting out of the way of other persons, and visiting the rest of the complex, and getting back on the bus to leave.

What I have been describing to you is a logical impossibility, that we were in a sense in two places at once.

We were in this corner of the Egyptian desert and at the same time we were with the company of heaven, in anticipation of its being fully revealed to us.

In the same way, John the Seer writes of being in two places at once.

Adding several more verses to where our Second Lesson ended a moment ago, we hear: “I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.

I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write in a book what you see....”

And he has a wonderful and terrible vision, seeing things too great to be described, the despair of every artist who has tried to put them in picture-form.

Even as visitors can now go to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco and poke around to see what it might have been like years ago, visitors can go to the island called Patmos and be shown the supposed cave of John the Seer. It wouldn't do for tourists not to be shown some specific place, even though there is no idea where John might have stayed on the island.

All we really need to know is that in ancient times it was a place to which one got a one-way ticket; the prisoner was not expected to survive his time on the island.

So John is in a dreadful situation, but at the same time he recognizes that he is also somewhere else, in the presence of the Lord God in his vision.

It is not delusions or drug-induced hysteria, but the deeper truth about life and faith.

The hardships of being on Patmos are real enough, but this other place, this vision of the Lord God and the outcome of creation is even more real.

For in his ordinary life things are falling apart, in the other reality they are heading toward the goals that God has in mind.

He experiences both at the same time.

Since that is true, it should not come as a surprise to us that various parts of the liturgy and much imagery in our hymns comes from John's visions in Revelation.

We're not just stuck here in Williamsport worrying about sin, death, politicians, and taxes.

We are also incorporating persons into the body of Christ in Holy Baptism, and sharing in the appetizer of the heavenly banquet in Holy Communion.

And that is the even greater reality and truth of life as a child of God.

How has that worked out in life?

Think of the experience of slaves in 18^th and 19^th century America, who sang the Spirituals that had double meaning texts:

Wade in the water, children, wade in the water.

Judgment's comin' and I don't know; wade in the water.

The enemy's great, but my Captain's strong;

I'm marching to the city, and the road ain't long.

Another sample:

This train is bound for glory, this train!

If you ride it, you must be holy, this train!

This train don't pull no extras, this train!

Don't pull nothing but the Heavenly Special, this train!

Are these and other texts talking about salvation, or about escape to freedom?

Possibly both at the same time.

Their workday life may have been miserable, but they knew another view of life, another outcome greater than the trials and hardships of slavery.

And whenever they could hold onto that vision, they had it right, they had the key to calmness of spirit, no matter what else was happening.

I was reading this week about the experience of another pastor who was conducting a funeral and noticed that the widow had a look of peace on her face during the service.

Was she in denial about the tragedy that had snatched her husband away from her?

No, she was physically at the funeral, fully comprehending the sad magnitude of what had happened, but she was also somewhere else.

In a later conversation she told the pastor, “I sat there, even in my grief, and I thought about the life we had together, the memories we have shared, our life of faith, and I was transported out of my grief.

Suddenly I felt gratitude instead of only grief.”

She had been lifted by the Spirit from one place to another.

She was here, but also there at the same time.

This is not overcoming the laws of physics, but a matter of knowing that no matter where we are, even on the bleak island of Patmos, we are the Lord's.

Note that John says all of this happened on “the Lord's Day”.

This was not just some other day; it was Sunday, the Lord's Day.

Caesar had his day; he demanded to be treated as a god.

He could do anything he wanted; he could send people to Patmos if he wished.

But this day is not Caesar's day; it is not Caesar's world.

John was not just in the Roman Empire, he was in the Spirit, God's Holy Spirit.

And in that Spirit he could see a new heaven and a new earth.

He thanked God for that sight, and passes on that vision to us in Revelation.

There are those times when we feel marooned on our own Patmos.

Grief and sadness of many sorts tries to isolate and punish us.

John gives us the cue and our Lord teaches us that this prison cannot hold us.

Christ's word and promise break those barriers, so that we can live in the anticipation of the completion of God's work with us.

“Bring us safe through Jordan” we pray in our next hymn, and we sing joyfully to the One who was, who is, and who is to come, the Almighty,... because Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.