“The Heartbeat of God”

John 14:15-21, Acts 17:22-31
Sermon by Carrie Eikler
Easter 6

Last weekend I joined other Celtic music aficionados for a concert here in our sanctuary. On that blustery, rainy evening our church was warmed by the music of Phil and Pam Boulding, a harp and hammered dulcimer duo who largely played a variety of Irish music. With the occasional appearance of a penny whistle and a child’s accordion, the sound of strings filled the sanctuary and spilled out into the street. And as I listened I thought, what a wonderful beckoning to the neighborhood.

Now, I don’t know if I would have felt the same way if we were listening to a brass band, or a tuba and trombone duet, or an electric guitar and drum set, or even an organ concert. I think any music spilling into the world outside of the church can be a warm invitation…depending on your taste in music. But there is something particular to my musical taste that is especially stirred by music of the British Isles, of Ireland and Scotland and England. It could be because the thickest branches of my family tree originate from those islands. But more likely it could just be my musical make-up, the receptiveness of my spirit to music that is at once rowdy and tender, as well as mysterious and joyful.

And as the music washed over me, and the stirring of my spirit continued, I found the music conveying a truth about God to me that I can’t explain. Perhaps in a sense this is what God is to me—rowdy and tender, mysterious and joyful. Have you ever been stirred by the Spirit? Perhaps by music? Something deep within you clicks, or feels a union with God? Well that’s what I felt that evening, as I have many times before when listening to this type of music. And I found myself thinking, I could never preach a sermon that speaks about the essence of God, as much as this music makes me feel the essence of God.

Now this isn’t to be a critique or reflection on my sermon writing skills. I imagine as time goes by I’ll find better and fuller ways to convey the stirrings of the Spirit in our lives and in our world, but, Hallelujah! God can work in ways other than sermons! Hallelujah, the boundaries of our potential for meeting God are wide, so we may search, and even grope for God…so we might find God, the invitation given us today by the apostle Paul .

Well of course I didn’t get out of the concert without buying a new release. But we know a CD is never the same as a live performance. A CD can’t convey that stirring. It can try to recreate it, but generally it just helps us remember it. It can’t send vibrations through the air that touch the vibrations in our bodies, somehow connecting us with the music. So I’ve been playing that CD, reminding myself of all the places God hides; the places where the Spirit squats ready to surprise you with her rowdy tenderness; the places where Christ is just waiting to be found.

And as I was looking at the back of the CD at the list of songs, I noticed something in the bottom corner. There was an indicator for music stores that would sell the CD to help them know where to file it amidst all their other CDs. It said “Celtic (slash) New Age,” meaning they could either put it under a Celtic section, or a New Age section, or perhaps in some stores they are one in the same. I thought “how interesting” that Celtic and new age in some regards are synonymous. Admittedly, streams of Irish music have been reincarnated in forms that people would consider new age, sort of “airy” and “flighty”—people may think more of crystals and incense rather than pubs and fiddles when they hear some types of Irish music.

But what is so interesting to me is that Celtic traditions are so very “not new” –in fact Celtic traditions are ancient, going as far back and beyond our own Christian traditions. So perhaps, when we revive ancient ways of seeing and being, we consider it “new age” as in “new for this age.” I imagine it also doesn’t help that the traditions of Celtic cultures have been earth-based and creation-centered, therefore deemed pagan. I have seen a humorous T-shirt picturing Stonehenge, and underneath it says “Give me that Old-Time Religion.” This is probably the understanding of Celtic spirituality that many Westerners hold.

But to know the history of Christianity in the Western Isles, is to capture a unique and beautiful collection of traditions, both pre-Christian and Christian. A Christianity that developed far from the seat of religious power in Rome around the forth century, sought not to find God in sacraments and buildings, but in creation, in daily life, in relationship. J. Phillip Newell, a Church of Scotland minister said that instead of listening for the word of God through institutions, as the Roman Church came to exemplify, the ancient Celtic Christians, “listened for the heartbeat of God” all around them.

Our scriptures for this week epitomize an early Celtic Christian spirituality: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in the Father… and you in me…, and I in you (John 14);

And as Paul conveys in our text from Acts: “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands…For in him we live and move and have our being.

At the heart of Celtic spirituality rests the belief that God really is in all things. It can’t be overlooked. God’s goodness is a piece of everything that moves…and all that does not move. God is in all that is beautiful and good. And God’s presence can be seen, if every so dimly, in what we consider ugly and evil. And it is to that extent, with the belief that God dwells in everything, that a Celtic theology enters faith with the willingness to wrestle with both the goodness and the capacity for destruction in the world and the human spirit. Yet even with this dilemma, the early Celtic Christians had a deep connection with the gospel of John, which they believed to speak of great openness, a huge capacity for goodness, and worshiped a Christ full of grace.

An ancient Celtic prayer: “There is no plant in the ground/ But is full of His virtue,/ There is no form in the strand/ but is full of His blessing/ Jesu! Jesu! Jesu!/ Jesu who ought to be praised.// There is no life in the sea,/ There is no creature in the river,/ There is naught in the firmament,/ But proclaims His goodness./ Jesu! Jesu! Jesu!/ Jesu who ought to be praised.// There is no bird on the wing,/ There is no star in the sky,/ There is nothing beneath the sun,/ But proclaims His goodness./ Jesu! Jesu! Jesu!// Jesu who ought to be prayed.” (qtd in Newell, J Phillip. The Heartbeat of God)

These prayers, passed orally from generation to generation began to disappear as the larger Church now based in Rome became more and more established in the Western Isles. Looking to create a monolithic faith, the Roman Church discouraged the ancient forms of worship and prayer. Those who practiced this form of Christianity--who put God’s power in the world, rather than a hierarchy--were punished. Perhaps it seemed too much like praying to the unknown God’s that Paul speaks of. If we heard these prayers today, I think a part of us would think these prayers were to the elements, to nature, to many different gods.

But what, I wonder, is more present to us than our breath? What is more tangible than the presence of another person? What is more constant than the sun and the moon, its rising and setting, its waxing and waning? This type of spirituality doesn’t worship these things, rather, it sees that God is the being on which everything rests, God is the Light within all light, God is at the heart of all life.

I think this part of our gospel message, and the message of the early Church, has been lost to us. Paul speaks “tongue-in-cheek” to the Athenians, sarcastically referencing their idolatry and buildings as “extremely religious.” I sense here, as I often observe in our traditions, the tendency for institutional religion to become confining, static, bound by duty and containing God into the proper places. Even binding God up in religious rhetoric that is used only to push forward a particular political ideology—God as some sort of method, a means to an end that has more to do with political and economic power rather than any love or grace.

I wonder what the difference is between a life that is “extremely religious,” and one where we are rooted in our faith that “in him we live and move and have our being?”

We might find it affects the patience we have with one another. We might find that we can’t go the long stretches that we often do without being in awe and thanksgiving for the way God presents Godself in the minutiae of life. We might find that every moment presented to us is an opportunity to feel the vibration of the spirit in how we choose to love another person, care for a patch of earth, or recognize the truth in a piece of music. It might mean that we can’t approach the real issues of suffering and evil in this world, without asking the hard questions of God’s presence.

And we might realize that our connection with God goes deeper than the words we give to it, or the worship we create can honor it. Yet sometimes we might be tempted, the more deeply we sense God working in the world, that there is no reason for anyone or anything else to enter into our spiritual path. Sometimes when we try to dwell more deeply in a relationship with God we will find ourselves moving into a puritanical sort of piety, an “extremely religious” life that looks to some world beyond us. I have a hunch however, that the more we listen for the heartbeat of God in all life, to live with the movement and breath of God, we find ourselves called to look more deeply into life, rather than away from it.

J. Phillip Newell, says the heartbeat of God can be heard most clearly when we find a way of weaving our personal spiritual paths, with the lifeblood other people seeking faith:

“Most of us will have the experience of walking to Church in the light of the morning or evening” Newell says, “and feel reluctant to leave the freshness of the wind or the colours of the sky to enter an enclosed building, sometimes terribly stifling or unimaginative in design. Sometimes we need not the busyness of a church but the solitude of a hill […] to be still and attentive to God. On the other hand, most of us have also experienced in the words, silence and sacraments of Church liturgy an opening of our inner vision, so that on our return home we see the elements of creation around us with fresh eyes.”

He continues, “In times of trouble and loneliness, have we not all drawn comfort from singing hymns and saying prayers in a congregation of men and women who, like us, have known temptation, loss and emptiness?”

“Occasionally it is not the open air or the church we desire, but both.” Newell recalls what he thinks is probably a universal type of memory. One evening on the Isle of Wright, [of the shore of Scotland] “[t]owards sunset, I was out walking, with open fields on one side and trees lining the path. The air was clear and calm and I was hearing the birds’ closing song for the day. For a long time I stood under a great pine, looking at its height and feeling its ancient life, aware that all was being enfolded by the sun’s last light. I did not have to move; I was alone. I could have had another ten minutes, but I chose to move and a minute later was standing in the chapel of Quarr Abbey listening to the monks chanting and allowing my prayers to rise with the incense. I knew that in two different ways I had experienced one continuous act of worship.” (Newell, 98)

Listening for the heartbeat of God calls us to slow and perceive the rhythms of our lives and world that burst with the stirrings of the spirit. It invites us into one continuous act of worship. It leads us to claim that God dwells within us and in God we move and breathe and have our being, no matter how much darkness obscures it.

I was reminded sharply of that fact after our Easter Sunrise Service. I drug myself out of bed early in the morning, and went about the tasks of gathering hymnals and setting up chairs at the park in the biting cold. Those of us who gathered stamped our feet until the time that we figured no one else was coming. We sang, I said some words, we prayed…it was cold. And when it was done, I found myself, just as hurriedly as I set up, taking down the chairs, tossing the hymnals in the car to take back to the church and get my breakfast dish ready for the potluck.

And as I began to pull out of the parking lot, I realized that I was the only one leaving. Most everyone there had gathered in little clusters, talking, all watching the sun rise over the hill. I felt a little ashamed, but mostly humbled. I stopped the car, hoping people hadn’t noticed how quickly I was about to leave and I joined the small group gathered there, and watched the sun rise, our warm breath mingling together in the cold air. I could see that I shared Cindy’s breath, that Sue shared my breath, that Cindy shared Sue’s breath. And we shared the living breath of the risen one, in whom we move and breathe and have our being.

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My prayer I close for us this day comes from George MacLeod, a 20th century Scottish social reformer and priest who founded the ecumenical community of Iona, an island off the shores of Scotland.

“Almighty God…/Sun behind all suns,/ Soul behind all souls,.. /show to us in everything we touch/ and in everyone we meet/ the continued assurance of thy presence round us,/ lest ever we should think thee absent./ In all created things thou art there./ In every friend we have/ the sunshine of thy presence is shown forth./ In every enemy that seems to cross our path,/ thou art there within the cloud to challenge us to love./ Show to us the glory in the grey./ Awake for us thy presence in the very storm/ till all our joys are see as thee/ and all our trivial tasks emerge as priestly sacraments/ in the universal temple of thy love.”