The Ah-h-h-h! Moment

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Frederick Buechner once described “Prayer” in a way that leaps to my mind this week, in these days after our communal experience of the Eclipse.

Buechner said:

“We all pray whether we think of it as praying or not. The odd silence we fall into when something very beautiful is happening, or something very good or very bad. The "Ah-h-h-h!" that sometimes floats up out of us as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the skyrockets burst over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else's pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds we use for sighing with over our own lives. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken, not just to ourselves but to something even more familiar than ourselves and even more strange than the world.”

This might not be a definition of prayer that you’re used to hearing. But I think it gets at something important.

If there is a God worth understanding, connecting with, experiencing…then the experience of that God must START at this kind of primal level of human experience.

If we want, it can go all sorts of places after this. But it has to start at this very broad level of human understanding.

The fancy-theological word we United Methodists use for this is “Prevenient Grace.” This is the grace of God that comes to all folks…at all times…in all places, whether or not we understand it…can name it…or even realize it as “Grace.”

My own sense is that whether we are religious or not, we tend to race past these kinds of moments. We name them. We categorize them. We cut them down to size….and in doing so…imho…something is lost.

If we are religious, we immediately stick our own theological language on these “numinous” experiences. We quote scripture. (In these moments, we seem to quote a LOT of scripture…) We squeeze down ineffable moments into bite-sized pieces.

If we are not religious, we often look to science to explain our feelings and experience. We marvel at the human reason that helps us describe how an Eclipse is going to happen at just this moment and last for just this many seconds.
We take comfort in the “facts” as they can be known. But, again, this often reduces and explains our own experiences into more bite-sized pieces.

I’m not here to suggest one approach is better than the other, and I definitely don’t believe in a binary choice between the two. Further, I hope whoever you are you don’t take too much offense at the broad brush I just used to describe all of humanity.
(Which is, I know, what I just did…)

I’m here to suggest that all of our reactions at moments like this are all based on an “a priori" human experience that is “the same” whomever we are. I’m suggesting this experience is the heart of all human spirituality or experience, whatever form it takes, and whether or not we ever name it as “spiritual."

Whether your response to the Eclipse was a religious one, a secular one, or something else…I’m inviting you to PAUSE with me here…

Pause…at that moment before we put any other language on such a moment as the Eclipse.

Pause at the moment of experience, just like that 4th of July moment Buechner described.

Pause at the “Ah-h-h-h…” moment of the Eclipse. And see its deep connection with a deep-level spirituality that unites all human beings, a human experience St. Augustine called “the God shaped hole” inside of all of us.

My own strong belief is that we human beings can have these kinds of mystical experiences when we listen to music, poetry, see art…study the sciences…experience other humans through love and connection in many times and many places.
And yes, they can even happen in Church - if we are open to them.

But please note: this “Prevenient Grace,” must, de facto, be experienced in all sorts of times and places that have nothing to do with organized religion or “Church.”
(This must be the case if there really is a God of the universe, far beyond the comprehension of any church language…)

This is what I’m talking about here. This is the kind of “mystery” that we all experience and that we all respond to in our own very human, very personal ways.

This is what writer Patricia Hample meant when years ago she said:

“I don’t know if everyone has to come to terms with religion, but everyone has to come to terms with mystery, which is the business of religion.”

This quote from Hample is kind of an inverse of St. Augustine’s quote about the “God shaped hole” in our hearts. Instead of describing the moment of *absence* of God (Augustine’s thought), Hample describes the moment of PRESENCE.

Like Buechner’s “Ah-h-h-h!”

She suggests a universal ability to have spiritual experiences as I tried to suggest just a moment ago.

Almost all of us are gob-smacked by certain moments…
…The birth of a child.
…The death of a loved one.
…The horrors of war.
…Acts of selflessness…or selfishness.

Even an Eclipse.

And these things tend to take us out of ourselves, whether we are “religious” or not. They remind us of that common mystical bond between us all.

This helps explain the reaction of so many this week, who described the Eclipse as…

“Spiritual…mystical…”
“It reminded me of how small we are in the universe…”
“It felt like all my problems went away for a moment and everybody was just ONE…”
“I was filled with awe…”

This is what Hample is talking about when she says the business of religion SHOULD BE “mystery."

I don’t need to tell you that far too often the “business of religion" devolves into something far less, and far less beautiful, than “mystery.”

— A set of moral rules to be followed.
— A set of rote practices to be repeated.
— A way to become more, not less, tribal.
— A corruptible institution manipulated by Empires, Church leaders and those exploiting the Earth.

None of these, of course, get at the kind of mystery we are talking about here which is why so many human beings get so frustrated (and “Done” with) organized religion.

In his autobiography St. James of Taylor suggests that church and concerts are really quite similar in terms of their communal and spiritual experience. He suggests they are unique in our culture. I tend to think many communal events can have this spiritual dimension, but I take his point and certainly have agreed with it about music and church for many years.

Do we find this gold vein of spiritual experience every Sunday in Church?

No. We do not. Because we are human, we use too many words, or we are too worried about the “performance” of religious ritual (whether we’re a leader or a participant…). We get distracted or bored. Or the suffering and pain of our own life get in the way. Or our own sense of self-sufficiency blinds us from our need for God.

There are sooooo many distractions to pull our focus away from the mystery.

But I am so overjoyed with how Monday went here in our city. The clouds parted. The skies darkened and millions of us looked up and said…

“Ah-h-h-h!”

I talked with Jimmy Contreras over at Taco y Vino on Sunday and he said that this weekend had been one of his busiest in a long time. News reports shared that Dallas hotels were 90% full!!

And, sure enough, this weekend as I drove around Oak Cliff, Downtown and East Dallas, I saw dozens of small groups of obviously lost out-of-towners wandering around and trying to get their bearings.

Even as late as Monday morning, though, it was still cloudy. Really cloudy. The forecast was for possible clearing later in the morning. But just based on the feel of the 9 am temps, it seemed like all we’d experience was four minutes of “dark.”

As you know, the clouds started to break mid-morning. Then as temps cooled the clouds evaporated even more, and the moment of totality was suddenly completely clear! The break in the clouds seemed magical as well. (But I’m told it was likely completely attributable to the drop in temps…)

And the experience?

It was exactly as Buechner described…

“Ah-h-h-h!”

Here’s my own little backyard video.

Again, our human problem is:

1. We dismiss these kinds of moments by explaining them away (whittling them down either through our logic or religious language…)

2. We fail to connect them at the deep level of human spiritual experience.

One more thought from Frederick Buechner (and I’ve already quoted this once this week…)

Buechner liked to describe reading the Bible in the way the theologian Karl Barth used to describe it. And it’s very much like watching an Eclipse.

“…reading the Bible is like looking out of the window and seeing everybody on the street shading their eyes with their hands and gazing up into the sky toward something hidden from us by the roof. They are pointing up. They are speaking strange words. They are very excited. Something is happening that we can't see happening. Or something is about to happen. Something beyond our comprehension has caught them up and is seeking to lead them on…”

At Kessler Park we practice our faith through the language of Christianity and United Methodism. We “point” to these mysteries…yes, we sometimes use “strange words.”

But we try to remind ourselves that the spiritual reality behind all the words we say…the songs we hear…the experiences collectively shared…are trying to get at the

“Ah-h-h!” moment…

Where all falls aways and everything is holy.

Faith-FULL

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Increasingly I am convinced the opposite of “faith” is not “doubt,” but “fear.” This is because the deepest level of “faith” is not “belief,” but “trust;” and the opposite of “trust/faith” is “fear/anxiety.”

Instead of faith’s opposite, doubt is a part of the journey of faith. Skepticism is, or should be, embraced as how we grow, not how we “gain or lose” our faith. Long ago, I came to dearly love Frederick Buechner’s definition of “doubt”…

“Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
(From “Wishful Thinking.”)

This has always been how I’ve seen the connection of faith and doubt. Doubts keep our faith awake and moving. They keep it from calcifying into fundamentalism. They push us to know more, do more, be more. This kind of faith is like Jesus coming down the mountain instead of building the “Transfiguration Shrine” that Peter wants him to.

This kind of faith doesn’t attempt to literalize or concretize spiritual experiences which are, at their heart, always ephemeral. (And must be!)

My overall sense is that my own tradition (Mainline Protestantism) has done a much better job of reminding its adherents that doubt is a part of our faith journey.

I was a very young man when I first understood this. And I am grateful to my own youth minister, Ben Marshall, for both being a calm, non-anxious leader, but also for inviting us kids to always unpack our doubts, our fears and our skepticism. We were never once shamed, dismissed, or shunned for questioning the Bible or any facet of the Christian religion.

But throughout my adult life I’ve encountered many folks who were. For many who grew up in evangelical/fundamentalists traditions, if they even so much as *slightly* “doubted” or questioned the “logical propositions” they were told to believe, they WERE shunned, shunted aside, or worse, even cast out of Christian fellowship.

In these more evangelical and fundamentalist traditions, “doubt” was the *worst* thing a “believer” could ever have.

This next part may feel controversial to some, but it’s how I see things.

Most of the debate I hear between “Atheists” and “Believers” seems to take place at this level…the level of debating “belief in logical propositions about God.”

There’s a lot of “proof-texting” that seems to go back and forth. There’s a GREAT DEAL of assuming that:

“Faith” = “Belief in factual or logical propositions about God.”

Many churches websites feature a “What We Believe” page. And many times this is where you can find these “logical propositions about God” spelled out. And many times it’s assumed that any “real” Christian will believe these things *literally.*

From my chair I see a lot of “Atheists” attempting to undercut these types of factual or literal claims about God. I see a lot of “Evangelicals” defending them, often twisting themselves into theological pretzels —dancing on the heads of some very small pins— to defend their “beliefs.”

Secularly there are similar debates over “facts” happening everywhere of course.

Right now all over social media there are raging debates over the truth claims made by Donald Trump.

Right now there are *still* debates about vaccines and the science of pandemic medicine.
(I have a near-neighbor with a “Kennedy for President” sign up. :( )

Just last night we watched a chilling documentary about Alex Jones and the horrific way he lied for decades about the massacre of children at Sandy Hook. EVEN DURING HIS TRIAL, even as he repeatedly apologized in court, Jones continued to publicly lie about the situation on his internet show!!

His lies helped keep alive the conspiratorial virus started by Trump’s “Birthirism” and later led to the kooky views about Hillary Clinton eating babies in non-existent pizzeria basements.

Folks, we’re in the midst of a full-on “war” about facts in our nation. And it’s not over yet.

What I’m suggesting here is that beneath all of this back and forth about “logical propositions,” there is an entirely *different* level of “faith” that is not primarily dependent on this debate at all; that does not “stand or fall” on its outcome.

And that is to see “Faith” as “Trust, Assurance, Confidence…or Hope.”

Faith at this level isn’t nearly as concerned with the literal truth or falsity of logical propositions, or even with our “gut emotional feeling,” but instead with developing a deep-level TRUST in the presence of God.

As Marcus Borg so well puts it, “Faith is trusting that the reality of reality is gracious.”

This gets me to this story about “Doubting Thomas.” (John 20)

Again, lets remember this story starts on Easter Day. That night.

The Disciples appear to be in shock. They are confused. Their spiritual/emotional teeth have been kicked in by the Roman Execution of Jesus and a fear of marauding collaborators who are potentially out to harm them, too.

The Gospel literally uses the word FEAR to describe them.

“The doors were locked, for fear of Jews.”

“The Jews,” here —and this is important— are not clearly *all* Jews in Israel (they are all Jews, too!). But “the Jews” here clearly refers to some folks who want to show their loyalty to the Roman Empire by turning in associates of Jesus.

But the point is not WHO they are afraid of, though.

The point is that they ARE afraid. And their fear is the opposite of faith.

This is the moment when they are most “faith-empty.”

The story goes that Jesus comes and stands among them. Note that he apparently has some kind of non-normal body that can walk through locked doors. The text doesn’t seem to worry about this, and we shouldn’t either…because (and I can never emphasize this enough…) the point of the story is not logical, factual, literal, consistency.

Jesus breathes on them. Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit and wishes them PEACE.

Thomas isn’t there. It’s not explained why.
It doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s an introvert.
Maybe he couldn’t take being with the group.

But he comes back and hears of their miraculous encounter. But instead of taking their word for it, he tells them that he won’t believe unless he can see for himself.

And then…a week passes!

A WEEK!

Don’t rush past this. Thomas has to endure the Spirit-filled joy of the other ten for a week…all the while insisting that HE be given what THEY got. He’s not asking for more than them or special treatment. He just wants to see as they have seen.

He gets his wish. Jesus pops back in the room a week later and allows Thomas to see his weirdly physical/non-physical body. And that’s why Thomas’ doubts fall away.

But its the final line of this story that, imho, is the most important. Because I always imagine Jesus ends this story by addressing US. Jesus’ last line can’t be addressed to anybody still in the room because they’ve all seen the physical-him.

Instead, Jesus breaks the “fourth wall” of the Gospel drama and turns to all of us readers over the past two thousand years and says:

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

You see it?
He can’t be speaking to any other character. (They DID see him…)

But we —unlike the ten and now Thomas— are never going to get a physical glimpse at this weird post-resurrection body of Jesus. We live in a time when all that’s available to us is the still, small voice of God.
The whisper of the Spirit.

So….
We can argue about “facts.” (And we most certainly will…)
We can argue about “beliefs.” (And we’ll do that, too…)

But can we find —through the grace of God— some sense of bedrock TRUST beneath all of this?
Because this trust is the heart of what Jesus calls “blessed.”

Can we believe —all evidence to the contrary— that “the reality of reality is gracious?”
Because this reality is the heart of what Jesus calls “blessed.”

The most “blessed” form of faith is below the level of human doubt and anxiety.

None of us have it all the time.

Few of us have it most of the time.

One paradoxical dynamic I see? The more we are trapped by a “faith” that logical propositions about God are all that matter, the less of this bedrock trust we humans seem to have.

This is why some of the fundamentalists/evangelicals you know seem to be deeply distrustful and incredibly fearful (Literally: “full of fear”) because their sense of faith has never led them to this deeper place.

But pursuing faith-as-trust by finding it (or, perhaps better, allowing it to find us…) we live out the deepest calling God has for us.

This kind of faith is outside the level of logical propositions about God. It’s beyond the reach of human evil and even past the event-horizon of human logic, outside of our sense of history, space, and time.

This level and form of faith is a kind of foolish-seeming TRUST in God.

We often say that “believers” are “faithful.” But pull those words apart and recall their deeper meaning.

Those who have “faith” the way Jesus is describing here are “faith-FULL.”

They are FULL of a specific *kind* of faith…a trust, hope and assurance… that is not dependent on the logical mind or the emotional heart.

It’s Buechner’s “ants in the pants” kind of faith that somehow still finds trust in God, even though we live in a world where it’s hard to trust anything at all these days.

This is the heart of what Jesus means when he says….

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

Holy Week

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Even at the saddest Christian funeral we also speak of New Life, resurrection, and Hope.

We do not fail to do so, and we understand that this is our calling: To not only name and acknowledge the reality of true, physical death, but to also speak to God’s message of Hope and Life.

For me as a pastor, that means that the traditional hard division between “Good Friday” and “Easter Sunday” is unhelpful, to say the least.

Christian theologians, especially in the Western Church, theologize endlessly about the meaning of Jesus’ death. As many of you know (and perhaps get tired of me saying), this can lead to an “out of balance” obsession with Atonement Theologies.

That’s why, as your pastor, I would urge you to always keep the entire week in focus.

Yes, Good Friday is a truly horrible moment, just as is the physical death of our own dear loved ones in our own lives. But its significance cannot be truly understood unless it’s paired with Easter Sunday’s hope.

The Holy Week message is always —or should always be— about embracing the reality of death and mortality while simultaneously speaking to Hope, New Life, and the healing of our human heartbreaks.

Let me say it another way…

Can you imagine a memorial service where nobody offers any message of Hope? Where we just focused on the horror of death?

Conversely, can you imagine a memorial service where the preacher only talked about resurrection and didn’t acknowledge the human suffering of family and friends?

(Sadly…I bet you can imagine *both* of these! Yes, they do happen. Some of you tell me about these that you’ve attended in other places…)

The goal or the point of any truly good memorial service is to hold BOTH things in tension…at the same time.

The Holy Week is similar. It’s a BOTH/AND message, not an “either/or” one.

Holy Week is Good Friday…
Where we don’t deny the truth of Jesus’ death at the hands of Roman Imperial Power. Where we understand that this death stirred up confusion and grief among his Disciples and friends.

When we acknowledge how, even in our own day, human beings “scapegoat” those who offer hope and healing.

The Romans are long gone, but the “Powers that Be” in our world still crucify the hopes and dreams of too many who seek to love the world unconditionally.

But Holy Week is ALSO Easter Sunday….
Where we hear the remarkable Good News that God overcomes our death-obsessed culture with New Life.
Where God rejects our rejection of God.
Where God turns our greatest heartbreaks into moments of grace and transformation. Death is never the final word.

Our journey is “life into death…into life.”

This is what I mean by saying Holy Week is “both/and” not “either/or.”

Jesus came to live, to spread the Gospel message of Good News to all people (Luke 2). But the Powers That Be killed him. Earthly, human power killed him. The great miracle of Holy Week is in how God overcomes that death with New Life.

So, this is why we never have a memorial service (at least a good one) without both embracing the hard truth of death while simultaneously speaking of Hope and Good News.

And it’s also why during Holy Week I hope you’ll take the whole journey. Finish the hard road with us at Kessler Park as we retell the holy story of Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

This has been our journey all along during this season. And this is our calling in this special week.

Hope to see you Thursday, Friday, and Sunday.

Eric Folkerth