The Sauntering Pilgrim

Last Tuesday, Craig Muir had just left his house for a morning walk when he spotted in the distance, in the middle of nowhere, a silver monolith protruding from the ground. There was no clue how it got there or what it was doing in that spot. “To look at it,” Muir said, “you could have easily thought it had been dropped off by a U.F.O. or something” (New York Times, Mar. 12).

The monolith is about ten feet tall and appears to be very heavy and well crafted, made of surgical steel with no markings of any kind, like the mysterious thing in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Objects like it have appeared around the world in recent years – this one in the United Kingdom, others in Utah, California, Romania, Turkey. Is it a prank, a publicity stunt, an art installation? No one knows, and no one knows how long it will be there; such things have a way of disappearing as quickly and mysteriously as they appear.

In another day and age, it might have been considered a messenger from another planet or dimension. Some may think of it that way today, bearing some word from a U.F.O. or the gods or even from the one God we call Yahweh. Theologians have a word for it. They call it a “theophany,” from the Greek words for “God” and “to show,” and it refers to God’s appearance or God’s direct message to us.

Like monoliths appearing around the earth, theophanies are scattered throughout our scriptures. Abram experienced a theophany when God promised to make him a blessing (Gen. 12:1-3). Jacob experienced one when God appeared to him in a dream (Gen. 28:10-17). Moses experienced theophanies in a burning bush (Exod. 3:2) and again when God gave him the divine law on Mount Sinai (Exod. 20:1ff). Isaiah experienced a theophany when God appeared in a smoke-filled temple attended by winged seraphs (Isa. 6:1-5).

There was a theophany when the angel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus (Luke 1:26-38); again at Jesus’ baptism, when a voice from heaven proclaimed him God’s Son (Mark 1:11); when Jesus’ disciples saw him transfigured on the mountain (Mark 9:2-8); when Jesus asked God, “glorify your name,” and “a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again’” (John 12:28). Paul experienced a theophany on the road to Damascus when he heard the risen Christ ask him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:3-4).

In dreams and visions and burning bushes; on smoke-shrouded mountains and in smoke-filled temples; at baptism’s new beginning and on the road that ends in crucifixion; and in so many other situations and places – messages from heaven, the Spirit made visible, God’s unmediated, palpable presence. Theophanies.

But do we have theophanies today? When was the last time your eyes were blasted with light and you were knocked to the ground like St. Paul? When did you last see a bush that burned and was not consumed? When did the curtain of the temple part, giving you access to the holy of holies? Are theophanies now things of the past? Are they gimmicks like that monolith in Wales? Are they remnants of a more primitive, pre-scientific time? Or do we expect too much of them? Do we listen for the wrong things or look in the wrong places?

When Samuel had his theophany while serving in the temple under Eli, we read, “The word of the Lord was rare,” and he mistook God in his dream for Eli in the next room (1 Sam. 3:1-11). Maybe for us the word of the Lord is not rare as much as it is unrecognized. Maybe we’re so distracted by too much noise intruding from the next room, or because we put too much hot sauce in the Buffalo wing soup, that we don’t hear the subtle whispers of God that come to us all the time, in our every breath.

When Elijah, hiding in his cave, had his theophany (1 Kings 19:1-18), he prepared to meet God in fire and wind and earthquake and found God in none of those things. He heard God instead in what the scriptures describe as “a sound of sheer silence” or “the sound of a gentle whisper.” Maybe the word of God is not as rare today as we believe. Maybe our theophanies are obscured by the chaos and noise in which we have allowed ourselves to be immersed, our preconceptions and prejudices, our social and cultural and religious training and filters.

I believe we don’t need to ask for more from God; we need to ask for less: less frantic seeking, less striving for more, less self-indulgence. And when we have less of those things, we may find we actually have more: more of the blessings of paradise, more gratitude for what we already have, more attention to give the music of the spheres and the rhythms of life. God is always self-giving; our challenge is to remove the obstacles that make it difficult to receive the gift.

What do theophanies look like today? They might look like memories that emerge from some deep place as a response to the present moment. They might appear as quiet surprises that jolt us into fresh perspectives on life and our experiences. They might be a sense of readiness or ripeness that transforms uncertainty or anxiety about the future into a nudge toward something new. They might come to us as a sudden, unexpected calm amid a great storm. They may come in the form of a text message that comes to a preacher in the middle of a worship service and flows forth in a sermon of unexpected grace.

Start, if you haven’t done so already, by making sabbath a regular part of your life. Choose a day of rest, a day of listening and observing, or begin with half a day if that’s all you can manage, even an hour will do as a beginning, and stop all you’re doing and give your attention to what God is doing. Accept the invitation of Shirley Murray’s hymn:

“Come and find the quiet center in the crowded life we lead,
find the room for hope to enter, find the frame where we are freed:
Clear the chaos and the clutter, clear our eyes that we can see
all the things that really matter, be at peace, and simply be.”