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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
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From June 3, 2007
Crowned
Psalm 8
Ellen Ekevag pastors part-time at Grace
Episcopal and is married to a Swede. In Sweden, Ellen
confessed recently, everyone knows about trolls. Not from
books or folk tales either; trolls live in the nearby
forest. If you happen to go hiking there or come back from a
picnic, expect to be asked whether you saw one. Expect to be
believed when you answer in the affirmative.
The same is true in Ireland with leprechauns. Go to the pub
and report that you've seen a little man in a green suit and
no one will question your sanity. In fact, they'll cheer and
raise a pint in celebration.
It's great when folks believe you, applaud you even. But
what if your neighbor called and said she had just seen a
tree full of angels? Have you ever seen a tree full of
angels? Probably not. Which might explain any reluctance to
take your neighbor at her word.
But just because you haven't seen angels among the branches
doesn't mean they're not there. Macrina Wiederkehr saw them
one day - and even though I've never seen angels in trees I am
inclined to believe her.
Here's how it happened. Macrina--or Sister Macrina as she's
known in her religious community--was out for a stroll early
one daybreak. It was one of those perfect fall mornings that
life sometimes hands us. The air was crisp and the autumn
leaves sang out under Sister Macrina's feet.
As she walked along, the very first rays of morning light
began shimmering through a silver maple. Something about
that light, something about the majesty of it all, compelled
Sister Macrina to stop and take it all in.
As Sister Macrina stood before that tree, the shining from
its limbs was so incredible she knew that what she was
gazing upon was just a wild jumble of sun-struck leaves. No.
They were more like angels' wings. In fact, they were
angels' wings. And not the billowy kind, either. Not the
kind that, if you gathered them up, would make for a
heavenly pillow. No. These wings were on fire with glory. On
fire with heavenly light.
The shining made Sister Macrina's heart leap. Joy overtook
her, filling her with a kind of wonder that can only be
called awe. A deep wonder, a deep reverence that in the
church we used to call "fear of the Lord," before that
phrase took on other - less appealing and more
troubling--connotations.
Seeing lies at the core of our faith. Seeing not only with
the eyes in our heads but also with the eyes of our hearts.
Sister Macrina's worldly eyes saw a silver maple struck by
morning's first light. But her spiritual eyes, her eyes of
faith saw beyond those branches to the brilliance of angels
and the majesty of God.
God has given us eyes to see both the material and the
mystical; each has its place.
But there's more to our faith-seeing than sight alone. As
central as it is to faith, sight does not serve us if it
does not lead to insight.
I use this morning's psalmist as an example.
Sight has clearly led to insight. Insight which has led him
to sing a song of divine majesty and human dignity. A song
shared with us so that you and I might find ourselves open
to a similar "aha," a similar shift from mere sight to
joyous insight.
How did our psalmist arrive at his powerful insights? By
devoting himself to deep study of religious texts? From
engaging in theological dialogue long into the night? We'll
never know. But I suspect his insights came much the way
Sister Macrina's did; by seeing deeply, by taking in the
world around him and then being willing to be overcome by
its staggering beauty and stunning light, and the creator
whose work this is.
I like imagining how the psalmist's revelation might have
come. I see him in my mind's eye. He is traveling with a
caravan. Long after the sun has gone down, he creeps off
while the others are sleeping. On the hill above the
encampment, he finds a comfy spot and stretches out under
the vast canopy of stars.
As he has done so many times since he was a boy, he scans
the heavens. The sky is decked with jewels, some clustered
in patterns whose names he he remembers from childhood.
Other stars shine alone, bright and true.
A little man in his little world, our psalmist has made
peace with his humble lot in life. And yet as he gazes
skyward, as he peers into the velvet heavens littered with
more stars than a man could count in his lifetime, something
big, something very big unfolds before our friend's eyes.
He begins to see beyond the stars to God, the maker of these
heavens, the fashioner of these stars. He sees God. Not
God's physical contours, of course, but the qualities, the
nature of God. A God whose word for love is so big that it
can only be expressed by this - moon and stars and galaxies.
And the earth below, teeming with life and all manner of
awesome beauty.
He sees love, supreme love, our psalmist does. And he sees
more. He sees generosity. He sees respect and tender care.
Plain as day, he sees the glorious crown God placed upon our
human heads so soon after creation, a wreath of golden light
transforming mere dust into royalty. He sees the God who put
us within a holy arm's reach of God's own throne, so God can
touch us easily and often.
And then, as I imagine it, the curtain of stars draws back,
revealing a pure and holy darkness. Into which our psalmist
tumbles. He fell, he would later explain. He fell into it
and fell in love with God. Which is why he had to hurry home
to write a song about it; a holy song about what he was
given to see.
To see what surrounds us, what is real, we need not only the
eyes in our heads but the eyes of our hearts. But often the
eyes of our culture will do our seeing before our hearts
have even had a chance.
And what a fickle thing culture can be. A six-year old told
me with great authority once that her sister would need to
go on a diet to lose weight because she was plagued with
chubby thighs. Her sister was right there when she said it,
too. Right there, sitting in her stroller. Sister was two
years old!
Instead of the United States, if we had been somewhere in
Samoa, in a culture that celebrates fleshly abundance, big
sister would've been bragging about little sister. Because
the eyes of that culture see differently.
If we are not careful, if we are not attentive, our culture
will do our seeing for us.
A friend involved in prison ministry once invited me to join
him for a Wednesday afternoon Bible study. I had never been
inside a prison before and was not at all sure what to
expect. All I knew was what I had seen on TV or read in
magazines.
As I sat in the circle of jump-suited men, taking note of
their wildly tattooed arms and wondering to myself about
their crimes, I could feel how my culture wanted me to view
these men: as dangerous, as less-than, as failures, as
hopeless.
And yet something more begged to be seen that day. As we
pored over that day's gospel reading, the room suddenly
filled with people. I saw them with the eyes of my heart,
standing still and silent behind each prisoner were the
people who loved them--mothers and lovers and children. And
behind them, the bosses they had worked for and the
landlords they had paid. Also standing there were the people
whose lives had been disrupted and forever changed because
of each inmate's unwise choice. The room was crowded.
And then, quite unexpectedly, I saw each man as a boy. Saw
the precious child he had been. Saw who was and wasn't there
in his formative years. Saw the teachers and the doctors and
the neighbors whose influence had been felt, for better or
for worse. Saw how the crown God had placed upon each one's
head the day he was born had--with time and trouble--been
tarnished, broken, or misplaced.
And when I was done seeing, done feeling what went with
this, I knew that I could not see these men as society hoped
I would. They weren't separate from us; they were bound to
us. Nor were they failures; we all were.
I did not go into the prison that day expecting to see
things. Just as Sister Macrina did not take her early
morning walk anticipating a tree filled with angels. Just as
a stargazer did not expect to see into God's heart for us.
Such moments can't be forced; they can only be welcomed.
Amen.
© 2007 Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC)
A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary,
Harper Collins, 1990. |
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