Proper 4 A

June 1, 2008

Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28

Psalm 46

Romans 1:16-17, 3:22b-28

Matthew 7:21-29

Do you know how it feels to get a flu shot, have blood drawn from the bend in your arm or be stung by a wasp? How do you know? Do you know the smell of freshly cut grass, honeysuckle, roses, or fresh baked bread? How do you know? Do you know the colors in a sunrise, a sunset and a rainbow? Do you know the shape of a cloud’s shadow? How do you know? Do you know the taste of ice cold, juicy watermelon in the summertime or vanilla ice cream? They’re both cold but don’t they feel differently in your mouth?

Do you know how it feels to walk barefoot in the sand, through a patch of bright green clover, or across a cool stone floor? Do you know how it feels in your legs, arms, heart and lungs to run as fast as you can? Do you know how it feels to hit a home run? Or a hole in one? Do you know how it feels to hear good news on the phone? Or bad news? Do you know the sound of a marching band at a football game? Or your mother humming softly in your ear? They both echo in the hollow of your chest.

Do you know the sound of your own name spoken by someone who loves you? Do you know the comfort of words written in letters and greeting cards when you’re sad? Or a hug when you’re lonely? How do you know?

If your mind said yes to any of these questions then you have experienced them first hand. The only way you could know the things I just mentioned is to have encountered them intimately so that they made a lasting imprint on you. There is a knowing, a deep knowing, that you can only learn through life by being fully present and attentive to what you experience in your life.

When Moses told the people of God to keep the commandments in their heart and soul, teach them to their children, speak of them when they were at home and when they were away, when they were awake and even when they were asleep, he wanted them to live the commandments. To experience them through their senses so they would know them so intimately that they were imprinted on their hearts and souls. If that happened, there would never ever be a time when they were separated from the commandments and as long as they were not separated from God’s word they were not separated from God. Living the commandments was the way they knew God in the deepest most intimate way of knowing. It was the way the intimate relationship between God and God’s people was maintained.

By the time Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, the people of God had memorized the commandments. They knew them the way we know our timetables. Some, particularly the scribes, could recite them in a minute’s notice. But they weren’t living the words. They weren’t experiencing the commandments in a way that could leave an imprint in their hearts and souls and keep them close to God which is why God gave the commandments in the first place and why Moses urged the Israelites to obey them.

In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus truly was and is "God with us" since Jesus incarnated the commandments, made them to be a flesh and blood human. He was the way God was present to God’s people. He was the way they knew God. He made it possible to know God intimately.

I once knew a nun who said she disagreed with me that you have to experience something to know it. She argued just because Catholic priests are celibate doesn’t mean they can’t give good counsel about marriage. Of course they can. In fact, they can be experts about marriage in an academic sense. But to know marriage intimately, to know how it feels to make a lifetime commitment to someone and be accountable to that person, to care about their well-being and happiness, to have them care about you in the same way, day after day after day for years, well, you just have to be in that relationship.

To experience something intimately does not mean you’re an expert. It means through your experience you enter a way of knowing that involves more of your whole person than just your intellect. On another day the same sister was telling me about the Lenten discipline in the convent where she lived. After a time of fasting the sisters were made to kneel in the center of the dining room and beg for bread. "It was to teach us humility," she said. They learned how it feels to be hungry, hungry enough to beg for food, and they learned how it feels to receive mercy when someone gave it to them.

About as soon as she told me the story we both understood that while I knew marriage intimately in a way she never would. No matter how much she studied about it or how much time she spent with married people. Her experience in the convent allowed her to know hunger, humility, and mercy intimately in a way I never had. No amount of tending to the needs of the hungry would bring that depth of knowing for me.

The authority the crowds heard in the words of Jesus that astounded them came from his deep knowing of the nature of the God of heaven and earth whom he experienced at his baptism, in his prayers, and I suppose through all the faithful people who helped him grow from a boy to the man he was at his death. Most of all, it came from the Spirit of God growing inside him throughout his earthly life. The Spirit that consecrated all his life experience for God’s purpose.

As Christian disciples we bear Christ in our lives for the sake of others. We live our Lord’s commandment of love. At least we are meant to. The Holy Spirit has been within us since our baptisms. That Spirit consecrates our life experiences to be used for God’s purposes. None of those experiences are as useful to our vocation as disciples as those we experience with our whole person, not just our intellect. Our deepest knowing comes from being present and attentive to all the experiences of our lives. Particularly those we might be ashamed of. Death on the cross was shameful to Jesus. At the same time it was his most powerful experience. Through it came the salvation of the world.

Do you know how it feels to be loved? To feel alone or scared? Hungry or thirsty for something you can’t get for yourself? Do you know how it feels to receive kindness and mercy? How do you know? In the experiences of our lives that bring deep knowing lies our authority as disciples of Christ. It’s where we live his commandment of love; where grace dwells within us. And through that fertile grace we grow into true disciples who are indeed known and loved by the One we serve.