St. Gregory’s Church Woodstock
Sunday, August 16, 2009, Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev’d Susan Auchincloss
In a college psychology
class our professor once quipped, “We all know the mind
and the body are one. The question is, which
one?” I'm recalling this witty remark now, because it leads into the topic of
today's sermon. That is, “How does the Bible work?” And, “How can I make it work
for me?”
If we say, “The mind and the body are one,” we speak from a certain level of our
mind; and when we add, “but which one?” we jump up to a different level. Let me
sketch out a few of the differences between these two levels of consciousness,
and then give an example of how they interact. The first level – the level that
sees the body and mind as one – lies deep, and for the sake of making the
distinction I'll call it the level of wisdom. The second level lies at the
surface, and I'll call it the level of thoughts, meaning all mental activity,
including perceptions and feelings.
At the level of wisdom our minds are passive, simply aware. Wisdom deals in
wholes. It does not so much perceive the whole picture, it
participates in the whole picture. Wisdom is what it beholds.
This drives the thinking mind crazy. The thinking mind depends, as it must, on
clear boundaries, definite definitions. It deals in logical connections; and in
contrast to the passivity of wisdom, the thinking mind goes out questing for
action.
This story will illustrate the difference. It comes from the book, Kitchen
Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen. The doctor who told this story directed
a neonatal unit in a large hospital. For several weeks this doctor had struggled
to save a tiny, premature baby. Finally, despite all the resources of the
hospital's state-of-the-art, intensive care nursery, the doctor had to
acknowledge that the baby was dying. She phoned the parents to come quickly so
that they would have time to say good-bye. After she hung up, all the beeping
and the bustle of the unit got on her nerves. She wanted to compose herself and
marshall her thoughts for when the parents arrived. The chapel offered the kind
of quiet she sought, so she went there to try to find the words she would need
when she looked into the eyes of the parents and told them their son was not
going to make it.
After fifteen minutes she went to meet the parents. As she walked along the
corridor, the thought came to her to try a certain drug. Irritated, she
dismissed the thought. The drug in question had no relevance to the baby's
condition. Still, the thought persisted. She met the parents and explained that
everything had been done to save the baby's life. Then together they walked to
the baby's isolette so that the mother and father could say good-bye. The
sadness on the parents' faces tore at the doctor's heart, and she found herself
blurting out, against all reason, that there was one further drug they could
try. They gave their permission, though the baby appeared moribund.
The doctor administered the injection herself. As they stood there, the baby
continued gasping for breath and remained quite blue. Minutes passed; no change.
Giving the parents time alone with the baby to make their good-byes, the doctor
went to her office and busied herself with paper work. A few hours later she was
astonished to see that they were still there. In fact, the baby's breathing was
normal and the baby was no longer blue.
Afterwards the doctor felt deeply disturbed. Why? Because she could not account
for what had happened, and it threatened to upset her entire worldview. So she
dismissed the whole thing, though she remained troubled. A few years later she
read in a medical journal about a team of physicians who had used this same drug
for the same condition. Relieved, the doctor assumed that somewhere she had read
about the unorthodox use of that drug before she tried it. She simply had not
remembered reading it. So she contacted the authors of the article to ask where
they had learned about this unusual use of the drug. Stunned, she learned that
they had no precedent; they had, as they thought, tried it for the first time.
The doctor had developed her upper-level mind, her logical, sense-making mind to
the full. However, not only had she not developed the lower level of her
mind, the level of wisdom, she did not know of its existence. This is where many
people find themselves today when it comes to reading the Bible. We expect it to
make sense to our upper-level mind; and of course to a degree it does; but much
of it, perhaps most, addresses our deeper mind, our basic awareness. With the
Bible, we are meant to read between the lines, as it were, to adopt an attitude
of expectant listening. We let it impregnate us and then wait, as if we were
awaiting a birth, for the meaning and wisdom to emerge.
Let's look at today's readings as a case in point. The first reading from the
Hebrew Bible introduces a female figure called Wisdom. If we read the whole of
the Book of Proverbs we find this figure developed amazingly. For instance, at
one point she speaks as if she were God. At another point we learn that she had
a role in creation. She says, “Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the
beginning of the earth.... When [God] established the heavens I was there...
when [God] marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside [God] like
a master worker.” We even hear her say, “Who ever finds me finds life.” Our
sense-seeking minds want to cry out in frustration. “So, is God male or female?”
The Gospel of John solves the problem by calling this figure the Logos, the
Word, and making her male. As such she becomes Jesus the Christ. The Gospel
begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word
was God.” Again our logical minds rebel at such slippery use of language. Let's
get our definitions straight! Stop the shapeshifting! Yet wisdom makes sense of
this morphing of genders. It says, “You cannot limit God to being male or
female.”
Take another example. Wisdom says, “Come eat of my bread and drink of the wine I
have mixed. Lay aside immaturity and live, and walk in the way of insight.” This
is more than poetry. If we want Wisdom she has to become our food and drink; we
must make her a part of us at the cellular level. Friends, Jesus knew the Hebrew
Bible! His action at the last supper would have recalled this image. It makes no
sense at the level of our logical minds – “This is my body, given for you.”
What, are we cannibals? But taken in at the level of basic awareness, we accept
that, as Jesus said, he is “the living bread that came down from heaven.” To
have eternal life we must make him part of us – not only as a thought, not only
as a body of beliefs, not only at the level of our logical minds, but at what we
can only call the cellular level, the level of wisdom. We not only perceive
Jesus Christ, we participate in Jesus Christ.
Yesterday the church celebrated the feast of St. Mary the Virgin. Here again,
the story of Mary's virginity challenges our logical minds. Like the doctor, we
want to reject the idea and stick with what makes sense. Yet if we go apart, to
some hospital chapel of the heart, and wait, the story turns out to be
life-giving. We begin to see that what happened to Mary can happen to us. And it
does not depend on some external agent.
I want to close with a different image. We have stood on the shore of the ocean
and watched as the waves rolled in. Paradoxically, while the waves roll in, the
tide may be flowing out. In a similar way, whatever may be happening at the
level of our thinking minds, there is a tide that always flows in one direction,
toward wholeness and healing. We could call that tide God or the Holy Spirit or
Wisdom. It takes practice to align ourselves with the tide as well as the waves.
We get that practice every time we seek refuge, as the neonatologist did. It may
be a physical chapel, but it can equally well be a chapel of the mind, a moment
of prayer, a brief period of centering ourselves in the house with seven
pillars. Amen.