Sunday
February 27
Luminous Eye
By Marsh Chapel
Click here to hear the full service
Click here to hear just the sermon
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. On the mountain, the baffled disciples tried to bear true witness—word, tent, accolade, mystery. What did you see? I saw…
Our passage from Luke 9 is an account developed after Easter, as a way of trying to symbolize Jesus Christ as risen Lord. It has no biographical or earthly valence, nor does it need any, nor does it claim any. It is about seeing, and being transfigured by what one sees. The disciples see, truly saw, Jesus. “During his lifetime a few of his followers were permitted a glimpse of what he was to become” (IBD, loc cit, 173).
Our witness arrives after a word and before a deed. Transfiguration precedes healing for the shrieking, convulsing foaming at the mouth demoniac, a case that stumped all disciples. (9:37) Transfiguration follows the word of the cross, ‘if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow’. (9:23)
A moment of witness follows a word and forecasts a deed.
You are good and sturdy gospel listeners so you know without elaboration that Moses embodies the law and Elijah the prophets. You know the revelation of wisdom from Moses, the Decalogue. Recite it by memory… You know the audition of love from Elijah. Remember the still, small voice. (… the Lord was not in the wind, earthquake, fire… and after the fire a sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19)…), Sinai and Horeb, the Law and the Prophets.
Here, it is as if the Gospel of John has spilled ink upon the page of St. Luke. Notice the little things: law and prophets, Moses and Elijah; a prophecy of the cross, called by the term ‘departure’ (did John write this?!?) (the Greek word is ‘exodos’); Andrew absent; Peter confused.
But what of his confusion? The confusion itself is confusing. ‘Not knowing what he said..’ What does that mean? Jesus confuses Peter. Peter confuses Luke. Luke confuses the preacher of the day. The preacher confuses you. There is an opacity here, a stymied utterance. To which, oddly but honestly, Peter bears witness.
There is a cloud here, a cloud of unknowing. There is a mountain here, a mountain of unknowing. There is a voice here, a voice of unknowing.There is a countenance here, a face of unknowing. There is a white robe here, a robe of unknowing. There is a silence here. This is worship. Enchantment. Not entertainment. Enchantment not entertainment. Bear witness.
Poetry may illumine theology. Theology can ascend to poetry.
Ours is a scientific not a poetic age. We follow the science not the poem. Yet, as Jaspers once remarked, perhaps we need continuously to seek out those who contradict us (NYT 1/9/22).
Our maladies are many. Planet overheating. Pandemic marching. Politics infuriating. Prejudice remaining. Pockebook straining. Putin attacking.
And through all: Systems straining. Inequality increasing. Culture languishing. Doubts multiplying. Faith receding. Our maladies are many.
Yet in and through the long history of the communities of faith, there are, there remain, springs of living water, there remain, pools of quiet calm, there remain, underground currents of life and hope and love. We for sure and first need all that we can muster to provide physical wellness: vaccine, booster, testing, tracing, masking, distancing, all. We do. But physical wellness alone will not see us through, will not carry us through, will not bring us through. In tandem with physical wellness, for a future worthy of its name, we shall also and more so it may be need spiritual gladness. Physical wellness that then leans toward, reaches up for, finds a path toward spiritual gladness. Wellness alone will not save. Gladness too, that which makes the heart sing and the mind dance, gladness, a luminous inner eye of spiritual gladness we shall need to cool climate, deter pandemic, heal politics, sustain systems, dampen inflation, encourage culture, doubt our doubts, and find faith. Worship brings spiritual gladness. What brings you spiritual gladness? What gladness does this coming week promise? Where will you find such? How will you know it when you see it? What brings you spiritual gladness?
Two years ago, a week into pandemic, which we then thought might abate by Easter you may recall, my oh my, a friend and member of the Marsh Chapel worshipping community, gave me a book. This is Dr. Ute Possekel of Harvard, who teaches Syriac there. She meant it I believe as a symbol of light, a little bit of light, as we then entered COVID dark. Who would have thought we would be still shadowed so, 24 months later, with more to come? I am grateful for her faithfulness and her gift, her gift of faith and her faith in the goodness of gifts. Today’s sermon is simply a reflection on this marvelous gem of a book, a homiletical book report, you might say.
Her gift is The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, by Sebastian Brock (Rome: Cistercian Publications, 1985). Brock sums up Ephrem thus: Ephrem is a theologian who employs poetry as the principal vehicle of his theology. Because of the way in which the study of theology has grown up in the West, we have all too often forgotten that poetry can prove to be an excellent medium for creative theological writing…(as in) “It is not at the clothing of the words that one should gaze, but at the power hidden in the words”…The Syriac poetic medium through which Ephrem works has the added advantage of being completely free from the somewhat deadening literary conventions of the Graeco-Latin rhetorical tradition of late antiquity, conventions that can often seem tiresome to the modern reader. (TLE, 160, 161).
Some will remember Kathleen Norris’s memoir of twenty years ago, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (2001). She intentionally centered her work on the seemingly contrary terms, spiritual and geography, stayed centered on that mashup, and brought many, a generation ago, to a renewed sense of faith, of depth, of meaning, of grace and of love—all delivered with more than a pinch of humor. Ephrem does something of the same, throughout a whole lifetime of prayer, study and writing. Because he wrote in Syriac and focused on poetry, he is not well known especially compared to his fourth century contemporaries (Basil, the Gregories, Athanasius) (13). He died in 373ce, was raised in a Christian home, and lived on today’s Turkey\Syrian border in the Roman outpost of Nisibis, before moving late in life to Edessa. He spent much of his life and ministry in organizing relief for the poor, and led ‘some sort of consecrated life’ short of full monasticism. As you already perceive, there are many similarities here to the lives of John and Charles Wesley. Ephrem was heir to three major traditions: ancient Mesopotamian tradition, Jewish tradition, and Greek tradition. Hence, he is an ideal meeting point between East and West (21). Do we not need more such today, even in this very hour? With Athanasius, he battled the Arian ‘heresy’ throughout his lifetime. In the course of his work and writing, both in poetry and prose, several magnificent insights arise, as guides for our own lives.
One of Ephrem’s primary insights is the steady reliance on the primacy of faith: ‘I believe in order that I may understand’. A second involves his celebration of human free will (‘the nature of our free will is the same in everyone’) (35). A third, strikingly modern abiding insight is the ‘value of the body’. In fact, Ephrem repeatedly uses imagery of clothing in his poetry. This may be related to his abiding dual reliance on Scripture and nature both. ‘God’s two witnesses’ (41). But all of this pales in comparison to the rhythmic beauty of his theo-poetics:
Your fountain, Lord, is hidden
From the person who does not thirst for You;
Your treasury seems empty to the person who rejects You;
Love is the treasurer
of your heavenly treasure store.
Truth and love are wings that cannot be separated,
For Truth without Love is unable to fly
so too Love without Truth is unable to soar up:
Their yoke is one of harmony.
Most strikingly, Ephrem takes his poetic ‘eye’ into the rendering of meaning in Holy Scripture. Scripture opens itself to the ‘eye of faith’, and is open to multiple meanings. God depicted His word with many beauties, so that each of those who learn from it can examine that aspect of it which he likes (50)….So brethren, let prying dry up and let us multiply prayers, for though He is not related to us, He is as though of our race, and though he is utterly separate, yet He is over all in all. (65).
At the heart of Ephrem’s teaching there lies a beautiful border land, like the border areas in Tillich’s existentialist theology as well. Listen to the poetic spirit: Lord, You bent down and put on humanity’s types so that humanity might grow through your self-abasement (54). A sense of wonder gives rise to faith. (69). Blessed is the person who has acquired a luminous eye, with which he will see how much the angels stand in awe of You, Lord, and how audacious is man (73). So that, for Ephrem, life becomes a pattern of listening, obedience and faith. Give ear to his magnificent poetry, so utterly fit for Transfiguration Sunday:
Luminous Eye
Illumine with Your teaching
The voice of the speaker
And the ear of the hearer:
Like the pupil of the eye
Let the ears be illumined;
For the voice provides the rays of light.
Praise to You, O Light.
It is through the eye
That the body, with its members,
Is light in its different parts,
Is fair in all its conduct
Is adorned in all its senses
Is glorious in its various limbs.
Praise to You, O Light.
It is clear that Mary
Is the ‘land’ that receives the Source of light;
Through her it was illumined
The whole world, with its inhabitants,
Which had grown dark through Eve,
The source of all evils.
Praise to You, O Light.
Mary and Eve in their symbols
Resemble a body, one of whose eyes
Is blind and darkened
While the other is clear and bright
Providing light for the whole
Praise to You, O Light.
The world, you see, has
Two eyes fixed in it:
Eve was its left eye,
Blind,
While the right eye,
Bright, is Mary.
Praise to You, O Light.
Through the eye that was darkened
The whole world has darkened
And people groped
And thought that every stone
They stumbled upon was a god,
Calling falsehood truth
Praise to You, O Light
But when it was illumined by the other eye,
And the heavenly Light
That resided in its midst,
Humanity became reconciled once again
Realizing that what they had stumbled on
Was destroying their very life.
Praise to You, O Light.
Our poet theologian of the fourth century has carefully preceded us, cutting a trail forward, in our reading of Scripture. For him, Scripture is a mirror, an ancient mirror, a distant mirror, but the crucial mirror, a figure of the holy preaching of the outward Gospel…There the kingdom is depicted, visible to those who have a luminous eye (77). The reading of Scripture, including its public recitation in worship at Marsh Chapel for instance, is meant to further a spiritual awareness, a reciprocation, no less, of divine love…each individual’s openness to the sense of wonder, and his or her possession of the luminous inner eye of faith (96).
Ephrem celebrates the medicine of life, the coal of fire, the pearl of great price, the incarnation, the bridal chamber of the heart, the church as bride, all leading toward what this preacher would call a ‘modified’ (Hill) ascetic ideal: the ideal of wakefulness, characteristic both of the angels and of the wise virgins, together with that of singleness, would thus seem to be among the most important motivating factors that lay behind the ascetic vision and orientation of early Syriac Christianity (141). We have in our time the term ‘woke’, but that sense of wakefulness was early and fully expressed ALREADY in the fourth century.
Sebastian Brock, our guide to and through the work of St. Ephrem, challenges us with theological poetry today. He is the Rick Steves of the land of Ephrem. Ephrem represents a genuinely Asian form of Christianity, a great gift especially for those of us largely shaped by, saturated by the European traditions. Ephrem employs poetry as the principal vehicle of his theology. While not inclined to eschew the historical, scientific, ethical and moral demands of Scripture, Ephrem nonetheless steadily avers that the interpretation of Scripture comes within the context of faith. Further, in a most contemporary way, Ephrem’s ecological vision, and his emphasis on the role of the feminine in faith, are for us added gifts in our time. We are not the first to honor the earth or to celebrate the strength of woman in faith and life.
Coming from the time of the undivided church, Ephrem belongs to the heritage of all Christian traditions. He speaks to the unlearned and learned alike, to both lay and religious…precisely because his thought and imagery are so deeply rooted in the Bible, his poetry is thereby enabled to participate in something of the perennial freshness of the biblical text itself…the perennial freshness of the biblical text itself. (172).
May that perennial freshness kindle in us a spiritual gladness this and every Lord’s Day!
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
