{"id":3314,"date":"2022-02-27T11:00:12","date_gmt":"2022-02-27T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3314"},"modified":"2022-03-01T13:36:48","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T18:36:48","slug":"luminous-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2022\/02\/27\/luminous-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"Luminous Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Luke 9:\u00a028-36<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear just the sermon<\/a><\/p>\n

Today is Transfiguration Sunday.\u00a0 On the mountain, the baffled disciples tried to bear true witness\u2014word, tent, accolade, mystery. What did you see? I saw\u2026<\/p>\n

Our passage from Luke 9 \u00a0is 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.\u00a0 The disciples see, truly saw, Jesus. \u201cDuring his lifetime a few of his followers were permitted a glimpse of what he was to become\u201d (IBD, loc cit, 173).<\/p>\n

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, \u2018if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow\u2019. (9:23)<\/p>\n

A moment of witness follows a word and forecasts a deed.<\/p>\n

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. (\u2026 the Lord was not in the wind, earthquake, fire\u2026 and after the fire a sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19)\u2026), Sinai and Horeb, the Law and the Prophets.<\/p>\n

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 \u2018departure\u2019 (did John write this?!?) (the Greek word is \u2018exodos\u2019); Andrew absent; Peter confused.<\/p>\n

But what of his confusion? The confusion itself is confusing. \u2018Not knowing what he said..\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

There is a cloud here, a cloud of unknowing.\u00a0 There is a mountain here, a mountain of unknowing.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There is a silence here.\u00a0 This is worship. Enchantment. Not entertainment.\u00a0 Enchantment not entertainment.\u00a0 Bear witness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/b> Poetry may illumine theology.\u00a0 Theology can ascend to poetry.<\/p>\n

Ours is a scientific not a poetic age.\u00a0 We follow the science not the poem.\u00a0 Yet, as Jaspers once remarked, perhaps we need continuously to seek out those who contradict us (NYT 1\/9\/22).<\/p>\n

Our maladies are many.\u00a0 Planet overheating.\u00a0 Pandemic marching. Politics infuriating. \u00a0Prejudice remaining.\u00a0 Pockebook straining.\u00a0 Putin attacking.<\/p>\n

And through all: Systems straining.\u00a0 Inequality increasing. Culture languishing.\u00a0 Doubts multiplying.\u00a0 Faith receding.\u00a0 Our maladies are many.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 We for sure and first need all that we can muster to provide physical wellness:\u00a0 vaccine, booster, testing, tracing, masking, distancing, all.\u00a0 We do.\u00a0 But physical wellness alone will not see us through, will not carry us through, will not bring us through.\u00a0 In tandem with physical wellness, for a future worthy of its name, we shall also and more so it may be need spiritual gladness.\u00a0 Physical wellness that then leans toward, reaches up for, finds a path toward spiritual gladness.\u00a0 Wellness alone will not save.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Worship brings spiritual gladness.\u00a0 What brings you spiritual gladness?\u00a0 What gladness does this coming week promise?\u00a0 Where will you find such?\u00a0 How will you know it when you see it?\u00a0 What brings you spiritual gladness?<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 This is Dr. Ute Possekel of Harvard, who teaches Syriac there.\u00a0 She meant it I believe as a symbol of light, a little bit of light, as we then entered COVID dark.\u00a0 Who would have thought we would be still shadowed so, 24 months later, with more to come?\u00a0 I am grateful for her faithfulness and her gift, her gift of faith and her faith in the goodness of gifts.\u00a0 Today\u2019s sermon is simply a reflection on this marvelous gem of a book, a homiletical book report, you might say.<\/p>\n

Her gift is The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian,<\/em> by Sebastian Brock (Rome: Cistercian Publications, 1985).\u00a0 Brock sums up Ephrem thus:\u00a0 Ephrem is a theologian who employs poetry as the principal vehicle of his theology.\u00a0 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\u2026(as in) \u201cIt is not at the clothing of the words that one should gaze, but at the power hidden in the words\u201d\u2026The 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).<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>Some will remember Kathleen Norris\u2019s memoir of twenty years ago, Dakota:\u00a0 A Spiritual Geography (2001).\u00a0 <\/em>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\u2014all delivered with more than a pinch of humor.\u00a0 Ephrem does something of the same, throughout a whole lifetime of prayer, study and writing.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 He died in 373ce, was raised in a Christian home, and lived on today\u2019s Turkey\\Syrian border in the Roman outpost of Nisibis, before moving late in life to Edessa.\u00a0 He spent much of his life and ministry in organizing relief for the poor, and led \u2018some sort of consecrated life\u2019 short of full monasticism.\u00a0 As you already perceive, there are many similarities here to the lives of John and Charles Wesley.\u00a0 Ephrem was heir to three major traditions:\u00a0 ancient Mesopotamian tradition, Jewish tradition, and Greek tradition.\u00a0 Hence, he is an ideal meeting point between East and West (21). Do we not need more such today, even in this very hour? <\/em>\u00a0With Athanasius, he battled the Arian \u2018heresy\u2019 throughout his lifetime.\u00a0 In the course of his work and writing, both in poetry and prose, several magnificent insights arise, as guides for our own lives.<\/p>\n

One of Ephrem\u2019s primary insights is the steady reliance on the primacy of faith: \u2018I believe in order that I may understand\u2019.\u00a0 A second involves his celebration of human free will (\u2018the nature of our free will is the same in everyone\u2019) (35).\u00a0 A third, strikingly modern abiding insight is the \u2018value of the body\u2019.\u00a0 In fact, Ephrem repeatedly uses imagery of clothing in his poetry.\u00a0 This may be related to his abiding dual reliance on Scripture and nature both. \u2018God\u2019s two witnesses\u2019 (41).\u00a0 But all of this pales in comparison to the rhythmic beauty of his theo-poetics:<\/p>\n

Your fountain, Lord, is hidden<\/em><\/p>\n

From the person who does not thirst for You;<\/em><\/p>\n

Your treasury seems empty to the person who rejects You;<\/em><\/p>\n

Love is the treasurer<\/em><\/p>\n

of your heavenly treasure store.<\/em><\/p>\n

Truth and love are wings that cannot be separated,<\/em><\/p>\n

For Truth without Love is unable to fly<\/em><\/p>\n

so too Love without Truth is unable to soar up:<\/em><\/p>\n

Their yoke is one of harmony.<\/em><\/p>\n

Most strikingly, Ephrem takes his poetic \u2018eye\u2019 into the rendering of meaning in Holy Scripture.\u00a0 Scripture opens itself to the \u2018eye of faith\u2019, and is open to multiple meanings.\u00a0 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)\u2026.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).<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>At the heart of Ephrem\u2019s teaching there lies a beautiful border land, like the border areas in Tillich\u2019s existentialist theology as well. Listen to the poetic spirit: Lord, You bent down and put on humanity\u2019s types so that humanity might grow through your self-abasement (54). A sense of wonder gives rise to faith. (69).\u00a0 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). <\/em>\u00a0So that, for Ephrem, life becomes a pattern of listening, obedience and faith.\u00a0 Give ear to his magnificent poetry, so utterly fit for Transfiguration Sunday:<\/p>\n

Luminous Eye<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Illumine with Your teaching<\/em><\/p>\n

The voice of the speaker<\/em><\/p>\n

And the ear of the hearer:<\/em><\/p>\n

Like the pupil of the eye<\/em><\/p>\n

Let the ears be illumined;<\/em><\/p>\n

For the voice provides the rays of light.<\/em><\/p>\n

Praise to You, O Light.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is through the eye<\/em><\/p>\n

That the body, with its members,<\/em><\/p>\n

Is light in its different parts,<\/em><\/p>\n

Is fair in all its conduct<\/em><\/p>\n

Is adorned in all its senses<\/em><\/p>\n

Is glorious in its various limbs.<\/em><\/p>\n

Praise to You, O Light.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is clear that Mary<\/em><\/p>\n

Is the \u2018land\u2019 that receives the Source of light;<\/em><\/p>\n

Through her it was illumined<\/em><\/p>\n

The whole world, with its inhabitants,<\/em><\/p>\n

Which had grown dark through Eve,<\/em><\/p>\n

The source of all evils.<\/em><\/p>\n

Praise to You, O Light.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mary and Eve in their symbols<\/em><\/p>\n

Resemble a body, one of whose eyes<\/em><\/p>\n

Is blind and darkened<\/em><\/p>\n

While the other is clear and bright<\/em><\/p>\n

Providing light for the whole<\/em><\/p>\n

Praise to You, O Light.<\/em><\/p>\n

The world, you see, has<\/em><\/p>\n

Two eyes fixed in it:<\/em><\/p>\n

Eve was its left eye,<\/em><\/p>\n

Blind,<\/em><\/p>\n

While the right eye,<\/em><\/p>\n

Bright, is Mary.<\/em><\/p>\n

Praise to You, O Light.<\/em><\/p>\n

Through the eye that was darkened<\/em><\/p>\n

The whole world has darkened<\/em><\/p>\n

And people groped<\/em><\/p>\n

And thought that every stone<\/em><\/p>\n

They stumbled upon was a god,<\/em><\/p>\n

Calling falsehood truth<\/em><\/p>\n

Praise to You, O Light<\/em><\/p>\n

But when it was illumined by the other eye,<\/em><\/p>\n

And the heavenly Light<\/em><\/p>\n

That resided in its midst,<\/em><\/p>\n

Humanity became reconciled once again<\/em><\/p>\n

Realizing that what they had stumbled on<\/em><\/p>\n

Was destroying their very life.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Praise to You, O Light.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our poet theologian of the fourth century has carefully preceded us, cutting a trail forward, in our reading of Scripture.\u00a0 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\u2026There the kingdom is depicted, visible to those who have a luminous eye (77). <\/em>\u00a0The 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\u2026each individual\u2019s openness to the sense of wonder, and his or her possession of the luminous inner eye of faith (96).<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>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 \u2018modified\u2019 (Hill) ascetic ideal:\u00a0 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).<\/em>\u00a0 We have in our time the term \u2018woke\u2019, but that sense of wakefulness was early and fully expressed ALREADY in the fourth century.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Ephrem employs poetry as the principal vehicle of his theology.\u00a0 <\/em>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.\u00a0 Further, in a most contemporary way, Ephrem\u2019s ecological vision, and his emphasis on the role of the feminine in faith, are for us added gifts in our time.\u00a0 We are not the first to honor the earth or to celebrate the strength of woman in faith and life.<\/p>\n

Coming from the time of the undivided church, Ephrem belongs to the heritage of all Christian traditions.\u00a0 He speaks to the unlearned and learned alike, to both lay and religious\u2026precisely 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\u2026the perennial freshness of the biblical text itself. (172).<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

May that perennial freshness kindle in us a spiritual gladness this and every Lord\u2019s Day!<\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Luke 9:\u00a028-36 Click here to hear just the sermon Today is Transfiguration Sunday.\u00a0 On the mountain, the baffled disciples tried to bear true witness\u2014word, tent, accolade, mystery. What did you see? I saw\u2026 Our passage from Luke 9 \u00a0is an account developed after Easter, as a way of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3315,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314\/revisions\/3315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}