touched by the Holy

Have you ever had experiences that were different, set apart from your ordinary days, that you didn’t know how to describe?

One of the priests, in commenting about the Easter Vigil Saturday night, said that he had been in a very thin place. I’ve said that myself before, and for me this was not the same. It was sacred space, a place of knowing without having to make sense of it, a participation in the Mystery that was a being and a doing, rather than a feeling.

It would be very like me to try to inspect the experience, dissect it and investigate it, but why? To validate it, or replicate it? I don’t think I’ll try; or, to put a more positive slant on it, I choose not to.

Yes, it would be good to go over the week’s many services with the other clergy, as that same priest suggested, to talk about what went well and what might have been better if we’d done something differently.

But I don’t want to be writing down a recipe: 3 parts prayer, 1 part preaching, 4 parts music, mix well together and heat till the Holy Spirit takes notice and the batter begins to rise.

The thing is, you can’t make Resurrection happen. The dry bones, as much as they might like to, don’t just get up and dance. The earnest hearts that fast and pray and do all the right Lenten things sometimes find that, as much as they regret it, nothing new happens. They have gone through the same motions, the same devotions that have worked before to draw them closer to their Lord, and yet...and yet….

And yet, sometimes something new does happen, something unaccountable and uncontrollable, sometimes even to the person who just stumbled into Lent at the eleventh hour.

In the sermon today, the preacher told an anecdote about an incident at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The bishop was to begin the service by knocking on the closed doors with his crozier, Inside, the church would be in darkness following the Great Vigil, and when the doors were opened, the bishop would shout out:, “Alleluia. Christ is risen.” The congregation was to respond in kind, “The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.”

Unfortunately, the bishop had turned on his microphone too early, and what came before those traditional words was unexpected. The congregation of 600 worshippers heard mumbling and grumbling, followed by, “This is damn awkward, damn awkward!”

The preacher went on to say how very fitting and theological she thought those words were. Resurrecting hearts and minds from the dead doesn’t fit the regular pattern of life. Christ shook up his world in his own time, by his life, death and rising. Christ still shakes up the world, in this very day and time. We cannot will it to happen. The Spirit blows where it will. That too, is damn awkward.

P.S. One thing about these Easter services that made them different from any I've ever been to before is that people were asked to bring bells. If they didn't have any, ushers passed out bells at the door, and we rang them all during the hymns. Imagine how "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" sounds with two hundred bells ringing! Wow!