So, when I was a kid, growing up in Chattanooga, I couldn't help but be aware of the Civil War. So many battles were fought there because Chattanooga was one of the central rail hubs in the south, opening up the west to the Mississippi and the south to Atlanta, South Carolina, and the ports of Florida and the Caribbean.
And to commemorate this, the powers that be at various times plopped down plaques, cannon, or mounds of cannon balls just about everywhere they could.
When Ken Burns' “The Civil War” showed on PBS, interest in the Civil War took off, and I got caught up in it. And it was then that I decided to go down to the Chickamauga Battlefield (about 5 miles from South Chattanooga) and read every plaque I could find.
And I'm here to tell you...that was possibly the most boring thing I ever did in my life. Not only did I not get any real sense of the battle itself, I didn't even pay attention to the beauty of the park, to the bikers ambling along, the picnickers enjoying the sun, or the folks playing fetch with their dogs.
All that battlefield became to me was just a bunch of words that I don't even remember now.
I thought of this a couple of days ago as Brooks and I were having our regular Friday breakfast at Tallman's Diner in Oriskany Falls.
We were talking over todays readings and grousing about how we seem to get the Transfiguration twice a year every year and, frankly, there's only so much to say about something that we didn't get to see and that isn't very well described, because, after all, how to you describe the indescribable?
Peter's reaction to the miracle of the transfiguration is to get to work building booths for Elijah, Moses, and Jesus. And I got to thinking that that's his version of plopping down a plaque: “On this sacred spot, Peter, James, and John saw Jesus transfigure before their very eyes.”
We love sacred spots. Whether we're throwing up booths, putting down plaques, building an information center, or opening a souvenir shop on site, for some reason we feel the need to mark sites as sacred.
Peter felt that way on Mount Tabor, and I'm sure Elisha was thinking, “I need to remember this place and come back,” when Elijah slapped the water with his mantle and split the Jordan river in two.
And Brooks and I started talking about sacred sites and how we mark them. Christians do it with large, soaring buildings with flying buttresses, stained glass, massive pipe organs, gilded altars, big red doors. All the things that says this place is sacred.
We even have our own plaques memorializing those saints that went before us that played large roles in making our sacred sites sacred. And that was about where we left it when the splendid breakfast arrived.
But then Brooks paused and said, “Have you ever read Walker Percy's 'The Loss of the Creature'?” And while Walker Percy is (or was) a famous Southern writer and therefore worthy of praise, I had to admit that I'd only read “The Last Gentleman,” and that was because I had to in high school. But when I got home, thanks to the miracle of the internet, I read it.
Percy's essay, written in 1954, suggests that the real problem with our consumer society is that we've lost our ability to experience life. Rather we consume the ideas of life. Take the Grand Canyon
Say a dude has a postcard of the Grand Canyon on his fridge a beautiful snapshot that tries to capture all the grandeur of the place, and every day, he looks at it, and thinks, “One day I'm going to go there.” And that day comes.
And rather than experience it, the first thing he does is take a picture. “Take” a picture. Consume it. Make it his. He doesn't come upon the Grand Canyon as the first person to ever see it does. Instead he comes up to it to see if it conforms to what he saw in the postcard.
Percy writes: “If it looks just like the postcard, he is pleased; he might even say, 'Why it is every bit as beautiful as a picture postcard!' He feels he has not been cheated.” But if it does not conform, if it's hazy or rainy that day, “he will say later that he was unlucky in not being there at the right time.”
And he misses the experience of the Grand Canyon completely. He has no experience at all...just a picture.
You know, I think if any good came of the Covid shutdown it is this: we learned that the sacred is NOT the place. We love our churches, and there is a sense of sacred to them, yes. But that's not the whole of it.
During Covid, we still hung together in ways that were as sacred if not more so. We were left only with the experience of prayer and worship. Of holding together in love and compassion, of discovering new and different ways to care.
If Peter had put a plaque on top of Mount Tabor where Jesus transfigured, he would've missed the mark. If Elisha had put a plaque at that site on the Jordan where Elijah split it in two, he would've missed the mark also.
Because the dust where Jesus stood on that day is long since blown away, and the water that was parted at that river has long since flowed on by.
And the windows and the pews and the altar and the land we are on are not what makes a church sacred. Just like the postcards and the scenic overlooks and the tour guides are not what makes the Grand Canyon the Grand Canyon.
What makes the sacred sacred is the activity, and that activity is as ephemeral as the wind that carried Elijah up to be with God. Elijah parted the waters, and then left Elisha to work. Jesus was transfigured and then went down the mountain and toward the cross. The sacredness of the event was left behind.
And y'all, I've decided that's good. Because it allows a new sacred to take it's place. Over and over and over.
Whenever we pray, whenever we gather together to worship, whenever we reach out to someone in love. Events that occur and then they are over, making room for the new sacred to follow. Sacred moments powering the world toward God's kingdom.
And we will never know when they will occur, so we should always be on the watch. And we will never know WHERE they will occur so we should see everywhere as potentially sacred. And we will never know why they will occur, so we should see everything and every person as a possible reason.
The sacred is wherever God's Spirit blows, and no plaque can mark it. But I pray God that we'll know it when blows our way.
Amen