“The gate of heaven is everywhere.”
July 19, Proper 11:
2 Samuel 7:1-14a & Psalm 89:20-37 or Jeremiah 23:1-6 & Psalm 23;
Ephesians 2:11-22, Mark 6:30-34,53-56
Other Texts: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton.
Draft text of the homily, please do not cite without permission.
The gate of heaven is everywhere.
David is given a respite from all his enemies.
A brief pause in the long history of military campaigns and inter-family strife that David both inflicts and endures throughout his long and complex life.
And in that respite, David wonders about building God a permanent dwelling place.
A temple.
To which God replies…”thanks, but no thanks.”
God is building David a house out of his troublesome and troubling offspring.
The passage plays with the double meaning of “house” both as offspring and dwelling place.
God’s house will be made of and by David’s offspring.
The gate of heaven is everywhere.
The writer of the letter to the Ephesians—probably not Paul, but a follower of Paul—reminds us that once upon a time we were on one side of a chasm…aliens…strangers…without hope…and without God (it’s a pretty grim picture). But now, he says, Christ has broken down those dividing walls and created one new humanity.
So that those who were far off and those who are near are now joined.
We are citizens with the saints.
“The whole structure—[all of us…all of creation]—is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord…a dwelling place for God.”
God’s house is made of and by not just the descendants of David, but all of us…as troubled and as troublesome as we are.
God’s house is a dwelling that grows in all people.
The gate of heaven is everywhere.
The disciples/apostles are just trying to get to a deserted place.
A place apart.
A place of rest.
A place where they can just be with Jesus.
And the crowds just keep coming.
It doesn’t matter where they go, “into villages, or cities, or farms,” they’re surrounded by people begging…pleading…to be touched. To be healed. To be made whole.
And where is that sacred space? Where’s this space apart that they can go? Where is this holy temple of God?
And then we see that even in the midst of this chaotic activity, this bustling secular world, even this is also the site of the presence of the Holy, because in the midst of it all…in the eye of the storm…is Jesus. The incarnate one. The one who shows most clearly the union and unity between the creation, humans and the Divine.
God’s house is made of and by all of us, and all of creation because God in Christ became incarnate, and transformed it all into God’s dwelling.
The gate of heaven is everywhere.
This refrain, “the gate of heaven is everywhere” is from Thomas Merton.
Merton spent years living as a monk, and even a hermit in the beautiful rolling hills of Western Kentucky at the Trappist Abby of Gethsemani.
It is a special, sublime, and deeply spiritual place—a set apart place.
But that’s not where Merton had his epiphany about the gate of heaven being everywhere.
That happened on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in a busy shopping district in Louisville.
Merton says: it was there that “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.” [ Merton, Thomas (2009-11-04). Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image Classics) (pp. 153-154). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ]
The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.
This week we are baptizing Ethan.
And as a church we are still evolving in our understanding of baptism.
Baptism has been understood as an act that imparts, or implants the Holy Spirit within a person.
It’s been understood as adoption into a family.
As becoming a citizen of another country.
As becoming members in a church.
It is all those things and probably more.
Because as much as baptism is a setting apart, it is equally and joining together.
One thing we’re not doing is taking Ethan out of the world.
We’re saying that we are committing to help him and his parents and sponsors to live out his already existing and eternally ongoing relationship with God in a particular way.
By following the way lived by Jesus.
And the way of Jesus while a deeply spiritual journey is also very much in the world.
Sure there are times of rest and times apart, but the ministry of Jesus and the mission of God through the church is in the world.
Merton says that our tradition, our participation in the life and events within the church, doesn’t separate us from anyone else.
“We are in the same world as everyone else,” he says, “the world of the bomb, the world of race hatred, the world of technology, the world of mass media, big business, revolution, and all the rest.
“We take a different attitude to all these things, for we belong to God. Yet so does everybody else belong to God.”
We are in the same world as everyone, but we take a different attitude to all of it, because we belong to God, and because we realize that so does everyone—and every thing else—it all belongs to God.
And in each of us, says Merton, there is a point at the center of our being, a point “untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or a spark that belongs entirely to God…this little point is the pure glory of God in us…It is so to speak His name written in us…It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely….” [ Merton, Thomas (2009-11-04). Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image Classics) (pp. 155-156). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ]
That is God’s dwelling place.
And when we “come away” to this place, when we baptize, when we participate in the Eucharist and share the gifts—the gifts—of bread and wine…we open little windows from which that pure light of God pours into the world.
That is how we grow, by seeing and revealing more and more of that pure light.
And “The whole structure—[all of us…all of creation]—is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord…a dwelling place for God.”
That is our task, and what we are promising and recommitting to each time we baptize anyone, continuing to participate in the work of God in us and in the world until everyone can see clearly what we already experience to be true in knowing and following Jesus…
That God’s house is made of troubled and troublesome human hearts and built with tentative and trembling human hands.
That there is no separation between any of us.
That even in the midst of the noise and needs of a busy world…God is present and acting through us.
That the gate of heaven is everywhere.
Amen.