January 11

January 11, 2009

How I Became a Mystic
(the spiritual kind)

a sermon on 1 Corinthians 12.12-27
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

I have a confession to make: I am a mystic. I do not mean I have joined a Mardi Gras society. Nothing against them—I am simply talking about something different. The other kind of mystic, the spiritual kind.

Making this confession, I should probably define what I mean by mystic. As I am using the term, a mystic is someone who discerns spiritual realities and connections. Church history is rich with mystics: men and women who sought a pure vision of God or a life of pure love for God. While I too desire to love God purely and to see him clearly, I have not taken the traditional path of the mystics. I became a mystic backwards, and I’ll explain that in a moment.

The great Christian mystics like John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila have written about the soul’s union with God and the path of suffering leading to it. When I say I am a mystic, I am not comparing myself to giants like them. I am not among the great mystics. I am the simplest of mystics, just a person who recognizes a deeper reality than my eyes can see. I trust my senses, but I know they only tell me part of the story. As Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I think I know what some of them are.

If you use my definition of mystic, all Christians are mystics. We believe that the Father raised Jesus from the dead, and he lives and reigns today—not just in heaven, but also here with us. By his Holy Spirit, our Lord Jesus keeps his promise never to leave or forsake us. By his Spirit, he lives inside every Christian. That’s what a Christian is: someone in whom Jesus lives. Looking at some of his followers, you might think he has gone into hiding. But I know a lot of Christians, many in this church, in whom the presence of Christ shines through. If you know him, you recognize his presence in their lives. And if you don’t know him, you still see something special and holy.

So all Christians, really, are mystics. All Presbyterians are. We believe, for example, that when we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s Supper that Jesus really gives himself to us. He does not do so physically, as if the bread became his actual body. He does so spiritually. We feed on him in our hearts by faith. Calvin liked to say that when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we do not bring Christ down from heaven and put him on the table; he lifts us up to heaven, spiritually, mystically.

All Christians are mystics. All Presbyterians are mystics. But my own mystical vision has grown. One reason may be I am getting older. When I was younger I was so skeptical, so scientific, so precise. I wanted to be able to understand everything and explain everything. As I have grown older, I have learned—not that I was wrong before—but I have learned humility. There is more to reality than I can see with my eyes or comprehend with my mind.

The main reason my mystical vision has grown, however, is you. By you I mean this church. As I have come to know you, work alongside you, and experience life and God’s blessing with you, I have come to see the deep spiritual connection among believers that Paul described in our scripture reading. You see, I came backwards into mysticism. The normal way is to go off by yourself to fast and pray. And that’s what we think of when we hear the word mystic. That and parades through downtown. We think of a Buddhist mystic alone on top of a mountain or a Hindu mystic lying half-naked on a bed of nails chanting or a Native American mystic alone in the woods—or a Christian mystic, secluded in a monastery, barefoot, fasting, praying for days on end. That’s the mystic way, right? Deny yourself, purify yourself of all other concerns or desires except God, and wait for a vision.

That wasn’t my path. I became a mystic by being around other Christians. I saw Jesus in them. I worshipped with them and celebrated the Lord’s Supper with them. I listened to them, especially those older and wiser than I, when they spoke about what they have seen God do. And I have loved them, and they have loved me. And perhaps this last is most important, because it has opened my eyes to the way we are all one in Christ Jesus … and how when one suffers all suffer and when one rejoices all rejoice. I now believe that Christians are like islands in a sea. On the surface, each one appears individual and separate from the others, but drain off the water a bit, and you will see they are all part of the same continent. They are connected to one another, just beneath the surface.

That’s a very mystical thing to say, but I think it was what Paul was saying in our scripture reading. If ever a church needed to catch this mystical vision, it was the church in Corinth to whom Paul wrote the letter we call 1 Corinthians. They were very spiritual people—too spiritual in a way. Paul wrote to them because they had all kinds of problems, one of which was they had turned worship into two things Christian worship should never be. Christian worship should never be about “me” (the individual) or about us—it is always about God. And it should never be a contest to see who is the holiest. The Corinthians had made it both of these things.

I regularly try to convince all of you that God has gifted you for service. Our church would be better if everyone believed that and acted like it. Their church would have been better if they had taken their gifts less seriously. Whenever they got together for worship, it turned into “battle of the gifts.” Each person tried to outdo all the others. Each tried to outshine the others. “My gift is better than yours.” “My gift is more important than yours.” The results were predictable: Their gifts stopped pointing people to God because they kept pointing to themselves. When worship is about me, God is not honored. And, naturally, they couldn’t get along with one another. Divisions, conflict, personality clashes—call it what you will. They were tearing one another apart. And over what? Spiritual gifts! It is no accident that Paul’s great chapter on love follows right after this one. Paul, of course, didn’t write in chapters. The Bible wasn’t divided into chapters and verses until centuries later. Paul wove a continuous tapestry of ideas. Love is the most important spiritual gift, and the one we should strive for above all others. That alone would have solved a lot of their problem, but before he wrote of love, he gave them—and us—a startling and memorable image about the organic connection among Christians. “You are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

This does not mean what some have taken it to mean, that he has no body but us. Jesus rose bodily from the dead. He has a glorified body. Others have claimed that we are his hands, and he has no other hands with which to work in this world. That would be half right. He does work through us, but God can always work independently of us. Thank God.

What this business about the body of Christ does mean is that we are organically related. We are not all the same, just as a hand and foot are different and distinct, yet like them we are part of one body. We are united by virtue of our relationship to Jesus Christ who is our head. That’s another important point. He is the head. We are not. But that’s a sermon for another day. This one is about the very real and literal bond that unites us to one another.

By the way, I use the word literal carefully. When Paul says we are the body of Christ, he uses a metaphor. But the metaphor describes something that really exists. This is how figurative language works. You might call your car “the old tin can.” That’s figurative language, but the car is a real car. In the same way, “body of Christ” is a metaphor, but our unity in Christ is something quite real and literal. The tie that binds us together is his Spirit—the Holy Spirit. “We were all baptized into one body … we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and try to describe our unity as Christians using a story about a Buddhist monk. It seems there was this Buddhist monk, who sat alone in a monastery one day meditating. Outside the weather was freezing cold, so the monk had a nice warm fire, and he was dressed in two warm cloaks. He sat in front of a little golden image of the Buddha. While the monk was meditating a poor thief happened to look in on him and spy the golden statue. “I could sell that and eat for a long time,” the thief thought. So thinking the monk was deep in a trance, the thief snuck in and grabbed the statue. He made a sound, however, on his way out, and the monk opened his eyes and saw the thief making off with the statue, and the monk shouted, “Stop!” The thief didn’t. He ran for all he was worth. The monk chased him, screaming for him to stop. Finally the thief grew weary, and the monk caught him. What he said surprised the thief. The monk said, “Here, I want to give you my coat. It is freezing out here, and you might get sick. Why didn’t you stop? Didn’t you hear me calling you? … In fact, take my robe too. I have a nice warm fire, but your profession requires you to be out in the cold.” The thief said, “You’re crazy.” “No, I’m not,” replied the monk, “and I’ll prove it to you. You are out here in the cold. You right hand is freezing. What would you do if you had two warm mittens on your left hand?” “I’d take one of them off and put it on the other hand,” answered the thief. “That is what I have done,” concluded the monk.

Buddhism says our basic problem is our selfishness. Its solution is to get rid of the self. According to Buddhism, your self-consciousness is a mere illusion. Everything—all people, animals, even material things—is one. Eliminate the self, and the selfishness disappears. Christianity agrees that our basic problem is selfishness. Its solution, however, is grace … and love. The self is not eliminated; it becomes a new creation in Christ. Jesus comes to live in you, and before he is finished transforming you, you will be able to love as God does.

I believe the Christian way is right. So I disagree with the Buddhist monk about reality, yet I find his story a helpful way to think about my relationship to other Christians. When you do good to a brother or sister in Christ, your action is like taking an extra glove off your left hand and putting it on your right. It is more like that than anything else. You are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.

We talk about the church as the people of God, and that is true. It’s important. It is an expression of our unity, but it does not do full justice to our unity. We talk about the church as the family of God, and that image goes deeper. But not deep enough. It takes the phrase “the body of Christ” to do full justice to our unity with him and with one another. We are distinct, but organically connected. When one suffers, all suffer. When one rejoices, all rejoice.

What about those outside? One thing I am not trying to do with this sermon is turn our focus inward. The church exists for the sake of its mission. We are called and gifted so that we can share the Good News and continue Jesus’ ministry of compassion. He loves everyone, and we are to express that.

All human beings are connected in at least a couple of ways. We all share a connection to our environment. And we have come to understand this a lot more in the past generation or so. We all depend on the earth for air and water and food production. This is a biological connection. We are also connected socially. We live in societies because we are social creatures. We need one another. These connections are real and important, but they are natural, physical connections. To be connected spiritually as one body, I think we need Jesus Christ. I think our spiritual unity may be something we lost with the Fall. I suspect God created us humans to share a spiritual unity, but we have lost that. We are supposed to have it, but we don’t anymore. It is one more thing Jesus gives back to us. So when I talk about the spiritual union of Christians, I am not trying to be exclusive. I do think it is something we have that those who do not know Jesus lack. But it is something he wants them to share and eagerly offers to everyone. We had it, then we broke it, but he gives it back to us; and the reason you have to get it through him is, he is the only one who can. That sounds exclusive. It is not, in the sense that we think we are better than anyone else. It is, only in the sense that Christians have always believed Jesus is God’s answer to our problems. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The thing to remember is his love for everyone, not just us.

This sermon is an invitation to become a mystic. You need to learn to see Jesus in other Christians and to know that whatever you do for the least of his people, you do for him. You also need to recognize how deeply we are united in Christ. When you care for a brother or sister in Christ, you are loving that person … and Jesus … and yourself in a way, because that person and you are part of one body. And … you need to look at the whole world through Jesus’ eyes and love each person as he does and act with his courage and compassion. You need to see in every person not only someone Jesus died for, but also (maybe) someone you would die for. If you love as he does, you love without limits.

That’s a tall order, and perhaps the perfection of the mystical vision. I’m not there yet, but I am on the way. What about you?

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