The sermon preached by Fr. Ernie on Sunday, February 5, 2023.

A Sense of God’s Presence

 (by Ernest Boyer - written version)

I closed my sermon last week by confessing how much I love to come to this church. I enjoy it so much because true Christians are just so wonderful to be around. Genuine Christians — such as all of you — are so warm and welcoming, so joyful and hopeful. I love all of you. You light up my life. Jesus explains why this is so in this morning’s selection from Matthew.

“You are the salt of earth,” he starts out. Remember, he’s speaking about you now — you and all his followers. And it’s true. Think of what salt does. It adds flavor to food. It makes food taste richer, and so makes life itself fuller and more enjoyable. “But [what] if salt has lost its taste,” Jesus then asks, teasing us now, “how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.” I say he’s teasing us, because the truth is, salt can never lose its taste. Have you ever had any salt go bad? — “Oh, don’t use that salt. It’s gone flat.” — Have you ever heard someone say that? You have not — and with good reason too. That’s because it can’t happen. Salt is a mineral. It’s formed from the chemical bonding of Sodium and Chloride, and it takes a lot to break it down. It requires heating it to 801degrees C and passing an electric current through the molten substance that results. … So… just keep away from electricity on very hot days and you’ll be fine. You are — and will remain — the salt of the earth.

Jesus then goes on to say, “You are [also] the light of the world,” and this is true too. We are all the bearers of hope in dark times.

To those who are in despair,

to those believe their life has no greater purpose,

to those who distrust their fellow humans

and treat them with suspicion and hostility,

…we show another way.

We show them this though how we ourselves live our lives. “Don’t hide that light,” Jesus warns. “Don’t be afraid to make it visible for all to see.” That’s because this is what the people of the world need most — to see this light.

They need to know that there is hope.

There is purpose.

There is reason to trust our fellow humans

and treat them with respect.

They need to know that there is a God

and that this God loves them.

They need to know this, and we need to teach them.  

It’s because we’re Christians that we even have these gifts

of hope…and purpose… and meaning… and trust offer them,

and it is in today’s reading from St. Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians that Paul expands on what Jesus tells us and goes on to explain why this is. We are able to offer these things to the world, he says, because as followers of Jesus, we have access to a special wisdom. It is, Paul tells us, “God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which… God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for,” as he goes on to say, “the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”

 “…the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” Those are Paul’s exact words, and they’re astonishing enough, but then he goes on to say something that really caught me. He concludes with this:” For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within?”

Think about it for a moment. “For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within?”It seems to me that after telling us that, with the spirit, we will be able to know the depth of God, Paul is now also saying that we need to spirit to even know who we ourselves are as human beings. But what does that mean? 

You know, Fr. Charles and I have formed a little two-person study group. We’re currently reading a book called The Problem of Empathy by a woman named Edith Stein. Let me tell you about Edith Stein. Edith Stein was born in Germany in 1891, the youngest of 11 children of a devout Jewish family. She herself rejected all religion as a teenager, and yet she was deeply introspective and drawn to profound questions, so that by the age of 22 she was the top student of the most brilliant thinkers of the day, particularly the philosopher Edmund Husserl. She became Husserl’s personal assistant and edited his most important book, a massive work called Ideas. And yet, when it came time for her to write her own dissertation — which turned out to be brilliant — Husserl refused to support her. He said he wouldn’t pass her because if he did, she’d be able to teach, and he didn’t believe that women should be allowed to teach — not at the college level at least. And yet that dissertation is the very book that Charles and I are now reading together.

The title is, as I say, The Problem of Empathy, and in it, Edith asks this question: “How is it that one person is able to care about and empathize with another?” I mean, think about it. How do you know what another is feeling? Of course, we don’t know in detail, and yet most of the time we have a pretty good idea. Frequently we can sense it without even being told. We have only to look at a person, and we know. We can see that they are sad…or happy… or distracted … or … anything. We just sense it. Isn’t that true? Hasn’t that ever happened to you? Hasn’t happened that, for example, you walk into a room with another person and — just like that — after only the briefest glance and without a single word from them, you just know that something is wrong. You can tell at once that they are deeply upset. Of course, some are better at this than others, but everyone has this ability to some degree. How do we do it?

We can do it, Edith Stein says, because we have an inner sense, a deep empathy, built into the very nature of who we are as human beings that lets us feel something of what others are feeling. That’s what allows us not only to know but also to sympathize with what another person is going through. But she doesn’t stop there. After telling us how empathy allows us to see into the heart of another person, she then goes say something truly astonishing. Edith Stein goes on to say that this same inner awareness is also how believers are able to sense the presence of God in their lives. As long as people are willing to open themselves to it, all people are also able to actually feel God’s love for them, to experience God’s peace, to know God’s truth.

She’s talking about our inner Spirit, of course — the very Spirit that Paul says in today’s reading is available to all who open themselves to God. Is it really true that we, mere human beings, can know such things? St. Paul says it is, and Edith Stein also found it to be true. It’s an astonishing claim and even more amazing that a young Jewish woman came to it though her own experience. It turns out, though, that this discovery changed her life. Not long afterward she converted to Christianity and about ten years later Edith Stein became a Carmelite nun. She then managed to write a number of brilliant works of theology before her life was suddenly cut short. You see, even though she was now a Christian, to the Nazi’s a Jew was always a Jew, and so even though she had by then fled to a Convent in the Netherlands, the Nazis tracked her down. They caught up to her in 1942. She died in the gas chambers in Auschwitz.

Edith Stein has since been canonized as a saint and is among those that the Episcopal church recognizes among our “cloud of witnesses.” We remember her every August 9, which is the anniversary of the day she died. Her writings too have been rediscovered after decades of neglect. They are bold and fresh and deeply spiritual.

And how about you? Are you aware of the inner sense she talks about — the inner awareness that St. Paul calls the “spirit within”? It’s God’s hidden gift to each one of us. It’s what allows us to experience each other’s deepest feelings. More astonishing still, it opens us even to sense the presence of God in our life.

·      Do you have moments when you suddenly experience an unexpected inner peace, a deep calm spreading through you like a gentle warmth, a lightness of the heart, a quiet certainty that — despite what may be happening — everything will be ok?

·      Do you have times by yourself when you find that you can’t quite shake a feeling that someone is nearby and you feel that you are not alone?

·      Do you have times when you’re struggling to decide what you should do when all at once the answer comes to you and you suddenly see your way forward so that you now know just what you need to do?

All of these are gifts of the spirit, and if they are less than familiar to you, take some time this week to just sit quietly, open your heart and pray to God that God reveal them to you. Because they are your birthright. They are the gifts of your inner spirit — the gifts of the part of you that is one with God. They are why you are both the salt of the Earth and the light of the world. And they are wonderful. Look for them. They’re there inside you. Just look within. They’re there, and they’re worth finding. …And you will.

Amen.         

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