Sacramental Living

I used to be enamored with mystics like the Desert Fathers (and Mothers), and with people like St. Francis of Assisi and St. John of the Cross, and John Bunyan. I’m still kind of fascinated by them, to tell the truth. There’s something appealing about the thought of a lone figure in the wilderness, removed from the clatter and clutter of everyday human discourse and discord, maybe living in a cave or a tree. They were doing two things at once: facing down temptation and being ushered into the presence of God. Visions and visitations, ecstasies and epiphanies, moving from glory to glory – that caught me. Even their darkness appealed to me. Even when they were lamenting their sin or God’s absence, they seemed so real. They lost and found and lost God over and again in their (usually) short lives. Mystics, it seemed, lived on a higher plane of existence. Their self discipline and connection to the supernatural realm was what I wanted for myself. Maybe it’s because I so lack discipline, or maybe it’s because I’ve always been drawn to extreme people and activities (without ever being extreme myself. I’d rather read about your extreme experience from the safety of my sofa). Maybe I’m the stereotypical hopeless romantic. Who knows. Whatever it was, that small band of super Christians sparks my imagination.

But more and more I’m interested in everyday mysticism, ordinary living wrapped in the extraordinary Life of God. It doesn’t have the same edge of the cliff, burning desert excitement, but it’s just as real. Not to discount the Desert Sage Experience, which I’m sure it’s a great thing, but daily mysticism has great potential because it is so hidden.

It’s also more true to the incarnation. If (and this is, I realize, a big “if”) Jesus is the Son of God and if (another big “if”) he became a human being, then the whole material world is changed. Jesus touched everything, setting everything free to be his and to be itself. If that’s so, then common, ordinary experiences become mystical. They have sacramental potential. That is, they might become a sacrament.

A sacrament is a physical action that brings a person into the presence of God (some people add that it should be commanded by Jesus). One of the distinctions between Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox Christians and Protestant Christians is the number of sacraments they celebrate. Catholics and Orthodox identify seven; Protestants who recognize sacraments at all see two, baptism and communion. If, however, a sacrament is a physical action (commanded by Jesus) that leads one into the presence of God, and if God-ness is permeating the very fabric of the cosmos because of the incarnation, then every action has sacramental potential, from the most mundane to the most exalted.

Jesus very clearly told his followers to serve the poor. He set it up in a very sacramental fashion, too: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was naked and you clothed me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me in. I was sick and in prison and you came to me. What you’ve done for the very least, you’ve done for me.” He is saying, In these actions, in these people, you will meet me.

He didn’t bother (of course) to clearly spell out what he meant by that. He didn’t bother to say, The hungry person is like me, or, Tending the sick is a way of serving me, or, I am present in everyone. I’ve known a lot of people who have done a lot of theologizing and careful mind exercises trying to figure out what Jesus meant by that. I don’t know that I could ever properly sort out what Jesus meant us to believe about his words.

All I can tell is that he wasn’t presenting a metaphysical puzzle for his followers to sort through; he was serious about what he meant we should do. We should act as though his kingdom is real, as though he is the savior of the world. When people live in that way (or Way) everyday encounters are sacramental.

A problem with what I just laid out is in the impossibility of ritualizing everyday actions. Religion is like science: actions and words (like experiments) need to be repeatable and predictable, otherwise they don’t count. But the unexpected, or at least, the unpredictable, is closer to the norm for sacramental living. It’s pretty tough to find a hungry man and drag him into a church building and give all the members a chance to feed him. There are no special words for visiting a woman in prison. Sacramental living takes each piece as it comes, and finds God in it.

No doubt, Jesus is in the desert, and on the tops of mountains. I can believe that ten years of silence will help a person find God, or that meditation on a single word (like Abba, Jesus’ name for his Father-God) will open unseen doors into the spiritual realm. But the presence of God is also in the tedium of ordinary life, and if we cannot find it there, we won’t find it anywhere.

St Francis of Assisi, one of my mystic heroes, realized early on that he was not to do his work alone. A group of men, almost as eccentric as he himself, were attracted to his joyful abandon to God. That was something new in the midst of religious austerity of the Middle Ages. So he formed a Rule of Life for the small band of “Little Brothers” (friars minor) who gathered around him. Then his friend Claire found herself surrounded by women looking for the same kind of experience. So he helped them write their own Order of Little Sisters.

So far, this is pretty standard monk and nun stuff. But then, as they traveled through towns and villages, working with peasants in fields and begging food for the sick, other people -- married people, ordinary people with families and responsibilities – started to become interested in this life. They asked Francis to help them. After much thought and prayer, he organized what he called the Third Order for those who couldn’t abandon everything to live as a monk or nun, but who nevertheless wanted this new way of life.

The new way of life is not for the super spirituals. It’s for dock workers and parents and children (yes, little kids) and single people and the strong and the weak and deputies and cooks and the lonely and people who can sing and people who can only sign and quadriplegics and prisoners and runners and nurses and the brave and the fearful and even you.

When pressed for what matters most to God, Jesus had an answer at the ready. He cited the Shema, the Israelites’ mantra: “Hear, O Israel, YHWH your God; YHWH is one. You shall love YHWH your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second,” said Jesus, “is just like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

As we love God and our neighbor, everything becomes sacramental. Prayer and scripture reading (alone or in a group) isn’t easy, but it has great power to focus my attention away from myself and my needs, desires, my petty disappointments and fears. If I let it, it can lead me Godward. Serving the least and the last likewise tears my eyes away from myself and retrains my attention. In the face of the poor, I can find Jesus looking at me.

But, beyond those disciplines becoming ingrained, all of life is one great sacrament. Eating and drinking are windows into God’s provision. Exercise and rest display God’s mercy. Children, partners, friends, and parents are a gateway for God’s love.

I had a professor in college who was a fierce atheist. He told us a story once, though, of a time he was on a Navy ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. A hellacious storm pounded the boat, but before it got to there, he watched it coming. He said, “It was the closest I’ve ever come to a ‘religious experience’”.

I was at the Grand Canyon with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. As we stood looking over the edge, trying to take in all of it, she said, “Isn’t God awesome?”

My tendency in both circumstances would be to say, “Look at that big storm,” and “Look at that big hole.” But others, maybe people who are more in tune at specific moments, sense something beyond themselves. My professor had no words, no coordinates, no map, for understanding his experience. My sister-in-law had the rudiments of our God talk: “God” and “awesome”. Each had the opportunity to go further in, further up into the mystery of God’s reality, into the sacrament of God’s world.