Subliminal Sermon

Readings:
Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10,22-22:5
John 14:23-29

This week Pastor Johnson describes the texts as a wonderfully strung set of pearls laid out for all to see. Sometimes, it seems only in retrospect that I can even begin to see the pearls or that one goes better with the other than all by itself. Then he proceeded to string them … Acts … Revelation … and John.

There is constant reference made to the light, the sun, the lamp that comes with the realization of God’s will. After basking in this light, no other message will again, ever do. Once the night that was before is quenched in this light, it “will be on their foreheads” and the night will be no more. The night is presumably some metaphor for all or each of us before we have such an encounter with God and The Word. When touched by the message of God, our hearts are opened, as was Lydia’s, to “listen eagerly and await what was said (in His name)”.

The metaphor was brought home in the face of a worshiper of God named Lydia in Acts. It was brought to us in the deftly painted description of a night visitor to a college dormitory named Henry Yoger. I will ask Pastor Johnson’s indulgence, as he asked ours, if I borrow some of his articulate descriptors.

It was the Spring of 1967. The setting: college … a breeding ground for the undisciplined, the unguided, those yet without vision and possibly those with a shallow, untested faith life. Certainly every college has a dollop of this. Pastor Johnson’s room is a varied collection of unfinished papers adorning a desk punctuated by an ashtray full of snubbed out Lucky Strikes. It’s 10 p.m. and there’s a knock on the door. Standing in that doorway, a man in a crisp black suit, a starched and bleached white clerical collar, rimless glasses and steel grey hair, combed back. The man was Pastor Henry Yoger. The vision was apparently one that prompted greeters of such a visage to move adeptly to cover the Lucky Strike war zone with the as-yet-unfinished treatises on Dante’s Inferno. But the point of the story was that Henry Yoger made a night time pilgrimage, of sorts, to seek out one of the souls on that campus and deliver a message. That message was, I believe, at its essence, to see if Gary Johnson would like to consider taking up study in the ministry of God. I do not recall his immediate reaction, if he shared it, but this is usually the scene in the movie where the young college student, holding a snubbed out Lucky Strike behind his left ear, looks incredulously at the visitor and wants to pinch himself to see if this is really happening. Is he imagining this? Is he Ray Kinsella hearing voices in the corn field? Well, here’s a modern day Lydia! A messenger from God interceded in a young man’s life, immersing him in a light from which he could never look back.

Such incidences, Pastor Johnson reminded us, are God Incidences, chance meetings between unlikely people that lead one or both to the realization that it’s not the things of this world that matter at all.

We BEST serve when we focus on the things NOT of this world!

When we focus NOT on this world, but on visions and dreams, fields of dreams, that people who have not “been exposed to the light” can not see., where the City gates are open and there is no night. But there is the sweet smell of possibility.

When we recently heard the Lenten story of Jesus washing the disciples feet during the Last Supper, I couldn’t help but think that Jesus’ bigger gift to the disciples might not have been only washing their feet. It may very well have been the message behind it – I do this to remind you to serve others, to be self-forgetful and “pay it forward”. Someone does for you and you do for others. Take care of each other and I will take care of you. Jump and the net will appear.

God and His messengers come in the micro-moments of our lives …….

The moments in which a young student opens a college dorm room to a sight that he never forgets, that 40 years hence he describes with alarmingly accurate and descriptive detail, down to the letter. He can still smell the moment. These are the micro-moments, the slices of our existence, the Thin Places where our worlds are entered by the Almighty to serve us notice that his Kingdom is NOT of this world. And, if you are to serve Him, it will be by serving one another. God sends that lucrative and rich message through a paper thin door and often by way of a character we’re not likely to forget.

John Denver, in the movie Oh God, is visited by, well … God, played by George Burns. God appears in the form of an older man in a baseball cap. In a line only Burns could deliver as he did, he says “You were expecting someone younger. I know. It’s all those pictures with the robes and sandals. Frankly, I never got it …. I come to you in a form you can understand me.” He then proceeds to give John a message to give the rest of the world “Take care of one another. I gave you everything you need to do it.”

God sends those messengers for sure. But they do come in thin slices of existence, in micro-moments, in glimpses, lit only by starlight … to lead us from night into a day that will never end. So we have to be awake and paying attention. Micro-moments can be missed if we’re pre-occupied with the ways of this world. Micro-moments in which bread and wine become body and blood, where young Lucky Strike laden, impressionable college lads consider a life dedicated to The Word and The Way.

In the world of advertising, subliminal messages are thin slices of film or video spliced into a running ad or film … sometimes a tub of popcorn or a refreshingly cool soda. The human brain takes in the vision that the conscious mind does not appear to perceive. And the body reacts accordingly, becoming hungry or thirsty. The remarkable human physiology sees the message, regardless of its thinness in the visually perceptive plane. So it might be with the thin slices on which God interjects his promptings for us. If you miss the splice, you miss the message – so we must be willing to watch and consider visions, dreams, possibilities.

Pastor Johnson knew and knows to this day that Henry Yoger was a man who believed in possibilities. Much like Al Smith, Jackie Robinson, Mother Theresa, Susan B. Anthony and those who kept their eyes on the prize, they believed in the voice in the corn field that “sent me to find you”. They believed in possibility and renewal, that God could “make a new thing”, that hope, as Emily Dickinson reminded us all, is “the thing with feathers”.

Subliminal messages are still illegal in advertising, but they are part of Gods modus operandi. When we preach the Gospel, Pastor Johnson subtly references that it is most likely to be in a locker room, in an honest and sincere conversation about God, in simple words and in simple stories. I blogged about a sign in the halls of Cardinal Stritch University that I feel compelled to repeat here:

Preach the Gospel always; when necessary use words.

Henry Yoger’s very presence spoke volumes to a young college student. He had a vision that there was something to this young man that made a trip to visit him in the dark of the night a worthwhile or compelling enterprise, must-see Unreality Church. He had a vision, a notion of the possibility that made it necessary to ask that young man to pray about the vision he had for that young man to go into the ministry.

He believed in the power of the resurrection, the power of renewal, the power of possibility in lives. It’s NEVER too late for God to act. And there’s NEVER a wrong time for the asking to occur.

Please forgive me this one last indulgence of a visit to The Field of Dreams. Ray Kinsella and Terrance Mann travel to Chisolm, Minnesota to visit an old ball player Archibald “Moonlight” Graham. He played one inning in the major leagues, had one at bat and never got a hit. He had a dream of getting that one hit, looking down a major league pitcher, letting him think you knew something he didn’t, get a hit and sliding headfirst into fresh dirt. Doc Graham never has the baseball career, but becomes a doctor in a small town in Minnesota, making a world of difference to the entire community.

Ray asks him if he would come with him to a place where those dreams (of making the big leagues) do come true. Graham declines the offer. Ray implores him “It’d kill a man to come this close to their dreams and not touch them! They’d consider that a tragedy!”

Graham’s reply … simply “No son. If I’d only become a doctor for 5 minutes, now that’d been a tragedy.” And he winks.

He gets it! Just as Lydia gets it! It’s not about this world, about the big leagues, the big house and the promotion. Lydia and Moonlight are free from the shackles of worldly wealth, zip codes, status. Now they say “I am not a subject of the rulers of this age.”

They’ve both had a taste. And they’re not going back.

In a later scene, Ray and Terrance have at least one more micro-moment. They pick up a stray hitchhiker, a young man with all the world agleam in his eye. They ask him his name, He says “Archie … Archie Graham”. He comes to Iowa, plays the big league players, but crosses the first base line – that THIN LINE that separates the space between man and the possibilities. He becomes old Doc Graham. He saves Ray’s daughter from choking on a hot dog, then walks toward the corn field, never able to return to the worldly want he once had. Ray says he’s sorry and “Thank you”. Doc says “No son …… Thank You!”

Thank you for believing in the possibility and for asking me to also!

Henry Yoger, as an old man, died while planting flowers in his garden. Flowers … the perennial sign of hope and possibility, of renewal and new life.

I figure it’s a good money bet Pastor Johnson says thanks often enough for Henry Yoger and a trip he took, and a knock on his door. In one of those micro-moments, he paid it forward today by sharing his story. What a powerful glimpse.

Preach the Gospel always; when necessary, use words.

But, if not words, pull an unkempt college student buried in Lucky Strikes out of his comfort zone, take someone into your home, pay something forward … for it is in those other-worldy moments, in those thin places and slices that we are in the midst of the light and the truth that sets us free.