Sermon: A Diamond in the Pocket of Your Heart

Texts: Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9

Date: February 6, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

In the classic fantasy book by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins and his troop are traveling through a dark, dangerous forest  infested with gigantic, poisonous spiders and all manner of dark critters and creepy-crawly things. Just being in that kind of place was a frightening experience. And each member of the group, especially Bilbo Baggins, wanted to get out of that dreadful forest of darkness. As they traveled on, hoping against hope that the edge of the dangerous forest was near and not having their hopes fulfilled, one of the leaders ordered Bilbo Baggins to climb the tallest tree he can find in order to have a look around and see where the dark forest ended.

Reluctantly, Bilbo climbed the tree, with limbs, branches and leaves scratching at him all the way. Several times he nearly falls. Having pushed his way through the forest canopy, he is nearly blinded by the sudden and
intense sunlight. It took some time for his eyes to get used to the light, but once they had, Bilbo found that it was very wonderful and beautiful up
there. The canopy above him was the most beautiful blue sky and around him was an ocean of green treetops. After being in the damp darkness below, he enjoyed the sunshine and was able to soak it into his weary, tired and
aching bones. The fresh air blew softly in his face and invigorated his lungs and cleared his mind.  What a wonderful place to be! And no doubt, if we could have asked Tolkien's fictional character, Bilbo Baggins, he would have said, "Yes, 'tis good to be here."

That’s not so very different from the time when three disciples were permitted a view that was extraordinary. When Jesus took Peter, James and John with him, he took them out of the dark valleys of this world and up to a high place, a mountaintop, where their eyes would squint at the bright light of the Christ, the manifestation of God, who would be transformed before their wondering eyes. As soon as Peter recovered the power of speech, he said in a masterpiece of understatement, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

It is good, it is good, it is very good, when we get those glimpses of glory.   Glimpses of glory.   They are as common as…not as common as dirt, which is the way that figure of speech ends.   No, glimpses of glory are not as common as dirt.   Most of us aren’t privileged to be made ecstatic by the sudden, powerful and unmistakable presence of God on a daily basis.  

Glimpses of glory are as common as…diamonds.   How many of you have ever seen a diamond?   How many of you have a diamond in your household?   Who’s wearing one right now?   Diamonds aren’t so common, but they’re not so rare, either, are they?  

The kind of spiritual experience when you come face to face with holiness is not so common, but it’s not so rare, either.   Lots of us, probably most of us, possibly all of us have had an experience of closeness with God, or oneness with the universe, that left us weak with wonder.   There are times in ordinary human existence when we find ourselves climbing out of the dank forest of the daily journey and emerge up high, blinking in the radiance of enlightenment.  

Such visions are not hallucinations. Visions are not fantasies. Visions are those extraordinary moments in life when you see something with utter clarity, and you know that it is absolutely true.

Three little stories, to go alongside the stories of Jesus and Moses.   There was a man by the name of Erling Wold. He was a Lutheran pastor, down in California . One day, when Erling was down there in Southern California , he was out surfing in the ocean and suddenly, he was hit down by a wave and he was smashed into the sand. He broke his neck. He was upside down, and was drowning, and he said in his book, DO I HAVE TO BREAK MY NECK, “Then and there, something very important happened to me. It was not a hallucination. My senses were totally alive. In that moment, there was an inrush of light and filled me as I floated. The light was on my right side, and the light took shape, pulsating with an invitation to come into the light, into the center of the light.” Wold recognized this light as the Presence of the Risen Christ. He continued,   “I was swept up into an unspeakable exhilaration of glory and I had an intense longing to let go of everything. I welcomed anything. Death. Paralysis. As long as I could be part of that light. I was filled with a light born ecstasy, and my exhilaration continued for what seemed like an eternity.” All these years, Pastor Erling Wold had been preaching that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and was the glorious light of God. And then, for a moment, in that exotic, rare moment of breaking his neck and nearly drowning, he truly believed what he had been preaching for all those years. This vision was a benchmark moment in his life. He had a moment of clarity. He had a moment of truth.   This is true what I have been preaching, that Jesus Christ is the light of God. This is true, that someday I will be welcomed into the glorious light of the Presence of God.

Another story. Dag Hammarskjold was Secretary General of the UN many years ago in about 1961. He wrote a book entitled Markings , notes of his life as Secretary General of the United Nations and also a spiritual diary of his spiritual journey. Hammarskjold was a mystic, believing in the mystery of life and the mysteriousness of God. In his diary, he wrote the following words: “Summoned to carry it; alone to assay it; chosen to suffer it; free to deny it. I saw for one moment the sail in the sun storm, far off on a wave crest, bearing from land. For one moment, I saw….”   I love those words, “From that moment, I saw the sail in the sun storm, I saw.” And he continued, “From that moment, when I said Yes to Someone, I knew for sure that my life, in self surrender, had meaning and had a goal.”   Hammarskjold could not necessarily name that moment. That may be true for you as well. You had a visionary moment in your life, and you cannot pinpoint the exactness of the time of that moment, but you knew that your life, in self surrender, had a meaning and a goal.

My story’s not so dramatic.   (I’ve probably told you this one before, but just like in a long marriage we get to hear each other’s stories more than once.)   Our college chaplain took us up into the Beartooth Mountains in Montana for a retreat.   During the afternoon free time, I climbed up to a high place, a little grassy area on the side of an enormous mountain.   For some reason, with all that expansiveness surrounding—valley below, mountain peaks above—I became fascinated with the complexity of the close view of a little 2 foot square area of ground.   I spent a long time just noticing fully everything that was living in that tiny patch of earth and it was amazing .   I found a tiny little thing, about the size of three grains of rice stuck together, that was a pure, luminous amber color.  

I picked it up, thinking it was a rock or a gem, and then was overcome with the sudden understanding that it was alive .   It was extremely mysterious, unbelievably beautiful, this tiny, radiant unidentifiable living golden thing.   Words can’t really express what it meant to me; it was a sign of holy mystery hidden in the world, revealed to the attentive, but not fully comprehendible.   I lost the golden thingy as soon as I had absorbed the wonder of it.   Of course I lost it; you can’t bring something like that back into the real world.

Or can you?   I couldn’t get the thing physically into my pocket.   But all these years I have carried the memory of it like a diamond in the pocket of my heart.   It rides there, sparkling, whispering, “Don’t try to tell me there is no God.   My eyes have seen the glory.”

I think my experience was unique but not unusual.   Same for the vision of Jesus for the pastor at the ragged edge of his life, underwater with a broken neck; same for the former secretary general who saw the sail in the sun storm urging him to the horizon---unique but not unusual, as common as diamonds.   What a gift those encounters with holiness are.   But, you know, I don’t really think about my mountaintop experience all that often.   I wonder if you think of yours very often.  

Mostly you don’t need to bring those memories into consciousness.   You don’t need to be re-envisioning your visions every waking moment.  

They can stay deep in the pocket of the heart most of the time, hidden from the world’s view, even hidden from your view.

But there are times when you need to dig that diamond out from the pocket of your heart and let it speak to you again.   I was helping a colleague with his confirmation class last weekend when I met a youngster named J.   In the course of our conversation it came out that J. was not happy to be there, that his mother made him come, that he didn’t believe in God any more because he had become a true believer in science.   He found the claims of science to be more compelling than the claims of religion, and he didn’t really think God is real.

I was meeting J. for the first time Sunday night, but I’ve met him a million times before.   The flat, materialist, the-only-truth-is-quantifiable-truth vision of the world has adherents all over the place.   The true believers in science alone, representing what Huston Smith calls the “scientistic” world view, get great press and seem very smart and rational.   Proponents of the scientistic world view can be terribly convincing.   What proof do you have that God exists? they demand to know.   I’d guess that virtually every one of us has been tempted at times to join their ranks.

When we hear the siren call of scientism, or when the world’s darkness seems to be overshadowing any glimmer of divine radiance, that’s the moment to reach into the pocket of your heart and pull out that diamond.   Rummage through your memory, sift through the lint of doubtfulness, find that glittering experience of holiness and bring it out into the light.   Look at it from every angle and enjoy its pure beauty.   While you’ve got it there in the palm of consciousness, why not show it to your spouse?   Show it to your kids—they’ll more than likely have their own visions, eventually, but maybe they’ll be more open to it if they know about yours.  

Surely Moses carried the memory of the bright cloud from which God spoke to him in the pocket of his heart, and it gave him strength to face the chaos that awaited him at the foot of the mountain.   Surely Jesus was warmed by the memory of being infused with light while he agonized on the cross.   Surely Peter, James and John drew strength from their vision of shining Christ when discipleship got rough.

Just as surely God has given us glimpses of glory to bless us with strength for the journey.   Join me know in a moment of silence so that we may each reach into the pocket of our hearts, draw out a diamond, and give thanks.