The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

+ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Annie Dillard wrote about what the demand of life with God is like. For Annie, it is a willingness to step into a space of profound unlearning. The act of seeking God requires nothing less than an act of humility to step into the unknown by faith. In concluding her thoughts, she writes a beautiful metaphor, “You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”[1]

The motion towards God involves stepping into a luminous darkness. A darkness of humility, of recognizing our limited knowledge, our depending wholly on God. In this space, our stiff hearts begin to bend Godward. But it is a challenging step. It is a risky step.

Today, Saint Peter proclaims – in a moment of profound, and perhaps shocking clarity, the truth of who Jesus Christ is: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16)

It wasn’t so long ago that Peter wantonly threw himself off a rocking boat in the pitch black of night to seek his Lord. In a way, he stepped into that deep darkness of faith, and in so doing walked on water with Jesus.

But something changed for him, on that rocky boat and the calm waters after Christ’s arrival. The disciples worshipped Christ on that boat. They stepped outside into the darkness and found God. The disciples were being, gradually, transformed by their act of following Jesus. Their stiff hearts were being bent Godward.

The Christian life of faith is a life progressively transformed by God. This transformation leads to “fear of God,” a profound understanding of the goodness of God in the midst of the struggles of this world. This progressive clarity of spiritual vision, so to speak, empowers us to act boldly in the face of evil, and properly act as the Body of Christ.

The life of faith begins not by us, but by God. 

Saint Peter rightly identifies who Jesus is. Jesus says to him, in response, “Blessed are you… for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17). Peter’s clarity and capacity to identify Jesus’s identity is brought about by God, not Peter.

Faith begins with God, not us.

Faith is a gift from God through which we are empowered to offer ourselves back to the living God, the source of light and life. This is important because it decenters the self, and centers God. It is a humbling act. It emphasizes our fundamental reliance on God for all things, including even the most basic of things – which is faith.

Our hearts, however, can – indeed must – be prepared to receive this gift from God. Our capacity to receive faith happens, as with the disciples, through proximity and encounter with God in Christ. It happens, as Annie Dillard might say, by stepping into the darkness that we may see the starlight. 

It happens in an act of self-offering.

Saint Paul writes today about the central act of faith – that we, “by the mercies of God” (again centering God) present our bodies “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1).

A sacrifice offered to God. This is a great risk which faith endears us towards. This is the darkness which Dillard speaks of one needing to step into, in order to see the starlight.

The risk is that we would willingly offer our self to be changed, and we tend to not like change very much. But we offer our very selves the one who seeks our wholeness, that we may be “transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” (Romans 12:2)

But to which direction are we transformed? For what purpose?

One of the most shocking aspects of the Christian life is that, in baptism, we are joined mystically to Christ. Our core, our very being is changed in the sacrament of baptism – what is known in theological jargon as an ontological change.

In baptism, I am no longer become merely me. Rather I become we. “So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another.” (Romans 12:5)

This means that in our life of faith, we are progressively unveiling by the grace of God that shocking reality that I am really a we, that we are really united to Christ, and that, my friends, is a rattling and shocking and risky thing to be because what this means – fundamentally – is that when you hurt, I hurt; when you are oppressed, I am oppressed; that when you are held in joy or sorrow, I am held in joy or sorrow.

My individuality is suddenly exposed to many, many, many more people.

In Christ, I am expanded, I am encompassed and collapsed as a we. And while on this side of heaven I do not live this appropriately, the truth of this does not change. 

When our lives shift from “I” to “we,” we begin to realize that another person’s suffering is our own suffering, and it is Christ’s suffering, nailed to the cross.

When, in a life steeped in prayer and empowered by the sacraments, we begin to comprehend this truth; as our hearts begin to bend in that Godward manner chastened and awed in the luminous darkness of faith, the outcome is one in which our inward and outward actions and orientations lead us to a natural fear of God.

Fear, in the more traditional sense, of a profound and humbling awe.

And who, in today’s readings, show us what the fear of God looks like if not the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah in Exodus?

The Israelites are now enslaved by Pharaoh of Egypt. Pharaoh has ordered the midwives to kill the male children born to the Israelites (Exodus 1:16).

“But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.” (Exodus 1:17)

This chapter is one which centers the actions of faithful women continuously resisting the horrifying commands of state-sponsored child-killing. The power to stand up to evil, true and cosmic evil as seen by what Pharaoh has commanded, flows out of Shiphrah, Puah, and the other midwives because they “fear God.”

That is, they rightly understand and subsequently live their lives knowing that their identity is first given by God; they stand with clear vision of who God is, and what the goodness of God is, and what the sacrifice of God demands in the face of such horror commanded by the King of Egypt.

They risk their very lives to subvert and usurp the evil commanded them. They do so empowered by a heart which is transformed, no doubt, in the crucible of faith, in that blinding darkness which is to come and know the living God.

These women show us the natural outcome of faith. They understand the truth of the cosmos, that awe and humility before God leads them to be bearers of light amid the evil which whirls and whips in this world.

“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”

If we want to live a life with God, then we necessarily need to step into that great darkness of unknowing, of faith, of sacrifice, of offering. In so doing we come to realize our identity, founded first and foremost in Christ, moves us from an “I” to a “we.”

We become a people whose identity, rooted in God, is empowered to resist the death-dealing ways of the world. We become like the Hebrew Midwives of Exodus, like Shiphrah and Puah, who resist death and bring life. This is the long arc of a life of faith.

Of a life rooted in prayer. In the Holy Scriptures. In the Sacraments.

We step into the luminous darkness and offer what little we have – our very selves. It is risky. And the payoff is wholeness, true sight, clarity. The capacity to utter, much as Saint Peter did, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Amen.

 [1] Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, (HarperCollins, 1988), 43. In her essay “An Expedition to the Pole.”