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So Jacob called the name of the place Bethel,
saying, “I have seen God face to face and lived.”
Genesis 32:30

For most people, I think, religion is mainly associated with ethics.  Indeed, for the modern secularist, religion is only to be tolerated if it serves to advance the well-being of society.  But today’s Old Testament lesson reminds us that although religious faith has ethical consequences, its origin lies in something on an altogether different plane: an experience of the Holy, a numinous reality which provokes a reaction of awe and fascination. 
            This nameless reality may come upon us quite unexpectedly, even as Jacob, left alone by the ford of the Jabbok river, was suddenly challenged to a wrestling match by a nameless adversary, who vanished as day was breaking.  Such an uncanny experience leaves the recipient changed forever, even as Jacob ceased to be called Jacob and was called Israel (v. 28). 
            All the great religious founders and reformers traced their vocation to such an experience: Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan, Paul’s encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, Luther’s experience in the tower where he hurled his inkpot at the devil.  William James, in his classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience, writes as follows:
                        Churches, when once established, live at second-hand upon
                        tradition; but the founders of every church owed their power
                        originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with
                        the divine.

            Most of us, I suspect, would acknowledge that we do, in fact “live at second-hand on tradition.”  But we also long for that direct experience of God which lies at the origin of our faith.  Now experiences cannot be made—they just happen.  But fortunately their independence of our activity is not absolute but relative.  We can draw closer to them and thus deepen our experience of the divine and enrich our lives, both individually and as a parish. 
            Here at the Good Shepherd we share a common love for tradition, which is expressed in our continued use of the Book of Common Prayer.  But tradition, alas, as our empty churches testify, can lose its power of attraction if it is not continually revivified by infusions of that divine power to which the tradition itself owes it existence. 
            Religious experience is not some sort of self-gratification.  It bears fruit in the external world, as our second reading (Luke l8:1-8) reminds us.  The parable of the importunate widow has to do with justice, an issue about which, in our own day, we are continually being reminded. 
            I recall hearing of an incident in South America where a group who were reading today’s gospel resolved to imitate the widow in the parable and to keep pestering a local official until he finally provided the village with an adequate supply of drinking water.  The energy for such persistence can only come from within, from an experience of God. 
            It is that experience, like Jacob’s experience by the Jabbok river, which brings about change, whether in our socio-economic environment or in our individual spiritual lives.            

October 21, 2007

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