Nine years ago, on September 12, I knelt before Bishop Hugo and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. I had tears streaming down my face and Bishop Hugo said to me, “Are you happy?”
I could only manage just one word, “Very.”
Sometimes words aren’t enough. The joy that I felt that day is indescribable. I can tell you that it felt like standing under a waterfall, but instead of water flowing over me, it was the Holy Spirit. I can tell you that it was humbling, that it brought me to my knees literally. I can tell you that the presence of God that day was so strong that I could barely stand it. That it was the happiest I had ever been in my life, but that that joy was so strong—to live in that joy for longer than a minute, would have burned me out and left me a shell.
Our human selves are just not designed for that sort of thing.
I could tell you all of that and I still wouldn’t come close to describing how it actually felt.
Sometimes words just aren’t enough.
Sometimes when I can’t find the right words, I look to the great poets to help me out.
For example, no one expresses the joy I feel over God’s creation better than poet E.E. Cummings.
He writes:
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Specifically, it is these last two lines that I was thinking of when reading today’s reading from Job 42:1-6. Let me build some context for you.
Chapter 42 falls near the end of the Book of Job. The Book of Job begins, of course, with God bragging about how wonderful Job is. And He’s not just bragging to anyone, He’s bragging to Satan otherwise known here as the Adversary.
Satan responds basically, “Well, of course Job loves You. He has everything he could ever want. But take all that away from him and I bet he starts cursing you.”
And God answers, “Well, all right, let’s see what happens.”
And so God gives Satan permission to take everything from Job. His sheep and servants are burned in a fire. His camels are stolen. His children die in a freak windstorm that destroys the house in which they had gathered. And finally, God gives Satan permission to take from Job his health.
Job’s wife begs him to curse God.
His friends tell him he must have done something to deserve such treatment.
Job is all alone.
And never curses God.
He does, however, question God, and this is where we get the readings from today.
In Job 40, God asks Job this in verse 9, “Have you an arm like God?” and then in the subsequent chapter, gives one example after another of just how many ways Job is not God. Job is nothing like God. Job can’t achieve even one, one-millionth of what God can do. Why then should God have to justify Himself to Job? Job couldn’t even begin to understand God.
And Job, presumably, just stands there and listens and finally in chapter 42, says in verse 2, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” And then in verse 5, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you ….”
To borrow a phrase from our own time … Job is what we would call, “woke.”
But listen again to verse 5, Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you ….”
And listen again to the poem by E.E. Cummings. He writes, “(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened).”
We might call the similarity between the two men’s experiences in being woke to God … synchronicity. Did Cummings intentionally echo Job in his poem? Possibly. Or is it simply that these words are universal to someone who has experienced the presence of God?
“Now the eyes of my eyes are opened,” Cummings writes.
Imagine Mary standing in front of the empty tomb when Jesus appears to her.
Now the eyes of my eyes are opened.
Imagine Thomas touching Jesus’ wounds.
Now the eyes of my eyes are opened.
Imagine Peter on the fishing boat, staring off at the shore, at the man who told them where to cast their nets.
Now the eyes of my eyes are opened.
Imagine Paul, blinded on the road to Damascus, having his vision restored.
Now the eyes of my eyes are opened.
What Job, what E.E. Cummings, what Mary and Thomas and Peter and Paul show us is that belief in God, standing in His presence is a fundamentally sensory experience. Mary hears Jesus say her name. Thomas touches the wounds of Christ. Peter sees Jesus and hears him from the boat. Paul’s vision is both taken and given back to him by Jesus.
For those who experience the presence of God, words are not enough.
For the disciples, Mary’s testimony that Jesus has risen—her words—are not enough to sway them.
For Thomas, the word of his brothers—the disciples—that Jesus has risen, is not enough to sway him.
Words are not enough.
Jesus has to be experienced.
God has to be felt.
The moment has to be lived in.
The day of my confirmation, I experienced God in a way, quite frankly, that I have not experienced since. I lived in a moment that was completely filled by God. I lived in a moment where doubt did not exist.
And this, I think, is what Heaven must feel like.
Amen.
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