Acts 7:55-60
“Show Me the Father”
Preached Sunday, May 7, 2023
As many of you know, I had the opportunity to take a trip to Turkey this past Fall as part of a Conference-led continuing education trip.
By far my favorite place was in the city of Pamukkale, which went by the ancient name of Hierapolis. Pamukkale means cotton clouds and it is a UNESCO world heritage site for these calcium deposits that cascade down a hill. It looks like ice and you’d think the water would be freezing cold but it’s not - it’s calcium and the water is actually famously lukewarm. Which, when St. John wrote in Revelation about lukewarm Christians - guess what, it was directed toward Christians who lived in this region. Anyway, it is actually the only sight left like it in the world. There used to be more but climate change has dried them up. And even the ones in Pamukkale have been affected by extreme drought. Here is a picture I took but here is what they used to look like. They actually truck in water on a regular basis and spray parts of the side of the hills so that the cotton clouds don’t evaporate.
So let’s take a minute here and talk about St. Phillip. Phillip was one of the 12 Apostles and is known for spreading the Gospel through Greece, Turkey, and Phrygia. And the extra-Biblical tradition goes that, in about 80 BCE, Phillip, while preaching, converted the wife of the city proconsul and this upset her husband so he and his companions were crucified on a hill - Phillip continuing to preach the Gospel even as he hung from the cross. Other tellings have him beheaded. So this spot that the tour guide said we could take a walk to, was the believed site of his martyrdom, his tomb, and then a church that was built there to venerate him.
Now, keep in mind, it was like 104 degrees in the shade on this day. So at the time only me and one other person were crazy enough to make the trek up the hill in the heat. And here are some pictures - and there are actually two ruins of churches. There is the first that was built not long following the martyrdom of Saint Phillip and then the church that was built right next to the site of the first church when the first church was destroyed by an earthquake…and again, here are some pictures…
And so, let’s stop on this beautiful image that doesn’t do it justice but you can tell - God was showing off that day. And while looking out at this scene, at or near the site of his martyrdom I prayed the prayer to St. Philip - those are prayers that traditions that place a higher emphasis on the veneration of saints have - and this is the prayer:
“O Glorious Saint Philip, at the Last Supper you said to Jesus, ‘Lord, show us the Father and it will be enough for us.’ Help us make this our prayer also and to seek God in all things. Obtain for us the grace to know the Father and Jesus Christ whom He has sent - for in this does eternal life consist. Amen.”
And in that moment, in that experience, I had no doubt that I had been shown the Father. That God was revealing Godself to me in that beautiful and ancient space, through the natural world and that feeling of thinness between this world and the next - that was the presence of God. Through light breaking through the clouds. An experience of being shown God’s presence in this world.
Admittedly, many of us find it easy to see God in the natural world. And there is nothing wrong with this! The God of creation wants to reveal Godself to us and I believe, made creation expressly to convey beauty and wonder. And that’s actually one of our stated values here at Grace: “Beauty through Wonder.” That we see the beauty in the natural, created world around us and through that, wonder at the beauty and Divinity of the Creator.
But what about the places where it’s a little harder to see God? That day, on that hill in Pamukkale, I saw God. And yet…it was a little strange when I remembered that this was actually the site of a pretty gruesome and tortuous murder. And we’re reminded of the darkness of the human heart, of our capacity to hurt one another, with today’s reading from Acts - the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, the first martyr of Christianity. When you think about humans hurting other humans, our capacity for violence, our tendency to hurt and even kill - where is God in that?
As easy as it is to see God in nature, in beauty, in love and blessings and miracles…what about all the turmoil, strife, war, disease, death, and pain in this world? Do you ever look at our world, see the headlines, see the news - or even see what’s going on in your own life - and wonder, “Where ARE you God?”
It is then we pray, “Show me the Father.”
It makes me think of the mystic St. John of the Cross and his poem, “Dark Night of the Soul.” He writes of the soul’s journey through dark nights and eventually seeking and experiencing union with God in those dark places. The poem itself was written by John when he was a prisoner. The phrase “dark night of the soul” has come to refer to those trials that we go through in life, our darkest, most “Where are you God?” moments, that, through it all, we come to experience God more closely than before, and through it all, our relationship with God grows stronger than it did when all was seemingly well.
I also think of St. Julian of Norwich (side note: I really just wanted to see how many times this Methodist preacher could work in Saints into her sermon - I’m up to 5 and I couldn’t let them all be men so here’s one final saint). St. Julian fell gravely ill with what was thought to be the black plague and she thought she was going to die, she was administered last rites and her priest and mother sat by her bed for 6 days. And in her illness she had 16 visions of God’s divine love in which she claims she fully experienced the suffering and love of Christ’s crucifixion. When she woke, alive and not dead, when she woke from that near death experience, from then on she had a deeply mystical relationship with God and was forever changed.
To be clear, I don’t think God causes dark nights of the soul, near death experiences, or the depths of human pain and darkness in the world. God does not inflict suffering on us and the world to teach us lessons - God doesn’t work like that. But because we are human, at some point - actually more like points, plural, in our lives, we will be staring into the void of ourselves, our lives, and our world and we will ask, "Where is God in all this?” And I believe, it is then, we can pray the words that St. Phillip gave to us from today’s Gospel reading, “Show me the Father.” And God will reveal God’s self to us.
Because while it is easy to see God in the light, God is also in the darkness. While it is easy to see God in beauty, God is also there in the middle of the ugliness of the world. While it is easy to see God when all is going well, God is there when everything falls apart. There to cry and lament and rage with us. There to wipe away our tears, there to catch us when we fall. There to just BE with us and reveal God’s self to us. Cause there is no where in this world, no situation too heartbreakingly awful, no depravity too deep, literally no where in this world - where God is not. As the Psalmist said in Psalm 139:
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and night wraps itself around me,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
Let our prayer be, in every situation, in light and in darkness, in joy and despair, on days wen it is easy to see God at work and on days we can barely even believe - let our prayer always be, “Show me the Father.”
Amen.
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