“Religious Experience”
June 7th, 2009
Have you ever heard someone say, “I had a religious experience?” What does that mean? What are they talking about? I think a religious experience is any experience that connects us more deeply to God. They happen in our everyday lives more than we are aware. When Peter asked Jesus to help him walk on water, Jesus lovingly obliged. But, the storms came, Peter got nervous, and he started to sink. That is when he had a religious experience. As he sank, he cried out to Jesus and Jesus saved him. A religious experience is only meaningful when it is connected to the source of life - Jesus Christ.
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Matthew 14:22-33
1. I get to have a religious experience on an almost daily basis.
A. Dropping Corran off at school, giving the “I love you sign.”
B. Still puts a lump in my throat as I watch him walk off to school.
C. I don’t know why (is it due to a pain of my own childhood???).
D. Talking to my spiritual director recently, and he said something profound. I was lamenting feeling this ache.
E. His response…that is where true living happens. That is a religious experience.
F. Have you ever heard someone use that phrase, “religious experience?”
G. To some, this experience involves their conversion to Christianity. For others, it involves falling in love for the first time, or at least the most recent time.
H. I know some men, and I would count myself in this category, who describe the moment they see their bride walk down the aisle towards them on their wedding day as a religious experience
2. So what is a religious experience? A religious experience is any experience in the life of an individual or community where they are able to transcend the consciousness of their present situation and have a vision of the possibilities of God.
A. How is that for a wordy, high-fallutin description? Put simply, a spiritual experience occurs when we are allowed to see as God sees.
B. For example, during the New Year as we approached the year 2000, I went to the Grand Canyon with some friends…Here I found myself in the exact moment between night and day.
C. Sense not only of the vastness of the universe, but also an assurance of my place in it. It was an awesome moment. It was truly a religious experience.
3. A religious experience, than, is a glimpse of a future hope based on the present reality of God’s gracious love. To use the words of the old hymn, “Blessed Assurance,” a spiritual experience is a “foretaste of glory divine.”
A. And it is an important part of Christian development. Howard Clinebell, a pioneer in the field of pastoral care, in his hierarchy of spiritual needs, lists ”having regular moments of transcendence” as a human spiritual need.
B. I am aware that, there are probably as many people here that have had what they might call a “religious experience” as there are people here who have not had one.
C. Gospel lesson – sheds some light on religious experiences. First, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. Any time a person walks on water, I consider that a religious experience.
D. In our story we see Peter, doing what Peter is so good at, being impulsive, not thinking ahead, and not understanding the full breadth of what is going on around him.
E. In the midst of the storm on the lake, Peter decides that he is going to coerce a spiritual experience out of Jesus. He is going to make Jesus prove his power.
F. It should be noted that just prior to this story, Matthew records the famous episode of the feeding of the 5000, when Jesus fed 5000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. And yet, even after that, Peter still wants a demonstration of Christ’s power.
G. Jesus lovingly obliges, and summons Peter to come to him. And while Peter was focused on Jesus, he was actually able to walk on water.
H. The gospel records that when Peter “noticed the strong wind, he became frightened,” and started to sink.
4. And here is the heart of the spiritual experience. How often in our lives do we become enamored of an experience itself, and completely forgotten the source of the experience?
A. How often do we have a spiritual experience, or a moment of personal insight or clarity, and then forget it when fears or worries distract us? This is what happened to Peter.
B. Remember, it wasn’t the wind that made him sink, it was that he took notice of the wind. He allowed the power of the wind to make him forget the power the of Christ. Because he was enamored of the experience, rather than connected to the source of the experience, he was easily distracted.
C. In the film Grand Canyon – Steve Martin plays a movie director who specialized in violent action dramas. He is in the hospital because he is a victim of the violence he portrays on the screen. He has been shot in the leg by a carjacker.
D. Unable to sleep, he stares out the window of his hospital room until he watched the sun rise. For him, this becomes a spiritual experience. The sunrise was so pure, so unmanufactured, and so real, that he is deeply moved.
E. He is convicted of his personal contribution to the violence in our world, renounces his past, and vows to make movies that have a more socially redeeming message. Lasts just a short time. The problem for the character is that, aside from the religious experience, he has no connection to the source of the experience. He had no framework in his mind with which to understand his religious experience. He had no way of putting it into its proper context. He had no underlying faith, or vision.
F. And without that, it was just a beautiful sunrise. So, like Peter, when the distractions and worries of the world came into view, all faith in the religious experience was lost.
G. By the end of the movie, the character has returned to his old ways. In fact, he is even more cynical than when he started. He has completely forgotten his religious experience.
5. Fortunately, for Peter, as he began to sink into the sea, he remembered not the experience, but the source of the experience. He called out to Jesus, “Lord, save me!” And Jesus did.
A. Now, I want to assure you, that it doesn’t take something miraculous like walking on water to have a spiritual experience. In fact, most spiritual experiences are not necessarily based on a miraculous event, but on how a person views a perfectly natural event.
B. A sunset, or a sunrise, the splendor of the Grand Canyon, the birth of a child, all of these events hold within them the promise of a religious experience.
C. Story of Jude in Little League. It was truly a religious experience because there was a deeper value present.
D. It is the person whose eyes are focused on Jesus Christ, the author and creator of spiritual experiences, who will be able to see them for what they truly are.
E. For the person whose love for their family is grounded in Christ’s love for the world, the promise of regular moments of transcendence where a child or spouse is seen not from the perspective of the humdrum duties of life, but in the light of God’s radiant love, will be a reality.
F. For the person who chooses to walk not according to the selfish or materialistic standards of the world in which we live, but chooses instead to walk the narrow road, guided only by Christ’s love, religious experiences will be a by-product of your daily life.
G. For it is not the rarity or miraculousness of a religious experience that defines it as something to be desired. It is the fact that the religious experience is grounded in the every day experience of the love of God in Jesus Christ that makes it something to be desired. For in connecting with the religious experience, we connect with Christ. And in so doing, we connect with the source of all that is good. And that is indeed a religious experience. Amen.
Sermon delivered at Light of the Canyon United Methodist Church Anaheim Hills – June 7, 2009.
