Riding Towards Iona

A Sermon for a Scottish Episcopal Church Liturgy

(Audio .MP3)

Then Jesus cried aloud: ‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.’

It was George Bernard Shaw who once said that "England and America are two countries separated by a common language." It's said that at one meeting of the Allied leaders during the Second World War, negotiations were brought to a standstill by differing meanings of the verb "to table." In the U.S. Senate, to table a bill means to take it off the agenda, while in the Parliament, to table means to open it up for discussion. Roosevelt and Churchill found that they were speaking past each other because the words they heard the other using meant the opposite of what they thought.

Misunderstandings aside, I have to tell you honestly that Shaw was wrong about England. We have trouble understanding each other from time to time, but England doesn't hold a candle to a certain other country. A country with accents so thick you can cut them with a knife, a country with the most inexplicable cuisine imaginable, a country that thinks tossing logs around or rolling stones on a frozen lake -- while someone else runs ahead with a broom -- can be called "sport," a country called Scotland.




I was on a bus in Scotland once, trundling over the heath northwest of Glasgow. It was a local affair, tired and covered in dust and aside from a couple of us tourists the packed compartment was entirely made up of locals. Now the driver of this bus spent literally hours chatting to us over the loudspeaker and he would talk and talk and every so often the people on the bus would erupt into laughter. I think I understood one word in five. The stories and jokes kept coming, the riders kept laughing and I stayed thoroughly in the dark. The punchlines flew right by, dressed up in a Scottish cant that I cannot even begin to describe. The driver was speaking English, but it might have been Norwegian for all I understood it.

Sometimes when I read the Gospels, I feel like I'm back on that bus again. "I am the light coming into the world Jesus says," and yet the accent is too thick, the cadence too unfamiliar, the words so changed in their meanings from what I expect, that I miss the punchline. What do you mean Lord? What light, what resurrection, what life, what salvation, what gate? What do you really mean? How many times do I have to hear the "I am's" the parables, the signs, how many times do I have to receive the sacraments, pray, meditate, how many books do I have to read and theologies do I have to understand before I will get it?

There's a wonderful Zen koan about a monk who achieves enlightenment. It is a small monastery, high up on a secluded mountain. And the news spreads through all the other monks in the monastery that one of their brothers has achieved nirvana. They run down the hallways to go and see him and knock nervously on the door of his room. "Is it true that you are enlightened?" they ask, voices hushed in awe. "Yes, it is" he answers. "How do you feel?" "As miserable as ever," says the monk.

I've studied theology for a few years now and the anthropology of religion for years before that. And I still have no idea what Jesus is saying half the time. I think that's the point of the koan, that enlightenment or salvation or eternal life are never quite what we expect them to be. That we work and toil and slave to achieve knowledge or wealth or status and that these things are "vanities, and chasing after wind."

Jesus says that he is the "light of the world," and that everyone who believes in him "will not live in darkness." But I'm not sure that this light gets any clearer as we get closer to it -- that it gets any better defined, that it gets any stronger. It's more like something you seek after, over and over again because you can't help yourself not to. It's like standing at the door and knocking, Jesus said, over and over again until you wake up the person on the other side. But one knock won't cut it -- you have to really keep pounding on that door, because the grumpy judge inside is asleep and not thrilled about your case anyway. But you keep knocking with the hope that someone will wake up, and see you as you really are, and have mercy on you for Christ's sake.

At some point I have to take comfort in the fact that I don't really get it -- that I'll never be able to convince myself with any degree of finality. I'll never forget how, one day in class, Louis Weil dismissed the controversy over children receiving communion. "The argument is that children don't understand it," he said to me "well I've been studying it for my entire life and I still don't understand it either!"

It's hard to argue with that logic. And yet I can't stop trying to understand it either, trying to understand what happened with this crucified peasant that got people so flustered, so overcome with passion that they suffered unbelievable cruelties to proclaim it. That a light had come into the world and banished the darkness.

At the end of that long, bumpy bus ride over the Isle of Mull I got off the bus and stepped onto a ferry. And when I stepped off onto solid ground again it was onto the soil of Iona. A small group of monks setup shop here in the 6th century. They tended their crops and flocks, did a whole lot of praying and meditating, and among other things, illuminated the Book of Kells. Iona is a funny place, a bit like the island in Lost actually, a place where time and space don't quite have the same meaning. A quick glance around the abbey might lead you to believe you'd wandered into a vortex and reappeared in the Middle Ages. The walls of the abbey itself are a mottled gray-brown stone, weathered and unspeakably ancient. The fields surrounding it are emerald green, studded from time to time with little off-white sheep, like a quietly grazing flock of clouds.

Iona is also a thin place. A place with spiritual power welling up like a spring. A shiver ran down my spine the first time I placed a foot on that holy ground. Mind you, I don't believe in "thin places" really, if you asked me straight I'd say that most of that talk is superstitious mumbo-jumbo. Except that I've been to one, and all I can say is that I felt the spirit with my toes.

That may be a strange analogy -- but we're all friends here -- so what the heck. My own spiritual journey is looking a lot like that bus ride to Iona. Along the way I miss a lot of what's being said. I struggle a lot with the day-to-day of praying to a God who is both light and shadow, who is both known and unknown, who speaks to me in a language I do not and cannot fully understand -- a call without words but full of spirit. I don't really get it Lord, except that I can do nothing otherwise. "Lord I believe, help my unbelief."

I stay on the bus because of my hope that one day it will stop, and we'll all file off, tourist and pilgrim, local and foreigner, seeker, skeptic and saint. And whether we got the jokes along the way, whether we heard the call in the light of day or the small-hours of the night, whether we knocked with trembling hands or beat on the door with passion, the only punchline that really matters, the only one that really counts in the end, is the one you understand in your toes. The light of God that speaks without words, and shatters the darkness of our yearning hearts.