"I let out a great 'whoopee!'...I knew that God had touched my life."
A man named Ed Clinch who lives in Peoria, Illinois, has received a Christmas coconut every year for the past twenty-five years. He has never known who the sender is or why the coconuts arrived in such a strange way. For example, one year his Christmas coconut was delivered by parachute into his front yard; another time it came by the hand of the Mayor of Peoria; yet another delivery was on the back of a trained German police dog.
Someone once asked Clinch if he thought he would ever discover who was responsible for the unusual gift. "No!" Ed replied with certainty, "and I really don't want to know. It would spoil the surprise."
With this fascinating story in mind, we continue our theme of recognizing and experiencing sacred moments in life; those short-lived times when we sense God's presence with us and our connectedness to Him, times when we cross the thin line which separates secular from sacred.
I suspect a spiritual crossing happened during the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee, at least for the steward of that famous wedding feast. Picture it. There's a big wedding in town, the reception was well underway, far too many guests had shown up and the wine was running low, a disaster-in-the-making.
Suddenly, the local carpenter's son, Jesus, arrives with his mother. Words are spoken and the servants are told to take jars of water into the banquet hall to the steward of the feast.
For some strange reason, they don't question the order and when the steward dips out the first glass, to his great surprise what was water is now wine. And to his even greater surprise, it was not the Gallo jug he'd been serving, but vintage Chateau Lafite Rothschild--the best that money could buy. The wedding party was revived and it continued on through the night. Every now and then as the steward dipped the new wine he would shake his head and smile. He knew something miraculous and mysterious had come his way and he didn't need to know how or why. He didn't want to spoil the surprise. He knew only that it was wonderful and resulted in a joy-filled party.
We often think that sacred and mystical moments just happen at solemn times and in sacred places, but the fact is they appear in such ordinary places and times that the great danger is that we will miss them.
A classic example of what I mean: Do you remember the old TV show, Candid Camera? There was one particularly poignant scene shot in a plain ordinary lunchroom. On a table in front of the hidden camera, Alan Funt had placed a vase with a special flower in it. An unsuspecting customer would sit down and start drinking his coffee or milk and then set it down close to the vase. At that point the "miracle" would happen. All of a sudden, that extraordinary flower would rear up out of its vase, arch over and start inhaling the customer's drink.
It was amazing how people dealt with this miraculous event. Most would just cast a furtive glance around the room to make sure nobody else had seen it, and then move to another table and try to look as if nothing had happened.
It was a dramatic and indeed sad experience to see unfold because it showed us how little prepared we are to be surprised by miracles and mysterious events. We don't expect them to happen in our ordinary lives and when they do (and they really do), we either analyze them out of existence or just don't see them, or worse yet, fearful of experiencing a sacred moment, we get up and move somewhere else, hoping nobody will notice. I wonder why this is so and why we struggle so with allowing mystery and miracles into our lives?
One clear reason is that most of us have discovered that life is hard. We've had to work hard for what we have and so have lost that childlike ability to accept extravagant and free gifts, as children accept them, freely given and freely accepted. We want to earn or pay for what we get. Maybe we don't think we deserve a sacred moment with God and maybe we don't even believe it's possible anymore and we rationalize the sacred away.
I suspect another reason that we miss holy times is that we don't expect them to be joyous surprises--happy moments of healing.
I remember coming out of a doctor's office a few years ago after being told that all the tests were negative. There were no problems, the disease was not there, I was healed and whole again. I stood there in the cool morning air, not knowing how to feel or what to say. Part of me wanted to just ignore the whole business and get on with my life as if nothing had happened. But the better part emerged and I experienced a joy-filled spiritual moment of wonder and surprise. I let out a great "whoopee!" and as I ran to the car I knew that God had touched my life. I was, as C.S. Lewis put it, surprised by joy. I didn't need to know how or why, only that I was okay.
As I continue to explore my own struggles with letting God's miraculous presence come into my life, I'm aware that my attitude is a part of my shortsightedness. I've learned that as we grow older and "wiser," we become like farm animals who are fenced in by thin one-wire electrical fences. Once we've been stung once or twice by life, we stay put. We don't challenge the fence and explore the world around us anymore, even when the electrical power is shut off. So we live much of our life behind self-imposed fences which seemingly mark the boundary between secular and sacred space.
And, above all, the Wedding Feast at Cana tells us the good news that through the love and in the presence of Jesus Christ, God wants us to live joy-filled, happy lives, experiencing as many graceful moments as we will allow ourselves to have.
A final and closing story which kind of wraps all this up for me, as told by friend, Don Shelby.
A few years ago, a fifty-eight-year-old woman was driving home one night on State Route 12 in Ohio. She was quietly minding her own business, when suddenly her headlights illuminated the side of an old oil storage tank revealing a portrait of Jesus' face.
She stopped her car to take a better look--to see if her eyes were deceiving her, but sure enough, there it was, clearly outlined on the oil tank--the face of Jesus. Overcome by the miracle of the vision, she was afraid to tell anyone lest they ridicule her, so she kept the experience to herself for a week.
Finally, she could stand it no longer and shared the discovery with her best friends. Word spread and before long the portrait became a local attraction. Time magazine sent a photographer and experts argued that the headlights of her car cast shadows on the rusted surface of the tank, all right, but what did they really show? None of it mattered to the woman. The issue was not whether it could be proved true or false, whether it was rust or her active imagination. Nothing would spoil her surprise. She had beheld the face of Jesus and believed. It was for her a sacred moment to be treasured for all time. Amen.
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