The Park Road Pulpit

She has been blind from birth. She has never seen her mother's face. Her father's smile. A sunset at dusk. The opening of a flower in bloom. But now, she "sees" in stereo sound.

The glasses she wears look a little like something out of Star Trek. There are no lenses in these glasses. Lenses would do her dim eyes no good. The lenses are, instead, equipped with ultrasonic transmitters and receivers. Like bats in the night, casting invisible, ultrasonic (inaudible) waves of sound to a 90-degree field of "vision," these waves bounce off objects within the field and echo back. Inside the glasses, a small processor translates the shape, size, and distance of the object described by these sound waves into "dynamic real-time neural image[s] of object space." So says the website of an amazing product called SonicVisioN.[1]

SonicVisioN is the result of forty-three years of experimentation and technological advance by an award-winning English scientist named Leslie Kay. Dr. Kay's inventions allow the visually impaired to "see" the field of view through sound. Working with these glasses over a period of time, the blind can learn to recognize objects by learning their "neural image" - that is, the computer turns an ultrasonic wave into an audible sound, which is played through headphones attached to the glasses, and the brain learns to discern the nuances of these translated sounds as identifiable objects. Over time, those who see with SonicVisioN can negotiate space, distance and depth, and can eventually locate an object within the field.

This amazing technology allows a person, blind from birth, a distinct, repeatable "auditory image" of any given object. Without first touching it, for example, a lamp can be recognized by looking in its direction. For the once-sighted person, these translated sounds can trigger the recall of the corresponding mental image, still stored in the brain. (If you once knew what a hammer looked like, the sound of its SonicVisioN shape will connect the image in your brain.)

Imagine being able to walk into a blind room and "see," and even recognize, the chair or the lamp or the sofa. Imagine, being able to walk into a room and negotiate the furniture, and bend over to pet the family dog, sleeping silently in the corner. SonicVisioN is being continuously improved, and its use for the blind is virtually limitless.

But you do not need to be blind to know that sometimes the most important things in life cannot be seen with our eyes. And we do not need space-age technology to experience Sound Seeing.

For old Eli, “It was the worst of times. And it was the worst of times.”[2] Eli was weary, worn down by sons who had disappointed him. Sons who had trashed the family name. Sons who had disgraced a father's hard-earned reputation. The weariness went deeper than his bones, and the drought he felt had nothing to do with water. A word of destruction and doom had already been pronounced: his sons would die for their sins; only Eli would live, yet he would live "weeping out his eyes, and grieving his heart."[3]

Yet day by day in that old Temple, Eli carried on in darkness. The darkness of worry, guilt, fear, grief over his two boys. The darkness of increasing old age - with its physical aches and pains and the encroaching loss of eyesight. The spiritual darkness of a day without a Word. This might have been the worst darkness of all – the darkness of the silence of God: "for the word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread." For the average Joe this may have gone unnoticed. But for Eli, the Priest of God, this was as thirst to the dying.

Ministry can be a lonely vocation. Eli existed, cloistered in a Temple, cold and dark, filled only with the presence of the Ark of God. (The ark was that ornamental box which contained the tablets of the ten words given to Moses. And due to folk lore and superstition, the box mostly contained the almost tangible fear of an Angry God.) Living in the shadows of doubt, over the failure of his sons, and in the shadow of the fear of the Almighty,[4] Eli’s priestly "calling" must have been unbearable at times. A day without a Vision, an era without a Word surely brought with it the self-imposed shame of failure for one whose job, whose calling, whose very life was given to such prophetic and mystical purpose.

I tried to preach today from John's gospel,[5] which is also a powerful story of calling. Philip, who has met this Jesus of Nazareth, finds his friend, Nathaniel, and brings him with excitement, "Come and see…" for "I have seen the face of God."[6] But I continue to be drawn to the old stories of ancient faith. The narratives of the Hebrew people, who struggled and searched, who failed and succeeded, who were comforted and afflicted, who seized and who were "seized by the power of a great affection."[7]

Today's story is rich for us as a people – a people in a new year, who stand at the beginning of a process of Visioning and discernment. As a people also seeking a “Word from God.” Did you notice all of the wonderful insights and ironies found in these words:

(A lamp was to burn in the Temple from dark till dawn, but I don't think this detail means simply that Samuel's call came before morning, do you?)…

•Young Samuel, the boy miraculously born of a barren mother and in gratitude given to God, did not yet "know the Lord," had not yet known God's "revelation"…

•Yet Samuel (who did not know the Lord) slept in the presence and power and fear and awe of the Divine ("where the ark of God was")…

(This is no detail of historical fact, but a powerful symbol meant to remind us of the persistence and completeness of the God's calling.)…

•Old, tired, dry, lonely, grieving, spiritually exhausted Eli, yet, perceives something that he cannot hear…

Did you hear it? This is the Word of the Lord thanks be to God! On the eve of this new day, I believe God’s Word is not rare. Maybe you will be the one to perceive it. Maybe you will be the one to hear it. Maybe it’ll take our community to understand it. I'm not sure who will be “Eli,” or who will be “Samuel” in this particular place, at this particular time, but I believe that the Lamp of God has still not gone out. I believe that there is a Word in this world that will still "make our ears tingle" -- if we can hear it.

On Friday morning I had locked myself out of the office, so at 7:30 am I went over to Caribou Coffee and sat down to read, while I waited for Anne Neal to get to the church and open up. As I sat there I was thinking of Jesus' call to Philip, and Philip's call to Nathaniel, and God's call to Samuel. I was thinking of Park Road Baptist Church. I was thinking of a so-called "Vision Team.” I was reading an essay that made use of some of the insights of a twelfth-century visionary by the name of Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard was born in 1098 CE, and her writings survive today, testifying to God's pulsing "viriditas" in the world. Veriditas can be translated as God's "greenness" in the world. Hildegard had a series of recurring visions, which began at the age of three and continued into her late seventies, in which she saw a "reflection of the living light" which bathed illumination on all people. Douglass Burton-Christie explains,

Veriditas is for Hildegard one of the key manifestations of the Spirit's creative power in the world. Thus, too, the "greening" of the soul and the greening of the world are two moments in a single continuous process. Attention to the Spirit means learning to attend to the living world in all of its palpable particularity. The "vision of God" emerges nowhere else but within that living world.[8]

As I sat in the noise and clamour of Caribou Coffee, the words, "palpable particularity" resonated in my ears. Two tables down a group of men talked jovially. One recounted for his friends the headaches of a recent kitchen renovation project, and the failure of his contractor to properly install his Corian countertops. At the table next to me, two executives spoke in the jargon of their world … "deliverables… opportunities… scenarios… preferred investments… ownership…" To my left, there was noise from the cash register and the sounds of coffee being served up, hot and with a smile.

It was like studying in a crucible, preparing for this sermon in a virtual laboratory of life. Around me was the cacophony of the urban environment which is our home, in all of its particularities – fellowship, commerce, laughter, anger -- and it is here, in this palpable (touchable, tasteable, smellable, real) world that God still comes in particularity (in very specific ways).

I do not believe that the Lamp of God has gone out, still. I do not believe that we are in a day when the Word of God is rare. I do not believe that visions are hard to come by. On the contrary, I believe that even in the noise and confusion and stress of a very specific place called Park Road Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, that amid the pressures and anxieties of a world always on the brink of some new war, God is still calling "as before."

But I do believe that it will make no difference to claim that God once "called" or that God still "calls" – unless I can be convinced and willing that God might just call me. (Carol Cramer. Bob Clare. Betty Poole. Parks Helms. Jean Veilleux. Mike Desmond. Anna Beth Woolley. Noah Sellers.) The god who is "out there" is a powerful idea, but he is not God. Only when the God of the "Deep" resonates with the God of the "Deep Within" – only when we recognize that we, individually, or we, collectively, might just be the palpable particularity that God needs to speak to this world -- only then will that word rightly be called a Living Word.

Sometimes at night, from her side of the bed, Amy whispers, suddenly, “Listen! Did you hear that?” After sixteen years, I’ve learned that Amy is always concerned about bugs and not burglars, but the words still always make my heart pound. And when she calls, I always have to get up, and do something. This is as it should be – anytime we try to See a Sound in the darkness.

[1] http://sonicvision.co.nz/

[2] Charles Dickens’, Tale of Two Cities, begins, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times…”

[3] The story of Eli and his sons can be found in the first chapters of 1 Samuel. This quotation is from 1 Samuel 2.33.

[4] I am playing a bit here with the idea of God as “Almighty,” which might lead to the kind of superstitious fear that I suggest surrounded the Ark, versus the concept of God as “continual presence.” Is God truly “all mighty” (can do everything), or is God, as revealed in the reality of our lives, better understood in terms of a gracious presence?

[5] The lectionary gospel reading for this Sunday is John 1.43-51.

[6] This phrase is not from the text, but from an old contemporary Christian song by Bob Bannister, entitled, “Come and See.”

[7] This is a phrase that Gordon Cosby has used to speak of a “call” from God.

[8] Douglass Burgon-Christie, “Learning to See: Epiphany in the Ordinary,” Weavings, Nov./Dec. 1996.

[9] Micah 6.8