Lent 4a 2026; 15 march
John 9:1-41; Jack Hardaway
I Give My Heart: The Apostles’ Creed part 4
CRAMMED WITH HEAVEN
So the story of the blind man, it turns out he wasn’t the one who was blind.
The question then quickly becomes, what am I choosing not to see?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning has a famous quote, from Aurora Leigh, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees, takes off his shoes / The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries”.
So often we walk on holy ground, and simply miss out on the whole thing.
But to be honest, I am a big fan of both: being bare foot and plucking blackberries.
But the wonder of the moment quickly passes unobserved, I am distracted.
The Holy Spirit. Life itself touching the world, everywhere, all time.
I believe. I give my heart to the Holy Spirit.
I wonder if I saw that presence all the time, if I would blow out all the sensory receptors in my brain, a glory overload.
Sometimes just plucking blackberries is all I can handle.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints.
We consider that section of the Apostles’ Creed today, the fourth part of a five part Lenten reflection.
This is the beginning of the third part of the Creed, the section on the Holy Spirit. The first two sections told the story of God Father and Son, creating, being born, dying, rising, ascending, returning as judge.
The Holy Spirit is different, we finish the history of creation and redemption, and we put on our detective hats and break out our magnifying glass as we look for the Holy Spirit in the world, we look for evidence. The Creed shows us a trail of clues, where the Holy Spirit is present in a glory overload.
Holy is a powerful word whose meaning we brush past too quickly.
It means set apart, different, unique, other. To be holy is to be what it is and nothing else, like nothing else. It is the language of distinctiveness, differentiation, honoring the difference.
The Spirit that is Holy, that is what it is and nothing else.
God is holy, unashamedly, unabashedly, God and nothing and no one else.
And that commandment for us to be holy as God is holy? It means to be who you are. Don’t be anybody else.
Be who we are made to be, who we are called to be, to be who we are becoming. Honoring the distinctiveness and uniqueness of everyone and everything that God has spoken into creation.
Reverence for the holy.
We find evidence of the Spirit of holiness in the Church being holy, in the Church being what it is and nothing else, the body of God inhabiting the world.
And the church is catholic.
Universal. Now let’s talk about that.
It has nothing to do with big C or little c, it has nothing to do with being Roman Catholic or Anglo Catholic, that’s like saying Universal but not really, it’s oxymoronic.
For the Church to be catholic means that it is for everyone, the Church belongs to everyone.
I don’t really know how to do that, or be that Church that belongs to everyone, but that is my problem that is always stretching me.
When I encounter someone who is truly foreign and strange to me, who weirds me out by being so surprisingly not like me, that is what I call a catholic moment. That strangeness is an encounter with the otherness of God, the strangeness of God, who is not like me.
For the Church to be truly catholic is for that encounter to be a normal everyday thing, it is about much more than the latest version of diversity, and inclusion, those words are too small. It is about communion with God in the other.
To be catholic is to preserve and shield and cultivate that encounter, a never ending vulnerability and openness to that holy presence. It is evidence. It is a clue that leads us closer to God.
And to live in that holy space, is to become part of the communion of saints.
It is a beautiful, awesome and comforting and challenging thing, to give our hearts to the communion of saints.
A table with the living and the dead through the body of Jesus, we never really lose each other, the communion is stronger than death, because the body of Jesus destroyed death.
You know that movie where that boy says, “I see dead people”? We break bread with the dead. In the Eucharist the living and the dead kneel together. The bread which makes us one is a serious thing, a glory overload.
It is more than a comfort. It is a challenge: to share the table. To share the table. It doesn’t have to make sense, we simply share. Faith is so much bigger than what I will ever know, it is crowded with all kinds of humanity and believers, and sinners of God’s own redeeming.
The trail of clues, the Holy Spirit leads us into holiness, it catholicity, into Church and into communion with the saints, one leading to the next.
We stop today with the Communion of Saints.
This trail of clues reveals that the Holy Spirit connects us in many ways, one to another, and to God. God is like that, the tie that binds. Be that binding, holy and catholic and crammed with heaven.
Next week that communion leads us into the greatest power in the universe, the forgiveness of sins, which is true liberty, and from there the trail leads us to the resurrection of the body and life everlasting and a great big Amen.
Be that binding.
Tune in next week for the conclusion. Same grace time, same grace channel.