Mark 9:2-9
While we lived in Pennsylvania, we
discovered certain places that became special to our family, places we enjoyed
spending time, and one of these was a state park called World’s End.
Interesting name, right? The place at the end of the world.
Sometimes we would drive up to World’s
End on a whim, on a summer day when we had no commitments and felt the desire
to do more than the usual routines. It took a little over an hour to get there.
We would drive up to about the highest point on the mountain and turn left into
the park. We would park our car and get out. Now, you could walk over a little
way to the left and there was a swimming hole that was very popular. It was a
dammed area of the river, and in the summertime there were always people there.
But when we got out of our car, we preferred to go over to the right.
When you walked a little way to the
right there was the river heading down the mountain – here, only a narrow, shallow
stream. Never crowded, sometimes we were the only ones there. Clear water,
rocky ground, there were little areas where the water moved rapidly over the
rocks, creating some fun for the kids. Find the right spot and sit back in the
water and take a little ride. I mostly sat on the flat rocks at the river’s
edge and watched the kids play. It felt extraordinary, like I was in a thin
place.
Do you know what a thin place is? I’ll
tell you what it is not. It’s not a place where you find Thin Mint Girl Scout
cookies. It’s not a place for thin people. It’s not a long narrow stretch of
land. A thin place is a place where you are more likely to notice God.
It is a term that seems to have
originated in Celtic spirituality. They have a saying: heaven and earth are
only three feet apart, but in thin places the distance is even shorter.
You stumble into a thin place. They
aren’t marked by signs or labeled on maps; they don’t have predictable common
characteristics. I found them beside the stream at World’s End and also in the
busy, tourist-filled Sacre Coeur Basilica at the top of Montmartre in Paris.
You are as likely to stumble on a thin place in a city park as in a cathedral.
One never knows when or where the spirit of God is likely to press against the invisible
membrane separating heaven and earth.
I think you have to be ready to
experience a thin place, but that doesn’t mean you need to prepare yourself for
it. On the contrary, you don’t go in with expectations; you simply enter it
open to any experience. And when you do enter a thin place, simply being there,
you experience a sort of jolt – not like an electric surge, but just a sudden
awareness of otherness all around you. A thin place changes the way you think,
the way you feel, the way you are – it is transformative. And it is a place you
want to go back to, you long to be there again.
In the story of Jacob in Genesis, on
his journey to Laban when he stopped for the night in the middle of nowhere,
and he rested his head on a rock for a pillow, he dreamed of angels climbing up
and down a staircase between heaven and earth. In the morning he marked the
place by setting his stone pillow upright as a pillar. He called the place
Bethel – house of God. Surely, this was a thin place.
When Moses was tending his
father-in-law’s sheep at Horeb, also called Sinai, and something caught his
eye, he approached what looked to be a bush on fire. He heard a voice speaking
to him saying, “remove the sandals from your feet, for you are standing on holy
ground.” Surely, this was a thin place.
At this particular thin place,
centuries later, Jesus brought his friends, Peter, James, and John. He led them
up the high mountain and at the top he was, as the text says, transfigured. He
was transformed. He was revealed to them.
And Moses and Elijah, the twin pillars
of Israel, stood on either side of him. At this thin place, where the membrane
was stretched so thin Peter James and John could see right through it, they
witnessed the divinity of Jesus. And they heard a voice from heaven saying to
them, “This is my beloved Son – listen to him!”
And Peter was jolted by the
experience, knowing something was wholly different, but not knowing what to
make of it. He opened his mouth and said something about erecting structures to
house these three holy relics of Israel – Elijah, Moses, and Jesus. Was he out
of his mind? Maybe just disoriented – very disoriented.
But he was really just expressing that
desire any one of us would have, to hold on to this experience. I wish I could
bottle the essence of that gentle spot at World’s End Park and carry it with
me. I wish I could have put the feeling of Sacre Coeur in a scrap book and
revisit it now and then. The memories of these thin places fill me with
longing.
Perhaps that is exactly what they
should be doing.
For the experience one has at a thin
place is the privilege of glimpsing the glory of God. It is the foretaste of
the joy to come when we cross that barrier. It is the assurance that God is,
indeed, very close at all times.
The thin places offer us a revelation
of God, showing us that there is holiness, there is goodness, there is mystery
and divinity all over the world, really, if we have the vision to see it. Thin
places, when we step into them, show us that there is a different way of living
and being, seeing and hearing, in the world. It is a testament to the rightness
and goodness of these thin-place experiences that they leave us with such
yearning. We cannot stay in these places, but we can carry the essence, the
power of them with us in all that we do.
The voice spoke to Peter, James, and
John saying, “This is my beloved Son – listen to him!” and we ought to hear
this message too. It is a message for us: listen to him.
When you are in a thin place, you
become more aware of your surroundings. Your senses are heightened a little
bit, or maybe a lot. Even someone like me, who usually goes around with my head
in the clouds, lost in thought, enters a thin place and suddenly sees and hears
and smells and feels all that there is to see and hear and smell and feel. And
we say, “there is something about this place. Could it be that God is in this
place?”
My friends, God is indeed in those
thin places, but God is in every place. The experience of thin places may help
us to keep our eyes and ears and all our senses open and attentive, knowing
that God is present, God desires us to be near, and God will be revealed not
only in the thin places but in everyplace where we carry the desire to be in
God’s holy presence.
May Christ be revealed to you anew
each day, so that you may reveal the light of his glory wherever you go.
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