November 1, 2020: Thin Places
Revelation 7:9-17
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Blevins
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing,
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
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Have you ever experienced the presence of God in a surprising way? In a profound way? In a way that you might wish to communicate, but what you experienced cannot be captured in any adequate way with words?
If so, you probably understand what the ancient Celtic people called “thin places,” places where the veil between this world and the spiritual realm seems especially thin—where the separation between earth and heaven seems to dissipate, if but for just a moment. The Celtic people would mark these places by stones—Stonehenge, for instance, is thought to have been built by the Druids, the high priests of the Celtic people, to mark one of their sacred “thin places.”
In the Bible, we read of many “thin places” (though they aren’t called that) in both the Old and New Testaments. In the New Testament, for instance, we read about Jesus with three of his disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, where Elijah and Moses seem to pass through the thin veil from heaven to earth to join them on the mountaintop. In the Old Testament, we read about Jacob’s ladder, Jacob’s vision in a dream of a ladder between earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending, and the Lord stood beside him. Jacob is recorded as saying: “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” and “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17) Jacob marked the placed with a stone.
Thin places don’t have to be places at all. Art and music can transport you to some other place—maybe you’ve experienced transcendence through art.
This week I was reminded of a transcendent experience I once had through the arts. My first-grader’s art project was to replicate Monet’s “Water Lilies.” Watching him work on that, crayons on printer paper, took me back to a moment, a “thin place,” when I was in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. I walked into the room that housed Monet’s “Waterlily Pond,” and though I had seen it in art books, seeing it in person filled me with so much awe that it took my breath away.
You can experience this kind of awe through nature. Or you might wake up from a dream, like Jacob did, believing that you experienced heaven in some powerful way that’s impossible to express.
And then there’s a time of the year the ancient Celtic people believed to be a “thin place”— October 31-November 2. Western Christianity calls this triduum “Allhallowtide;” it includes All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints, and All Souls days—“where past, present, and future intertwine, and the veil between worlds becomes permeable.”[1] Today, November 1, is All Saints Day. I don’t think the Chapel has traditionally observed All Saints Day even though many churches observe the holy day on the Sunday closest to November 1. But this year, given that November 1 falls on a Sunday, it seems fitting, especially in light of 2020 and the many challenges we have faced as a world, as a nation, as a community, and as a church family.
The 827 white flags in our church yard represent the 827 lives lost to COVID-19 in Pinellas County to date. 827 families who are grieving. 827 empty chairs at the table during the upcoming holidays. On our altar we have one more flag; the invitation is to allow that one flag to represent someone or ones you have loved and lost.
But the good news today, is that as people of faith, we know that death does not have the final say. We believe that Jesus conquered death, and that life and death are all part of the great unfolding mystery of salvation.
And occasionally, in some thin place, people of faith catch a glimpse of that spiritual reality, as did John in this beautiful passage I read from Revelation 7. While a lot of people are weirded out by Revelation and its talk of the beast and the anti-Christ and 666, the ultimate message of the book of Revelation is a vision of hope, beyond our current reality.
For the first recipients of the book of Revelation, the current reality was the oppression they experienced under a brutal Roman occupation. The hope in the book, for them, was the eventual demise of the Roman Empire. And in the passage I read earlier, we see a beautiful, worshipful celebration—a multitude (not social-distanced!) from “all tribes and peoples and languages” gathered along with the angels—and they are worshipping God. And they are singing, like, out loud, without masks! They are those who came out of “the great” ordeal. And now there is no more hunger, no more thirst, and God wipes every tear from their eyes. What a beautiful vision of some future reality!
And on this All Saints Day, as we remember so many who have passed from this world to the next, we claim this vision as our own. We can envision those we love, those who have gone on before, as a part of that great multitude, a part of the massive, diverse choir singing their joyful, maskless songs.
We can claim this vision, because as an ancient Celtic saying goes, “Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places, that distance is even smaller.”
On All Saints Day, this “thin place,” perhaps we can use some holy imagination to envision those whom we have loved and lost as close to us, participating with us in the sacrament of holy communion.
So as the choir sings, I invite you to prepare your heart. Allow yourself, for just a few moments, to imagine this moment in time as a thin place, where the distance between heaven and earth is so faint, that you can envision the great cloud of witnesses participating with us as we share the bread and the wine, the body and the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.
[1] Jan Richardson, https://paintedprayerbook.com/2014/10/24/it-is-hard-being-wedded-to-the-dead/