Sermon Illustrations on presence
Background
Knowing our Being and the Ground of Being
Martin Heidegger said that being is presence. Whatever else this means, it suggests that in some way presence is a basic property of simply being. Everything that exists has presence by virtue of its being. Being is more straightforward for rocks, trees, and black holes than it is for humans. Inanimate objects are never tempted by false ways of being. They are aligned within their being, and consequently their presence is less ambiguous. This is also true for nonhuman living beings—for example, animals and trees—all of which remain closer to their natures than is true for most humans. As a result, their presence is also more pure and singular.
For humans, living our truth is much more of a challenge. First, we are profoundly alienated from our being. We forget what it is to stand in awe of being itself, and of our being in particular. We are lost in doing and tempted to believe that there is nothing more to us than this. This separation from our being also reflects our separation from Being itself.
At the core of our soul is an ache that is answered only in knowing both our being and the Ground of Being. But that ache is easily ignored and misinterpreted, and consequently we seldom are aware of this most fundamental level of our alienation.
Lacking Presence
In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling describes the challenge of experiencing God’s presence, even in the relatively slow world (in comparison to our own) of the fourteenth-century:
It is said that fourteenth-century philosopher and theologian Catherine of Siena once asked the Lord why he seemed so present to his people in the time of the Scriptures but seemed so absent in her own time.
God’s answer is as true today as it was then: [God seemed so present to people in biblical times] because they came to Him as faithful disciples to await His inspiration, allowing themselves to be fashioned like gold in the crucible or painted on by His hands like an artist’s canvas, and letting Him write the law of love in their hearts.
Christians of [Catherine’s] time acted as if He could not see or hear them, and wanted to do and say everything by themselves, keeping themselves so busy and restless that they would not allow Him to work in them.
Taken from An Unhurried Life: Following Jesus’ Rhythms of Work and Rest by Alan Fadling Copyright (c) 2013 by Alan Fadling. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Presence in the Universe
Now, in our lifetime, scientists are finding ever newer evidence for what some religious people called presence in the very organizing energy of the universe—from fractals, to holograms, to electro-magnetism, to force fields, to gravitation itself—all of which invite us into a certain degree of mystery and non-explainability—and also participation!
The great scientists are revealed in their contentment to live provisionally with a certain degree of mystery! I wish we clergy were as patient. We seem to like certainty and answers—now. In our too literal attempts to explain and control presence, we often explain it away, and most people just lose interest in the deeper journey because they are told, in effect, that there is no “deeper” to be had!
Meanwhile, the scientists still search for the pattern behind the patterns, the seeming vibrational fields that hold all things together. We from the religious world often call these vibrational fields the divine presence or perhaps the Holy Spirit. As usual, religion intuits and gives metaphor to what science is now confirming and illustrating on ever new verifiable levels. Remember, truth is one (Ephesians 4:4–5) and will necessarily and in time be seen from different angles and at different levels—with ever more appreciation. How blessed we are to live in our time! There are, however, few teachers who can honor the different levels at the same time.
Presence in the Universe
Now, in our lifetime, scientists are finding ever newer evidence for what some religious people called presence in the very organizing energy of the universe—from fractals, to holograms, to electro-magnetism, to force fields, to gravitation itself—all of which invite us into a certain degree of mystery and non-explainability—and also participation!
The great scientists are revealed in their contentment to live provisionally with a certain degree of mystery! I wish we clergy were as patient. We seem to like certainty and answers—now. In our too literal attempts to explain and control presence, we often explain it away, and most people just lose interest in the deeper journey because they are told, in effect, that there is no “deeper” to be had!
Meanwhile, the scientists still search for the pattern behind the patterns, the seeming vibrational fields that hold all things together. We from the religious world often call these vibrational fields the divine presence or perhaps the Holy Spirit. As usual, religion intuits and gives metaphor to what science is now confirming and illustrating on ever new verifiable levels. Remember, truth is one (Ephesians 4:4–5) and will necessarily and in time be seen from different angles and at different levels—with ever more appreciation. How blessed we are to live in our time! There are, however, few teachers who can honor the different levels at the same time.
Tolerating Absence Means Trusting Presence
Tolerating absence is, in essence, trusting presence—even when the one who is present to us is not physically present. Think of the two-year-old gradually loosening his clinging grasp to the leg of his mother as they dance around the house. Slowly, he allows himself longer periods of independent movement, but, at least initially, these bursts of independence are made possible only by periodic rushes back to mother for emotional refueling. Over time he ventures farther away for longer and longer intervals. Initially, he needs his mother to be in sight to keep his anxiety manageable, but soon he is able to tolerate absences that include not just physical separation but his mother being unseen.
This Place is Enough
A simple refusal motivates my argument: refusal to believe that the present time and place, and the people who are here with us, are somehow not enough. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act like dams that capitalize on our natural interest in others and an ageless need for community, hijacking and frustrating our most innate desires, and profiting from them. Solitude, observation, and simple conviviality should be recognized not only as ends in and of themselves, but inalienable rights belonging to anyone lucky enough to be alive.
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Melville House, 2020.
The World is Full of Presence
The world is full of presence. Every moment of life is crammed full of potential encounters with people and things that are present to us even though we may not be present to them: the presence of a city—vital, decaying, dangerous, enchanting, oppressive, perhaps even seductive the comforting presence of loved ones—long unseen, sometimes long dead the troubling presence of people with whom we have unfinished business the evocative presence of a sacred space—
perhaps a cathedral, a grove of trees, a shore’s edge, or wherever we are called into awareness of the transcendent the distinctive presence of a home—immediately noticeable on entering, if we are paying attention the unmistakable presence of death that we might experience at a funeral the plethora of presences that confront us on entering an art gallery, walking through a shopping mall, or attending to sea life in a tidal pool the numinous presence of the Wholly Other—both at times and in places that might be expected but also at times and in places and ways never expected the puzzling presence of someone we encounter—disturbing us in ways that may be good or bad but that cannot easily be ignored What is this strange thing called presence?
Presence is the awakening that calls us into an engagement with some aspect of the present moment. Presence makes us feel alive, or, perhaps better, it lets us know that we are alive. It demands that we notice, and, in so doing, the distance between whatever we notice and us is suddenly reduced. We feel connected. Sometimes this might feel like more connection than is comfortable, but no longer are we on the outside looking at life through a thick glass.
Suddenly, we have passed through that which distanced us, and we are inside and a part of life. We are involved. We are participants, not simply spectators. Presence is elusive, but it can come to us with astounding force. Notice how a wisp of a scent can pull us into the presence of a beloved—a presence that may be both subtle yet powerfully real. A great work of music can similarly draw us into the presence of the artist—often into a period of time and a world dramatically different from our own. An experience might invite us to be present to the world and to ourselves. A fleeting memory might instantly draw us into awareness of the absence of one still powerfully present to us.
Stories
Being Available
You might know that I put my personal cell phone number in the back of a couple of books I wrote. When I told my publisher what I wanted to do, they said, “Are you crazy?!” I thought for a minute and said, “Actually, yes and no.”
I’ve noticed that the people who have had the most impact in my life were the most available. Granted, I get a lot of calls. And guess what? I answer every single one unless I’m on a plane or out of cell range. It’s terrific. I can’t get a thing done. Here’s the point. It’ll be hard to be like Jesus if you don’t want to be available to people. It’s what He did. Every day. If you don’t want to be with people, you’re going to hate heaven.
Bob Goff, Live in Grace, Walk in Love, Thomas Nelson, 2019, p. 55.
Free Hugs
On a Friday in July of 2007, fourteen-year-old LaSaller David Melia stumbled upon people giving away hugs outside a movie theater. Strange, he thought, and refused to take them up on their offer. Hours later, as the idea bounced back and forth like a pinball in his mind, he found himself intrigued. The next day, David walked Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago (where nothing comes free!) dispensing hugs while sporting a t-shirt with the words FREE HUGS applied in neon-colored duct tape.
Hugging hooked David. Every day since his first foray on Michigan Avenue, David has worn the words FREE HUGS somewhere on his person—on his shirt, his sleeve, even his forehead. In 2013, as a business management major at DePaul University, David published a book on his experience as a “free hugger” and with the proceeds traveled the following summer to thirteen cities, logging 2,500 hugs on the tour.
David has no question about who he is. He’s a serious student, a beloved son, a supportive brother, and a humble Christian. But at his core, David is a hugger. “I am making sure my actions reflect what I believe,” noted David. “What I do with my finances, what I want to do as a career, who I spend time with, where I spend my time: those are all resources that I have control over and can use to effect change. There is something in that small act of a hug, in that small gesture, which allows someone to switch their focus from negative to positive. I truly believe small, random acts of kindness have a big effect.”
The cynical side of us might retort: C’mon! At twenty-one, David hasn’t experienced the complexities of life; he doesn’t have kids or a mortgage or aging parents to support. He’s free to be himself.
True. But David sees a through line in his story that many of us miss. David has connected the various pieces of his journey into an arc of meaning. What if we did something similar? What if we remembered that openness, graciousness, generosity once came easily to us.
I’ll Be There
There’s a wonderful scene in The Grapes of Wrath, where Tom Joad says a final good-bye to his mother and assures her that his presence transcends physical boundaries—even when she can’t see him:
Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. . . . I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.
Showing People Louis
In his excellent book, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World, Mike Cosper shares a short vignette about the comedian Louis C.K.*
Louis CK tells fans he meets in public that he won’t take a picture with them, but he will talk to them. Some people are satisfied, but many walk away angry and frustrated. I suspect that it’s because they weren’t after the opportunity to meet Louis—they wanted to be able to show people they met Louis.
*Editor’s Note: The comedian Louis C.K has become a source of controversy during the #MEtoo movement. While his alleged actions were reprehensible, from the editor’s view, the insight created by this illustration made it worth placing on the site.
Taken from Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World by Mike Cosper. Copyright (c) 2017, pp.75-76. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Skin is Meant to be Touched
Brenda Peterson is an author whose work crosses multiple genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. In an essay entitled In Praise of Skin, Peterson shares a true story from her own battle with painful skin rashes. Similar to the woman with the hemorrhage in the gospels, Brenda visited multiple doctors, but was unable to find a cure. One day she was visiting with her grandmother, who came up with a different solution than the ones offered by the many dermatologists Peterson had already visited.
“Skin,” she exclaimed, “needs to be touched!” After that, the grandmother began regularly massaging Brenda’s skin, and eventually those massages were able to cure what all the those prior, fancy medicines were unable to: she was cured of the painful rashes. The grandmother, it turns out, was right: “skin is meant to be touched.”
Stuart Strachan, Source Material from Brenda Peterson, Nature and Other Mothers, Ballantine Books, 1993.
A Social Media Fast
So in the last three years, in order to reorient myself and head back onto the narrow way, I’ve given up social media and/or the internet for Lent. At first it’s agonizing. I’m like a caffeine or nicotine addict going through withdrawal. I get all panicky and shaky, wondering what to do with myself. My fears assail me with the tales of all the fun, banter, and insider information I am missing.
I’m nearly asphyxiated by the thought that I am left behind or uninvited, that I am an outsider looking in while others are living the good, glamorous life of connectedness. I fight the urge to check in. As Lent carries on, my urge slowly subsides. To some extent, I experience my life as it was before the internet. I read more books. I am more fully present to my family and friends. I hear God better. I am less hurried, more like God, who is never in a hurry.
In Lenten silence and solitude via social-media fasts, I discover the words of Isaiah 30:15 to be true: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, / in quietness and trust is your strength.” It is a soul-soothing time. I realize that I need to flee to this desert more frequently. Probably, weekly. My Lenten practice has become a regular spiritual discipline. It allows me to disentangle myself from the cares of the world and follow Jesus more closely. It allows me to better love others.
Marlena Graves, A Beautiful Disaster, Baker Publishing Group, 2014, p.40-41.
Sticking With One Another
Robert Wuthnow told a story about a man named Jack Casey, who worked as a member of an ambulance rescue squad. When he was a child, Jack had oral surgery – five teeth pulled. The little guy was terrified. What he remembered most, though, is the operating room nurse who recognized the boy’s terror and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be right here beside you no matter what happens.” When Jack woke up after the surgery, she kept her word, and was standing right there next to him.
Twenty years later, Jack’s ambulance team is called out to an accident. A truck has overturned, the driver is pinned in the cab, and they’re using power tools to cut him out of the cab. But gasoline is leaking everywhere and the driver is terrified it’s going to catch fire and incinerate him. So Jack crawls into the cab next to him and says, “Look, don’t worry, I’m right here with you; I’m not going anywhere.” And Jack stayed with the man until they removed him from the wreckage.
Later the truck driver told Jack, “You were an idiot; you know that the whole thing could have exploded and we’d both (have died)!” Jack told him that he just couldn’t leave him.
Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics, pp. 72-73. Lima, Ohio: C.S.S. Publishing, 1995.
When are You?
I recently watched a children’s movie (Extinct, 2021) with my kids. To be fair, it probably will not receive any Academy consideration, but it was enjoyable. The story revolves around a pair of extremely cute, utterly made-up animals (Flummels, they have a big circle where their stomach should be, making them look like furry doughnuts) who time travel from the Galapagos Islands (in 1895) to present-day Shanghai, China.
I bring this all up only because there was a line in the film that has stuck with me, and perhaps may with you as well. Soon after the two Flummels arrive in Shanghai, a cute dog (acting as a guide) shows up and offers to help them navigate this strange new land. The two exclaim “WHERE ARE WE?” to which the guide responds, “the better question is “when are we?” In other words, you haven’t merely gone from one part of the planet to another, you have actually crossed the space-time continuum in a radical way.
At the time, I thought it was a funny line, but as it resonated in my head, I began to realize it could serve as a powerful analogy for our own state of consciousness. Do we live primarily in the past, wishing we could have done things differently? Or are we constantly living in a preferred alternative future…maybe a place where we are more successful, or less busy. Either way, the question, “when are you?” can act perhaps as a magnet, a compass of sorts, drawing you back to live in the present. So, the question we might ask is, “when are you?”
Stuart Strachan Jr.
Studies
Presence in the Universe
Now, in our lifetime, scientists are finding ever newer evidence for what some religious people called presence in the very organizing energy of the universe—from fractals, to holograms, to electro-magnetism, to force fields, to gravitation itself—all of which invite us into a certain degree of mystery and non-explainability—and also participation!
The great scientists are revealed in their contentment to live provisionally with a certain degree of mystery! I wish we clergy were as patient. We seem to like certainty and answers—now. In our too literal attempts to explain and control presence, we often explain it away, and most people just lose interest in the deeper journey because they are told, in effect, that there is no “deeper” to be had!
Meanwhile, the scientists still search for the pattern behind the patterns, the seeming vibrational fields that hold all things together. We from the religious world often call these vibrational fields the divine presence or perhaps the Holy Spirit. As usual, religion intuits and gives metaphor to what science is now confirming and illustrating on ever new verifiable levels. Remember, truth is one (Ephesians 4:4–5) and will necessarily and in time be seen from different angles and at different levels—with ever more appreciation. How blessed we are to live in our time! There are, however, few teachers who can honor the different levels at the same time.
Analogies
Being Available
You might know that I put my personal cell phone number in the back of a couple of books I wrote. When I told my publisher what I wanted to do, they said, “Are you crazy?!” I thought for a minute and said, “Actually, yes and no.”
I’ve noticed that the people who have had the most impact in my life were the most available. Granted, I get a lot of calls. And guess what? I answer every single one unless I’m on a plane or out of cell range. It’s terrific. I can’t get a thing done. Here’s the point. It’ll be hard to be like Jesus if you don’t want to be available to people. It’s what He did. Every day. If you don’t want to be with people, you’re going to hate heaven.
Bob Goff, Live in Grace, Walk in Love, Thomas Nelson, 2019, p. 55.
Knowing our Being and the Ground of Being
Martin Heidegger said that being is presence. Whatever else this means, it suggests that in some way presence is a basic property of simply being. Everything that exists has presence by virtue of its being. Being is more straightforward for rocks, trees, and black holes than it is for humans. Inanimate objects are never tempted by false ways of being. They are aligned within their being, and consequently their presence is less ambiguous. This is also true for nonhuman living beings—for example, animals and trees—all of which remain closer to their natures than is true for most humans. As a result, their presence is also more pure and singular.
For humans, living our truth is much more of a challenge. First, we are profoundly alienated from our being. We forget what it is to stand in awe of being itself, and of our being in particular. We are lost in doing and tempted to believe that there is nothing more to us than this. This separation from our being also reflects our separation from Being itself.
At the core of our soul is an ache that is answered only in knowing both our being and the Ground of Being. But that ache is easily ignored and misinterpreted, and consequently we seldom are aware of this most fundamental level of our alienation.
Singular, Holistic Absorption
Presence is experienced as a unitary whole. Think, for example, about the experience of sitting on the top of a hill, far from the polluting lights of a city, gazing at a dark, starry sky. Unless you are an astrophysicist or an astronomy buff, your experience will not likely be one of thought and analysis but of singular, holistic absorption. You will experience the presence of the starry sky, not your thoughts about it.
Skin is Meant to be Touched
Brenda Peterson is an author whose work crosses multiple genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. In an essay entitled In Praise of Skin, Peterson shares a true story from her own battle with painful skin rashes. Similar to the woman with the hemorrhage in the gospels, Brenda visited multiple doctors, but was unable to find a cure. One day she was visiting with her grandmother, who came up with a different solution than the ones offered by the many dermatologists Peterson had already visited.
“Skin,” she exclaimed, “needs to be touched!” After that, the grandmother began regularly massaging Brenda’s skin, and eventually those massages were able to cure what all the those prior, fancy medicines were unable to: she was cured of the painful rashes. The grandmother, it turns out, was right: “skin is meant to be touched.”
Stuart Strachan, Source Material from Brenda Peterson, Nature and Other Mothers, Ballantine Books, 1993.
Tolerating Absence Means Trusting Presence
Tolerating absence is, in essence, trusting presence—even when the one who is present to us is not physically present. Think of the two-year-old gradually loosening his clinging grasp to the leg of his mother as they dance around the house. Slowly, he allows himself longer periods of independent movement, but, at least initially, these bursts of independence are made possible only by periodic rushes back to mother for emotional refueling. Over time he ventures farther away for longer and longer intervals. Initially, he needs his mother to be in sight to keep his anxiety manageable, but soon he is able to tolerate absences that include not just physical separation but his mother being unseen.
When are You?
I recently watched a children’s movie (Extinct, 2021) with my kids. To be fair, it probably will not receive any Academy consideration, but it was enjoyable. The story revolves around a pair of extremely cute, utterly made-up animals (Flummels, they have a big circle where their stomach should be, making them look like furry doughnuts) who time travel from the Galapagos Islands (in 1895) to present-day Shanghai, China.
I bring this all up only because there was a line in the film that has stuck with me, and perhaps may with you as well. Soon after the two Flummels arrive in Shanghai, a cute dog (acting as a guide) shows up and offers to help them navigate this strange new land. The two exclaim “WHERE ARE WE?” to which the guide responds, “the better question is “when are we?” In other words, you haven’t merely gone from one part of the planet to another, you have actually crossed the space-time continuum in a radical way.
At the time, I thought it was a funny line, but as it resonated in my head, I began to realize it could serve as a powerful analogy for our own state of consciousness. Do we live primarily in the past, wishing we could have done things differently? Or are we constantly living in a preferred alternative future…maybe a place where we are more successful, or less busy. Either way, the question, “when are you?” can act perhaps as a magnet, a compass of sorts, drawing you back to live in the present. So, the question we might ask is, “when are you?”
Stuart Strachan Jr.
The World is Full of Presence
The world is full of presence. Every moment of life is crammed full of potential encounters with people and things that are present to us even though we may not be present to them: the presence of a city—vital, decaying, dangerous, enchanting, oppressive, perhaps even seductive the comforting presence of loved ones—long unseen, sometimes long dead the troubling presence of people with whom we have unfinished business the evocative presence of a sacred space—
perhaps a cathedral, a grove of trees, a shore’s edge, or wherever we are called into awareness of the transcendent the distinctive presence of a home—immediately noticeable on entering, if we are paying attention the unmistakable presence of death that we might experience at a funeral the plethora of presences that confront us on entering an art gallery, walking through a shopping mall, or attending to sea life in a tidal pool the numinous presence of the Wholly Other—both at times and in places that might be expected but also at times and in places and ways never expected the puzzling presence of someone we encounter—disturbing us in ways that may be good or bad but that cannot easily be ignored What is this strange thing called presence?
Presence is the awakening that calls us into an engagement with some aspect of the present moment. Presence makes us feel alive, or, perhaps better, it lets us know that we are alive. It demands that we notice, and, in so doing, the distance between whatever we notice and us is suddenly reduced. We feel connected. Sometimes this might feel like more connection than is comfortable, but no longer are we on the outside looking at life through a thick glass.
Suddenly, we have passed through that which distanced us, and we are inside and a part of life. We are involved. We are participants, not simply spectators. Presence is elusive, but it can come to us with astounding force. Notice how a wisp of a scent can pull us into the presence of a beloved—a presence that may be both subtle yet powerfully real. A great work of music can similarly draw us into the presence of the artist—often into a period of time and a world dramatically different from our own. An experience might invite us to be present to the world and to ourselves. A fleeting memory might instantly draw us into awareness of the absence of one still powerfully present to us.
More Resources
Still Looking for Inspiration?
Related Themes
Click a topic below to explore more sermon illustrations!