The sacred is scary

"The sacred is scary. I mean, really scary. The sacred can kill you!" Dr. Plate got a kind of crazy look in his eyes as he talked about "the sacred." It was January, and I was in my second college religion class: Understanding Religion: Religion and Culture: Religion and Film. Dr. Plate looked like the kind of guy who would be really excited about the sacred (and about the sacred being scary). He had salt-and-pepper hair that was naturally wavy and kind of wild. He wore forest green jeans that barely reached his shoes. I could tell he wasn't wearing socks with his light brown loafers. His shirt was a light cotton tunic-style shirt that with sleeves that were a couple of inches too short. He was cute in an eccentric, bookish, religion professor kind of way. And he was very excited about the sacred. He just kept repeating himself. "The sacred is powerful. You can't even understand. POWERFUL. It can kill you so easily! I mean injure you. Hurt you. Kill you. Just like that." Dr. Plate used broad terms like "the divine" and "the sacred" to promote a pluralist, educational atmosphere, but I kept thinking "God. God is powerful. God could crush me like a bug. So easily." It was a thought that would fester.

I went home for a weekend about a third of the way through the semester. I walked in and began chatting with my mother. We sat in the living room catching each other up on our lives and the lives of our friends. Suddenly, she jumped off the couch and ran to our entertainment system. "You've got to hear this song," she said, as the searched through a pile of CD's. "It's from Jenny's new CD-Debbie gave me an advance copy. Most of their stuff isn't really my style, but this song just…just caught me." She put the demo copy of a CD into the player and began skipping through the tracks.

Jenny Simmons is my pastor's daughter and the lead singer of an up-and-coming Christian band called Addison Road. (Check them out online. You can find them on iTunes, MySpace, or just Google them. They're good, especially for some new praise and worship songs.) Addison Road does mostly pop/rock praise-style music that I enjoy at worship but usually don't listen to otherwise. They have a large young teen following, especially among girls. The song my mom played for me was different, though. It didn't start with jammin' guitar, or funky bass lines, or a drum groove. It began with a simple piano chord progression and Jenny's smooth voice. I was, like my mom, caught. In the first verse, Jenny confesses, "I think I made You too small, I never feared You at all. If You touched my face, would I know You?" These words touched me. The chorus reminded me of Dr. Plate's class. As I listened, I began to cry. "What do I know of You who spoke me into motion? Where have I even stood but the soil of your ocean? Are You Fire? Are You Fury? Are You Sacred? Are You Beautiful? What do I know? What do I know of Holy?"

Fire, Fury, Sacred, Beautiful &#)151 these are perfect descriptions of God. Over and over again in scripture we find people cowering in the presence of God. When people are visited by angels, consistently, the first words the angels speak are "Do not be afraid." When God called Moses, "Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God" (Exodus 3:6). In a blog posting about "What Do I Know of Holy," Jenny Simmons talks about a keynote she heard on Isaiah 6. It was this keynote and the resulting experience she had with God that inspired the song. In Isaiah 6, Isaiah describes seeing the Lord; seraphs surround the Lord and cover their faces and their feet and constantly shout the praises of God. Our God is a Powerful God. Our God is a Holy God. Even the angels cover themselves in God's presence. Our God could crush us like little ants.

The idea of the powerful, dangerous, awesome sacred bothered me. It scared me. It festered. It wouldn't leave me alone. I liked the idea of a God who walks beside me and lives within me. I still do like that idea. I still know that God, but I also think I made God too small. Now, I also like the idea of the powerful, dangerous, awesome God. I like that idea because it means God is bigger than my understanding. It means God is bigger and more powerful than I can imagine. Yet, I know I can come into the presence of that God just as I am. That God loves me and knows me. That God is fire-giving warmth, and light, and life, but dangerous and potentially harmful. That God is fury-powerful, passionate, but possibly angry. That God is sacred-holy, set apart.

That God is beautiful.