June 29, 2025
Third Sunday After Pentecost
Two weeks ago, John Morris told us “…we have a sort of tension here – we have the Word of God as a truth that was there at the beginning, a deep structure of everything that is and could be – but we also have the Word of God as evolving, requiring understanding and interpretation, not the kind of Word we can point to in a piece of scripture and say, “It’s written there, so it must be true.”
About when I turned 30, I noticed that I had an ossified, obsolete and inadequate understanding of the Bible, and the New Testament in particular. I had gone with my intern group to “Godspell”, and toyed with the idea of Good News as actual good news, but what I generally heard or, at least understood,
was bad news—”you will never be good enough, you will never do enough, and Doggone it, God hates you.” (That is a cultural reference to Saturday Night Live’s Stuart Smiley—who in the 1980’s always said “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” And it was funny because in that era, liberal people were never supposed to feel that they were good enough.
Today’s salad of scriptures could have been like that for me—was I supposed to follow Elijah into the desert? Or as Paul says in the Galatians reading “through love become enslaved to one another. . .live by the spirit and do not gratify the desires of the flesh?” Or not take care of my elders or say farewell and follow Jesus without looking back?
So I am going to introduce some of you to Edward Hayes parable stories from Twelve and One Half Keys, which I found during a retreat in the Life Direction Lab with Sonya Dyer and Jackie Mc Makin, which was later renamed “Working from the Heart,” with a workbook published to go along with the program.
I have put index cards on the rows of seats, and some pencils. I will read you all a story, and will ask you about your reactions. If you want to write down one word to remind you of a thought, do so—but do not stop listening to organize your thoughts—you can do that afterwards. The story is about 10 minutes long.
(Cynthia Dahlin read the story “The Secret Agent” from Edward Hayes’ Twelve and One Half Keys, pp, 77-86. Published by Forest of Peace Books, Inc., Easton, KS, 1881.)
Summary of “The Secret Agent,” Short story in
Twelve and One Half Keys, by Edward M. Hayes
Forest of Peace Books, Easton, KS, 1981
In this short story, Edward Hayes imagines God holding a meeting of all the prophets in
the universe asking how to find out what hell is like—“what in hell is going on?”
Jeremiah, Moses, Saint Paul, Mohammed and Buddha all offer to go down and seek
answers.
God decides to send Mary, the Blessed Mother, down as a secret agent, and Mary
Magdalene and Rahab help to disguise her. Mary goes to hell and comes back with
these findings:
–In hell, no one is ever alone, and they constantly multi-task, even while visiting with
one another.
—They are constantly restless, playing competitive sports where someone must
lose—including waging wars.
–Everything in hell is plastic and functional—no natural beauty.
–There are no doors in hell—people don’t try to escape.
God decides to send a redeemer who can deal with hardship and suffering, yet keep the
faith—a woman.
(Cynthia returns to her own sermon remarks.)
So—What do you think about this story?
- How did it make you feel?
- What did it say about God?
- How do you see yourself in this story?
I will give you one minute to think about the answers, then I will ask you to group with 3 or 4 other people and share your responses. You have only one minute each—please share the time! Those on Zoom, put any ideas you want to share in the chat.
Any responses you want to share with the whole community?
Our Community frequently uses relational bible study—trying to look at stories and ask:
–Where is God in this?
–Who do you see as yourself in the story?
–What is the message?
How does this relate to looking at a fairy tale story? We are asking the same questions, and I think the validity comes when we discuss what our observations and learnings are with others. We do not take a story as biblical truth, but use it to enter our values and assumptions.
When I first read this book 30 years ago, my learnings were:
–that story about each person approaching an elephant blindfolded and grabbing onto different parts to describe the elephant is like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions trying to describe the transcendent identity of God.
–that if heaven is what we make of it, so is hell. I really hadn’t thought about hell, except as where Michealangelo tosses burning bad people in the Sistine Chapel. But I liked thinking about man-made hell—seems empowering to us to disassemble.
–that 30 years ago, many men, deeply religious, were still dealing with the shock that women could serve God and their churches, too. A couple of years after the Life Direction Lab, I started seminary at Virginia Theological Seminary, and was shocked to find the Episcopal Church did not ordain women at the time. It has changed, but I switched to Wesley Theological. It wasn’t my burden.
Thanks for joining me on this story time. I hope you will look for Christian wisdom everywhere in the coming weeks, not just in the Bible.