Right Brain / Left Brain

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
Feburary 20, 2005; 2st Sunday in Lent; Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 3:1-17) ­ Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?"

Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

I'm running two risks this morning. I'm going to over-simplify some of the descriptions of brain function research. And I'm going to create a caricature of the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus. But I hope it will be helpful anyway. I want to play with this delightful story and use it as a metaphor for a conversation between left brain spirituality and right-brain spirituality.

Jesus meets Nicodemus, a leader and teacher, who comes to Jesus by night. The night, you know, is the time when the "wild things" play. Nicodemus probably spends much of his day analyzing and applying the sacred writings to the practical everyday needs of people. Which foods are kosher? Which of two parties in a dispute has right on his side? According to Moses, what is the correct way to pray? He is a student of sacred tradition. His life is the science of analyzing the written and oral sacred tradition of his people and systematizing it into laws and policies that will order every detail of the life for the observant. That's the way to be a holy person, he believes. He uses the disciplines and traditions of logical, linear argument that have guided his ancestors for centuries. "If this...; then that."

But one night, he comes to this strange and different Rabbi Jesus. No doubt he has thought for some time about the question he will pose for the new Rabbi's reflection. But before poor Nicky can finish his complementary introduction, the odd new teacher interrupts him with a perplexing statement. "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

Nicodemus is befuddled. What can he mean? So in good Rabbinic tradition he asks a logical question: "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?"

"Nicky, my friend," says Jesus. "Let your being emerge out of watery chaos and be energized with the breath of living wind. The spirit blows where it will, invisible and untrackable. Wake up and live!"

And Nicodemus said, "Huh?" They were speaking two different languages.

We might describe the disconnect between Nicodemus and Jesus as the disconnect when left-brain religion meets right-brain spirituality. Now I don't want to be too dogmatic about this. Both sides of our brains know reality, but they do so in different ways. And for too long, western religious thought, and for that matter western civilization, has been trapped, maybe like Nicodemus, in left-brain dominance.

You know some of these brain theories since Roger Sperry won a Nobel prize for his 1960's brain research. The left brain learns through analyzing, taking things apart and understanding the parts. If I understand the parts, I'll understand the whole. The right brain looks at the whole in a synthetic vision and interprets the parts in terms of their relationship to the whole. The left brain is rational, verbal, linear and logical. The right brain is intuitive, non-verbal, wholistic, and creative. The left thinks either/or; the right both/and. The left differentiates, the right synthesizes. The left uses ideas to define, the right uses feelings to reconcile. The left is interested in cause and effect -- it traces responsibility and defines sin and assigns guilt. The right sees complexity and suspends judging to effect reconciliation. The left side of our brain orders our activities of control, speaking, listening, reading and writing. The right side of our brain orders our creativity, spacing, drawing, seeing, touching. The left brain does what I'm doing now -- reasons and talks in words and concepts -- while the right brain communicates through symbols and stories, images, dreams and parables.

We need both sides of our brain. But it seems like in the worlds of education, commerce, government and religion we've tended to reward those most skilled in the use of the left brain functions. While the dreamers and artists of the right brain are shoved to the back of the appropriations line.

But Jesus, like all of the spiritual masters, offered stories and parables, images and paradox as the entrance into the mysterious relationship he called the Kingdom of God. And for any of us to be competent in the spiritual life, we need to develop our underdeveloped right brain capacities.

It is the right brain that rests in mystery. It is the right brain that opens to paradox. It is the right brain that is fed by ritual and symbol, music and movement. It was an intuitive leap of trust that prompted Abram to leave his home and journey to an unknown place with God. It was the blinding experience of grace that inspired Paul to abandon his quest to earn God's favor through works and accept God's blessing as gift.

How impoverished we make our inheritance when we reduce the divine mystery to mere words and doctrine. John says that the divine Word was not content to remain Word but became flesh through an act of God's love. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

How impoverished we make our faith when we restrict faith to the narrow left-brain frame of believing that a statement is propositionally true. "Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?" we get asked, like it's a proposition demanding our mental assent. In tradition there are four words that translate as believing or faith. Assensus is belief that is mental assent. But there are three other words that color our believing. Fiducia is belief that is trust, radical trust. It is a heart emotion. It is the opposite of anxiety and worry. "Do you rest your trust in Jesus so radically that you are free of anxiety?" Fidelitas is the faithfulness of the commitment of the heart. Fidelity. Its opposite is idolatry or adultery. "Do you give your heart in fidelity to Jesus, your beloved?" (The words believe and belove come from the same root.) And belief as visio is a way of seeing the whole as gracious, and responding with the whole self.

The linguistics of faith give us one left-brain word and three right-brain relationships. Abram and Paul each had an experience of radical grace that transformed how they saw (visio) reality, which led them to radical trust in God (fiducia) through a life of faithfulness (fidelitas). That was for them a saving faith. After all of that was true, Paul at least, thought and wrote a lot about the nature of propositional understanding (assensus) to better express the content of the truth to which he gave his mental assent. Abraham left us no such legacy of belief as propositional assent.

So the message to Nicodemus and to you and me is this. If you want your life to be transformed by the power of divine energy, you've got to blow with the Spirit. You've got to be born from above. So. Don't think so much when you pray. Let your heart and your feelings guide you into relationship with God. Let go of the words and theology while you worship, and enter into the rhythm and symbol, the music and color, the feelings of being cocconed within the inspirited Body of Christ and fed with heavenly presence. Pay attention to those momentary bursts of intuition that tell you to turn right at the next street, or to telephone someone who pops into your mind, or to stop and wait in silence for just a moment before deciding. Remember a dream before you fully awaken. Hold on to two things that seem incompatible long enough for the paradox to become creative. Give yourself space enough to let many things be true all at once. Don't figure it out. But instead revel in the wonder and mystery of it all.

We've all been exercising our left brains from the time they taught us to stay in the lines of the coloring book. But if you want to paint with the colors of the Spirit, you'll need to liberate the wild side of your right brain. It's okay. You can do it. Nobody will scold or make fun of you, even if your left brain will try to make you feel silly or foolish. But if you want to see the Kingdom of God exploding into being, right here, right now, it's gonna take plunging into a bit of the water of chaos and flying on the breath of the wings of the Spirit. As the right brained poet Elizabeth Barrett Browing said:
Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush alive with God.
Only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.
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