The Magic Christian : Woodland Hills Pastor Has Bag of Tricks to Get Across Lessons in Truth

Shedding his ministerial robe to reveal a tuxedo, a Woodland Hills Methodist pastor preached a pre-Halloween sermon Sunday on magicians and mystics, aided by playing cards, multiplying money and willing volunteers from the pews.

The Rev. Gilbert Stones, a member of Hollywood’s Magic Castle club for 10 years, even pulled a rabbit out of an apparently empty black box before a congregation of about 50 at Woodland Hills United Methodist Church.

The day before Halloween seemed appropriate to put his semi-professional talents to use and to make a point, said the 39-year-old preacher with handlebar mustache and Van Dyke beard.

People who seek out magicians to help deal with life’s problems are not really getting the help they need, he said.

“We don’t lack for magicians, but we lack for mystics--people who recognize that sometimes things just happen,” Stones said. “Magicians don’t like surprises. Mystics delight in them.

“The essence of religion is letting God break through rather than scrambling around trying to control everything,” said the minister.

Sunday’s hymns and prayers focused on the mystery and majesty of the Divine, and the New Testament reading was the Book of

Acts’ account of the conversion of Simon the magician.

Despite the serious themes in the service, the people in the pews applauded and laughed as Stones used sleight of hand, familiar magician props and bantering comedy.

Parishioner Jack Smeltzer, who held a playing card he thought he had chosen from a deck, was told that the rabbit Stones had produced was going to read his mind and identify the card.

“Make your mind a blank,” Stones said, adding quickly, “That was fast.”

While rabbits can’t talk, “he’s going to do something that rabbits can do--no, not that.”

After the laughter subsided, the minister-magus showed the congregants a newspaper page that had three diamond shapes apparently “chewed” out of it by the rabbit. And sure enough, Smeltzer held the three of diamonds.

Another man supplied a $5 bill that the pastor seemed to change into a $1 bill. “That’s my $4 trick,” Stones said. Later, he repeatedly dropped two or three dollars into a box, and yet continued to count seven $1 bills still in his hand.

“Now, if you could do that, you’d probably give a little more to the church,” he quipped.

Returning to his message on mystics and magicians, Stones said that the magician claims special knowledge and methods to get information about certain mysteries, and perhaps to change circumstances.

By contrast, he said, mystics “simply seek to contact, to touch and commune with the mysteries beyond,” not necessarily hoping for full understanding.

Some use of “magic” is fine, even in church, he said.

“When we pray and ask God to do something, we are doing ‘OK magic,’ ” Stones said. But because magicians of various kinds can’t always make everything work as predicted, excuses are often offered--the conditions were not right, the supplicant did not believe enough.

With magicians, “sometimes people get prayed for and they don’t get cured,” he said.

By contrast, “the mystic knows that if you pray for healing, you may not be cured, but you will be healed,” he said. “Your life will be touched and transformed--you’ll never be the same.”

In his closing prayer, Stones said, “Forgive our arrogance in those times when we think we know fully your mind and that we have all the answers.”