“THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN-SPIRITUALITY” Jan. 9,1994
Is. 42:1-7; Acts 10:34-38
Mk. 1:4-11
The Magnificent Seven is one of those classic Westerns which picks up on the oft repeated theme of good vs. evil and repeats the hope in the heart of most people that good will prevail over evil and the righteous will live in peace and happiness. It is the story of a small Mexican village which is being besieged by a band of ruthless bandits who, every time they come through the area take what ever they want and do what ever they want to do, without thought for the poor peasants who live in the village.
In desperation, three men of the village go to find help and that’s when they meet Yul Brynner, a gunslinger of some experience and reputation and ask him to help them get rid of the bandits. The story is about the 7 men Yul Brynner brings together to accomplish this task, 6 of whom are known hired guns and one of whom is a young man who wishes he was but isn’t, and never will be. In the scene where the three men from the village are trying to convince Yul Brynner to come and help them they say to him,
“It will be a blessing if you come to help us.”
To which Yul Brynner replies,
“Sorry, I’m not in the blessing business.”
“Not in the blessing business...”. The words we are going to be looking at in this series called The Magnificent Seven are words which were not in the blessing business 35 years ago when I began my ministry, but are today. Or at least they were not as focused 35 years ago and I was not as aware of the depth of meaning they held for the life of faith. In this way I hope to draw together something of the journey of faith which as been mine as I have been privileged to walk these 35 years, 30 of them here at Calvary, as Pastor, Preacher, Teacher, Counselor, Prophet, Priest and most important of all as one Baptized and Called to be a servant and a friend of the one God sent to be our Servant and friend.
We begin with the word SPIRITUALITY...a word greatly in vogue today which 35 years ago was hardly used at all, unless you were speaking about some weird group which believed in spiritualism and practiced visiting with the spirits of the dead through a medium in some sort of spooky and weird ceremony.
2
It is a word which pops up all over the place today and is used to try get ahold of that part of life which is intangible, unobservable, indiscernible, indistinguishable, invisible, non-definable and yet deeply a part of our lives.
Last Monday night on Cheers Dr. Frazer was trying to find out why Woody had a head ache, and he suggests to Woody that it might have some deep emotional or psychological or spiritual roots. (It really was because he hit his head on the underside of the bar after bending over to pick up something.) It is not unusual to find an article in the popular magazines of our day which have an article on Spirituality. The word is heard much more frequent in the medical community and is common among the New Age movement and all it’s spin offs. It is found central in the best of present day psychology as Thomas Moore so clearly articulates in his book Care of the Soul which calls for a return to a spirituality which cultivates the sacredness of everyday life and recognizes that a spiritual life of some kind is absolutely necessary for psychological health - for wellness and happiness and a sense of fulfillment in our lives. An insight which springs from the work of Karl Gustave Jung who said, “Every psychological problem is ultimately a matter of religion...A spiritual life of some kind is absolutely necessary for psychological health.”
And in all of this it is trying to get to that part of us which is deeper then the physical, more inclusive then the emotional...the very source of life itself...the soul. (A word which was used a lot when I started 35 years ago and then dropped out because it wasn’t human enough.)
What ever it is we mean by spiritual it has to to with the very essence of life itself...the energy of life...the deepest, most profound part of life without which we can never be happy or good...without which we can never be human and in fact that which makes us uniquely human. For to be spiritual is to be human and to be human is to be spiritual. The two go together and can never be separated. That was the problem with the use of soul in the past; it meant being something other then human and it led to all sorts of de-humanizing in the name of religion and left anyone who enjoyed being human and having passion and excitement for living either feeling very guilty or abandoning religion as a downer which took the joy out of living. And it is meant to be just the opposite...it is meant to put joy into our living, as well as give deep meaning to our living.
3
So we begin this morning by saying that all of us and all humans are spiritual beings and the popularizing of this word in our day is a healthy sign that people are looking for more out of life then just existence. As stated in an article on Bill Moyers, one of the few secular journalists who pays close attention to religion and spirituality -
“Its a manifestation of a deep, deep desire to experience life and connect as one to another, connect to the ground of our being and connect to truths about ourselves that take us beyond simply being economic creatures. ...People are beginning to say: “Wait a minute, I’m not just a consumer, an economic animal. I’m more than that.’”
This is good. It is also dangerous... dangerous not because it is bad to pursue spirituality in all it’s dimensions, but dangerous because if it isn’t grounded...if it doesn’t have any roots...if there is no connection to history it can end up leading people into blind alleys with creeds which sound like this: “I do my thing. You do your thing.
I am not in this world to meet your expectations.
You are not in this world to meet mine.
If we happen to meet it is beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.” Fritz Perl’s Gestalt Prayer
which is a far cry from “doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regarding others as better than ourselves...looking not to our own interests, but to the interests of others...(and having) the same mind that was in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant...to bring forth justice to the nations and compassion to the world.” (Phil 2:3-7 & Is. 42:1) which is what the spirit of God caused Jesus to do and calls us to be about. It is not enough to just be spiritual so I can have more of life...that kind of spirituality leads to the myth of individualism which “”isolates the individual, overlooks the reality of mingling (community) and ignores the link between passion and compassion...”( Sam Keen, The Passionate Life, p.179) and which leaves us in a terrible isolation which is worse then all the suffering which comes when our spirituality connects us with other humans in significant and compassionate and even intimate ways.
4 Such spirituality is like a warm shower. It’s very individual and even pleasant but short-lived. Eventually, you have to get out of the shower and back into the real world...and if one’s spirituality doesn’t have something to do with the real world they it probably isn’t spiritual either.
Jesus baptism was a very spiritual experience for him, as ours is for us. It identified him as the Beloved of the Lord, even as ours does and it reminded him that God was well pleased with him, even as ours reminds us that God
will never give up on us. This is the foundation on which we build our spiritual lives! This is the anchor which holds us fast in all the storms of life. As we heard in our Old Testament lesson God has “taken us by the hand and kept us”; God has promised to never stop loving us...to never stop calling us “my beloved son or daughter”...and our baptism gives us the assurance that this is true...It is a sign that we have been marked with the cross of Christ forever and the love of God will always be ours, known it or not...believe it or not...feel it or not. You cannot be un-baptized...we cannot stop God from keeping God’s covenant of love with us.
And from this beginning we nurture our spirits on God’s Word, which is vital to our spiritual growth. Without God’s Word we will go astray on our spiritual journey. Indeed, we go astray enough with God’s Word...for we do not always hear it clearly , and love what it says dearly, and follow it nearly day by day. In fact, we often have great difficulty with it and try to bring it under our control and keep it from being too radical in our lives. We like to think we know it, believe it, even understand it and control it so we don’t have to let it change us too much. We would rather study it then meditate on it and we would rather have it answer our questions then question our answers. We use it mechanically, cautiously, rigidly to establish the rules by which God is to act and then we try hold God to our rules rather then discover that God acts in mysterious ways his wonders to perform and sometimes what we think the Bible is saying is not what it is saying at all. There is no book on this earth more abused, and mis-used then this book we call God’s Word. And we wonder why our spiritual lives are so anemic!
5
We need to spend more time in God’s Word not looking for answers or trying to find clues to when God is going to pull off the big bang or what God is going to do with those who are different from us but to be filled with the spirit of God which is the spirit of love and to be nurtured in our believing so that, as Paul says in Ephesians (3:16-18) we “may be strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith...being rooted and grounded in love...(and we) may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breath and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that (we) may be filled with all the fulness of God.”
That’s what God’s Word wants to do with us and in us...and that’s a heck of a lot more then we want from it. That’s a spiritual energy and passion which frankly scares us and causes us to run for cover into our comfortable religious practices. Yet God does not give up on us...for God has made a promise and God’s promise is that what God does best on this earth God will do through those who are energized by God’s love.
And that’s the last part of our spirituality...rooted in baptism...nurtured in the word of love... and expressed in doing good...even as Jesus “went about doing good for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38)
Spirituality really is of little good to anyone, unless it includes others in a significant way. Now significant does not have to mean big, or important, or public or touching many...it means significant to one in some small way, which is really all God asks of us...often. And is the only way something can be truly significant.
6
Last sunday Francis Fischer shared an angel story which captures something of what I mean. After all the mittens, scarves, caps, gloves, socks, and what ever else was given for the Mission were taken down, one package was found lying on the table in the Synago Library. I saw it there and noticed the tag which read - To a Tall Extra Large Man, From Someone Who Cares- and gave it little thought. If this one present doesn’t get to the Mission, big deal. But Francis and Lyle saw it too, and they couldn’t just leave it lie there. They made an additional trip to the mission to deliver this special gift to some special, unsuspecting and unknown person. As they were driving to the Mission Francis said to Lyle, “I hope there is someone there who fits this description so we will know who to give this gift to.” As they approached the mission, a group of men were standing by the door and there was one man who stood out because of his size -tall extra large. As they stopped all the men when into the building but this one man. Francis said, “There’s our man; this gift if for him.” And Lyle took the package to the man who received it with joy and clutching it to his breast also went in out of the cold, with a gift to not only warm his body but also his soul.
This is spirituality at work without which our believing becomes stale and meaningless and our faith becomes something isolating and even destructive. And to this we are called...not to be religious but to be spiritual...and that means to let the fruit of the Spirit which is
“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22,23) be at work in our lives doing that which is well pleasing in God’s sight, trusting that God can do extraordinary things with our ordinary lives.
Indeed, to be spiritual is to be loved by God and to be alive with love - “able to live in the ordinary world with extraordinary grace.” (p.206-The Passionate Life, Keen)
Amen
Monday, July 25, 2016
2 MYSTICISM
“THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN-MYSTICISM” 2 Kings 2:1-12a; 2Cor. 3:12-4:2 Transfiguration Mark 9:2-9 Feb. 13,1994
Our second word of the Magnificent Seven...and remember these are words which were not “in the blessing business” when I started my ministry 35 years ago, but are now...is mysticism...mystic...mystery. It is a word which still sounds somewhat foreign to our ears, yet is coming out of the closet and becoming more in focus as an important part of the life of faith. However else we might try define what it means, let us begin by saying simply it means the experience of God which is deeper then thoughts and words and defies explanation. Mysticism has reference “to the non-rational experience-side of faith.” For the mystic, a person can know something about God by experience...“mystical theology is experience of God.” (Luther and the Mystics, Hoffman, pp.14,15)
It is something which happens which we cannot define, explain, control or capture which goes deep and stirs the soul within with a love which will not let us go and will not let us down and will not let us off, ever.
Mysticism has always been a part of the life of faith; it just hasn’t been given prominence in our western world for some time, because we worship the mind, logic, understanding and what we know about God we want to be able to put down in doctrines and creeds. So much so, that even a prominent Protestant theologian of our century, Reinhold Niebuhr called mysticism a “heresy.” Indeed, there has been an ambivalence toward mysticism in this century which has just started to wain, as we become more aware of right-brain activity and recognize that all that is to be said and known is not of the left-brain, known only by our heads without our hearts and souls being in on the knowing. Not that this is anything new, even though it might be new to us; for as Paul said to Timothy a long time ago;
“Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great:
He was revealed in flesh,
vindicated in spirit, seen by angles,
proclaimed among Gentiles,
believed in throughout the world,
taken up in glory.” I Tim 3:16
And if we think we can capture all there is to this Jesus and to God’s love with our minds, our rational being, our left-brains, then we are of all people the most to be pitied, for then we will be out of touch with who we are as well as who our God is.
2
The word mysticism comes from the Greek mystikos, which has two meanings: one, to “shut one’s senses” and the other to “enter the mysteries”. Over the centuries, the first meaning became the distorted understanding of mysticism which led to all sorts of strange and non-human ways of being which denied the beauty of the created world and of our human bodies and twisted the word into distorted ways of living and being. It became the mortification of the flesh by which anything human was denied and the few who sought to be mystics lived in ways which put down anything which was beautiful or of this world. The stories which came out of this distorted view of mysticism sound strange and weird to our ears and hardly something we want to be a part of our life of faith, like the nun who was so holy that “she never allowed herself to look at or touch any part of her person, even such as decency does not require us to veil.” Or Bishop St. Hugh, who, “though compelled by his pastoral charge to deal with women,...had never for forty years looked one in the face.” And again, St. Laurence Justinian who, “even when he might blamelessly have used his eyes, abstained from contemplating the beauty of the country, and the foliage of the trees which grew in his private garden.” (Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, pp.38,39)
Such a view of asceticism and mysticism led to the denial of the mystical in its true meaning, that of entering the mysteries and being open to wonder, imagination, awe and beauty. That which is more right-brain then left-brain, more given to experience then to explain without which we are out of touch with our deepest selves and even dead while we live. For as Albert Einstein said,
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Who ever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead."
And we can add all true religion too...for the mystical is part and partial of all religions, and certainly is at the center of our Christian faith.
3
It is to this that Buechner speaks when he says,
“At its heart, I think, religion is mystical...Religions start, as Frost said poems do, with a lump in the throat, to put it mildly, or with the bush going up in flames, the rain of flowers, the dove coming down out of the sky.” Buechner, Listening To Your Life, p273
And Abraham Heschel, a renowned Jewish theologian, who defines mysticism as “radical amazement.” The mystic in us is the one moved to radical amazement by the awe of things. “Humans exist for awe’s sake - to be radically amazed and to draw radical amazement from one another. That is our task. It is a mystical task, a task that demands we overcome the temptation to take our existence for granted. Awe is the opposite of ‘taking for granted.’ If awe precedes faith, then there is no faith without it.” (Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, p.51)
Mysticism is the WOW of life when confronted with all it’s amazing brilliance, without which we cannot know who we are or what we are all about. Listen also to these words written by someone who knows what mysticism is all about and what it’s absence does to us:
"A civilization that denies the mystic is no civilization at all. It offers no hope and no adventure, no challenge worthy of sacrifice and joy to its youth or its artists. It offers no festivity, no sabbath, no living ritual to its people. And no deep healing. Such a culture actually promotes negative addictions: drugs, crime, alcohol, consumerism, militarism. It encourages us to seek outside stimulants to provide meaning for life and defense from enemies because it is so woefully out of touch with the power inside. It relegates the poor to still greater poverty and the comfortable to an infinite deluge of luxury items, and those in the middle to resentment toward both poor and rich. For such a culture knows nothing and teaches nothing about authentic empowerment. Such a culture will trivialize the deepest riches of the human spirit and will fail to employ persons in the good work that art and creativity are all about."
(Alice Miller in “The Coming of the Cosmic Christ”, pp.43,44)
4
The transfiguration was for Jesus, as well as Peter, James and John a mystical experience. As was Jesus baptism...and the Garden of Gethsemane...and the many times Jesus went off alone to pray. These were moments to enter the mystery and be swallowed up by it; moments to feel the energy of God’s love surround him and remind him who we was and why he was and what it was all about. And there is no way to fully capture such experiences with words. Perhaps that is why Jesus told the three disciples who were with him to tell no one about what they had seen and experienced until later. The words would only spoil the experience and would not be able to transmit it to the others. Only after they had their experience with the risen Christ, would they be able to understand - and then as if through a glass dimly - what had really happened on that Mount of Transfiguration.
Sometimes we try put into words and logical systematic creeds what it is we believe and where as this is good and necessary and helpful...it is not all there is to say about a God who, as Paul says, is beyond human understanding. Of whom it finally has to be said, no matter how much we think we know about God...
“O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable
his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given a gift to him,
to receive a gift in return?
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be glory forever. Amen. Rom.11:33-36
Not all mysteries are to be solved; some are to be preserved!
The mystics remind us to not bottle God up and sell God in our neat formula’s which sound so good and feel so terrible; and they remind us to leave room for mystery in all that we say we believe, not trying to give answers to all the dilemmas of life, but living rather with a God who holds us in the palm of his hand and trusting, as William Sloane Coffin put it “in that love that never ends and that dazzling grace which always is.” Watch out for anyone who tries to tell you they have the answers to the mystery of God and try to give you answers rather then live with mystery. For to live with God is to live with mystery and to be swallowed up by mystery. 5
The mystic lies deep in every person, and to awaken the mystic in each of us we need to open ourselves to the mysteries all around us and in us and to the mysteries of God’s presence in our world and God’s Word alive in our lives. Again let me say, we do not need to study the Bible as much as we need to mediate on it; we do not need to look to it for answers as much as we need to look to it for empowerment; and we do not need to figure it our as much as we need to let it get under our skin and figure us out and tell us who we are and what we are all about, and what God is all about in our world and wants us to be all about too...for, as Dr. Rogness has said, “The Scriptures are the place where the Holy Spirit roams.” looking for a place in our hearts and lives. And that’s a great mystery!
And we can be sure of one thing when we do this, when we enter the mystery, compassion will be at the center of our lives and nothing will take priority over it. And this means justice will also be central, for compassion means that I live with a “keen awareness of the interdependence of all living things which are all part of one another and involved in one another.” (Thomas Merton, in Fox,p.50)
No one and no thing is unimportant or insignificant.
Lawrence Leshan tells the old story about a monk who prayed for a long time to have a visitation from the mystical world of spirits and angles...I believe it was the Virgin Mary he wanted to visit him. He prayed long and hard and finally one day she came. Just as they were about to start their visit, the bell rang signaling that it was time to feed the beggars at the gate, and it was his day to do this task. With great reluctance he left his state of trance and went to feed the poor, returning as fast as he could. When he got back, she was still there, waiting for him; which delighted him to no end.
Then she said told him, “If thou had stayed I must have fled.”
Which is to say that the end result of mysticism is to be more tuned in to what it is I can do in the here and now, in a most human and real way, to bring the Kingdom of God from heaven to earth, so that others too might share in its glory. Mysticism, which we have too little off, is not meant to make us less human but more human; not less in touch with reality but more in touch with reality and more ready to be
“servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.” I Cor. 4:1
in the real world in which we live.
6
Everyone is a mystic...it is a part of our created being; and it is the task of all true religion to help us “enter the mystery” and be given, deep in our being,
“the power to comprehend,(and this means with the heart as well as the head) with all the saints,
what is the breath and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
so that (our world) may be filled with all the fulness of God.”
Eph. 3:18,19
Amen!
Our second word of the Magnificent Seven...and remember these are words which were not “in the blessing business” when I started my ministry 35 years ago, but are now...is mysticism...mystic...mystery. It is a word which still sounds somewhat foreign to our ears, yet is coming out of the closet and becoming more in focus as an important part of the life of faith. However else we might try define what it means, let us begin by saying simply it means the experience of God which is deeper then thoughts and words and defies explanation. Mysticism has reference “to the non-rational experience-side of faith.” For the mystic, a person can know something about God by experience...“mystical theology is experience of God.” (Luther and the Mystics, Hoffman, pp.14,15)
It is something which happens which we cannot define, explain, control or capture which goes deep and stirs the soul within with a love which will not let us go and will not let us down and will not let us off, ever.
Mysticism has always been a part of the life of faith; it just hasn’t been given prominence in our western world for some time, because we worship the mind, logic, understanding and what we know about God we want to be able to put down in doctrines and creeds. So much so, that even a prominent Protestant theologian of our century, Reinhold Niebuhr called mysticism a “heresy.” Indeed, there has been an ambivalence toward mysticism in this century which has just started to wain, as we become more aware of right-brain activity and recognize that all that is to be said and known is not of the left-brain, known only by our heads without our hearts and souls being in on the knowing. Not that this is anything new, even though it might be new to us; for as Paul said to Timothy a long time ago;
“Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great:
He was revealed in flesh,
vindicated in spirit, seen by angles,
proclaimed among Gentiles,
believed in throughout the world,
taken up in glory.” I Tim 3:16
And if we think we can capture all there is to this Jesus and to God’s love with our minds, our rational being, our left-brains, then we are of all people the most to be pitied, for then we will be out of touch with who we are as well as who our God is.
2
The word mysticism comes from the Greek mystikos, which has two meanings: one, to “shut one’s senses” and the other to “enter the mysteries”. Over the centuries, the first meaning became the distorted understanding of mysticism which led to all sorts of strange and non-human ways of being which denied the beauty of the created world and of our human bodies and twisted the word into distorted ways of living and being. It became the mortification of the flesh by which anything human was denied and the few who sought to be mystics lived in ways which put down anything which was beautiful or of this world. The stories which came out of this distorted view of mysticism sound strange and weird to our ears and hardly something we want to be a part of our life of faith, like the nun who was so holy that “she never allowed herself to look at or touch any part of her person, even such as decency does not require us to veil.” Or Bishop St. Hugh, who, “though compelled by his pastoral charge to deal with women,...had never for forty years looked one in the face.” And again, St. Laurence Justinian who, “even when he might blamelessly have used his eyes, abstained from contemplating the beauty of the country, and the foliage of the trees which grew in his private garden.” (Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, pp.38,39)
Such a view of asceticism and mysticism led to the denial of the mystical in its true meaning, that of entering the mysteries and being open to wonder, imagination, awe and beauty. That which is more right-brain then left-brain, more given to experience then to explain without which we are out of touch with our deepest selves and even dead while we live. For as Albert Einstein said,
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Who ever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead."
And we can add all true religion too...for the mystical is part and partial of all religions, and certainly is at the center of our Christian faith.
3
It is to this that Buechner speaks when he says,
“At its heart, I think, religion is mystical...Religions start, as Frost said poems do, with a lump in the throat, to put it mildly, or with the bush going up in flames, the rain of flowers, the dove coming down out of the sky.” Buechner, Listening To Your Life, p273
And Abraham Heschel, a renowned Jewish theologian, who defines mysticism as “radical amazement.” The mystic in us is the one moved to radical amazement by the awe of things. “Humans exist for awe’s sake - to be radically amazed and to draw radical amazement from one another. That is our task. It is a mystical task, a task that demands we overcome the temptation to take our existence for granted. Awe is the opposite of ‘taking for granted.’ If awe precedes faith, then there is no faith without it.” (Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, p.51)
Mysticism is the WOW of life when confronted with all it’s amazing brilliance, without which we cannot know who we are or what we are all about. Listen also to these words written by someone who knows what mysticism is all about and what it’s absence does to us:
"A civilization that denies the mystic is no civilization at all. It offers no hope and no adventure, no challenge worthy of sacrifice and joy to its youth or its artists. It offers no festivity, no sabbath, no living ritual to its people. And no deep healing. Such a culture actually promotes negative addictions: drugs, crime, alcohol, consumerism, militarism. It encourages us to seek outside stimulants to provide meaning for life and defense from enemies because it is so woefully out of touch with the power inside. It relegates the poor to still greater poverty and the comfortable to an infinite deluge of luxury items, and those in the middle to resentment toward both poor and rich. For such a culture knows nothing and teaches nothing about authentic empowerment. Such a culture will trivialize the deepest riches of the human spirit and will fail to employ persons in the good work that art and creativity are all about."
(Alice Miller in “The Coming of the Cosmic Christ”, pp.43,44)
4
The transfiguration was for Jesus, as well as Peter, James and John a mystical experience. As was Jesus baptism...and the Garden of Gethsemane...and the many times Jesus went off alone to pray. These were moments to enter the mystery and be swallowed up by it; moments to feel the energy of God’s love surround him and remind him who we was and why he was and what it was all about. And there is no way to fully capture such experiences with words. Perhaps that is why Jesus told the three disciples who were with him to tell no one about what they had seen and experienced until later. The words would only spoil the experience and would not be able to transmit it to the others. Only after they had their experience with the risen Christ, would they be able to understand - and then as if through a glass dimly - what had really happened on that Mount of Transfiguration.
Sometimes we try put into words and logical systematic creeds what it is we believe and where as this is good and necessary and helpful...it is not all there is to say about a God who, as Paul says, is beyond human understanding. Of whom it finally has to be said, no matter how much we think we know about God...
“O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable
his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given a gift to him,
to receive a gift in return?
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be glory forever. Amen. Rom.11:33-36
Not all mysteries are to be solved; some are to be preserved!
The mystics remind us to not bottle God up and sell God in our neat formula’s which sound so good and feel so terrible; and they remind us to leave room for mystery in all that we say we believe, not trying to give answers to all the dilemmas of life, but living rather with a God who holds us in the palm of his hand and trusting, as William Sloane Coffin put it “in that love that never ends and that dazzling grace which always is.” Watch out for anyone who tries to tell you they have the answers to the mystery of God and try to give you answers rather then live with mystery. For to live with God is to live with mystery and to be swallowed up by mystery. 5
The mystic lies deep in every person, and to awaken the mystic in each of us we need to open ourselves to the mysteries all around us and in us and to the mysteries of God’s presence in our world and God’s Word alive in our lives. Again let me say, we do not need to study the Bible as much as we need to mediate on it; we do not need to look to it for answers as much as we need to look to it for empowerment; and we do not need to figure it our as much as we need to let it get under our skin and figure us out and tell us who we are and what we are all about, and what God is all about in our world and wants us to be all about too...for, as Dr. Rogness has said, “The Scriptures are the place where the Holy Spirit roams.” looking for a place in our hearts and lives. And that’s a great mystery!
And we can be sure of one thing when we do this, when we enter the mystery, compassion will be at the center of our lives and nothing will take priority over it. And this means justice will also be central, for compassion means that I live with a “keen awareness of the interdependence of all living things which are all part of one another and involved in one another.” (Thomas Merton, in Fox,p.50)
No one and no thing is unimportant or insignificant.
Lawrence Leshan tells the old story about a monk who prayed for a long time to have a visitation from the mystical world of spirits and angles...I believe it was the Virgin Mary he wanted to visit him. He prayed long and hard and finally one day she came. Just as they were about to start their visit, the bell rang signaling that it was time to feed the beggars at the gate, and it was his day to do this task. With great reluctance he left his state of trance and went to feed the poor, returning as fast as he could. When he got back, she was still there, waiting for him; which delighted him to no end.
Then she said told him, “If thou had stayed I must have fled.”
Which is to say that the end result of mysticism is to be more tuned in to what it is I can do in the here and now, in a most human and real way, to bring the Kingdom of God from heaven to earth, so that others too might share in its glory. Mysticism, which we have too little off, is not meant to make us less human but more human; not less in touch with reality but more in touch with reality and more ready to be
“servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.” I Cor. 4:1
in the real world in which we live.
6
Everyone is a mystic...it is a part of our created being; and it is the task of all true religion to help us “enter the mystery” and be given, deep in our being,
“the power to comprehend,(and this means with the heart as well as the head) with all the saints,
what is the breath and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
so that (our world) may be filled with all the fulness of God.”
Eph. 3:18,19
Amen!
3 INCLUSIVE
“THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - INCLUSIVE” March 13.1994
Num. 21:4-9; Eph. 2:4-10; John 3:14-21 Lent - 4
Make no mistake about it - Jesus is the only Son of God; that is, Jesus is the One who was sent into this world, who was in the beginning with God and was God, who became human and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
Jesus is the only one who can be identified with God and speaks with God’s full authority... “For in him the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.” Col.1:19,20
And what ever we say or don’t say about the inclusiveness of God’s love, must be said in the light of this truth and in no way minimize it or dilute it.
For that is to throw the baby away with the bath water; that is to nullify all that Jesus did as God’s Son, and that is to take away the very uniqueness with is ours to share with the world; the uniqueness of a God who desires everyone to be saved, everyone to come into the presence of God’s awesome love and come to the knowledge of the truth, that
“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, a God, who “did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”... in order that the “immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” might abound in our world, and we might be alive together with Christ and this God who is rich in mercy and who loves all with a great love...
“Who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Ps. 103:8
2
Having said this, we now turn to our word for today -inclusive.
It is a word which wasn’t heard much around the halls where I took my theological training. It is a word which has come to the foreground and is very much a part of theology today because of the terrible things which have happened without it, in the name of God and in the name of Jesus and in the name of religion. For we have championed its opposite for too long now - exclusive - and the result is far from anything which is pleasing to God.
The divisions of our world, many of which are outlined by bold religious differences, leave a lot to be desired and leave many lost and confused as to who is right and what to believe and where is God in the midst of it all.
It is no idle coincidence that the fighting in Sarajevo and Belfast and the West Bank, has deep religious roots which make it even more fanatical and more tragic. And it is not an over simplification to say that this is, in part at least, the result of the word exclusive, which has long been dominate in the world of religion and needs now to be replaced by its opposite -inclusive.
What ever we do with the powerful words of our Gospel for today, and the equally powerful words of our second lesson, which contain two of the most loved and quoted verses of the Scriptures -
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish
but have eternal life.” Jn. 3:16
and
“For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-
not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” Eph. 2:8,9
what ever we do with these words, we dare not use them to exclude anyone from God’s love or God’s Kingdom, even though it sounds like we are given permission to do so when it says, “those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
3
For to do so is to do that which is never ours to do...judge another person’s believing. This is where a lot of the terribleness of religion, based on it being exclusive and I can decide who is in and who is out, comes from. Who are we to think we can know the mind of God or the heart of another human being? Or who is God’s elect? “It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?” (Rom. 8:33,34) And on what basis do we judge, if we do? On the basis of the person saying the words or doing the deeds?
Paul says in Romans10:9 that ; “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” But Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, that “Not every one who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven.”
And our Gospel for today, makes it clear that the way to know who believes and who doesn’t isn’t just by what people say they believe, but by the deeds of our lives which show whether we love darkness or light.
And then, as if this isn’t enough to scare us off from making the judgements which lead to exclusive thinking which leads to condemning all who do not believe as I do and act as I do, we are reminded by Paul, as he struggles which this same issue, that we are dealing with a God who is reported to have said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion of whom I will have compassion.”(Rom. 9:15)
In other words, stay out of my business - which is deciding who is in and who is out; and be about the business I gave you when I sent my Son to be your Savior and acted kindly towards you when I let Him be lifted up on the Cross, for you, “(to) show the immeasurable riches of (my) grace in kindness toward (you)” -and that is to be compassionate as I am compassionate!
4
If I had to choose one verse to sum up all that Jesus said and did, this verse from Luke would be a top contender. “Be merciful, compassionate, inclusive, as your Father is merciful, compassionate, inclusive.” Lk. 6:36
Yes, inclusive belongs in that verse; as Walter Wink, a contemporary theologian says. It is a proper translation of the word merciful or compassionate for our day. And it is a word we need to come to grips with, lest our religion be an excuse for rejecting those God loves and becomes a means to keep us from the tasks to which God calls us, namely to love light rather then darkness and do what is true to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that our deeds have been done in God.
We are to give the gift we have been given!
We are to be a blessing because we have been blessed!
We are to live as “children of light” (Eph. 5:1) and that means
“clothe (ourselves) with compassion, kindness, humility,
meekness, and patience. (Bearing) with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, (forgiving) each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven (us), so (we) also must forgive.
Above all, clothe (ourselves) with love, which binds
everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of
Christ rule in (our) hearts...And be thankful.” (Col.3:12-15)
AND LEAVE THE REST TO GOD!!!
Don’t spoil what God has done by trying to play God with other peoples lives and faith. We never know enough to do that! And when we try, we become exclusive with God who never intended to be excluded by anyone from anyone. If there is to be excluding, God will be the one to do it and it may well be far different then how we would do it. For if we take our clue from Jesus, with God more times then not the first are last and the last are first, those who think they are in are out and those who are sure they are out are given the seats of honor. Which is to say it is not ours to say who is in or who is out...it is ours to show something of the “immeasurable riches of (God’s) grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” to all!
In other words, “Love ’em all; let God sort them out!”
5
Is this not why Mother Teresa stands out as such a unique person in our day?
She comes from a strong doctrinal Church which along with much of traditional Christianity has preached God’s love and practiced exclusivity in so many ways both within its ranks and without, that it can hardly be said to be very open to anything which sounds too inclusive, too accepting of those who are different. And yet she does not let this keep her from doing that which can be clearly seen to be deeds done in God, that is, deeds born of the love of God and deeply reflective of the immeasurable riches of God’s grace and love; and when asked to try put into words what she is doing, so we can see if it is true or not she blows us away with the reminder that:
“The same loving hand that has created you
has created me.
If he is your Father
he must be my Father also.
We all belong to the same family.
Hindus, Muslims and all peoples are our brothers and
sisters.
They too are the children of God.
Our work among the Hindus proclaims that
God loves them
God has created them
they are my brothers and sisters.
Naturally I would like to give them the joy of what I
believe
but that I cannot do;
only God can.
Faith is a gift of God
but God does not force himself.
Christians, Muslims, Hindus, believers and nonbelievers
have the opportunity with us to do works of love
have the opportunity with us to share the joy of
loving and come to realize God’s presence.
Hindus become better Hindus.
Catholics become better Catholics.
Muslims become better Muslims.”
6
And the love God has for the world becomes incarnate again, in those who confess Christ as Lord and in those who don’t; and something of the kingdom of heaven comes on earth because God’s love is not excluded from anyone and God’s lifting up of God’s only Son shines more brightly in the darkness of this world and the darkness will never overcome it.
The bottom line is, you see, that the best that we can say about what we believe is said through our deeds, not our words. And to use words, even holy words to exclude is to violate the heart of God and it is to love darkness more then light. What ever else we do, we dare not use God’s Word to exclude anyone from God’s love, for God’s love is infinitely more inclusive then we ever dreamed possible, and Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross penetrates the darkness of this world with a light which shines beyond our expectation and control.
Wm. Johnston, a Catholic priest who has spent years in the Orient, seeking to lift up this Jesus God sent whom we know to be the Son of God, has said it well when he said:
“I have spoken of an inner revelation, a gift of faith, an interior word offered to all (people) and I have said with Paul that God does not show partiality. This I believe is true. Yet I also believe that this inner grace is offered to all, thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who is ‘the true light that enlightens every (person) (Jn.1;9). In other words, the inner light of faith is not unrelated to Christ but is his gift to all (people). ‘for there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all...(I Tim. 2:5,6). I am aware that in taking this position I may sound unecumenical in that I give to Jesus Christ a unique role which I cannot accord to the founders of other religions even when I esteem them profoundly. But, after all, this is my belief, and ecumenism can only grow and develop when the members of the great religions are honest and faithful to their deepest convictions. Perhaps the matter could be stated more positively by saying that the Risen Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father belongs to all (people) and to all religions. No one religion, even Christianity, can claim to understand ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ.’ (Eph. 3:8)
And no one dare use the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’ to exclude anyone from God’s Kingdom. “For we are what (God) has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
Num. 21:4-9; Eph. 2:4-10; John 3:14-21 Lent - 4
Make no mistake about it - Jesus is the only Son of God; that is, Jesus is the One who was sent into this world, who was in the beginning with God and was God, who became human and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
Jesus is the only one who can be identified with God and speaks with God’s full authority... “For in him the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.” Col.1:19,20
And what ever we say or don’t say about the inclusiveness of God’s love, must be said in the light of this truth and in no way minimize it or dilute it.
For that is to throw the baby away with the bath water; that is to nullify all that Jesus did as God’s Son, and that is to take away the very uniqueness with is ours to share with the world; the uniqueness of a God who desires everyone to be saved, everyone to come into the presence of God’s awesome love and come to the knowledge of the truth, that
“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, a God, who “did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”... in order that the “immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” might abound in our world, and we might be alive together with Christ and this God who is rich in mercy and who loves all with a great love...
“Who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Ps. 103:8
2
Having said this, we now turn to our word for today -inclusive.
It is a word which wasn’t heard much around the halls where I took my theological training. It is a word which has come to the foreground and is very much a part of theology today because of the terrible things which have happened without it, in the name of God and in the name of Jesus and in the name of religion. For we have championed its opposite for too long now - exclusive - and the result is far from anything which is pleasing to God.
The divisions of our world, many of which are outlined by bold religious differences, leave a lot to be desired and leave many lost and confused as to who is right and what to believe and where is God in the midst of it all.
It is no idle coincidence that the fighting in Sarajevo and Belfast and the West Bank, has deep religious roots which make it even more fanatical and more tragic. And it is not an over simplification to say that this is, in part at least, the result of the word exclusive, which has long been dominate in the world of religion and needs now to be replaced by its opposite -inclusive.
What ever we do with the powerful words of our Gospel for today, and the equally powerful words of our second lesson, which contain two of the most loved and quoted verses of the Scriptures -
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish
but have eternal life.” Jn. 3:16
and
“For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-
not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” Eph. 2:8,9
what ever we do with these words, we dare not use them to exclude anyone from God’s love or God’s Kingdom, even though it sounds like we are given permission to do so when it says, “those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
3
For to do so is to do that which is never ours to do...judge another person’s believing. This is where a lot of the terribleness of religion, based on it being exclusive and I can decide who is in and who is out, comes from. Who are we to think we can know the mind of God or the heart of another human being? Or who is God’s elect? “It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?” (Rom. 8:33,34) And on what basis do we judge, if we do? On the basis of the person saying the words or doing the deeds?
Paul says in Romans10:9 that ; “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” But Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, that “Not every one who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven.”
And our Gospel for today, makes it clear that the way to know who believes and who doesn’t isn’t just by what people say they believe, but by the deeds of our lives which show whether we love darkness or light.
And then, as if this isn’t enough to scare us off from making the judgements which lead to exclusive thinking which leads to condemning all who do not believe as I do and act as I do, we are reminded by Paul, as he struggles which this same issue, that we are dealing with a God who is reported to have said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion of whom I will have compassion.”(Rom. 9:15)
In other words, stay out of my business - which is deciding who is in and who is out; and be about the business I gave you when I sent my Son to be your Savior and acted kindly towards you when I let Him be lifted up on the Cross, for you, “(to) show the immeasurable riches of (my) grace in kindness toward (you)” -and that is to be compassionate as I am compassionate!
4
If I had to choose one verse to sum up all that Jesus said and did, this verse from Luke would be a top contender. “Be merciful, compassionate, inclusive, as your Father is merciful, compassionate, inclusive.” Lk. 6:36
Yes, inclusive belongs in that verse; as Walter Wink, a contemporary theologian says. It is a proper translation of the word merciful or compassionate for our day. And it is a word we need to come to grips with, lest our religion be an excuse for rejecting those God loves and becomes a means to keep us from the tasks to which God calls us, namely to love light rather then darkness and do what is true to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that our deeds have been done in God.
We are to give the gift we have been given!
We are to be a blessing because we have been blessed!
We are to live as “children of light” (Eph. 5:1) and that means
“clothe (ourselves) with compassion, kindness, humility,
meekness, and patience. (Bearing) with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, (forgiving) each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven (us), so (we) also must forgive.
Above all, clothe (ourselves) with love, which binds
everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of
Christ rule in (our) hearts...And be thankful.” (Col.3:12-15)
AND LEAVE THE REST TO GOD!!!
Don’t spoil what God has done by trying to play God with other peoples lives and faith. We never know enough to do that! And when we try, we become exclusive with God who never intended to be excluded by anyone from anyone. If there is to be excluding, God will be the one to do it and it may well be far different then how we would do it. For if we take our clue from Jesus, with God more times then not the first are last and the last are first, those who think they are in are out and those who are sure they are out are given the seats of honor. Which is to say it is not ours to say who is in or who is out...it is ours to show something of the “immeasurable riches of (God’s) grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” to all!
In other words, “Love ’em all; let God sort them out!”
5
Is this not why Mother Teresa stands out as such a unique person in our day?
She comes from a strong doctrinal Church which along with much of traditional Christianity has preached God’s love and practiced exclusivity in so many ways both within its ranks and without, that it can hardly be said to be very open to anything which sounds too inclusive, too accepting of those who are different. And yet she does not let this keep her from doing that which can be clearly seen to be deeds done in God, that is, deeds born of the love of God and deeply reflective of the immeasurable riches of God’s grace and love; and when asked to try put into words what she is doing, so we can see if it is true or not she blows us away with the reminder that:
“The same loving hand that has created you
has created me.
If he is your Father
he must be my Father also.
We all belong to the same family.
Hindus, Muslims and all peoples are our brothers and
sisters.
They too are the children of God.
Our work among the Hindus proclaims that
God loves them
God has created them
they are my brothers and sisters.
Naturally I would like to give them the joy of what I
believe
but that I cannot do;
only God can.
Faith is a gift of God
but God does not force himself.
Christians, Muslims, Hindus, believers and nonbelievers
have the opportunity with us to do works of love
have the opportunity with us to share the joy of
loving and come to realize God’s presence.
Hindus become better Hindus.
Catholics become better Catholics.
Muslims become better Muslims.”
6
And the love God has for the world becomes incarnate again, in those who confess Christ as Lord and in those who don’t; and something of the kingdom of heaven comes on earth because God’s love is not excluded from anyone and God’s lifting up of God’s only Son shines more brightly in the darkness of this world and the darkness will never overcome it.
The bottom line is, you see, that the best that we can say about what we believe is said through our deeds, not our words. And to use words, even holy words to exclude is to violate the heart of God and it is to love darkness more then light. What ever else we do, we dare not use God’s Word to exclude anyone from God’s love, for God’s love is infinitely more inclusive then we ever dreamed possible, and Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross penetrates the darkness of this world with a light which shines beyond our expectation and control.
Wm. Johnston, a Catholic priest who has spent years in the Orient, seeking to lift up this Jesus God sent whom we know to be the Son of God, has said it well when he said:
“I have spoken of an inner revelation, a gift of faith, an interior word offered to all (people) and I have said with Paul that God does not show partiality. This I believe is true. Yet I also believe that this inner grace is offered to all, thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who is ‘the true light that enlightens every (person) (Jn.1;9). In other words, the inner light of faith is not unrelated to Christ but is his gift to all (people). ‘for there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all...(I Tim. 2:5,6). I am aware that in taking this position I may sound unecumenical in that I give to Jesus Christ a unique role which I cannot accord to the founders of other religions even when I esteem them profoundly. But, after all, this is my belief, and ecumenism can only grow and develop when the members of the great religions are honest and faithful to their deepest convictions. Perhaps the matter could be stated more positively by saying that the Risen Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father belongs to all (people) and to all religions. No one religion, even Christianity, can claim to understand ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ.’ (Eph. 3:8)
And no one dare use the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’ to exclude anyone from God’s Kingdom. “For we are what (God) has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
4 DOUBT
“THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN- DOUBT” April 10,1994
I John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31
Our fourth magnificent word, which is in the blessing business more then we know, which is a part of the act of believing which keeps us honest in our faith and keeps our faith, as Frederick Buechner says, “awake and moving” is doubt.
Doubt...to be skeptical or uncertain about something; dubious, suspicious, question, wonder; it can even mean a lack of conviction or certainty. Which is why we often fail to see its role in the life of faith. Yet it is doubt which keeps us from a blind faith which swallows anything and everything it is given and questions nothing; a faith which celebrates Easter with all its joy and shouts of Alleluia and never gets to the place of asking how can this be and what does this mean and show me some evidence that it is true.
Like Thomas does for us again today.
When I left the Seminary 35 years ago, I thought my task was to dispel all doubt and help people believe without a doubt that Jesus was the Son of God sent into our world to live and die and rise again and once people believed, there would be no questions, no hesitation, no doubt again. And with this faith, we would overcome the world and all would be well. How naive...and even dangerous such thinking is; for faith doesn’t work that way.
It isn’t that simple and it isn’t that clear cut. For “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb.11:1); and it’s greatest cry may well be the cry of the unnamed father who said to Jesus, “Lord I believe; help mine unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
Doubt is normal for us humans and the worst thing we can do is deny it. To doubt is human and in fact, without doubt somehow mixed up in our believing we end up being either too naive or too cock-sure, and in either case our believing becomes either something less then a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives or a distorted and twisted power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives which leads to terrible things, not good things, in the name of God.
2
Have you ever noticed how those who think they are sure about everything there is to know about God and have no doubts about God’s will in their lives are often the most difficult to be around and the least sensitive to human suffering and need as well as God’s caring about the least and the lost?
Have you ever noticed that those who are sure they know what God’s Word has to say and it will always be as they know and believe it to be, and as they quote it and use it, often use God’s word to abuse people and treat them without mercy, rather then with mercy?
Without doubt, there can be no faith; for doubt is a part of faith. Healthy wondering and uncertainty is a part of the life of faith. For just as hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is; so doubt is not the opposite of faith, un-belief is. And here the New RSV does a poor job of translating the words of Jesus to Thomas and uses doubt where it more clearly should be un-belief. For that is the first meaning of the Greek - apistos - and in places where doubt is more clearly intended, the greek uses other words caring more of the note of anxious, unsettled in mind, perplexed, hesitate. What Jesus is cautioning Thomas against and us is unbelief; not believing enough to even have any doubts, any uncertainty, any wondering.
Graham Green, a Catholic priest/author struggles with the role doubt plays in our faith in the story of an old monsignor he creates, who has been sent on a leave of absence by his Bishop, to get him out of the way for a while. Father Quixote, a well chosen name for the monsignor, takes a friend along as his companion. The friend is a communist, the ex-mayor of the little community where they both live. They are fond of each other - the believer and the unbeliever. As they set off on their journey in the priest’s old car, he muses on the fact that ‘sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter fights only with himself’.”
One day, during his siesta, Father Quixote has a dream. It is of the crucifixion. All the familiar figures are there-the Roman soldiers, the crowd, the Mother of Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t die. He appeals to a legion of angles and they save him.
3
“So there was no final agony, no heavy stone which had to be rolled away...Father Quixote stood there watching on Golgotha as Christ stepped down from the cross triumphant and acclaimed. The Roman soldiers...knelt in His honor, and the people of Jerusalem poured up the hill to worship Him. The disciples clustered happily around. His mother smiled through her tears of joy. There was no ambiguity, no room for doubt and no room for faith at all...The whole would knew with certainty that Christ was the Son of God.
It was only a dream, of course it was only a dream, but nonetheless Father Quixote had felt on waking the chill of despair felt by a man who realizes that he has taken up a profession which is of use to no one, who must continue to live in a kind of Saharan desert without doubt or faith, where everyone is certain that the same belief is true. He ...found himself whispering, ‘God save me from such a belief.’”
Commenting on this story in his book Soul Making, Alan Jones says,
“In a world where there is no room for doubt, ambiguity, or questioning, there is no room for genuine faith.” (p.116) Which is akin to what Fredrick Buechner says as he struggles with a publisher who somehow wants him to be more sure of himself and he comes to the conclusion that what ever a “genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be” it could not be if there were no room for doubt, for “If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.” (Listening to Your Life, p.91)
Without doubt we cannot believe! Without doubt we end up being too sure of ourselves and too unreal to be any earthly good and our passion becomes dangerous. It even becomes fanatical, and as Ellie Wiesel, who lived through the fanaticism of the Holocaust born of the blind belief in the superiority of the Arian race says, “I turn away from persons who declare that they know better than anyone else the only true road to God....My experience is that the fanatic hides from true debate...He is afraid of pluralism and diversity; he abhors learning. He knows how to speak in monologues only...The fanatic never rests and never quits; the more he conquers, the more he seeks new conquests....A fanatic has answers, not questions; certainties, not hesitations,(and ) as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed it, (it’s) ‘Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty’.”
Parade Magazine, April 19,1992
4
Doubt keeps us from going mad in our believing and becoming fanatical in our living, which is a far cry from what it is we are called to when we are called to walk as those who believe in the Resurrection and to be about the business of loving God and obeying God’s commandments, which are not burdensome because a burden is never burdensome when it is carried in love. Is this not the power of the theme often seen and quoted for Boy’s Town - “He ain’t heavy father; he’s my brother.”
I don’t understand the resurrection; but I do know something about love; and when the Bible tells me that God loves me, that is enough! The rest is all gravy. I can doubt the virgin birth; that is, wonder how could that happen? I can doubt the resurrection; that is, wonder how can that be? I can have more questions then answers about both and that’s okay. All I really need to dare believe with all the power of faith within me is that God loves me and God loves all God’s children. God will take care of the rest!
And is this not what Thomas gets in touch with when Jesus appears to him?
His words, “My Lord and My God!” are an intimate cry of one who now knows that the love he knew has not ended; that this Jesus who died is somehow alive again and that means that love has triumphant over hate, light over darkness, and life over death. And that means that doubt can give way to believing and make way for that which is beyond our imagining or comprehending to be a part of our living.
I would guess Thomas came out from that room shaking his head and saying over and over and over again, “I can’t believe I saw the whole thing?” I can’t believe it is true, but I do! And I’ll never figure it out, but I will cling to it with all the passion I have, for someone I love and whom I know loves me has told me it is true. And that is enough!”
5
Doubt is a part of faith; a very important part which serves to keep us alive and awake in our believing, again as Frederick Buechner says:
“Whether your faith is that there is a God, or that there is not a God,
if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.
Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
Perhaps this is why doubting Thomas is always our companion on the Sunday following Easter. We need a good dose of skepticism lest our exuberance last Sunday carry us off into unreal places and cause us to be unreal about our believing and causes us to be so sure of ourselves that we overstep our bounds and play god with the lives of people rather then live as those who have a hope in our hearts, and love on our minds, in spite of all things to the contrary. And that hope is that life is eternal just as God is eternal, just as love is eternal and no matter what we are able to understand about it, it is God’s good pleasure to give us the gift of life both now and eternally. And that love is the courage to act with forgiveness and grace, over and over and over again, even when it doesn’t seem to do any good, even when it seems to be weak and ineffective, even when it seems to be taken advantage of, even when we wonder and doubt its effectiveness; for this is “life in his name”, loving as we have been loved, and risking that this love can make the difference and even make all things new.
It is God’s command that we live in love even as we have been loved and let the rest fall where it may.
We are not to be so sure of ourselves we are no longer able to forgive We are not to be so doubtless that we never hesitate to say we know God’s will and are ready to lay it on any and all who come our way. We are not to be so believing that we never “wonder as we wander out under the stars how Jesus our Savior didst come forth to die for poor ornery sinners like you and like I”, and we are never to be so sure of ourselves we become blinded by our believing and our believing becomes a curse, not a blessing.
6
For the terrible truth we are saved from by doubt is, as Alan Jones says, “the persecuting personality (which) is marked by clarity and precision. (In which) there is no room for indecision... no room for guilt... no room for doubt. Such are the marks of a totalitarian state or totalitarian church. (It is ) the divided mind, the uneasy conscience, and the sense of personal failure (that is, our own uneasiness and doubt) which brings us... to the place of faith” where we become not blind believers but “one of God’s spies trying to make room for hope” and love in a world of hopelessness and despair. (Soulmaking,pp.117,119)
“One of God’s spies trying to make room for hope”...this is what the life of faith is all about, individually and together. For we all doubt and we all need the faith and hope of others to carry us through our doubts even as we carry others through their doubts. This is a place where sinners come to be forgiven and doubters come to make room for faith and hope and love, and together we come to keep on confessing that Jesus is our Lord and our God!; even though we can never say it without also wondering about it, and sometimes even doubting it.
Following the death of his wife, Dr. Smitts, Professor at Luther Seminary came to the President in deep grief and disillusionment and said, “I cannot teach anymore; I don’t believe anymore.” To which the President wisely replied, “Dr. Smitts, you keep on teaching; we’ll believe for you!” And they did. And he did! And faith returned to carry him to his final peace.
I’m glad Thomas was one of the 12. Without him we probably would not have permission to doubt, and in so doing, not have permission to be human. for to doubt is human. And as Martin Luther has said, “There is more honest faith in doubt than in all the creeds of Christendom.”
Faith that is which dares to believe that there is more to God then meets the eye...then can be understood by the mind...then can be captured by reason. This faith which is not our doing but is the stirring of God’s love within which causes us to stick our necks out and say “My Lord and My God”, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out what it is we have said and who it is we are following. This faith which is a risk and a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives not because we understand it fully but because it grips us and will not let us go, and will not let us down, and will not let us off, ever.
I John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31
Our fourth magnificent word, which is in the blessing business more then we know, which is a part of the act of believing which keeps us honest in our faith and keeps our faith, as Frederick Buechner says, “awake and moving” is doubt.
Doubt...to be skeptical or uncertain about something; dubious, suspicious, question, wonder; it can even mean a lack of conviction or certainty. Which is why we often fail to see its role in the life of faith. Yet it is doubt which keeps us from a blind faith which swallows anything and everything it is given and questions nothing; a faith which celebrates Easter with all its joy and shouts of Alleluia and never gets to the place of asking how can this be and what does this mean and show me some evidence that it is true.
Like Thomas does for us again today.
When I left the Seminary 35 years ago, I thought my task was to dispel all doubt and help people believe without a doubt that Jesus was the Son of God sent into our world to live and die and rise again and once people believed, there would be no questions, no hesitation, no doubt again. And with this faith, we would overcome the world and all would be well. How naive...and even dangerous such thinking is; for faith doesn’t work that way.
It isn’t that simple and it isn’t that clear cut. For “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb.11:1); and it’s greatest cry may well be the cry of the unnamed father who said to Jesus, “Lord I believe; help mine unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
Doubt is normal for us humans and the worst thing we can do is deny it. To doubt is human and in fact, without doubt somehow mixed up in our believing we end up being either too naive or too cock-sure, and in either case our believing becomes either something less then a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives or a distorted and twisted power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives which leads to terrible things, not good things, in the name of God.
2
Have you ever noticed how those who think they are sure about everything there is to know about God and have no doubts about God’s will in their lives are often the most difficult to be around and the least sensitive to human suffering and need as well as God’s caring about the least and the lost?
Have you ever noticed that those who are sure they know what God’s Word has to say and it will always be as they know and believe it to be, and as they quote it and use it, often use God’s word to abuse people and treat them without mercy, rather then with mercy?
Without doubt, there can be no faith; for doubt is a part of faith. Healthy wondering and uncertainty is a part of the life of faith. For just as hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is; so doubt is not the opposite of faith, un-belief is. And here the New RSV does a poor job of translating the words of Jesus to Thomas and uses doubt where it more clearly should be un-belief. For that is the first meaning of the Greek - apistos - and in places where doubt is more clearly intended, the greek uses other words caring more of the note of anxious, unsettled in mind, perplexed, hesitate. What Jesus is cautioning Thomas against and us is unbelief; not believing enough to even have any doubts, any uncertainty, any wondering.
Graham Green, a Catholic priest/author struggles with the role doubt plays in our faith in the story of an old monsignor he creates, who has been sent on a leave of absence by his Bishop, to get him out of the way for a while. Father Quixote, a well chosen name for the monsignor, takes a friend along as his companion. The friend is a communist, the ex-mayor of the little community where they both live. They are fond of each other - the believer and the unbeliever. As they set off on their journey in the priest’s old car, he muses on the fact that ‘sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter fights only with himself’.”
One day, during his siesta, Father Quixote has a dream. It is of the crucifixion. All the familiar figures are there-the Roman soldiers, the crowd, the Mother of Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t die. He appeals to a legion of angles and they save him.
3
“So there was no final agony, no heavy stone which had to be rolled away...Father Quixote stood there watching on Golgotha as Christ stepped down from the cross triumphant and acclaimed. The Roman soldiers...knelt in His honor, and the people of Jerusalem poured up the hill to worship Him. The disciples clustered happily around. His mother smiled through her tears of joy. There was no ambiguity, no room for doubt and no room for faith at all...The whole would knew with certainty that Christ was the Son of God.
It was only a dream, of course it was only a dream, but nonetheless Father Quixote had felt on waking the chill of despair felt by a man who realizes that he has taken up a profession which is of use to no one, who must continue to live in a kind of Saharan desert without doubt or faith, where everyone is certain that the same belief is true. He ...found himself whispering, ‘God save me from such a belief.’”
Commenting on this story in his book Soul Making, Alan Jones says,
“In a world where there is no room for doubt, ambiguity, or questioning, there is no room for genuine faith.” (p.116) Which is akin to what Fredrick Buechner says as he struggles with a publisher who somehow wants him to be more sure of himself and he comes to the conclusion that what ever a “genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be” it could not be if there were no room for doubt, for “If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.” (Listening to Your Life, p.91)
Without doubt we cannot believe! Without doubt we end up being too sure of ourselves and too unreal to be any earthly good and our passion becomes dangerous. It even becomes fanatical, and as Ellie Wiesel, who lived through the fanaticism of the Holocaust born of the blind belief in the superiority of the Arian race says, “I turn away from persons who declare that they know better than anyone else the only true road to God....My experience is that the fanatic hides from true debate...He is afraid of pluralism and diversity; he abhors learning. He knows how to speak in monologues only...The fanatic never rests and never quits; the more he conquers, the more he seeks new conquests....A fanatic has answers, not questions; certainties, not hesitations,(and ) as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed it, (it’s) ‘Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty’.”
Parade Magazine, April 19,1992
4
Doubt keeps us from going mad in our believing and becoming fanatical in our living, which is a far cry from what it is we are called to when we are called to walk as those who believe in the Resurrection and to be about the business of loving God and obeying God’s commandments, which are not burdensome because a burden is never burdensome when it is carried in love. Is this not the power of the theme often seen and quoted for Boy’s Town - “He ain’t heavy father; he’s my brother.”
I don’t understand the resurrection; but I do know something about love; and when the Bible tells me that God loves me, that is enough! The rest is all gravy. I can doubt the virgin birth; that is, wonder how could that happen? I can doubt the resurrection; that is, wonder how can that be? I can have more questions then answers about both and that’s okay. All I really need to dare believe with all the power of faith within me is that God loves me and God loves all God’s children. God will take care of the rest!
And is this not what Thomas gets in touch with when Jesus appears to him?
His words, “My Lord and My God!” are an intimate cry of one who now knows that the love he knew has not ended; that this Jesus who died is somehow alive again and that means that love has triumphant over hate, light over darkness, and life over death. And that means that doubt can give way to believing and make way for that which is beyond our imagining or comprehending to be a part of our living.
I would guess Thomas came out from that room shaking his head and saying over and over and over again, “I can’t believe I saw the whole thing?” I can’t believe it is true, but I do! And I’ll never figure it out, but I will cling to it with all the passion I have, for someone I love and whom I know loves me has told me it is true. And that is enough!”
5
Doubt is a part of faith; a very important part which serves to keep us alive and awake in our believing, again as Frederick Buechner says:
“Whether your faith is that there is a God, or that there is not a God,
if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.
Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
Perhaps this is why doubting Thomas is always our companion on the Sunday following Easter. We need a good dose of skepticism lest our exuberance last Sunday carry us off into unreal places and cause us to be unreal about our believing and causes us to be so sure of ourselves that we overstep our bounds and play god with the lives of people rather then live as those who have a hope in our hearts, and love on our minds, in spite of all things to the contrary. And that hope is that life is eternal just as God is eternal, just as love is eternal and no matter what we are able to understand about it, it is God’s good pleasure to give us the gift of life both now and eternally. And that love is the courage to act with forgiveness and grace, over and over and over again, even when it doesn’t seem to do any good, even when it seems to be weak and ineffective, even when it seems to be taken advantage of, even when we wonder and doubt its effectiveness; for this is “life in his name”, loving as we have been loved, and risking that this love can make the difference and even make all things new.
It is God’s command that we live in love even as we have been loved and let the rest fall where it may.
We are not to be so sure of ourselves we are no longer able to forgive We are not to be so doubtless that we never hesitate to say we know God’s will and are ready to lay it on any and all who come our way. We are not to be so believing that we never “wonder as we wander out under the stars how Jesus our Savior didst come forth to die for poor ornery sinners like you and like I”, and we are never to be so sure of ourselves we become blinded by our believing and our believing becomes a curse, not a blessing.
6
For the terrible truth we are saved from by doubt is, as Alan Jones says, “the persecuting personality (which) is marked by clarity and precision. (In which) there is no room for indecision... no room for guilt... no room for doubt. Such are the marks of a totalitarian state or totalitarian church. (It is ) the divided mind, the uneasy conscience, and the sense of personal failure (that is, our own uneasiness and doubt) which brings us... to the place of faith” where we become not blind believers but “one of God’s spies trying to make room for hope” and love in a world of hopelessness and despair. (Soulmaking,pp.117,119)
“One of God’s spies trying to make room for hope”...this is what the life of faith is all about, individually and together. For we all doubt and we all need the faith and hope of others to carry us through our doubts even as we carry others through their doubts. This is a place where sinners come to be forgiven and doubters come to make room for faith and hope and love, and together we come to keep on confessing that Jesus is our Lord and our God!; even though we can never say it without also wondering about it, and sometimes even doubting it.
Following the death of his wife, Dr. Smitts, Professor at Luther Seminary came to the President in deep grief and disillusionment and said, “I cannot teach anymore; I don’t believe anymore.” To which the President wisely replied, “Dr. Smitts, you keep on teaching; we’ll believe for you!” And they did. And he did! And faith returned to carry him to his final peace.
I’m glad Thomas was one of the 12. Without him we probably would not have permission to doubt, and in so doing, not have permission to be human. for to doubt is human. And as Martin Luther has said, “There is more honest faith in doubt than in all the creeds of Christendom.”
Faith that is which dares to believe that there is more to God then meets the eye...then can be understood by the mind...then can be captured by reason. This faith which is not our doing but is the stirring of God’s love within which causes us to stick our necks out and say “My Lord and My God”, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out what it is we have said and who it is we are following. This faith which is a risk and a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives not because we understand it fully but because it grips us and will not let us go, and will not let us down, and will not let us off, ever.
5 SUFFERING
“THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - SUFFERING” Easter 6th of
I John 4:1-11; John 15:9-17 May 8, 1994
The movie SHADOWLAND, which is about C.S. Lewis and his walk through the valley of the shadow of death in his falling in love and then loosing the one he loved, ends with C.S. Lewis saying, “The pain now is part of the happiness. That’s the deal!”...a conclusion he comes to not with his head alone, but with his heart as well. And in those words lies the mystery of our 5th magnificent seven word - suffering.
Love and suffering go together; we can’t have one without the other.
The only way to never suffer is to never love...never be close to anyone; not a person or an animal or even a plant. Indeed, not even be close to oneself. Then, just maybe we could eliminate most suffering from our vocabulary and experience.. Of course, we would eliminate much of life too - friendship and intimacy, joy and laughter, and much that makes life full and meaningful. There isn’t much to live for when there is no love in life; there can be no love without opening the door to suffering. For the suffering now is part of the happiness. That’s the deal!
To live is to risk suffering...to love is to open oneself to deep suffering, yet it is also to open oneself to deeper joy which outlasts the suffering, and even transforms the suffering and fills life with a joy which is deeper then the suffering. For it is true, as the song suggests, “You could have missed the pain, but you’d of had to miss the dance.”
When Jesus spoke these words John records for us to his disciples he was preparing them for the most painful time in their lives. He was soon to go the way of the Cross; he was soon to fulfill what the Prophet Isaiah had spoken about him long ago when he said, “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with grief” (Is.53:3b) and they were going to have to face His suffering which would become their suffering and would do them in unless there was something stronger then the suffering to hold them together...and make sense out of the senselessness. That something was love. So Jesus reminded them that love was at the center of their lives together and the one thing which is greater then anything the world could throw at them and gave them the commandment to love one another so that his joy might be in them and their joy might be complete.
2 For “the one who is in (them, this love) is greater then the one who is in the world” and nothing of what was going to happen could separate them from the love they had known and still know and keep them from both abiding in that love and letting that love bear fruit...fruit that will last!
Suffering and love go together; we can’t have one without the other.
As such, suffering is a part of the very essence of life without which there can be no life and love is a part of the very energy of life which brings a joy to life that not even the suffering can destroy.
As human beings we do and will suffer. This is a given. It is not a choice. It’s the way it is. It is not even God’s will; for God did not will that sin enter the world and death by sin. So we can’t blame God for the bad things which happen to us or try to be good so God won’t let them happen. It doesn’t work that way because God is not responsible for making us suffer. God is responsible for doing something so we do not have to suffer alone and without hope.
In a letter Dr. Al Rogness wrote to Don and Mary Neidringhaus following the death of their son, he paraphrased John 3:16 to read, “God was so indignant with this fallen order where sin and tragedy and death could strike his children that he sent his only Son to put in motion a mission that eventually would do away with the whole sorry state.” That is, God so loved the world that God entered our suffering so that not even the worst which happens to us is beyond God’s love and can keep God’s love from doing its transforming thing in our lives and making our joy complete.
And from this great love is born all love...our love which also has the power to “bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things”;
which does have the power to make a difference even in the worst places of life so that nothing can happen to us which is beyond that transforming power and nothing can happen to us which can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord who came to tell us in unmistakable clarity that God is love and God’s love is the greatest power in the heavens or on the earth, and takes the worst which happens to us in this life and makes of it something good.
3
Not that it was good...we must never say that.
Not that God willed it...we never know enough to say that. Not that we are glad it happened because of what came from it. That is never the end result of even the blessings which come to us through our suffering.
As Rabbi Harold Kurshner, author of the classic book, WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE, says”
“I am a more sensitive person, a more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of Aaron’s life and death than I would ever have been without it. And I would give up all of those gains in a second if I could have my son back. If I could choose, I would forego all the spiritual growth and depth which has come my way because of our experiences, and be what I was fifteen years ago, an average rabbi, an indifferent counselor, helping some people and unable to help others, and the father of a bright, happy boy. But I cannot choose.”
Indeed, let it never be said that we like suffering, or that we look forward to suffering so we can grow and be closer to God or that we are glad it happened so we could become the person we are. This is to make light of the terrible pain and make mockery of suffering. Even though it is true...it does make you real if it doesn’t break you -as the Skin Horse tells the Velventine Rabbit... “Real isn’t how you are made...It’s a thing which happens when a child loves you. It takes a long time. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, you get loose in the joints, and very shabby.”
Love does make us real, when we let it!
It can take the worst of what happens to us, and it can bring something good out of it. Not easily. Not quickly. Not so completely that we end up being glad the terrible thing happened. We must never imply that! Yet something good, warm, loving, precious; something which brings a smile to our lips and a joy to our hearts, a joy which can never be taken away!
This is what love can do and does do with our suffering.
Love which enters the suffering, takes it upon oneself and will not let it have the last say.
4
That is what God did to overcome suffered for us. God entered our suffering and was there with us, feeling its pain, knowing its despair, suffering its anquish...this we can say for this is the God we have come to know in the One Jesus, whom we call Lord. For
“When the crucified Jesus is called ‘the image of the invisible
God,’ the meaning is that this is God and God is like this. God is
not greater than he is in this humility. God is not more glorious
than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than
he is in this helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this
humanity.” (God and Human Suffering, p. 112)
“Suffering...(our 5th magnificent word) does not (as Douglas John Hall says) need to be transmitted by traditions; it is present here and now, as well as in the past. It needs no ecclesiastical sanction; it comes and goes without anyone’s bidding. It does not have to be defended doctrinally; it is our daily experience. It cannot be worshipped and adored by fine liturgy; it is to be endured and not to be idolized. To be human is to suffer, and God knows that. That is why God suffers too. Suffering is where God and human beings meet. It is the one place where all persons - kings, priests, paupers and prostitutes - recognize themselves as frail and transient human beings in need of God’s saving love. Suffering brings us closer to God and God closer to us. Suffering, despite all its inhumanity and cruelty, paradoxically enables (us) to long for (life), find it, treasure it, and (live) it with all (our) might.” (God and Human Suffering, p. 117)
It deepens our living and enlarges our loving and transformes our being in a way which brings a peace and a joy which passes human understanding.
And it makes us compassionate; for out of our suffering comes our compassion. Out of our suffering comes our believing. Out of our suffering comes our capacity to walk with those who suffer so that they suffer not alone, and in so doing, love them as we have been loved and as we have been commanded to love and to lay down our lives for others. That is, not only be willing to die for them, but also be willing to live with them and enter their suffering so that they suffer not alone.
5
As the Church, the body of Christ, whose suffering is our salvation, we are called not to a kind of spectator spirituality in which we are able to exist in a suffering world without either passion or compassion but to be a community of suffering, where the very sharing of the burden can be the beginning of the healing process and the joy being restored.
We are called to be there with those who suffer and let their suffering be a part of our being, not with pat answers and easy solutions but with that grace which comes from knowing that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint” (Rom. 5:3-5); ready to be a part of the healing process, the slow, tedious healing process which stretches over many weeks and even years and leads down many dark valleys and dead ends before it comes out
into the light of day again; able to be with them with the capacity to suffer with, a capacity which is born of having been so healed and thus it becomes “a case of the comforted comforting, the healed healing, the forgiven showing mercy.”
(God and Human Suffering, p. 142)
This is God’s love at work in our lives and in our world through our lives! This is what it means to abide in God’s love and have our joy complete!
This is how suffering is overcome and transformed into blessing!
This is that which is in us in the love we know in the One God sent which is greater then the one who is in the world!
It is not that we loved God and thus kept suffering from crossing our path - like a rabbits foot brings good luck - but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins; that is, to enter our suffering with a love which will not be overcome and will not give up and will not let us go - a love which cannot be taken from us no matter what - a love which as William Sloane Coffin says, “ never dies and... (and a ) dazzling grace which always is.” ...so that we can be sure that “neither death nor life, nor angles, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, now powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” or from the love we have known and shared in this life and the transforming power of this love does make our joy complete!
Indeed, the pain now is part of the happiness (joy); and the joy is that which is eternal. That’s the deal!
I John 4:1-11; John 15:9-17 May 8, 1994
The movie SHADOWLAND, which is about C.S. Lewis and his walk through the valley of the shadow of death in his falling in love and then loosing the one he loved, ends with C.S. Lewis saying, “The pain now is part of the happiness. That’s the deal!”...a conclusion he comes to not with his head alone, but with his heart as well. And in those words lies the mystery of our 5th magnificent seven word - suffering.
Love and suffering go together; we can’t have one without the other.
The only way to never suffer is to never love...never be close to anyone; not a person or an animal or even a plant. Indeed, not even be close to oneself. Then, just maybe we could eliminate most suffering from our vocabulary and experience.. Of course, we would eliminate much of life too - friendship and intimacy, joy and laughter, and much that makes life full and meaningful. There isn’t much to live for when there is no love in life; there can be no love without opening the door to suffering. For the suffering now is part of the happiness. That’s the deal!
To live is to risk suffering...to love is to open oneself to deep suffering, yet it is also to open oneself to deeper joy which outlasts the suffering, and even transforms the suffering and fills life with a joy which is deeper then the suffering. For it is true, as the song suggests, “You could have missed the pain, but you’d of had to miss the dance.”
When Jesus spoke these words John records for us to his disciples he was preparing them for the most painful time in their lives. He was soon to go the way of the Cross; he was soon to fulfill what the Prophet Isaiah had spoken about him long ago when he said, “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with grief” (Is.53:3b) and they were going to have to face His suffering which would become their suffering and would do them in unless there was something stronger then the suffering to hold them together...and make sense out of the senselessness. That something was love. So Jesus reminded them that love was at the center of their lives together and the one thing which is greater then anything the world could throw at them and gave them the commandment to love one another so that his joy might be in them and their joy might be complete.
2 For “the one who is in (them, this love) is greater then the one who is in the world” and nothing of what was going to happen could separate them from the love they had known and still know and keep them from both abiding in that love and letting that love bear fruit...fruit that will last!
Suffering and love go together; we can’t have one without the other.
As such, suffering is a part of the very essence of life without which there can be no life and love is a part of the very energy of life which brings a joy to life that not even the suffering can destroy.
As human beings we do and will suffer. This is a given. It is not a choice. It’s the way it is. It is not even God’s will; for God did not will that sin enter the world and death by sin. So we can’t blame God for the bad things which happen to us or try to be good so God won’t let them happen. It doesn’t work that way because God is not responsible for making us suffer. God is responsible for doing something so we do not have to suffer alone and without hope.
In a letter Dr. Al Rogness wrote to Don and Mary Neidringhaus following the death of their son, he paraphrased John 3:16 to read, “God was so indignant with this fallen order where sin and tragedy and death could strike his children that he sent his only Son to put in motion a mission that eventually would do away with the whole sorry state.” That is, God so loved the world that God entered our suffering so that not even the worst which happens to us is beyond God’s love and can keep God’s love from doing its transforming thing in our lives and making our joy complete.
And from this great love is born all love...our love which also has the power to “bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things”;
which does have the power to make a difference even in the worst places of life so that nothing can happen to us which is beyond that transforming power and nothing can happen to us which can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord who came to tell us in unmistakable clarity that God is love and God’s love is the greatest power in the heavens or on the earth, and takes the worst which happens to us in this life and makes of it something good.
3
Not that it was good...we must never say that.
Not that God willed it...we never know enough to say that. Not that we are glad it happened because of what came from it. That is never the end result of even the blessings which come to us through our suffering.
As Rabbi Harold Kurshner, author of the classic book, WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE, says”
“I am a more sensitive person, a more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of Aaron’s life and death than I would ever have been without it. And I would give up all of those gains in a second if I could have my son back. If I could choose, I would forego all the spiritual growth and depth which has come my way because of our experiences, and be what I was fifteen years ago, an average rabbi, an indifferent counselor, helping some people and unable to help others, and the father of a bright, happy boy. But I cannot choose.”
Indeed, let it never be said that we like suffering, or that we look forward to suffering so we can grow and be closer to God or that we are glad it happened so we could become the person we are. This is to make light of the terrible pain and make mockery of suffering. Even though it is true...it does make you real if it doesn’t break you -as the Skin Horse tells the Velventine Rabbit... “Real isn’t how you are made...It’s a thing which happens when a child loves you. It takes a long time. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, you get loose in the joints, and very shabby.”
Love does make us real, when we let it!
It can take the worst of what happens to us, and it can bring something good out of it. Not easily. Not quickly. Not so completely that we end up being glad the terrible thing happened. We must never imply that! Yet something good, warm, loving, precious; something which brings a smile to our lips and a joy to our hearts, a joy which can never be taken away!
This is what love can do and does do with our suffering.
Love which enters the suffering, takes it upon oneself and will not let it have the last say.
4
That is what God did to overcome suffered for us. God entered our suffering and was there with us, feeling its pain, knowing its despair, suffering its anquish...this we can say for this is the God we have come to know in the One Jesus, whom we call Lord. For
“When the crucified Jesus is called ‘the image of the invisible
God,’ the meaning is that this is God and God is like this. God is
not greater than he is in this humility. God is not more glorious
than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than
he is in this helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this
humanity.” (God and Human Suffering, p. 112)
“Suffering...(our 5th magnificent word) does not (as Douglas John Hall says) need to be transmitted by traditions; it is present here and now, as well as in the past. It needs no ecclesiastical sanction; it comes and goes without anyone’s bidding. It does not have to be defended doctrinally; it is our daily experience. It cannot be worshipped and adored by fine liturgy; it is to be endured and not to be idolized. To be human is to suffer, and God knows that. That is why God suffers too. Suffering is where God and human beings meet. It is the one place where all persons - kings, priests, paupers and prostitutes - recognize themselves as frail and transient human beings in need of God’s saving love. Suffering brings us closer to God and God closer to us. Suffering, despite all its inhumanity and cruelty, paradoxically enables (us) to long for (life), find it, treasure it, and (live) it with all (our) might.” (God and Human Suffering, p. 117)
It deepens our living and enlarges our loving and transformes our being in a way which brings a peace and a joy which passes human understanding.
And it makes us compassionate; for out of our suffering comes our compassion. Out of our suffering comes our believing. Out of our suffering comes our capacity to walk with those who suffer so that they suffer not alone, and in so doing, love them as we have been loved and as we have been commanded to love and to lay down our lives for others. That is, not only be willing to die for them, but also be willing to live with them and enter their suffering so that they suffer not alone.
5
As the Church, the body of Christ, whose suffering is our salvation, we are called not to a kind of spectator spirituality in which we are able to exist in a suffering world without either passion or compassion but to be a community of suffering, where the very sharing of the burden can be the beginning of the healing process and the joy being restored.
We are called to be there with those who suffer and let their suffering be a part of our being, not with pat answers and easy solutions but with that grace which comes from knowing that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint” (Rom. 5:3-5); ready to be a part of the healing process, the slow, tedious healing process which stretches over many weeks and even years and leads down many dark valleys and dead ends before it comes out
into the light of day again; able to be with them with the capacity to suffer with, a capacity which is born of having been so healed and thus it becomes “a case of the comforted comforting, the healed healing, the forgiven showing mercy.”
(God and Human Suffering, p. 142)
This is God’s love at work in our lives and in our world through our lives! This is what it means to abide in God’s love and have our joy complete!
This is how suffering is overcome and transformed into blessing!
This is that which is in us in the love we know in the One God sent which is greater then the one who is in the world!
It is not that we loved God and thus kept suffering from crossing our path - like a rabbits foot brings good luck - but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins; that is, to enter our suffering with a love which will not be overcome and will not give up and will not let us go - a love which cannot be taken from us no matter what - a love which as William Sloane Coffin says, “ never dies and... (and a ) dazzling grace which always is.” ...so that we can be sure that “neither death nor life, nor angles, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, now powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” or from the love we have known and shared in this life and the transforming power of this love does make our joy complete!
Indeed, the pain now is part of the happiness (joy); and the joy is that which is eternal. That’s the deal!
6 COMPASSION
“THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - ” Pentecost -3rd
Mark 3:20-35 June 12,1994
Our Gospel text for today leads us into our 6th magnificent word -compassion. For what is the will of God if it is not compassion -
first, last and always. As Jesus said in Luke 6:36: “Be compassionate just as your father is compassionate.”
Compassion - a word not heard much 35 years ago and still not the first choice of those who translate God’s Word and those who seek to describe how it is with God and how God would have it be with us. I find it a bit ironic that the greek word oikteiro, which means to have compassion on, exercise grace or favor towards, mercy, is more often translated mercy or merciful then compassion or compassionate. In fact, look up the word compassion in the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible and it will read:
“The words for ‘compassion and ‘pity’ in the original
languages of the Bible are also frequently translated ‘mercy’ and the meanings of these terms are interchangeable. See Mercy.”
Turn to mercy and there are two pages of information, in which the word compassion is central to its meaning and is indeed even a stronger word, for it comes out of the root word for “womb” in the Hebrew and thus carries with it the deep feeling one has for one born of the same womb. In the Greek it means literally “to be moved in one’s bowels” and carries with it a strong sense of obligation to be moved to action on behalf of someone in need.
In other words, compassion has passion in it! It has feeling in it!
It comes from deep within and brings with it a power which impels one to act! It is not something we do casually or cautiously; something we do when we get around to it or where there isn’t something better to do. It is more then mercy. It is something we do with power and passion; something we do because we have to, no matter what the cost. To be compassionate is to be deeply moved to act on behalf of others; it is to live not on others but for others.
And it is to do this because there is a burning within which will not let us be otherwise; for this is how God is with us!
2
We know God best and we know the best about God through the word compassion. For the most and the best that we can say about God...the first and the last word about God is, as the Psalmist repeats over and over and over again, that God “is gracious and merciful, (that is full of compassion) slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.” Ps. 145:8,9
Is this not the heart of the scriptures testimony about God; that
God is not against us but for us;
God is not indifferent to our suffering, but is in it with us;
God is not angry with us because God delights in being angry, but because God loves us too much to not be angry. And God will not remain angry for ever; for God’s anger is preceded as well as followed by compassion. Even in moments of indignation, God’s love remains alive.
God is known best not in God’s almighty power - God’s omnipotence; but in God’s pathos, that is, God’s compassion which leads God to act on our behalf. As Abraham Heschel says in his book on the prophets, in whom we hear a lot about the anger of God yet never without a word of compassion which holds even God’s wrath in God’s grace and mercy,
“...the reality of the divine is sensed as pathos rather than as power,
and the most exalted idea applied to God is not infinite wisdom,
infinite power, but infinite concern. ” The Prophet, Vol 2, p. 21
Is this not who we see God to be when we look at Jesus, of whom it was often said that he was moved to compassion when he saw the crowds because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
And is this word not central to that powerful, life-giving story he told when confronted by those who wanted God to be harsher on all but the pure of heart, who wanted God to measure them by their religious perfection, not by what was in their hearts and how they cared for others. The story I speak of is the Parable of the Prodigal or better named, The Parable of The Waiting Father. It tells us all we need to know about God and the most important word in the parable which forever turns it into a message of hope for the likes of you and me, comes as the son returns and it says,
“...while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” Lk. 15:20
3
Compassion...a powerful word which captures something of the passion God has for us and something of the secret of the life of faith, for we are to be compassionate as our God is compassionate. This is to be our mark of distinction in this world. This is our calling, our command, our challenge; and what ever else this means, it does mean that there is to be some passion in our living and some celebration in our serving, as we live not on others but care for others.
We are not called to judge and condemn others who are different and who are hurting - who are like sheep without a shepherd. We are called to be compassionate, that is, stand with them and act on their behalf. This is no easy task, something we do casually and spontaneously. As Henri Nouwen reminds us, “Compassion is the fruit of solitude (that is, our time spent with God alone so that our faith might be a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives and not just something we play with when we have nothing better to do, or something we keep around for an emergency.) and the basis of all ministry... Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. It is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others where they hurt, where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure...With the best of intentions we get into the action before we know it and so overlook our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer.”
And this means we have to let go of judgement because “compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the over-againstness, which prevents us from really being with the other.”
The Way of The Heart, pp. 20,21
Instead of judgement there needs be celebration if there is to be compassion, for as Matthew Fox reminds us, :“There can be no compassion without celebration and there will be no authentic celebration that does not result in increased compassionate energies. A person or a people who cannot celebrate will never be a compassionate people. And a person or a people who do not practice compassion can never truly be celebrating...for compassion is about...feelings of togetherness...’the feeling of kinship; with all fellow creatures.’ This kinship in turn urges us to celebrate our kinship. Compassion then, is about celebration.” A Spirituality Named Compassion, p.4
4
Do you see now how compassion is more then mercy? More then just doing something good for someone and then getting back to the business of one’s own living with a certain distance and indifference between us and them.
More then even setting aside a certain portion of our time and energy to do good and then removing ourselves from the deep feelings of sharing the suffering of others. This is mercy, with a certain aloofness, not compassion! Compassion can not get away from being there when needed and feeling the pain of someone else’s life...someone with whom we also would celebrate.
There can be no compassion in isolation; with a certain safe distance between us and them. This is what makes compassion so difficult and so powerful; it comes from deep within and reaches deep within the other in a way which touches the very essence of our being. This is why we do not do it easily or casually, but with a deep passion which will not let us do otherwise.
As we struggle to understand compassion in a practical way for our living, which requires so much from us and offers so much to us and others, we will find ourselves walking a tight rope between two extremes between which compassion exists and seeks its way. The first extreme is indifference, which may be said to be non-compassion and leads to callous living and private believing; (believing only so I can go to heaven, not so I can be of some earthly good in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.) The second is enabling, which can be said to be pseudo-compassion and leads to over-kill, living so much for others I have no individuality left and my helping becomes hurting and keeps the other person from ever having to be responsible for anything.
As we seek to be compassionate we are going to be walking the narrow road between these two - indifference on the one hand and enabling on the other.
And we will brush up against them as we seek the compassionate way. In fact, if we don’t brush up against them, chances are we are being too cautions in our compassion. I mean, there will be times when our compassion will be dangerously close to enabling and even slip into enabling. Then it is we need to pull back just a little, and leave room for the other to be responsible.
5
And there will be times when we don’t give a damn; when we are numb and indifferent. Then it is that we need to “go off to a lonely place to pray.” That is, be renewed in our own inner being with the compassion our God has for us so we can go back out there and be compassionate and not walk away from the suffering of others. And it is only as we bump into both of these - indifference and enabling - that we will know we are in the place of compassion and somehow being somewhat compassionate as our God is compassionate!
And then there is this business of celebration, which is a mark of compassion and vital to its existence. When the lost son came home the father threw a party! There was no other way to express the joy he felt! It was demanded by his compassion. We know we are being compassionate when we want to party with those with whom we are being compassionate.
When we want to celebrate life with them and have no hesitation about being with them. This distinguishes compassion from mercy; we can be merciful and go home. When we are compassionate we have to stay for the celebration...and we enjoy it as much as if it were our own. So a way to check our compassionate, is to look at where we celebrate and with whom.
For where are celebrating is, there will our compassion be also!
Compassion...no easy casual thing in our lives. Not something we do quickly or naturally; not something which comes automatically or without effort and energy. In fact, much of the evil in our lives and in our world is the result of our lack of compassion and our fear of being compassionate. For when we fear compassion we become critical and judgmental, to protect us from having to be compassionate.
6
This in part is what is happening in our midst which is resulting in the largest prison population in our history, and still no let up on crime on our streets. This in part is what creates the ‘Welfare Mother’ myth which has us believing that our high taxes and deficit spending would all be solved by cutting all welfare programs when that ‘waste’ doesn’t even come close to the waste of those who are the powerful and dip deeply into the public coffers. This in part is what is keeping us as a church let alone as a society from being able to embrace those who are born homosexual as being valid human beings with a right to their sexuality as much as we have a right to ours. This in part is what is causing us to become a negative society in which there is lots of talk about morality and family values but little effort being given to being moral and little energy is being given to being family, which might mean we have to give up some of the so called “good things of life” and live with less so we have more time for each other.
At a Notre Dame conference on the work of Elie Wiesel, Robert McAfee Brown set out to “define the Moral Society.” This is what he came up with:
1. “A moral society, basically and fundamentally, will be compassionate rather than vindictive.” Anger and outrage, perhaps necessary at times of desperate evil, must not become normative.
2. “A moral society will express special concern for the powerless.” Since society does not bend easily toward the powerless, we must work “not so much to be the voices of the voiceless as to be those who will establish places where the voiceless are enabled to speak on their own behalf.”
3. “A moral society will be a society of participants rather than spectators.” Brown: “To care for the other is the route to fulfillment for the self. The real sin is indifference, with no recipient and no donor. With no caring, there can be no relationship.”
4. A moral society will be a society that clings to hope rather than succumbing to despair.” To be sure it may cling despairingly to hope, but cling it must lest it nurture the seeds of its own destruction.
5. A moral society is perpetually unfinished. The quality of a moral society will not be that all questions have been answered, but that all questions continue to be asked...
7
A moral society, basically and fundamentally, will be compassionate...this is our calling and our challenge as a society and as a church; as those who are caught up in the Kingdom of God on earth. For compassion is basic and fundamental to our existence as the people of God; without compassion we do not exist and God is not here! And compassion means we will embrace those we feel are least perfect, least deserving, and even most threatening to our lives, and as Walter Wink translates this verse from Luke, “...be all-inclusive, as our heavenly Abba is all-inclusive.” This is how far compassion will go as it takes us to the heart of God and back again to the places of need in our world.
Indeed, it is no small thing to be compassionate as our God is compassionate! It is the heart of life with God and the heart of our life as the people of God. For as Meister Eckhart, a mystic of the middle ages said, “You may call God love; you may call God goodness; but the best name for God is Compassion.” And it is the best word to describe what we are all about as the people of God!
Amen
Mark 3:20-35 June 12,1994
Our Gospel text for today leads us into our 6th magnificent word -compassion. For what is the will of God if it is not compassion -
first, last and always. As Jesus said in Luke 6:36: “Be compassionate just as your father is compassionate.”
Compassion - a word not heard much 35 years ago and still not the first choice of those who translate God’s Word and those who seek to describe how it is with God and how God would have it be with us. I find it a bit ironic that the greek word oikteiro, which means to have compassion on, exercise grace or favor towards, mercy, is more often translated mercy or merciful then compassion or compassionate. In fact, look up the word compassion in the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible and it will read:
“The words for ‘compassion and ‘pity’ in the original
languages of the Bible are also frequently translated ‘mercy’ and the meanings of these terms are interchangeable. See Mercy.”
Turn to mercy and there are two pages of information, in which the word compassion is central to its meaning and is indeed even a stronger word, for it comes out of the root word for “womb” in the Hebrew and thus carries with it the deep feeling one has for one born of the same womb. In the Greek it means literally “to be moved in one’s bowels” and carries with it a strong sense of obligation to be moved to action on behalf of someone in need.
In other words, compassion has passion in it! It has feeling in it!
It comes from deep within and brings with it a power which impels one to act! It is not something we do casually or cautiously; something we do when we get around to it or where there isn’t something better to do. It is more then mercy. It is something we do with power and passion; something we do because we have to, no matter what the cost. To be compassionate is to be deeply moved to act on behalf of others; it is to live not on others but for others.
And it is to do this because there is a burning within which will not let us be otherwise; for this is how God is with us!
2
We know God best and we know the best about God through the word compassion. For the most and the best that we can say about God...the first and the last word about God is, as the Psalmist repeats over and over and over again, that God “is gracious and merciful, (that is full of compassion) slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.” Ps. 145:8,9
Is this not the heart of the scriptures testimony about God; that
God is not against us but for us;
God is not indifferent to our suffering, but is in it with us;
God is not angry with us because God delights in being angry, but because God loves us too much to not be angry. And God will not remain angry for ever; for God’s anger is preceded as well as followed by compassion. Even in moments of indignation, God’s love remains alive.
God is known best not in God’s almighty power - God’s omnipotence; but in God’s pathos, that is, God’s compassion which leads God to act on our behalf. As Abraham Heschel says in his book on the prophets, in whom we hear a lot about the anger of God yet never without a word of compassion which holds even God’s wrath in God’s grace and mercy,
“...the reality of the divine is sensed as pathos rather than as power,
and the most exalted idea applied to God is not infinite wisdom,
infinite power, but infinite concern. ” The Prophet, Vol 2, p. 21
Is this not who we see God to be when we look at Jesus, of whom it was often said that he was moved to compassion when he saw the crowds because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
And is this word not central to that powerful, life-giving story he told when confronted by those who wanted God to be harsher on all but the pure of heart, who wanted God to measure them by their religious perfection, not by what was in their hearts and how they cared for others. The story I speak of is the Parable of the Prodigal or better named, The Parable of The Waiting Father. It tells us all we need to know about God and the most important word in the parable which forever turns it into a message of hope for the likes of you and me, comes as the son returns and it says,
“...while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” Lk. 15:20
3
Compassion...a powerful word which captures something of the passion God has for us and something of the secret of the life of faith, for we are to be compassionate as our God is compassionate. This is to be our mark of distinction in this world. This is our calling, our command, our challenge; and what ever else this means, it does mean that there is to be some passion in our living and some celebration in our serving, as we live not on others but care for others.
We are not called to judge and condemn others who are different and who are hurting - who are like sheep without a shepherd. We are called to be compassionate, that is, stand with them and act on their behalf. This is no easy task, something we do casually and spontaneously. As Henri Nouwen reminds us, “Compassion is the fruit of solitude (that is, our time spent with God alone so that our faith might be a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives and not just something we play with when we have nothing better to do, or something we keep around for an emergency.) and the basis of all ministry... Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. It is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others where they hurt, where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure...With the best of intentions we get into the action before we know it and so overlook our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer.”
And this means we have to let go of judgement because “compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the over-againstness, which prevents us from really being with the other.”
The Way of The Heart, pp. 20,21
Instead of judgement there needs be celebration if there is to be compassion, for as Matthew Fox reminds us, :“There can be no compassion without celebration and there will be no authentic celebration that does not result in increased compassionate energies. A person or a people who cannot celebrate will never be a compassionate people. And a person or a people who do not practice compassion can never truly be celebrating...for compassion is about...feelings of togetherness...’the feeling of kinship; with all fellow creatures.’ This kinship in turn urges us to celebrate our kinship. Compassion then, is about celebration.” A Spirituality Named Compassion, p.4
4
Do you see now how compassion is more then mercy? More then just doing something good for someone and then getting back to the business of one’s own living with a certain distance and indifference between us and them.
More then even setting aside a certain portion of our time and energy to do good and then removing ourselves from the deep feelings of sharing the suffering of others. This is mercy, with a certain aloofness, not compassion! Compassion can not get away from being there when needed and feeling the pain of someone else’s life...someone with whom we also would celebrate.
There can be no compassion in isolation; with a certain safe distance between us and them. This is what makes compassion so difficult and so powerful; it comes from deep within and reaches deep within the other in a way which touches the very essence of our being. This is why we do not do it easily or casually, but with a deep passion which will not let us do otherwise.
As we struggle to understand compassion in a practical way for our living, which requires so much from us and offers so much to us and others, we will find ourselves walking a tight rope between two extremes between which compassion exists and seeks its way. The first extreme is indifference, which may be said to be non-compassion and leads to callous living and private believing; (believing only so I can go to heaven, not so I can be of some earthly good in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.) The second is enabling, which can be said to be pseudo-compassion and leads to over-kill, living so much for others I have no individuality left and my helping becomes hurting and keeps the other person from ever having to be responsible for anything.
As we seek to be compassionate we are going to be walking the narrow road between these two - indifference on the one hand and enabling on the other.
And we will brush up against them as we seek the compassionate way. In fact, if we don’t brush up against them, chances are we are being too cautions in our compassion. I mean, there will be times when our compassion will be dangerously close to enabling and even slip into enabling. Then it is we need to pull back just a little, and leave room for the other to be responsible.
5
And there will be times when we don’t give a damn; when we are numb and indifferent. Then it is that we need to “go off to a lonely place to pray.” That is, be renewed in our own inner being with the compassion our God has for us so we can go back out there and be compassionate and not walk away from the suffering of others. And it is only as we bump into both of these - indifference and enabling - that we will know we are in the place of compassion and somehow being somewhat compassionate as our God is compassionate!
And then there is this business of celebration, which is a mark of compassion and vital to its existence. When the lost son came home the father threw a party! There was no other way to express the joy he felt! It was demanded by his compassion. We know we are being compassionate when we want to party with those with whom we are being compassionate.
When we want to celebrate life with them and have no hesitation about being with them. This distinguishes compassion from mercy; we can be merciful and go home. When we are compassionate we have to stay for the celebration...and we enjoy it as much as if it were our own. So a way to check our compassionate, is to look at where we celebrate and with whom.
For where are celebrating is, there will our compassion be also!
Compassion...no easy casual thing in our lives. Not something we do quickly or naturally; not something which comes automatically or without effort and energy. In fact, much of the evil in our lives and in our world is the result of our lack of compassion and our fear of being compassionate. For when we fear compassion we become critical and judgmental, to protect us from having to be compassionate.
6
This in part is what is happening in our midst which is resulting in the largest prison population in our history, and still no let up on crime on our streets. This in part is what creates the ‘Welfare Mother’ myth which has us believing that our high taxes and deficit spending would all be solved by cutting all welfare programs when that ‘waste’ doesn’t even come close to the waste of those who are the powerful and dip deeply into the public coffers. This in part is what is keeping us as a church let alone as a society from being able to embrace those who are born homosexual as being valid human beings with a right to their sexuality as much as we have a right to ours. This in part is what is causing us to become a negative society in which there is lots of talk about morality and family values but little effort being given to being moral and little energy is being given to being family, which might mean we have to give up some of the so called “good things of life” and live with less so we have more time for each other.
At a Notre Dame conference on the work of Elie Wiesel, Robert McAfee Brown set out to “define the Moral Society.” This is what he came up with:
1. “A moral society, basically and fundamentally, will be compassionate rather than vindictive.” Anger and outrage, perhaps necessary at times of desperate evil, must not become normative.
2. “A moral society will express special concern for the powerless.” Since society does not bend easily toward the powerless, we must work “not so much to be the voices of the voiceless as to be those who will establish places where the voiceless are enabled to speak on their own behalf.”
3. “A moral society will be a society of participants rather than spectators.” Brown: “To care for the other is the route to fulfillment for the self. The real sin is indifference, with no recipient and no donor. With no caring, there can be no relationship.”
4. A moral society will be a society that clings to hope rather than succumbing to despair.” To be sure it may cling despairingly to hope, but cling it must lest it nurture the seeds of its own destruction.
5. A moral society is perpetually unfinished. The quality of a moral society will not be that all questions have been answered, but that all questions continue to be asked...
7
A moral society, basically and fundamentally, will be compassionate...this is our calling and our challenge as a society and as a church; as those who are caught up in the Kingdom of God on earth. For compassion is basic and fundamental to our existence as the people of God; without compassion we do not exist and God is not here! And compassion means we will embrace those we feel are least perfect, least deserving, and even most threatening to our lives, and as Walter Wink translates this verse from Luke, “...be all-inclusive, as our heavenly Abba is all-inclusive.” This is how far compassion will go as it takes us to the heart of God and back again to the places of need in our world.
Indeed, it is no small thing to be compassionate as our God is compassionate! It is the heart of life with God and the heart of our life as the people of God. For as Meister Eckhart, a mystic of the middle ages said, “You may call God love; you may call God goodness; but the best name for God is Compassion.” And it is the best word to describe what we are all about as the people of God!
Amen
7 INTIMACY
“THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - INTIMACY” Pentecost 7th
Psalm 143; 2 Cor. 12:7-10 July 10, 1994
Mark 6:1-6
In the movie “The Magnificent Seven”, one of the seven is not a hired gun, a killer; he just thought he was and for a while tried to be who he was not. In fact, he tagged along with the others, not because they wanted him but because he wanted to be one of them. In the end his true nature comes out and he stays behind in the village, to marry the beautiful daughter of one of the village leaders. He was a lover not a fighter...it just took him a while to figure it out. He was in the blessing business, even if the others were not.
Our last word has always been in the blessing business, for intimacy has to do with prayer, and even though the word intimate is not found in the Bible, the Bible is full of intimacy and prayer has much to do with intimacy.
I thought I knew what prayer was when I entered the Seminary...for had we not prayed at meal time and had I not asked God to help me catch fish? (If not the most, at least the biggest!) And had I not gone to church and prayed, as well as said my bed time prayers? And did I not have the notion that prayer was a way to get from God what otherwise might not happen?
I thought I knew what prayer was when I left the Seminary...for had I not written a paper on Jesus Prayer life analyzing all the times Jesus prayed and what He said about prayer? And did we not pray there too, in chapel, before classes and at various other times, including the quiet of our own devotional life? I remember a classic prayer by Dr. Iverson following chapel and the long walk back up the hill. It was a warm spring day and as Dr. Iverson began class he prayed, panting because he was old and out of breath:
“Lord, I thank you for this find spring day, which has finally come!” That’s all I remember of the prayer as we laughed quietly; and yet, is there not an intimacy in this prayer which says more about prayer then I knew at the time.
I thought I knew what prayer was after 5 years of experience and I stood with Mrs. Borman at EAFB hospital; her husband stricken with galloping pneumonia and in the course of those long hours together that night she said, “Pray for him!” And I said “we are!” And we spent the night there, in those intimate hours, praying with sighs where are too deep for words.
2
I thought I knew what prayer was, but I only had a hint of it’s meaning and a glimpse of its potential. Now I must confess that it is not what I thought it to be. It is much more then I thought it to be, and much better then I thought it to be for prayer is intimacy with God!
This is what got Jesus in trouble and probably why Jesus did most of his praying alone; as we read in Mark 1:35: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” This is why “they took offense at him”, as we are told in our Gospel for today. He wanted to be more intimate with God and with those God loved then they did. They prayed, but their prayers created a distance between themselves and others, not a closeness; and this distance extended even to God - they just didn’t realize it. For Jesus prayer was much more then a religious duty or ritual; it was what made him who he was and kept him in touch with the source of love which enabled him to be full of grace and astonish those who heard him teach as well as be a friend of sinners, a man of grace.
It also is what got him in trouble, for as Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian pastor of some 20 years who now teaches in a seminary somewhere has said,
“This world is no friend to grace. Seeking for intimacy at any level -with God or with persons - is not a venture that gets the support of many people. Intimacy is not good for business. It is inefficient, it lacks ‘glamour.’ If love of God can be reduced to a ritualized hour of worship, if love of another can be reduced to an act of sexual intercourse, then routines are simple and the world can be run efficiently. But if we will not settle for the reduction of love to lust and of faith to ritual, and run through the streets asking for more, we will most certainly disturb the peace and be told to behave ourselves and go back to the homes and churches where we belong...Intimacy is no easy achievement. There is pain- longing, disappointment, and hurt. But if the costs are considerable, the rewards are magnificent, for in relationship with another and with the God who loves us we complete the humanity for which we were created. We stutter and stumble, wander and digress, delay and procrastinate; but we do learn to love even as we are loved, steadily and eternally, in Jesus Christ.” (Five Smooth Stones, p. 49)
3
In the same book, Eugene Peterson tells the story of a woman coming to him for counseling. She had been recommended by a friend. Troubled for years, she had sought much counseling and was not much better off. So why not try a pastor; it can’t hurt. The consultation had been arranged on the telephone so when she walked into his study it was their first meeting. Her opening statement was, “Well, I guess you want to know all about my sex life - that’s what they always want to know.” He answered, “If that is what you want to talk about I’ll listen. What I would really be interested in finding out about, though, is your prayer life.” She didn’t think he was serious, but he was. And in the course of their time together she learned about the intimate handling of life, including prayer.
Intimacy and prayer go together - for all relationships between other persons involve us in some level of intimacy, which we call sexuality in our human relations. And all relationships with God, when there is any sense of closeness at all - as with the prayer of the Psalmist for today - any degree of intimacy at all, involves us in prayer. Therefore, as Peterson says, ”Because of the common origin of our creation and redemption, an examination of (intimacy) leads to an examination of our prayer life and vice versa.” p.29
To be intimate is to pray; to pray is to be intimate.
It is to be open with God...not just asking for what we want but telling God what we feel. Is this not the deeper, more precious communication we cherish in our human relationships? If a child talked to us only when he or she wants something from us, it would be empty and cold indeed. But to have a child climb on our lap and tell what is on their heart; to hear their soul speak and to hold them when they are afraid or sad or lonely as well as to hear them say “I love you.” - this is food for the soul indeed. This is intimacy!
This is also how prayer is to be...not just asking God for something but pouring out one’s heart to God, in joy and sorrow, in good times and bad, with words and also with that which is too deep for words,...”with sighs too deep for words.” as Paul says in Rom. 8:26 “For we do not always know how to pray as we ought”...and then it is that we best be silent and pray without words.
4
For prayer is more then words. It is words and it is more then words. The deepest prayer is beyond words, just as the deepest intimacy is found in the silent moments of our lives, when soul speaks to soul. To be intimate at any level at all, requires that I be silent; “Be still and know that I am God” the Psalmist wisely says; be still and listen for the still small voice which can only be heard when I stop talking. Prayer, like intimacy is much more then talking; much deeper then chattering away, “always over-talking, and so always under-listening.” (Arthur John Gossip. MPB, p. 299) Prayer is taking time out of our busy lives to go off to a quiet place and there be quiet...listen...wait for that which God is trying to say to us, but can’t get through because we are too busy and it is too noisy. This is what Jesus did often. In fact, most of his prayers are un-recorded; perhaps because they were a lot of listening and little talking. We seem to have turned that around and made prayer more talking then listening; and the price we pay for that inversion is intimacy. It’s hard to be intimate with someone who is always talking, always busy, always thinking ahead and planning the next more. Intimacy is nurtured in silence, both with each other and with God. Prayer is being with God in silence, listening for the still small voice which whispers a word of love into our hearts.
As such, prayer is meditation, something we still have difficulty with in our fast paced western world. It is taking time to be intimate enough with God to listen for the still small voice; it is slowing down the pace of life and taking time to get in touch with God’s will for my life. It is finding moments and creating moments in our days wherein we can be touched with the love of God and have our cups filled to over flowing. How ever we do it, be it a part of our exercise as we walk or swim or ride a bike, or be it a part of a disciplined exercise whereby we create a time and a place to be still and be with God, it is vital to the intimacy of our lives with each other and with our God. For there can be no intimacy when there is no time to be quiet; and it is perhaps true, that the greatest hinderance to intimacy in our lives is the pace at which we live, and the noise we have in our lives. And the tragedy is, we end up fearing intimacy and fearing each other. As Mother Teresa has said, “...to be able to pray we need silence, silence of the heart. The soul needs time to go away and pray, to use the mouth...to use the eyes...to use the whole body. And if we don’t have that silence, then we don’t know how to pray.” (Words To Love By, p.44)
5
We are currently inundated with stories and information regarding the abuse of intimacy, since O.J. Simson and the tragic deaths of his wife Nicoole and her friend Ronald Brown. And it is tragic when intimacy is abused, be it wife-abuse, child-abuse, parent-abuse or even husband-abuse; indeed, it is tragic when people are abused, even in the name of God...and there is plenty of that going on too, by those who would use God’s love to dominate and control someone else’s life. Yet at the same time, I am saddened by the article in our paper this past week that the National Education Association now feels compelled to advice teachers to “Teach - don’t touch.”, because of the fear of being charged with sexual abuse. “It hurts to say that,” said Keith Geiger, President of NEA, because often “what a kid most needs is a hug from a teacher because they surely don’t get it for anybody else.”
What we all need, more then we often admit, is a hug...a hug from each other and a hug from God. And that’s what prayer is meant to be...hugging time! And that’s what keeps us going even when times are tough! For it is life giving!
A true story is told of a group of Jews who were walking over a mountain, fleeing Nazi Germany. They carried with them the sick and the old and the children. A lot of old people fell by the wayside and said, “I’m a burden; go on without me.” They were told, “The mothers need respite, so instead of just sitting there and dying, would you take the babies and walk as far as you can.” Once the old people got the babies close to their bosom and started walking, they all made it over the mountain. They had reason to live; intimacy touched their lives and revived their souls.
Prayer is intimacy with God. A time when we can be open and tell the whole truth and know that we are being known and we don’t have to hide anything, nor be afraid of being abused by God’s love and know that God’s grace is sufficient for all our needs! A time when God somehow carries us, as the poem “Footsteps in the Sand” reminds us, and seeks to rejuvenate us with that love which never ends and the dazzling grace which always is...always is sufficient for all our needs.
6
The purpose of prayer you see, is not to give God a list of assignments. The purpose of prayer is to change us...change us and make us more intimate with ourselves, God and others. And that means we will become more vulnerable and risk being hurt as we seek to help. That means we will become more responsive, and risk being used as we seek to serve. That means we will become more accepting of what is and risk having to abandon what is not, even if our prejudices want to believe it is. That means we will be faced with having to choose, and risk standing with those who will other wise stand alone. All because we dare pray.
For prayer, as Henri Nouwen has said, “is far from sweet and easy. Being the expression of our greatest love, it does not keep pain away from us. Instead, it makes us suffer more since our love for God is a love for a suffering God and our entering into God’s intimacy is an entering into the intimacy where all of human suffering is embraced in divine compassion. To the degree that our prayer has become the prayer of our heart we will love more and suffer more, we will see more light and more darkness, more grace and more sin, more of God and more of humanity. To the degree that we have descended into our heart and reached out to God from there, solitude can speak to solitude, deep to deep and heart to heart. It is there where love and pain are found together.” (Reaching Out to Our God, p.150)
Take time to pray...to be intimate with God...to let God be intimate with you.
Discover the power of silence, the gifts which come in listening...in solitude, in being patient and long suffering, allowing life to flow with the spirit of Christ rather then being pre-determined by the economic forces of life. Develop the habit of prayer, not as a show of your religion but to “create a spiritual atmosphere which is most in evidence when it is not obvious.” (Hans Asmussen, MPB. p.297) And remember you are praying even when you don’t think you are praying, when you are being intimate, within your own self, with others, and thereby with God.
There is no better example of a person of prayer and what prayer can do to empower a person with Christ’s love, which is to be empowered to be intimate, then Mother Teresa. Listen to the words which which she and all the sisters of Charity begin their day, and carry with them throughout the day: (and I ask you...if this isn’t intimate, what is?)
Psalm 143; 2 Cor. 12:7-10 July 10, 1994
Mark 6:1-6
In the movie “The Magnificent Seven”, one of the seven is not a hired gun, a killer; he just thought he was and for a while tried to be who he was not. In fact, he tagged along with the others, not because they wanted him but because he wanted to be one of them. In the end his true nature comes out and he stays behind in the village, to marry the beautiful daughter of one of the village leaders. He was a lover not a fighter...it just took him a while to figure it out. He was in the blessing business, even if the others were not.
Our last word has always been in the blessing business, for intimacy has to do with prayer, and even though the word intimate is not found in the Bible, the Bible is full of intimacy and prayer has much to do with intimacy.
I thought I knew what prayer was when I entered the Seminary...for had we not prayed at meal time and had I not asked God to help me catch fish? (If not the most, at least the biggest!) And had I not gone to church and prayed, as well as said my bed time prayers? And did I not have the notion that prayer was a way to get from God what otherwise might not happen?
I thought I knew what prayer was when I left the Seminary...for had I not written a paper on Jesus Prayer life analyzing all the times Jesus prayed and what He said about prayer? And did we not pray there too, in chapel, before classes and at various other times, including the quiet of our own devotional life? I remember a classic prayer by Dr. Iverson following chapel and the long walk back up the hill. It was a warm spring day and as Dr. Iverson began class he prayed, panting because he was old and out of breath:
“Lord, I thank you for this find spring day, which has finally come!” That’s all I remember of the prayer as we laughed quietly; and yet, is there not an intimacy in this prayer which says more about prayer then I knew at the time.
I thought I knew what prayer was after 5 years of experience and I stood with Mrs. Borman at EAFB hospital; her husband stricken with galloping pneumonia and in the course of those long hours together that night she said, “Pray for him!” And I said “we are!” And we spent the night there, in those intimate hours, praying with sighs where are too deep for words.
2
I thought I knew what prayer was, but I only had a hint of it’s meaning and a glimpse of its potential. Now I must confess that it is not what I thought it to be. It is much more then I thought it to be, and much better then I thought it to be for prayer is intimacy with God!
This is what got Jesus in trouble and probably why Jesus did most of his praying alone; as we read in Mark 1:35: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” This is why “they took offense at him”, as we are told in our Gospel for today. He wanted to be more intimate with God and with those God loved then they did. They prayed, but their prayers created a distance between themselves and others, not a closeness; and this distance extended even to God - they just didn’t realize it. For Jesus prayer was much more then a religious duty or ritual; it was what made him who he was and kept him in touch with the source of love which enabled him to be full of grace and astonish those who heard him teach as well as be a friend of sinners, a man of grace.
It also is what got him in trouble, for as Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian pastor of some 20 years who now teaches in a seminary somewhere has said,
“This world is no friend to grace. Seeking for intimacy at any level -with God or with persons - is not a venture that gets the support of many people. Intimacy is not good for business. It is inefficient, it lacks ‘glamour.’ If love of God can be reduced to a ritualized hour of worship, if love of another can be reduced to an act of sexual intercourse, then routines are simple and the world can be run efficiently. But if we will not settle for the reduction of love to lust and of faith to ritual, and run through the streets asking for more, we will most certainly disturb the peace and be told to behave ourselves and go back to the homes and churches where we belong...Intimacy is no easy achievement. There is pain- longing, disappointment, and hurt. But if the costs are considerable, the rewards are magnificent, for in relationship with another and with the God who loves us we complete the humanity for which we were created. We stutter and stumble, wander and digress, delay and procrastinate; but we do learn to love even as we are loved, steadily and eternally, in Jesus Christ.” (Five Smooth Stones, p. 49)
3
In the same book, Eugene Peterson tells the story of a woman coming to him for counseling. She had been recommended by a friend. Troubled for years, she had sought much counseling and was not much better off. So why not try a pastor; it can’t hurt. The consultation had been arranged on the telephone so when she walked into his study it was their first meeting. Her opening statement was, “Well, I guess you want to know all about my sex life - that’s what they always want to know.” He answered, “If that is what you want to talk about I’ll listen. What I would really be interested in finding out about, though, is your prayer life.” She didn’t think he was serious, but he was. And in the course of their time together she learned about the intimate handling of life, including prayer.
Intimacy and prayer go together - for all relationships between other persons involve us in some level of intimacy, which we call sexuality in our human relations. And all relationships with God, when there is any sense of closeness at all - as with the prayer of the Psalmist for today - any degree of intimacy at all, involves us in prayer. Therefore, as Peterson says, ”Because of the common origin of our creation and redemption, an examination of (intimacy) leads to an examination of our prayer life and vice versa.” p.29
To be intimate is to pray; to pray is to be intimate.
It is to be open with God...not just asking for what we want but telling God what we feel. Is this not the deeper, more precious communication we cherish in our human relationships? If a child talked to us only when he or she wants something from us, it would be empty and cold indeed. But to have a child climb on our lap and tell what is on their heart; to hear their soul speak and to hold them when they are afraid or sad or lonely as well as to hear them say “I love you.” - this is food for the soul indeed. This is intimacy!
This is also how prayer is to be...not just asking God for something but pouring out one’s heart to God, in joy and sorrow, in good times and bad, with words and also with that which is too deep for words,...”with sighs too deep for words.” as Paul says in Rom. 8:26 “For we do not always know how to pray as we ought”...and then it is that we best be silent and pray without words.
4
For prayer is more then words. It is words and it is more then words. The deepest prayer is beyond words, just as the deepest intimacy is found in the silent moments of our lives, when soul speaks to soul. To be intimate at any level at all, requires that I be silent; “Be still and know that I am God” the Psalmist wisely says; be still and listen for the still small voice which can only be heard when I stop talking. Prayer, like intimacy is much more then talking; much deeper then chattering away, “always over-talking, and so always under-listening.” (Arthur John Gossip. MPB, p. 299) Prayer is taking time out of our busy lives to go off to a quiet place and there be quiet...listen...wait for that which God is trying to say to us, but can’t get through because we are too busy and it is too noisy. This is what Jesus did often. In fact, most of his prayers are un-recorded; perhaps because they were a lot of listening and little talking. We seem to have turned that around and made prayer more talking then listening; and the price we pay for that inversion is intimacy. It’s hard to be intimate with someone who is always talking, always busy, always thinking ahead and planning the next more. Intimacy is nurtured in silence, both with each other and with God. Prayer is being with God in silence, listening for the still small voice which whispers a word of love into our hearts.
As such, prayer is meditation, something we still have difficulty with in our fast paced western world. It is taking time to be intimate enough with God to listen for the still small voice; it is slowing down the pace of life and taking time to get in touch with God’s will for my life. It is finding moments and creating moments in our days wherein we can be touched with the love of God and have our cups filled to over flowing. How ever we do it, be it a part of our exercise as we walk or swim or ride a bike, or be it a part of a disciplined exercise whereby we create a time and a place to be still and be with God, it is vital to the intimacy of our lives with each other and with our God. For there can be no intimacy when there is no time to be quiet; and it is perhaps true, that the greatest hinderance to intimacy in our lives is the pace at which we live, and the noise we have in our lives. And the tragedy is, we end up fearing intimacy and fearing each other. As Mother Teresa has said, “...to be able to pray we need silence, silence of the heart. The soul needs time to go away and pray, to use the mouth...to use the eyes...to use the whole body. And if we don’t have that silence, then we don’t know how to pray.” (Words To Love By, p.44)
5
We are currently inundated with stories and information regarding the abuse of intimacy, since O.J. Simson and the tragic deaths of his wife Nicoole and her friend Ronald Brown. And it is tragic when intimacy is abused, be it wife-abuse, child-abuse, parent-abuse or even husband-abuse; indeed, it is tragic when people are abused, even in the name of God...and there is plenty of that going on too, by those who would use God’s love to dominate and control someone else’s life. Yet at the same time, I am saddened by the article in our paper this past week that the National Education Association now feels compelled to advice teachers to “Teach - don’t touch.”, because of the fear of being charged with sexual abuse. “It hurts to say that,” said Keith Geiger, President of NEA, because often “what a kid most needs is a hug from a teacher because they surely don’t get it for anybody else.”
What we all need, more then we often admit, is a hug...a hug from each other and a hug from God. And that’s what prayer is meant to be...hugging time! And that’s what keeps us going even when times are tough! For it is life giving!
A true story is told of a group of Jews who were walking over a mountain, fleeing Nazi Germany. They carried with them the sick and the old and the children. A lot of old people fell by the wayside and said, “I’m a burden; go on without me.” They were told, “The mothers need respite, so instead of just sitting there and dying, would you take the babies and walk as far as you can.” Once the old people got the babies close to their bosom and started walking, they all made it over the mountain. They had reason to live; intimacy touched their lives and revived their souls.
Prayer is intimacy with God. A time when we can be open and tell the whole truth and know that we are being known and we don’t have to hide anything, nor be afraid of being abused by God’s love and know that God’s grace is sufficient for all our needs! A time when God somehow carries us, as the poem “Footsteps in the Sand” reminds us, and seeks to rejuvenate us with that love which never ends and the dazzling grace which always is...always is sufficient for all our needs.
6
The purpose of prayer you see, is not to give God a list of assignments. The purpose of prayer is to change us...change us and make us more intimate with ourselves, God and others. And that means we will become more vulnerable and risk being hurt as we seek to help. That means we will become more responsive, and risk being used as we seek to serve. That means we will become more accepting of what is and risk having to abandon what is not, even if our prejudices want to believe it is. That means we will be faced with having to choose, and risk standing with those who will other wise stand alone. All because we dare pray.
For prayer, as Henri Nouwen has said, “is far from sweet and easy. Being the expression of our greatest love, it does not keep pain away from us. Instead, it makes us suffer more since our love for God is a love for a suffering God and our entering into God’s intimacy is an entering into the intimacy where all of human suffering is embraced in divine compassion. To the degree that our prayer has become the prayer of our heart we will love more and suffer more, we will see more light and more darkness, more grace and more sin, more of God and more of humanity. To the degree that we have descended into our heart and reached out to God from there, solitude can speak to solitude, deep to deep and heart to heart. It is there where love and pain are found together.” (Reaching Out to Our God, p.150)
Take time to pray...to be intimate with God...to let God be intimate with you.
Discover the power of silence, the gifts which come in listening...in solitude, in being patient and long suffering, allowing life to flow with the spirit of Christ rather then being pre-determined by the economic forces of life. Develop the habit of prayer, not as a show of your religion but to “create a spiritual atmosphere which is most in evidence when it is not obvious.” (Hans Asmussen, MPB. p.297) And remember you are praying even when you don’t think you are praying, when you are being intimate, within your own self, with others, and thereby with God.
There is no better example of a person of prayer and what prayer can do to empower a person with Christ’s love, which is to be empowered to be intimate, then Mother Teresa. Listen to the words which which she and all the sisters of Charity begin their day, and carry with them throughout the day: (and I ask you...if this isn’t intimate, what is?)
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