3 Lent A 2008 (RCL)
(Ex 17: 1-7; Ps 95; Rom 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42)
God loves a good question. God also loves a good questioner.
In the desert, while Moses fretted and the people complained, there were questions asked. They weren’t very sophisticated questions. “Where is there bread?” “Where is there water?” “Where is there meat?” Or, going deeper, "Is the LORD with us or not?"
God did grumble right back, and God did get pretty cranky with all the griping. But God responded. A people were forged in that desert, a people who asked questions even if it strained their relationship with God. “O that today you would hearken to God’s voice” sings the Psalm. “Harden not your hearts…”
How can we be a people who question God, and yet listen? How can we be a people who stand before God with our doubts and concerns yet not harden our hearts?
People listen best when they are at peace. People don’t harden their hearts when they believe their hearts have been healed.
God gives us peace and heals us through Paul’s words.
We are justified…we have peace…even in our suffering we have hope...God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. Christ died for us not when we were at our best but just as we are, broken, wounded, and sinful. We are reconciled to God and each other, we will be saved by the life of the living Lord.
It was that living Lord who made the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well so astounding.
She and Jesus shouldn’t even have been talking. She was a foreign woman from a despised minority. Jesus starts the conversation with a request—he needs something from her, he’s thirsty. But she picks up the thread and goes right back at him. “Why do you ask me for a drink?” “Living water, where do you get it?” Then, “Give me this water.”
Jesus leads them both deeper and deeper, deeper into her own life, and deeper into his call, deeper into God’s life. “Water, living water gushing up inside…” “Go call your husband…you’ve had five husbands…God is spirit, worship him in spirit and truth…the Messiah is speaking, I am he”
I love her attitude, the Samaritan woman, she’s full of life and history and she’s no shrinking violet. Attitude and nerve is not the same thing as a hard heart and a closed ear. She listens, she engages, and she receives the gift given to her: more than a jar of water, more than she bargained for, more than she ever imagined. It took a listening ear, and a heart ready and open to receive the astounding gift of God.
God loves a good question, and loves the questioner. What is your question today? What question does your life and soul pose to God? You may receive an answer you expect. But you may receive far more. You may hear silence that takes you to the depths, the depths of your own soul and the depths of God. You may hear strange words today, newness and strength, healing and forgiveness and a new start, a new life. Living water, gushing up, and the voice of One who says “I am.”
archived musings and preachments
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Lenten bits
It's been fun this year hearing questions about our parish Lenten observance. Even long-time members come up with questions about language and customs that they have experienced for years.
"Lent" comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word referring to Spring. The name itself does not imply anything dark or harsh. Other languages, such as Spanish and the Latin from which it is derived, call the season simply "the forty days". "Forty" in Biblical number symbolism usually means simply "a long time", and comes up over and over in the Old and New Testament. Jesus' forty days in the wilderness spoken of in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke simply recalled that tradition. It's not really true that "Lent is forty days because Jesus was in the desert forty days"; that notion, although meaningful, was read into the season and not the other way around.
Lent's origins are complicated and go back to the earliest Christian roots. Fasting and more intensive prayer is used by the Biblical tradition as well as by most of the world's faiths to prepare for and to honor great feasts. Our Feast of Feasts is Easter, the focus of which is the "Great Three Days" or Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter. Christians always prepared for Easter fervently and with great anticipation. Easter was originally the one day for Baptism, for which adult converts prepared for as long as three years. We have restored Easter as the preferred day for Baptism.
As the Christian movement matured, the issue of how to restore people to fellowship who had removed themselves by publically renouncing the faith under pressure became critical. The period before Easter became the time when these folks would be prayed over and would prepare for their reconciliation and re-reception into fellowship. Hence new life in Baptism as well as new/renewed life in forgiveness were the notes of this season.
The spiritual intensity experienced by both baptismal candidates as well as penitents began to look like a good idea to everyone, and soon the whole Church lived this period along with those special few.
"Lents" were often longer according to region (the Irish started Lent earlier and, not being satisfied with a longer Lent, observed three Lents at three different times!). The "Western" Church, of which we are a part, settled on forty days and counted back from each Easter date, not counting Sundays which are NEVER "days of Lent". The "Eastern" Church, which we usually call Eastern Orthodox, count back forty days and do not count Saturdays or Sundays, hence their "Great Lent" is eight weeks as opposed to our six plus Ash Wednesday and the three days after.
The custom of receiving ashes imposed on Ash Wednesday is ancient and goes back to a gut-level sense of ashes representing humility and mortality.
We here at SPP drape most of our sacred images in church with an off-white "unbleached" cloth. We don't cover the hanging "rood" or cross simply because it is a Spiderman-worthy feat to even try! The unbleached cloth goes back to medieval Salisbury or "Sarum" Cathedral in England and the churches within its influence. In the Middle Ages different regions and even different cathedrals or abbeys used different color schemes for the seasons, and only in the 19th Century did the colors that many now think of as the "right colors" for the seasons begin to settle down. I like the "Sarum array" colors myself and prefer it to the purple favored by many churches. To me the unbleached white implies simplicity and suggests that in this season we honor the fact that in this life we see only in part, not wholly, "in a mirror dimly" as St. Paul says, and that we have a journey to make. Rather than a season of spiritual and psychological complexity, I have come to regard Lent as a season of simplifying and of getting back to bare basics of faith and of practice.
Our "Sarum array" Mass vestments are my favorite set and the bold T or "Tau" cross on the back of the priest's outer garment is a traditional sign of penitence and conversion, one favored by St. Francis of Assisi among others. The "Tau" cross is derived from the old Greek translation of the Book of Ezekiel which speaks of a "mark" ("tau") placed on the foreheads of those belonging to God.
A few years ago we began to leave a few of our Eastern-style ikons uncovered. Covering crosses and statues is a Western custom--the Christian East does not veil its ikons for which it has intense reverence and would regard doing so as strange at best. I prefer to have a few of our images of patron saints peeking out at us, as it were, as we go about our Lenten observance.
Western worship also banishes the Easter cry "Alleluia" (or "Hallelujah! in the Hebrew pronunciation) during this season. To me, this is a reminder that the great acts of God in Jesus Christ, his passion, death, and resurrection, are always new and astounding news and it is good for us to remember its gift and its surprise by "fasting" from the cry which expresses it. This makes the first use of the "Easter Acclamation" of "Alleluia!" at the Great Vigil service that much more powerful.
There is a lot to say about Lent and even more for us to share with one another about its practice and its impact on our lives. I'll stop here and will read with interest anyone's thoughts, sharing, and questions in the Comments section.
"Lent" comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word referring to Spring. The name itself does not imply anything dark or harsh. Other languages, such as Spanish and the Latin from which it is derived, call the season simply "the forty days". "Forty" in Biblical number symbolism usually means simply "a long time", and comes up over and over in the Old and New Testament. Jesus' forty days in the wilderness spoken of in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke simply recalled that tradition. It's not really true that "Lent is forty days because Jesus was in the desert forty days"; that notion, although meaningful, was read into the season and not the other way around.
Lent's origins are complicated and go back to the earliest Christian roots. Fasting and more intensive prayer is used by the Biblical tradition as well as by most of the world's faiths to prepare for and to honor great feasts. Our Feast of Feasts is Easter, the focus of which is the "Great Three Days" or Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter. Christians always prepared for Easter fervently and with great anticipation. Easter was originally the one day for Baptism, for which adult converts prepared for as long as three years. We have restored Easter as the preferred day for Baptism.
As the Christian movement matured, the issue of how to restore people to fellowship who had removed themselves by publically renouncing the faith under pressure became critical. The period before Easter became the time when these folks would be prayed over and would prepare for their reconciliation and re-reception into fellowship. Hence new life in Baptism as well as new/renewed life in forgiveness were the notes of this season.
The spiritual intensity experienced by both baptismal candidates as well as penitents began to look like a good idea to everyone, and soon the whole Church lived this period along with those special few.
"Lents" were often longer according to region (the Irish started Lent earlier and, not being satisfied with a longer Lent, observed three Lents at three different times!). The "Western" Church, of which we are a part, settled on forty days and counted back from each Easter date, not counting Sundays which are NEVER "days of Lent". The "Eastern" Church, which we usually call Eastern Orthodox, count back forty days and do not count Saturdays or Sundays, hence their "Great Lent" is eight weeks as opposed to our six plus Ash Wednesday and the three days after.
The custom of receiving ashes imposed on Ash Wednesday is ancient and goes back to a gut-level sense of ashes representing humility and mortality.
We here at SPP drape most of our sacred images in church with an off-white "unbleached" cloth. We don't cover the hanging "rood" or cross simply because it is a Spiderman-worthy feat to even try! The unbleached cloth goes back to medieval Salisbury or "Sarum" Cathedral in England and the churches within its influence. In the Middle Ages different regions and even different cathedrals or abbeys used different color schemes for the seasons, and only in the 19th Century did the colors that many now think of as the "right colors" for the seasons begin to settle down. I like the "Sarum array" colors myself and prefer it to the purple favored by many churches. To me the unbleached white implies simplicity and suggests that in this season we honor the fact that in this life we see only in part, not wholly, "in a mirror dimly" as St. Paul says, and that we have a journey to make. Rather than a season of spiritual and psychological complexity, I have come to regard Lent as a season of simplifying and of getting back to bare basics of faith and of practice.
Our "Sarum array" Mass vestments are my favorite set and the bold T or "Tau" cross on the back of the priest's outer garment is a traditional sign of penitence and conversion, one favored by St. Francis of Assisi among others. The "Tau" cross is derived from the old Greek translation of the Book of Ezekiel which speaks of a "mark" ("tau") placed on the foreheads of those belonging to God.
A few years ago we began to leave a few of our Eastern-style ikons uncovered. Covering crosses and statues is a Western custom--the Christian East does not veil its ikons for which it has intense reverence and would regard doing so as strange at best. I prefer to have a few of our images of patron saints peeking out at us, as it were, as we go about our Lenten observance.
Western worship also banishes the Easter cry "Alleluia" (or "Hallelujah! in the Hebrew pronunciation) during this season. To me, this is a reminder that the great acts of God in Jesus Christ, his passion, death, and resurrection, are always new and astounding news and it is good for us to remember its gift and its surprise by "fasting" from the cry which expresses it. This makes the first use of the "Easter Acclamation" of "Alleluia!" at the Great Vigil service that much more powerful.
There is a lot to say about Lent and even more for us to share with one another about its practice and its impact on our lives. I'll stop here and will read with interest anyone's thoughts, sharing, and questions in the Comments section.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Toward God Chapter 7: Pondering the Word
This chapter of Casey's speaks of an ancient way to encounter the Scriptures as a way of prayer and as an act of listening to God.
I suspect that many people who love the Bible and who turn to it for the feeding of their souls have discovered this old way, for it is not a secret. The impressive-sounding name from monastic tradition is lectio divina, sacred reading. Casey makes plain that lectio divina is a form of prayer first of all. It is a way of listening to God and of entering into conversation with the living God.
Perhaps that is why this form of prayer-reading seems like some sort of esoteric secret guarded by "spiritual professionals." Many of us do not really want this sort of encounter with a living God. It's scary. It makes us vulnerable and brings up any trust issues we carry about. It raises any fear that we have that there really is "nothing there" and that our trust is built on air. Paradoxically it risks as well that there really IS "something there" or rather "Someone there" who is not a projection of our wishes and desires and about whom we may learn more and more the more we listen and converse. And what is more, we suspect that we shall be changed in the encounter, and few of us really want to change.
All of these concerns are correct. We shall be vulnerable, we shall be asked to truly live faith and not simply entertain it as a pleasant possibility, we shall be invited to progressively encounter a living God who is not just a projection of our own desires or fears. And we shall be changed, in ways we cannot predict.
But this is what it means to follow a path with heart, to answer a sense of living Call, to truly believe. Because to believe is to entrust oneself, to give one's heart. To believe is not to clutch at certitudes, to guard pet ideologies or fixed ideas. That sort of faith is at best a clinging to childish images. We either cling harder to these or abandon them as we grow older, refusing to take the deeper road into the mystery who is God.
I speak here out of my own experience, out of the tangle of fears and delusions which have made up the bird's-nest in my own soul lo these many years and which the holy Three have been kind enough, patient enough, to let me see and perhaps begin to untangle for me. I count it a grace that I have some sense of just how much untangling needs to take place.
The ancient school of prayer called lectio divina holds promise as one simple way to allow God to do this work of untangling. Casey speaks of this way as "one of deep seriousness and submission. We do not seek to control or manipulate the Word, but allow it the freedom of our minds and hearts. We come as disciples for whom it is more fitting to be silent than to speak. There are times for sorting out thoughts, speaking about problems and putting into words what we feel towards God; there is also a time to be still, to wait, to listen."
So often we approach the Bible as a problem, looking for our own beliefs or even ideologies to be supported or challenged, attempting to justify the Scriptures or prove them inadequate to directly address modern issues depending on our point of view, "mining" them for a few favorite verses. Lectio divina attempts to allow the Scriptures to "just be" in their integrity and in their purpose, which is to allow the living God to speak the living Word by means of the written word.
Casey describes the "technique", if such a simple process needs to be called such. Prayerfully, slowly, move through a text, putting it in one's mouth--the ancient way is to "murmur the Word" as the Jerusalem Bible's translation of Psalm 1 puts it. To stop when it seems that one has been struck--by comfort, by challenge, by discomfort, by puzzlement--to be attentive to and respectful of our own response. To stay with that moment, to not be in a hurry to move on, to ask God to speak, to pray that moment. The classic progression is: read, consider (and not in a complicated fashion but as one who hears powerful words spoken), and pray. This may lead to the silent state of attention sometimes called "contemplation", which the Desert Mothers and Fathers simply called "rest" (quies).
I'm not good at any of this, really. In addition to the bird's-nest of inner tangle that I referred to above, my mind is restless and curious and constantly struggles to move on. As prayer, the Prayer Book Daily Office has worked well for me. In my praying of the Psalms I find that I can sometimes slow and linger, especially if I has arisen early enough in the morning so that I can take my time. The words of the Psalms can take me to a place of quiet attention, until I slide into simple blissed-out reverie or distraction due to lack of sleep and caffeine and fretting. The long Biblical readings, although they do me good, at best provide me with some tidbit that will re-surface at odd moments throughout the day. They are over and done with rather quickly, even long passages from Genesis or Kings, and that is not the approach that Casey is speaking of.
But I am hoping and feeling called to a deeper way these days and perhaps it has taken me all these years of getting somewhat more comfortable in my own skin to venture it. I think my attraction to monastic spirituality has this healthy element to it: I long for a deeper and more honest encounter with the living God. I hope to make more space in my life for this form of prayer. And as I am a beginning, I am glad to hear the pilgrim tales of any of us who have knowledge of the road to share.
I suspect that many people who love the Bible and who turn to it for the feeding of their souls have discovered this old way, for it is not a secret. The impressive-sounding name from monastic tradition is lectio divina, sacred reading. Casey makes plain that lectio divina is a form of prayer first of all. It is a way of listening to God and of entering into conversation with the living God.
Perhaps that is why this form of prayer-reading seems like some sort of esoteric secret guarded by "spiritual professionals." Many of us do not really want this sort of encounter with a living God. It's scary. It makes us vulnerable and brings up any trust issues we carry about. It raises any fear that we have that there really is "nothing there" and that our trust is built on air. Paradoxically it risks as well that there really IS "something there" or rather "Someone there" who is not a projection of our wishes and desires and about whom we may learn more and more the more we listen and converse. And what is more, we suspect that we shall be changed in the encounter, and few of us really want to change.
All of these concerns are correct. We shall be vulnerable, we shall be asked to truly live faith and not simply entertain it as a pleasant possibility, we shall be invited to progressively encounter a living God who is not just a projection of our own desires or fears. And we shall be changed, in ways we cannot predict.
But this is what it means to follow a path with heart, to answer a sense of living Call, to truly believe. Because to believe is to entrust oneself, to give one's heart. To believe is not to clutch at certitudes, to guard pet ideologies or fixed ideas. That sort of faith is at best a clinging to childish images. We either cling harder to these or abandon them as we grow older, refusing to take the deeper road into the mystery who is God.
I speak here out of my own experience, out of the tangle of fears and delusions which have made up the bird's-nest in my own soul lo these many years and which the holy Three have been kind enough, patient enough, to let me see and perhaps begin to untangle for me. I count it a grace that I have some sense of just how much untangling needs to take place.
The ancient school of prayer called lectio divina holds promise as one simple way to allow God to do this work of untangling. Casey speaks of this way as "one of deep seriousness and submission. We do not seek to control or manipulate the Word, but allow it the freedom of our minds and hearts. We come as disciples for whom it is more fitting to be silent than to speak. There are times for sorting out thoughts, speaking about problems and putting into words what we feel towards God; there is also a time to be still, to wait, to listen."
So often we approach the Bible as a problem, looking for our own beliefs or even ideologies to be supported or challenged, attempting to justify the Scriptures or prove them inadequate to directly address modern issues depending on our point of view, "mining" them for a few favorite verses. Lectio divina attempts to allow the Scriptures to "just be" in their integrity and in their purpose, which is to allow the living God to speak the living Word by means of the written word.
Casey describes the "technique", if such a simple process needs to be called such. Prayerfully, slowly, move through a text, putting it in one's mouth--the ancient way is to "murmur the Word" as the Jerusalem Bible's translation of Psalm 1 puts it. To stop when it seems that one has been struck--by comfort, by challenge, by discomfort, by puzzlement--to be attentive to and respectful of our own response. To stay with that moment, to not be in a hurry to move on, to ask God to speak, to pray that moment. The classic progression is: read, consider (and not in a complicated fashion but as one who hears powerful words spoken), and pray. This may lead to the silent state of attention sometimes called "contemplation", which the Desert Mothers and Fathers simply called "rest" (quies).
I'm not good at any of this, really. In addition to the bird's-nest of inner tangle that I referred to above, my mind is restless and curious and constantly struggles to move on. As prayer, the Prayer Book Daily Office has worked well for me. In my praying of the Psalms I find that I can sometimes slow and linger, especially if I has arisen early enough in the morning so that I can take my time. The words of the Psalms can take me to a place of quiet attention, until I slide into simple blissed-out reverie or distraction due to lack of sleep and caffeine and fretting. The long Biblical readings, although they do me good, at best provide me with some tidbit that will re-surface at odd moments throughout the day. They are over and done with rather quickly, even long passages from Genesis or Kings, and that is not the approach that Casey is speaking of.
But I am hoping and feeling called to a deeper way these days and perhaps it has taken me all these years of getting somewhat more comfortable in my own skin to venture it. I think my attraction to monastic spirituality has this healthy element to it: I long for a deeper and more honest encounter with the living God. I hope to make more space in my life for this form of prayer. And as I am a beginning, I am glad to hear the pilgrim tales of any of us who have knowledge of the road to share.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Rewind! I Lent 2008
1 Lent A 2008
(Gen 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7; Ps 32; Rom 5: 12-19; Mt 4: 1-11)
Have you ever wanted to hit the “rewind” button on your life?
A movie called “Being There” explored that. The main character was the live-in butler for a reclusive man. The butler’s whole life was watching TV with his remote control in hand. When the owner finally died and the butler had to venture out into the real world, his hand still clutched the remote. When something bad happened to him or to others, he stood and hit “stop” or “rewind”, and wondered why it was not working.
Rewind just does not work—not for something as small as a thoughtless remark or as far-reaching as a Presidential election. I know—I’ve tried in both cases.
Today sin is on the agenda, sin sin sin, and what do we do about it, and what does God do? Is there a rewind button to hit in the face of that most fascinating, recurring, uncomfortable topic in Christianity which is sin?
No. The very, very familiar story in Genesis still stands no matter what we do or say. How utterly familiar—Adam, Eve, snake, tree, fruit—and the ending is always the same. Everyone blames someone else, everyone gets kicked out. I like the Simpson’s version which gives Ned Flanders’ voice to God: “Darn diddle arn it, Eve!”
“They knew they were naked…” The moment of knowing they could choose, and then learning they could choose poorly, made that first lovely couple vulnerable. It is a deep story in spite of how many times we’ve told it. It’s the story of how things are, and how we are. And there is no rewind button.
Each of us replays the Garden of Eden as we are born and grow. Each of us loses that fresh-born, unself-conscious innocence. Life will do it. Some have it torn from them even earlier by loss or someone else’s cruelty. And we all grow into realizing that we have choices, and each choice we make becomes part of our history, for good or for ill. And there is no rewind button. I do not believe we are born instantly into some wicked state like some dark theologies would have us believe, with images of unbaptized babies going to hell. But we are born into history and all the choices that have gone before us, and we participate in this history more and more deeply as we grow.
To be human is to be tempted, to be beset with choices. It looks like no way out. But there is a way out. The way out is to go through.
The three first Gospels carefully tell today’s temptation story. They say that only God could make a way out of the mess of our own history. God takes human flesh and soul and walks through it all. With his hair still wet from his own baptism, Jesus walks wide-eyed into the desert. He allows the seductive voice to speak to him—manipulate life! Pretend you are completely in control! Turn stones into bread! Run the world! You know what’s best for other people’s lives! Be invulnerable! Worship the voice that says you can have everything, at all times, you can quiet your greed and your fear and your lust for power.
Jesus’ answers are simple—depend on God. Turn to God. Don’t be a super-hero, be human. Do not take from others the same freedom you yourself desire. Let God be God and be human flesh and bone, turning to God for all that is needed.
Since Jesus walked through, so can we. There is no rewind. But there is liberation and peace. Each of our choices, our history, our moments when we have harmed or been harmed, can be and are transformed when we are in the One who has gone before. In humility, he has triumphed. In him, so can we.
There’s no going back. But there is going forward to healing, vision, God, and glory.
(Gen 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7; Ps 32; Rom 5: 12-19; Mt 4: 1-11)
Have you ever wanted to hit the “rewind” button on your life?
A movie called “Being There” explored that. The main character was the live-in butler for a reclusive man. The butler’s whole life was watching TV with his remote control in hand. When the owner finally died and the butler had to venture out into the real world, his hand still clutched the remote. When something bad happened to him or to others, he stood and hit “stop” or “rewind”, and wondered why it was not working.
Rewind just does not work—not for something as small as a thoughtless remark or as far-reaching as a Presidential election. I know—I’ve tried in both cases.
Today sin is on the agenda, sin sin sin, and what do we do about it, and what does God do? Is there a rewind button to hit in the face of that most fascinating, recurring, uncomfortable topic in Christianity which is sin?
No. The very, very familiar story in Genesis still stands no matter what we do or say. How utterly familiar—Adam, Eve, snake, tree, fruit—and the ending is always the same. Everyone blames someone else, everyone gets kicked out. I like the Simpson’s version which gives Ned Flanders’ voice to God: “Darn diddle arn it, Eve!”
“They knew they were naked…” The moment of knowing they could choose, and then learning they could choose poorly, made that first lovely couple vulnerable. It is a deep story in spite of how many times we’ve told it. It’s the story of how things are, and how we are. And there is no rewind button.
Each of us replays the Garden of Eden as we are born and grow. Each of us loses that fresh-born, unself-conscious innocence. Life will do it. Some have it torn from them even earlier by loss or someone else’s cruelty. And we all grow into realizing that we have choices, and each choice we make becomes part of our history, for good or for ill. And there is no rewind button. I do not believe we are born instantly into some wicked state like some dark theologies would have us believe, with images of unbaptized babies going to hell. But we are born into history and all the choices that have gone before us, and we participate in this history more and more deeply as we grow.
To be human is to be tempted, to be beset with choices. It looks like no way out. But there is a way out. The way out is to go through.
The three first Gospels carefully tell today’s temptation story. They say that only God could make a way out of the mess of our own history. God takes human flesh and soul and walks through it all. With his hair still wet from his own baptism, Jesus walks wide-eyed into the desert. He allows the seductive voice to speak to him—manipulate life! Pretend you are completely in control! Turn stones into bread! Run the world! You know what’s best for other people’s lives! Be invulnerable! Worship the voice that says you can have everything, at all times, you can quiet your greed and your fear and your lust for power.
Jesus’ answers are simple—depend on God. Turn to God. Don’t be a super-hero, be human. Do not take from others the same freedom you yourself desire. Let God be God and be human flesh and bone, turning to God for all that is needed.
Since Jesus walked through, so can we. There is no rewind. But there is liberation and peace. Each of our choices, our history, our moments when we have harmed or been harmed, can be and are transformed when we are in the One who has gone before. In humility, he has triumphed. In him, so can we.
There’s no going back. But there is going forward to healing, vision, God, and glory.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Toward God Ch. 6: Different Vantage Points
Casey tells us, with charming monkish reticence, "I guess it must be the same in a marriage."
He means our ongoing, unfolding relationship with God, and the fact that there will be many seasons, moments of growth, of challenge, of dryness, and even of seeming to stand still or even to go backwards.
If God is real and if our prayer-life, our living conversation and relationship with the real and living God, is real, then there will be all these moments and more.
I hear this as comfort and challenge. As I think I shared previously, Casey's book makes me face the fact that often I have regarded prayer and the spiritual life as a self-improvement project, and that there was some sort of state of serenity, a clear "achievement", to which I was supposed to reach and from which, of course, I always fell short.
Casey says instead that although there is effort calle for and though there may be such a thing as "progress", it is in light of the shifting reality of relationship. There will be seasons, and days. In fact, some days will seem worse after a day in which I may feel that my praying is really "in sync". To this Casey says, "the danger is that next time I come to pray, I try to re-create that prayer instead of trying to pray from where I am. In other words, I spend my time searching for yesterday's prayer. It has vanished as certainly as a champagne bubble. I cannot evade the task before me; I must pray from where I am today." (p. 61)
Casey quotes John Cassian, who is my "new favorite" early Christian author and spiritual guide, in speaking of the changing seasons of prayer and the possible reasons for the changes: spiritual growth (interior), and exterior circumstances.
Casey speaks about various elements of "exterior" influence in prayer, which for him include relationships with others, engaging the Scriptures, and contemplating the nature of the incarnation of the Son of God. Because of the power of the Incarnation, we engage with God's own revelation, the Beloved Jesus Christ, in our own and in others' lives.
For me this makes me think of my own very mixed life, where I've traveled, where I've ministered, lived, rejoiced, and suffered. Each place and each person has left a deep mark upon me, and often enough at prayer a face, a moment, an experience bubbles to the surface. I used to be troubled by this, as if they were distractions. I have slowly learned to pray those moments, those memories, bless them in the name of Jesus, or give thanks, or shudder and pray for those who were wounded including myself and pray for the grace to let go. If I don't pray my own life, whose life will I pray?
For me, one of Casey's most powerful lines in this chapter is: "Prayer, then, is a matter of our participating in the life of Jesus Christ. In him we have access to God's revelation of himself...and of us."
He means our ongoing, unfolding relationship with God, and the fact that there will be many seasons, moments of growth, of challenge, of dryness, and even of seeming to stand still or even to go backwards.
If God is real and if our prayer-life, our living conversation and relationship with the real and living God, is real, then there will be all these moments and more.
I hear this as comfort and challenge. As I think I shared previously, Casey's book makes me face the fact that often I have regarded prayer and the spiritual life as a self-improvement project, and that there was some sort of state of serenity, a clear "achievement", to which I was supposed to reach and from which, of course, I always fell short.
Casey says instead that although there is effort calle for and though there may be such a thing as "progress", it is in light of the shifting reality of relationship. There will be seasons, and days. In fact, some days will seem worse after a day in which I may feel that my praying is really "in sync". To this Casey says, "the danger is that next time I come to pray, I try to re-create that prayer instead of trying to pray from where I am. In other words, I spend my time searching for yesterday's prayer. It has vanished as certainly as a champagne bubble. I cannot evade the task before me; I must pray from where I am today." (p. 61)
Casey quotes John Cassian, who is my "new favorite" early Christian author and spiritual guide, in speaking of the changing seasons of prayer and the possible reasons for the changes: spiritual growth (interior), and exterior circumstances.
Casey speaks about various elements of "exterior" influence in prayer, which for him include relationships with others, engaging the Scriptures, and contemplating the nature of the incarnation of the Son of God. Because of the power of the Incarnation, we engage with God's own revelation, the Beloved Jesus Christ, in our own and in others' lives.
For me this makes me think of my own very mixed life, where I've traveled, where I've ministered, lived, rejoiced, and suffered. Each place and each person has left a deep mark upon me, and often enough at prayer a face, a moment, an experience bubbles to the surface. I used to be troubled by this, as if they were distractions. I have slowly learned to pray those moments, those memories, bless them in the name of Jesus, or give thanks, or shudder and pray for those who were wounded including myself and pray for the grace to let go. If I don't pray my own life, whose life will I pray?
For me, one of Casey's most powerful lines in this chapter is: "Prayer, then, is a matter of our participating in the life of Jesus Christ. In him we have access to God's revelation of himself...and of us."
Ash Wednesday--Spring meant the boat
It has been my habit now to preach Ash Wednesday without manuscript or notes. Here's the story I told, and why I told it.
Spring on Long Island where I grew up meant at one point Dad would arise from his chair and announce, "It's time for the boat." My verbal response was "OK Dad." My inner response was "Oh God, not again!"
For the boat was an 18 foot wooden "runabout", with an ancient outboard motor, that had wintered upside-down on sawhorses in the side yard. Wooden boats basically dissolve slowly in salt water. Hence the boat had all the effects of last season's deterioration plus the ravages of a New York winter.
Barnacles and flaking paint had to be scraped. New primer and paint, especially that potent thick red bottom paint, had to be carefully applied respecting the lines traced with masking tape. A number of repairs needed to be effected, and new fiberglass pads and strips needed to be applied to the stem and along the seams.
It was a lot of work. But if you wanted to cruise, you had to do your work.
To a ten year old boy, it seemed endless and excruciating, although I no doubt did only a dollop of what was necessary. I never remember Dad complaining. I think, as he contentedly scraped, painted, hammered, that in his mind's eye he was already out on the open water, wind in his hair, sun on his face, feeling the wooden boat sway and flex beneath him, not an object on the water so much as a living part of the water, alive and endlessly moving as does the sea itself.
I think of the boat as I think of this Lent.
None of us need to add articifial burdens to what we already carry. I became rebellious against what seemed to be an obligation to have a gloomy Lent, something one dreads, the season in which we make it tougher on ourselves because God likes it tough. In those days of a kind of gothic Catholic piety, Easter came not as a joy and delight but as simple relief--thank God that's over for another year!
But Lent is a gift and a joy. It is the season when we recall to whom we have been called--the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We recall that we are pilgrims. We drop the burdens that we may have laid upon ourselves, or that the world has laid upon us. Do we labor under the need to keep up false appearances of invulnerability, of self-sufficiency, of "having it all together" like the hypocrites of Matthew's Gospel (Mt 6: 1-6, 16-21)? They have "already received their reward", the pathetic self-satisfaction and ego-gratification of having it "all together" and having received recognition for it. In return they have the burden of keeping up the pretense for the next time, and the next...
In Lent we may lay aside the burdens laid upon us or that we lay upon ourselves. Do we always need to be right? Do we always need to seem to have it "all together"? If we suffer from money woes, do we let the world shame us or demean us as "poor"? If we are ill or in pain, do we let that illness or pain tell us that we are nothing but illness or pain?
We may lay it down. In turn we may step lightly, with joy, as we learn again from the lips of Jesus who we truly are and what we are called to do and not called to do. My favorite line from Jesus' instructions on spiritual practice in Matthew's Gospel is "Do not be dismal, like the hypocrites..." I have a sense of lightness of foot this Lent, and I like it.
In Lent, we honor the longing and the preparing.
In the Western church, we veil the statues and other sacred images, and we lay aside the Easter-shout "alleluia" until the Great Vigil. We do so to honor the fact that in this life we see at best only partially, we are on a journey, what we shall be and who God truly is has not yet been revealed. We are pilgrims, and pilgrims do not stay in one place. We honor the longing, the pilgrim desire to see and walk into our true and lasting home.
And we honor the preparing. Saint Benedict said that, although the life of the monk is supposed to be a perpetual Lent (!), still in this season it's good to put forth a little extra effort. In the freedom given us by Christ, we do have the strength to quietly examine our lives and see where barnacles have accumulated, where old paint, old ways and habits, need to be scraped in order that fresh paint be applied.
Because we are meant to cruise on the open sea. We are meant for the voyage. Christ is the longing, and the hand that steadies ours as we do what work each of us needs to do. Christ is the setting-out and the open sea and the wind. Christ is the far shore, for the moment just beyond the horizon, where we are meant to beach at last.
Spring on Long Island where I grew up meant at one point Dad would arise from his chair and announce, "It's time for the boat." My verbal response was "OK Dad." My inner response was "Oh God, not again!"
For the boat was an 18 foot wooden "runabout", with an ancient outboard motor, that had wintered upside-down on sawhorses in the side yard. Wooden boats basically dissolve slowly in salt water. Hence the boat had all the effects of last season's deterioration plus the ravages of a New York winter.
Barnacles and flaking paint had to be scraped. New primer and paint, especially that potent thick red bottom paint, had to be carefully applied respecting the lines traced with masking tape. A number of repairs needed to be effected, and new fiberglass pads and strips needed to be applied to the stem and along the seams.
It was a lot of work. But if you wanted to cruise, you had to do your work.
To a ten year old boy, it seemed endless and excruciating, although I no doubt did only a dollop of what was necessary. I never remember Dad complaining. I think, as he contentedly scraped, painted, hammered, that in his mind's eye he was already out on the open water, wind in his hair, sun on his face, feeling the wooden boat sway and flex beneath him, not an object on the water so much as a living part of the water, alive and endlessly moving as does the sea itself.
I think of the boat as I think of this Lent.
None of us need to add articifial burdens to what we already carry. I became rebellious against what seemed to be an obligation to have a gloomy Lent, something one dreads, the season in which we make it tougher on ourselves because God likes it tough. In those days of a kind of gothic Catholic piety, Easter came not as a joy and delight but as simple relief--thank God that's over for another year!
But Lent is a gift and a joy. It is the season when we recall to whom we have been called--the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We recall that we are pilgrims. We drop the burdens that we may have laid upon ourselves, or that the world has laid upon us. Do we labor under the need to keep up false appearances of invulnerability, of self-sufficiency, of "having it all together" like the hypocrites of Matthew's Gospel (Mt 6: 1-6, 16-21)? They have "already received their reward", the pathetic self-satisfaction and ego-gratification of having it "all together" and having received recognition for it. In return they have the burden of keeping up the pretense for the next time, and the next...
In Lent we may lay aside the burdens laid upon us or that we lay upon ourselves. Do we always need to be right? Do we always need to seem to have it "all together"? If we suffer from money woes, do we let the world shame us or demean us as "poor"? If we are ill or in pain, do we let that illness or pain tell us that we are nothing but illness or pain?
We may lay it down. In turn we may step lightly, with joy, as we learn again from the lips of Jesus who we truly are and what we are called to do and not called to do. My favorite line from Jesus' instructions on spiritual practice in Matthew's Gospel is "Do not be dismal, like the hypocrites..." I have a sense of lightness of foot this Lent, and I like it.
In Lent, we honor the longing and the preparing.
In the Western church, we veil the statues and other sacred images, and we lay aside the Easter-shout "alleluia" until the Great Vigil. We do so to honor the fact that in this life we see at best only partially, we are on a journey, what we shall be and who God truly is has not yet been revealed. We are pilgrims, and pilgrims do not stay in one place. We honor the longing, the pilgrim desire to see and walk into our true and lasting home.
And we honor the preparing. Saint Benedict said that, although the life of the monk is supposed to be a perpetual Lent (!), still in this season it's good to put forth a little extra effort. In the freedom given us by Christ, we do have the strength to quietly examine our lives and see where barnacles have accumulated, where old paint, old ways and habits, need to be scraped in order that fresh paint be applied.
Because we are meant to cruise on the open sea. We are meant for the voyage. Christ is the longing, and the hand that steadies ours as we do what work each of us needs to do. Christ is the setting-out and the open sea and the wind. Christ is the far shore, for the moment just beyond the horizon, where we are meant to beach at last.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
We crave the light
Candlemas 2008
(Malachi 3: 1-4; Ps 84: 1-6; Heb 2: 14-18; Luke 2: 22-40)
No one appreciates light quite like Oregonians.
We live light-deprived through more than half the year. We warn newcomers to leave their house lights on during the day. When the sun finally streams through the murk, we blink bedazzled and then we walk outside, anywhere, our faces tilted like flowers to soak it up.
We are fortunate because we are people who appreciate the light. We have much in common with the ancient Irish tribe who also lived much of the year under clouds. They built the massive tomb-shrine at Newgrange just for the light which would pass through the long passage only at dawn on the winter solstice. They appreciated the light.
We crave the light. We are made for the light. But we spend a lot of our time in darkness.
Yesterday a small group of local church leaders sat in a circle in a small storefront on Alberta Street. No mega-church pastors there—all of us are working hard in challenging urban ministries. We spoke of the darkness of our world, the confusion of our times and in our churches, the ravages of war and economy and environmental decline. And then we lit, one by one, small candles and spoke aloud our faith and hope. And the light was enough to kindle that faith and hope and bring it to life.
In this brief time before quiet Lent we are brought into the light. Bright Brigid of the sacred fire gathered us for her feast last week and worked miracles on human hearts. The prophet whose name Malachi means “messenger” promises that the Lord will come suddenly into his temple, and so he does. On this feast he comes, a helpless baby filled with light, carried by his poor parents making the poor people’s offering. Old folks see him and know him and receive him into old faithful arms. In the midst of a busy and noisy day in the Jerusalem Temple, the light of the world has come. Only those who believed old Anna’s and Simeon’s words knew him for who he is. But everything the great Temple was built for was fulfilled in that moment. Its mighty God, worshipped with offerings and rituals and psalms, came in the poor people’s door as an offering.
The Temple is the world. The Temple is this church. The Temple is every human heart gathered here today.
We crave the Christ-light. We are made for the Christ-light. We seek the One who is light and life, more dearly than we seek the sun in the winter. Any of us who have seen the darkness know how dearly we need the light. And we are light-bearers and light-givers ourselves if we receive with gratitude the Christ-child that old Simeon presents to us today as a gift. Another old man named Sophronius sang these words long ago:
“The light has come and has shone upon a world enveloped in shadows; the Dayspring from on high has visited us and given light to those in darkness. This then is our feast, and we join in procession with lighted candles to reveal the light that has shone upon us and the glory that is yet to come to us through him. So let us all hasten together to meet our God.
“Let all of us, beloved, be enlightened and made radiant by this light. Let all of us share in its splendor, and be so filled with it that no one remains in the darkness.”
We run with joy to the One who is Light. The Light is real and the gift of the living God made flesh is real. Today the Beloved comes suddenly into the temple, into this gathering, into our very souls. We have waited in silence upon God’s loving-kindness, and God has not disappointed us. Soak in the light, that we may be lamps of the living Light.
(Malachi 3: 1-4; Ps 84: 1-6; Heb 2: 14-18; Luke 2: 22-40)
No one appreciates light quite like Oregonians.
We live light-deprived through more than half the year. We warn newcomers to leave their house lights on during the day. When the sun finally streams through the murk, we blink bedazzled and then we walk outside, anywhere, our faces tilted like flowers to soak it up.
We are fortunate because we are people who appreciate the light. We have much in common with the ancient Irish tribe who also lived much of the year under clouds. They built the massive tomb-shrine at Newgrange just for the light which would pass through the long passage only at dawn on the winter solstice. They appreciated the light.
We crave the light. We are made for the light. But we spend a lot of our time in darkness.
Yesterday a small group of local church leaders sat in a circle in a small storefront on Alberta Street. No mega-church pastors there—all of us are working hard in challenging urban ministries. We spoke of the darkness of our world, the confusion of our times and in our churches, the ravages of war and economy and environmental decline. And then we lit, one by one, small candles and spoke aloud our faith and hope. And the light was enough to kindle that faith and hope and bring it to life.
In this brief time before quiet Lent we are brought into the light. Bright Brigid of the sacred fire gathered us for her feast last week and worked miracles on human hearts. The prophet whose name Malachi means “messenger” promises that the Lord will come suddenly into his temple, and so he does. On this feast he comes, a helpless baby filled with light, carried by his poor parents making the poor people’s offering. Old folks see him and know him and receive him into old faithful arms. In the midst of a busy and noisy day in the Jerusalem Temple, the light of the world has come. Only those who believed old Anna’s and Simeon’s words knew him for who he is. But everything the great Temple was built for was fulfilled in that moment. Its mighty God, worshipped with offerings and rituals and psalms, came in the poor people’s door as an offering.
The Temple is the world. The Temple is this church. The Temple is every human heart gathered here today.
We crave the Christ-light. We are made for the Christ-light. We seek the One who is light and life, more dearly than we seek the sun in the winter. Any of us who have seen the darkness know how dearly we need the light. And we are light-bearers and light-givers ourselves if we receive with gratitude the Christ-child that old Simeon presents to us today as a gift. Another old man named Sophronius sang these words long ago:
“The light has come and has shone upon a world enveloped in shadows; the Dayspring from on high has visited us and given light to those in darkness. This then is our feast, and we join in procession with lighted candles to reveal the light that has shone upon us and the glory that is yet to come to us through him. So let us all hasten together to meet our God.
“Let all of us, beloved, be enlightened and made radiant by this light. Let all of us share in its splendor, and be so filled with it that no one remains in the darkness.”
We run with joy to the One who is Light. The Light is real and the gift of the living God made flesh is real. Today the Beloved comes suddenly into the temple, into this gathering, into our very souls. We have waited in silence upon God’s loving-kindness, and God has not disappointed us. Soak in the light, that we may be lamps of the living Light.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Toward God ch. 5: The Gift Of Time
In a sense, this is Casey's most counter-cultural chapter, although it is short and concrete.
Time-poverty is such a powerful part of our culture. How many people have you heard say, "I have lots of time." Every gathering I attend includes endless discussions of how stressed and time-poor we all are. Few of us doubt the current dogma that "there are not enough hours in the day."
The problem with that, according to Casey, is that prayer takes time.
Prayer takes time, and taking time to pray does not insert a self-help activity into our day. In other words, we don't pray because it will improve our health or our relationships or our happiness or our inner peace. We pray because God is God and we are meant to be in ever-deepening relationship with God. This hits head-on the notion that "prayer achieves something" other than that basic relationship, whether prayer has other side benefits or not.
I too have heard the prayer-cry from the minaret in Islamic areas of the Philippines and I never ceased to be moved. For everything would stop--it was time for prayer.
But it is hard--there is so much that militates against cultivating a life of prayer. That powerful sense of time-poverty is one. Another is the fact that God is very subtle, and unless we become attuned to the movement of God within us and, when we are aware of such movement, honor it with stopping however briefly for prayer, then the moment can pass us by.
Funny how out here in the Northwest we'll get up before dawn to drive to the coast or go skiing or fishing, yet the thought of the Trappist monks in Lafayette getting up at 4:00 AM for the first common prayer of the day seems both extraordinary and at the same time slightly absurd.
Casey makes a quiet plea for regularity in prayer, another counter-cultural note. I think this jogs up against mainstrean American sensibility, because we jealously guard our sense of control over our personal time and because somehow the idea of "planning prayer" seems inauthentic to some. It must be spontaneous, otherwise it's "scripted" and "not real." But the truth is that most of us who work or go to school or, God help us, do both, have our days planned for us by schedule demands that we either choose or feel we need to do. And busy couples soon learn that they'd better schedule in romantic interludes, or else those interludes will soon become few if any!
I am no one's example of a faithful prayer life, but I do know that what prayer life I do enjoy would dry up and blow away entirely if I did not pray Morning and Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Funny how some think this is extraodinary, and I remember that when I first began years ago with just Evening Prayer it did seem like a big deal. But both Offices or prayer-exercises can be completed in an unhurried and reverent way in no more than 20 minutes each. That's not a lot compared to how much time we spend before a TV screen or on-line.
But it's still hard to make a beginning and it has taken me years to get to this pretty basic stage, just like now after 7 years of martial arts classes 100 stomach crunches is no big deal. When we first started it put us into agony. I believe that spiritual growth is similar--it is all up to God, but we co-operate with what the tradition calls the "stirrings of grace" and with time we are surprised at noting how not only our prayer and living relationship with God has changed, but so has our whole life. It is never too late to make a beginning, and we each begin again each day.
Time-poverty is such a powerful part of our culture. How many people have you heard say, "I have lots of time." Every gathering I attend includes endless discussions of how stressed and time-poor we all are. Few of us doubt the current dogma that "there are not enough hours in the day."
The problem with that, according to Casey, is that prayer takes time.
Prayer takes time, and taking time to pray does not insert a self-help activity into our day. In other words, we don't pray because it will improve our health or our relationships or our happiness or our inner peace. We pray because God is God and we are meant to be in ever-deepening relationship with God. This hits head-on the notion that "prayer achieves something" other than that basic relationship, whether prayer has other side benefits or not.
I too have heard the prayer-cry from the minaret in Islamic areas of the Philippines and I never ceased to be moved. For everything would stop--it was time for prayer.
But it is hard--there is so much that militates against cultivating a life of prayer. That powerful sense of time-poverty is one. Another is the fact that God is very subtle, and unless we become attuned to the movement of God within us and, when we are aware of such movement, honor it with stopping however briefly for prayer, then the moment can pass us by.
Funny how out here in the Northwest we'll get up before dawn to drive to the coast or go skiing or fishing, yet the thought of the Trappist monks in Lafayette getting up at 4:00 AM for the first common prayer of the day seems both extraordinary and at the same time slightly absurd.
Casey makes a quiet plea for regularity in prayer, another counter-cultural note. I think this jogs up against mainstrean American sensibility, because we jealously guard our sense of control over our personal time and because somehow the idea of "planning prayer" seems inauthentic to some. It must be spontaneous, otherwise it's "scripted" and "not real." But the truth is that most of us who work or go to school or, God help us, do both, have our days planned for us by schedule demands that we either choose or feel we need to do. And busy couples soon learn that they'd better schedule in romantic interludes, or else those interludes will soon become few if any!
I am no one's example of a faithful prayer life, but I do know that what prayer life I do enjoy would dry up and blow away entirely if I did not pray Morning and Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Funny how some think this is extraodinary, and I remember that when I first began years ago with just Evening Prayer it did seem like a big deal. But both Offices or prayer-exercises can be completed in an unhurried and reverent way in no more than 20 minutes each. That's not a lot compared to how much time we spend before a TV screen or on-line.
But it's still hard to make a beginning and it has taken me years to get to this pretty basic stage, just like now after 7 years of martial arts classes 100 stomach crunches is no big deal. When we first started it put us into agony. I believe that spiritual growth is similar--it is all up to God, but we co-operate with what the tradition calls the "stirrings of grace" and with time we are surprised at noting how not only our prayer and living relationship with God has changed, but so has our whole life. It is never too late to make a beginning, and we each begin again each day.
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