There is a LOT for us to cover in the sermon time this morning.
We have these two scriptures
from the gospel of Mark and book of Psalms that are just begging to be engaged.
We’ll be using the
Theological Banquet as our guiding metaphor over for the next ten Sundays,
which will need some unpacking, and within that today we specifically meet the
SPIRITUAL response to the sacred,
Oh, and it’s my first sermon
with you, so there’s that.
With so much to do, and so
little time to do it, we’re going to do something a bit counter-intuitive while
also getting some first-hand experience of a spiritual response to the Holy:
we’re going to pause, and silently, intentionally open ourselves to God, the
source of love and life, God, who knows you intimately and loves you
unconditionally and connects all of us to one another and to the earth and all
who dwell therein. I invite you, then, to
find a comfortable posture, loosen your shoulders, close your eyes or soften
your gaze, and take three deep, cleansing breaths, releasing into God’s care
any distractions or unfinished agenda that came with you today, and simply
being silent in the presence of our loving, live-lifting God… (chime?) And so
we re-engage this room, and this group gathered for worship, knowing that we
are in God’s presence right here, right now.
As we shape our daily and
weekly routines, as individuals and as a community of faith, there needs to be
space in which we intentionally seek the presence of God, with no agenda other
than being present to the sacred one Paul Tillich famously called “the ground
of all being”. Whether we are contemplative
by nature, or find it hard to disengage from agendas, words, thoughts and
tasks, developing a pattern of stopping and just being with God gets things
more real. Without time spent listening
for the urgings of the Holy Spirit, even the most urgent changes we work for in
the world will be fuelled by our blood, sweat, toil and tears but not fully
connected to the peace and presence of God. Taking a moment to breathe always has the
potential to open us more fully to the gift of life, and the Holy One who gives
that gift.
In days of old, the Psalmist
understood this well. Our reading this
morning from Psalm 139 is one of mutual adoration, a song of gratitude to the
God who has always known and loved us, who is well aware of our greatest joys
and potentialities and our most shameful moments and loves us right down to the
DNA. To open ourselves to God is to
explicitly place ourselves in that place of total honesty and total
belovedness, a place where being vulnerable and known is safe and affirming.
Safe and affirming and expansive, for in that moment of our being open and fully
known and loved by God, God is also open to us, sharing God’s own commitment to
justice and dignity and wholeness and joy. One of the ways that the Spiritual
table setting at the Divine Banqueting table can be misunderstood, by those
following this path and those on the outside looking in, is to imagine that
going deep with God is disengaged from engagement with the needs of neighbour
and the needs of the earth. As we go
deep with God, with silence or with mantras or with sacred imagery guiding the
way, God’s passionate desire for the wellbeing of the world and all who dwell
within is hard to miss.
A movement that is gaining
momentum, as humanity becomes increasingly aware of just how perilous things
are for planet earth, is a connection between contemplative practice and
environmental engagement. Many who are deeply concerned with the future of this
planet find that setting time aside for silence, meditation and prayer - is
essential to ground and energize their endeavours. Locally, my friend Sarah Arthurs and her
Green Exodus ministry holds this tension between spiritual contemplation and
ecological action and from what I have seen, that spiritual grounding brings
with it the type of resilience and purpose that is necessary not only for
ecological activism, but for any social justice needs that are both lengthy and
urgent. And partly because of that, the
Spiritual, contemplative mode of responding to the Holy, is one of the modes of
Christian response that is most likely to have some resonance amongst folks
outside the Church who are not drawn to Church per se, but are passionately concerned
about this planet AND might already be engaged in some form of spiritual
practice like centering prayer, or meditation, or yoga, or other practices
based in non-attachment. And while it
might not be quite the right place to mention it, I do want to lift up the
beautifully intimate communion services that Amy offers every Thursday morning
at 11 AM in the chapel. It’s one of
those places where the agenda of the day gets handed off to God, even for a wee
while, and space is claimed for quiet time with God. And for those drawn to labyrinths, I note that
Thursday from 11:30 to 2:30 the labyrinth is available for walking, and that
most definitely is part of the Spiritual table setting of the Theological
Banquet.
This connection between
spiritual practice, and God’s extraordinary desire for health and wholeness, brings
me to our other reading, from the gospel of Mark. Though his ministry was still
quite young, the spiritual disruption caused by Jesus has already managed to upset
those with religious privilege and they are taking dead aim at Jesus and his
followers. Taking the most rule-bound angle possible, the Pharisees note that the
disciples had been breaking sabbath, gleaning and eating grain on a day
reserved for God. In reply, Jesus, hearkening back to King David, says “The Sabbath was created
for humans; humans weren’t created for the Sabbath”.
When confronted by his
legalistic opponents, Jesus changes the terms of reference about Sabbath, from
the rule-bound obligation of the Pharisees to a God-given gift which saves
people from perceiving life as nothing but work. Yes, there were rules and yes, sabbath
observance was a significant aspect covenant, but it was gift. Pure, holy gift. In his wonderful little book on Sabbath, Wayne
Muller shares the words of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi who said “Lots of
people will swear allegiance to the Sabbath and criticize those who do not keep
all the Sabbath laws. But their inner
experience is not one of spaciousness and delight. It is too easy to talk of prohibition, but
the point is the space and time created to say yes to sacred spirituality,
sensuality, sexuality, prayer, rest, song, delight. It is not about legalism and legislation, but
about joy and the things that grow only in time… a day to pamper the soul.”
(Muller, p.30)
What a concept: viewing
sabbath time, the time we set aside to rest agenda-free in God’s presence, the
time that is the cornerstone of the spiritual/contemplative response, as a time
of spaciousness and delight, to let the God of love and belovedness just pamper
us. That might take some adjusting to,
especially for those of us – including me - who like to be busy. But I can say from experience, coming from a
community of faith in the mountains that has for the past 23 years had a
Wednesday night lay-led contemplative service, taking the time to be quiet,
truly quiet, with God, is a gift beyond measure.
In that spirit, I close this
message with this gift: words of the 139th Psalm (from THE VOICE
translation) and I invite you to let these words just wash over you in their
beauty:
Eternal One, You have explored my heart and
know exactly who I am;
2 You even know the small details…3 You
observe my wanderings and my sleeping, my waking and my dreaming, You
know everything I do in more detail than even I know.
4 You know what I’m going to say long before I
say it.
It is true, Eternal One, that You know everything and
everyone.
5 You have surrounded me on every side, behind
me and before me,
and You have placed Your hand gently on
my shoulder.
6 It is the most amazing feeling to know how
deeply You know me, inside and out;
the realization of it is so great that I cannot comprehend it.
Friends in Christ, may that
feeling of intimacy with God, the giver of life, and the invitation to be
regularly rejuvenated and re-centred by deep belovedness, be real in your life
and in the lift of this faith community, and may it truly find a home in the
world and all who dwell therein. Amen.
References cited:
Gear, Janet. Undivided Love. Altona, MB: Friesen, 2022.
Green Exodus – home website https://greenexodus.ca/
Muller, Wayne. Sabbath. NYC: Bantam Books, 1999.
© 2024 Rev Greg Wooley,
Scarboro United Church, Calgary AB.
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