“Closer Still” (John 12:20-33)

So I want to tell you a true story.

(I always strive to tell you a true story.)

When I completed a two-year commitment to the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Bethesda, Maryland, I came away with lots of new surprises when it comes to relating to God.  Or perhaps I should say how God relates to us. 

 

My teachers were fond of saying, “When a lesson needs to be learned, the teacher will come.”  We don’t need to worry about spiritual maturity, it happens by the grace of God. God uses our whole lives to communicate with us—a conversation at every turn.

Another word for teacher is mentor; or guide.  Sometimes the mentor appears in person—sometimes the mentor appears in print.  After all, isn’t our Bible a collection of testimonies about how God is with us and how ordinary persons learned to listen to God?  All of the persons in the Bible are mentors, or teachers, in the faith.  Jesus’ disciples referred to him as “teacher.”

Well, when it came to a mentor I’d hit a dry spell.  No person raising my awareness of God and no book challenging my perceptions of God.  So I’m engaged in my day of silent prayer at St. Agnes in Red Lodge where I walk between their prayer chapel and their sanctuary for several hours.  I start in the chapel, reading and then sitting quietly—and then I move into their sanctuary where I sit quietly, and walk around the room prayerfully, and then sit, and then walk, and so on. 

Many conversations with God were in my heart, including one about the need for a new mentor.

I’d sit in the same little wooden pew in the sanctuary every time—an empty pew, free of the clutter of bulletins.

After I had sat quietly in that same little pew for about the third time, when I opened my eyes, there was a card right beside me.  It had not been there before.  It was the prayer card of St. Gertrude.

 

I looked at the words for a few minutes before I realized what this card meant---it wasn’t about St. Gertrude’s prayer---St. Gertrude was my next mentor, so I ordered a book about her life with God.  St. Gertrude has lasted a long time, I’m currently in a faith formation program at St. Gertrude’s monastery in Cottonwood, Idaho.

In the book that I read I was listening for God’s conversation with Gertrude.  What was Gertrude’s issue with faith?  She was afraid of her gift—God wanted Gertrude to write about her relationship with God and Gertrude didn’t feel worthy. 

I had to ask myself, “Do I hold back from God because I don’t feel worthy?”

And so it goes with the Spirit of God, and mentors or teachers in the faith.

This past week I encountered a twist on the words my instructors at Shalem offered me (when the lesson is ready to be learned the teacher will come) and it goes like this, “When the server is ready, the service will come.”

When the server (or servant) is ready, the service will come.

Isn’t that beautiful?

Isn’t that an amazing insight?

Most of us think that God gives us something to DO to mature us, when in fact it’s just the opposite—God matures us, and then gives us something that is very important to God for us to DO.  God is hungry for concrete acts of love – they move the creation forward to the peaceable kingdom God says will emerge one day.

But in order for us to engage in concrete acts of love God first has to “work the soil of our hearts”.  There are AT LEAST three orientations of our hearts that God desires (as far as I can tell):

  

     1. An Undivided Heart.  Jesus teaches us that we cannot serve two masters; the Ego (the ME) and the Word of God.

I am reminded of the story of the story of the conversion of Antony the Great, sometimes called Saint Antony, (who lived 200-300 years after the death of Jesus.)

 One day the young Antony, who had been brought up in a Christian family of the church of Alexandria (or at least in the region of Alexandria), and who had therefore heard the Scriptures read since his childhood, enters the church and is particularly struck by the text of Scripture that he hears read: the story of the call of the rich young man: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me; you will have a treasure in heaven". (Matt. 19, 21) 

Antony has undoubtedly heard this text many times before; but this day the message strikes him most forcibly, and he receives it as a personal call. He therefore answers the call, sells the family property - which is quite considerable - and distributes the profits of the sale to the poor of the village, keeping just enough to support his younger sister for whom he is responsible. 

A little later, on entering the church once again, he hears another Gospel text which affects him as much as the first: "Take no thought for the morrow" (Matt. 6,34; Ant.3). This text too goes straight to his heart as a personal call. And so he entrusts his sister to a community of virgins, (such communities have been long in existence), rids himself of everything that remains to him and undertakes the ascetical life near his village, under the guidance of the ascetics of the region.

No if’s, ands, or buts with Antony, only urgency.  All voices were made smaller so God’s could grow taller. 

    2. An Unattached Heart.  Jesus teaches us that we cannot love material possessions and enter the Kingdom of God.  A life of love is about generosity towards God and neighbor and not grasping stuff; it’s about compassion and not about calculation—love isn’t about tax deductions.  “Love,” we learn from the life of Christ, “Doesn’t count the cost.” In fact it is the exact opposite.  Love has a sacrificial element—forsakes meeting our own needs with our resources in the faith and hope that God will sustain us.”  (See Renovare Spiritual Formation bible.) Jesus turns to his friends at one point and says, “I don’t have a place to lay my head.” Material possessions are irrelevant because he has a place to rest his heart—in God.

3.    3. An Unafraid Heart.  Jesus teaches us that we are not in control of where our life with God will lead—we are called to OFFER our lives to God no matter where the road leads—to trust God no matter what the outcome—including death

In our story today from the Gospel of John Jesus shares with his friends the reality of his life with God—he will sacrifice his life in order for God to show the world a glimpse of God’s power in the life of a human being, in the well-being of the creation, and in order to give us a glimpse of what life with God is like after our death.  “Listen carefully, “Jesus teaches his friends, “Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”

God is invested in our health and well-being and the well-being of the world; offering concrete actions that help us open up to God so that we can go forward with God, like Jesus.  

Does a prophetic word help us trust a life of love more?  God provides many in the scriptures.  Have you ever encountered a prophetic word from God in your own life? A friend shared with me the other day that her husband had a dream that a little money was coming their way—and much to their delight they received an unexpected inheritance that is helping them find some confidence in retirement.  This prophetic experience is encouraging them to put their heads to their pillows a little harder each night—to listen to God—for other instructions.

Does a resurrection help us trust a life of love more?  God provides an amazing one in the life of Christ.  Have you ever encountered a resurrection in your life?  Have you ever been dead to the world through loss and grief only to find, with love and time that you returned to joy?  

Why does God indulge us in such experiences? Because the world certainly needs more love.  We are starving for tenderness and compassion and helpfulness and generosity and humility and encouragement.  If you and I hold back; if we are lost to a love of material possessions or control—God’s good plan remains delayed.

So Jesus chose to cut his life short that you and I could learn to trust God with our own lives and let God shape us into instruments of love and peace.  Does his act of devotion deepen our own acts of devotion when we realize it was something he chose to do?

Have you experienced similar acts of devotion?  Last Wednesday at the Soup & Study gathering around the topic of “Humility and Obedience” two women told stories about supporting persons enveloped in tragedies—cancer, and an accident that left a young woman paralyzed.  The first woman reduced her work to part-time, receiving less pay, in order to tend to the woman diagnosed with cancer who had no care giver.  The second woman volunteered to clean the house of the young woman who suddenly found herself wheel-chair bound and over-come by the new physical demands of her life as a paraplegic.  Both of them gave up something of value to them; money, time—in the faith and hope that God would sustain them—in the faith and hope that love would win over apathy (I don’t care) and hate (I detest your life.) 

It’s amazing what a loving heart can do.  It’s worth dying for.

Let us Pray:  Loving God we offer up our suffering and, come to you seeking to be made whole. For you God, put your love within us; you wrote it on our hearts; that we may be your people.  Amen. 

(This sermon was preached by Reverend Dana Keener at Central Christian Church on March 22, 2015.)

“All In” (Mark 8:31-38)

How much do you demand of others?

My mother, for the most part, was a stay-at-home mom.

The house was her domain---inside that is—the meals, the laundry, and the cleaning.

The gift for me in this arrangement was that I never had to clean anything.  My job was to do well in school.

When I met John, my husband, he brought with him to the marriage a completely different set of rules to run a house by.  His father worked in the Air Force which meant long absences, and two of his three siblings struggled with disabilities.  By age three John was carrying groceries into the house, and by fifth grade he was washing his own clothes.

“Children are quite capable of being helpful,” John reminded me, “if we let them.”

So we made a commitment to teaching our children to do their own laundry as soon as they were tall enough to see the dial on the washer and dryer. 

They only messed up once—everyone has to learn to sort their dark clothes from their white clothes—no matter what age they start doing laundry.

Our children were quite proud of themselves, too.  When they went off to college and their friends lamented their new chore, laundry, our kids would smile and say, “Are you serious?  I’ve been doing my own laundry for years!”

Again, how much do you demand of others?

The largest Christian Church (DOC) congregation in Georgia is Ray of Hope.  Its pastor is Cynthia Hale.  Rev. Hale was a prison chaplain in her early formation years as a minister, and began Ray of Hope in 1986 with just 4 other persons engaged in Bible study in her home.  In 1987 67 persons signed the charter which officially established the congregation within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ.)  Today their membership is over 5,000 persons. 

I know a little about the ins and outs of Rev. Hale’s leadership.     At Ray of Hope members are expected to partner with the Holy Spirit and build the kingdom of God—excuses aren’t allowed whether you’re too busy, too sick, too poor, too tired or too shy.  So Rev. Hale developed her own introduction to evangelism for the members of The Ray.  It’s called the “Rev. Hale School for Evangelism,” and it consists of being dropped off at the mall where you can’t go home until you’ve talked to three strangers about your love for God and your pastor and your church.

At Ray of Hope, everyone is expected to put God FIRST in their life in their living and in their financial support.  “The only way to prosperity, “preaches Rev. Hale to her over 5,000 members, “is through generosity.”  Ray of Hope members TITHE.  That’s ten percent of your income to the church BEFORE taxes. 

At Ray of Hope, members pray. Here’s the congregation’s weekly schedule:

 SUNDAYS
  7:20 a.m. Corporate Prayer
  7:30 a.m. Worship Service
  9:50 a.m. Corporate Prayer
10:00 a.m. Worship Service
10:00 a.m. Children’s Church in the CE Building
10:00 a.m. Youth "iFlow" Teen Worship Service in the Chapel (2nd & 3rd Sundays)

TUESDAYS
10:50 a.m. Corporate Prayer
11:00 a.m. What’s@thecorE  Small Groups
  6:50 p.m. Corporate Prayer
  7:00 p.m. What’s@thecorE  Small Groups

SATURDAYS
  7:00 a.m. Men’s Intercessory Prayer in the Sanctuary
  7:00 a.m. Women’s Intercessory Prayer in the Chapel
(Notice what TIME corporate prayer, or praying with others, IS.)

In the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), when I think about a church that is willing to make demands on others, I think of Ray of Hope, or THE RAY as it is referred to. The members work very hard to stay in the presence of God.


Why would anyone want to stay in the presence of God?


I have a little book on my shelf in my office.  It’s one of my favorites.  It’s called A Testament of Devotion.  If you think about it, that’s what the scriptures are—a collection of testaments of devotion—ours to God, God to us.  The book is written by Quaker Thomas R. Kelly.

Thomas R. Kelly grew up in a Quaker home—do you know very much about Quakers and worship?  Quakers sit in silence, stilling themselves inwardly, waiting for the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  They call each other “friends.”  Their places of worship are called meeting houses.  They refer to the Divine as “The Light,” and the “Light” is the most important part of the house, our spiritual house.  During intercessory prayer they hold people “in the Light.”  In Billings a small group of Quakers assemble at Angela’s Piazza on Sunday mornings for worship.   

Kelly discovered a great hunger for the Divine while in college.  Stirred by the beauty of God Kelly announced to a friend, “I am just going to make my life a miracle.”

Over the course of his life Kelly would teach science, give himself to religious work in the Far East, volunteer his services as a Quaker first in canteen duty with the Y.M.C.A. and then in work with German prisoners of war in England, marry, teach philosophy at Harford Theological Seminary, open a Quaker center in Berlin, and teach philosophy at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, where he retired.

He was deeply committed to the life of a scholar, to be sure, but his little book, A Testament of Devotion, is about his love for the Divine, the source of his life.  Kelly writes,

“Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return.  It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it.  Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action.  And He (the Divine) is within us all.”

Like Christ, Kelly understood that our most precious possession is within us—the living Christ—the Divine Center.  In our text from Mark Jesus refers to it as the “soul.”  And like Christ, Kelly understood that we lose contact with the Divine life within us—that part of our personality that lives from the heart of God, which is compassion, and which extends itself for the spiritual growth of others. This is what it means to perish, to “loose Contact with” the Divine life within us.

How do we lose contact with the Divine life within us?  Jesus teaches us this morning that when we put ourselves at the center of the universe, when we demand that God and neighbor serve us, give TO us, we move very, very far away from the goodness of God which is at our center.  Jesus’ whole life teaches us that when we fill our days with worry because we aren’t this and we don’t have that, when we use religion to shame others like the Pharisees, and garner status and attention for ourselves instead of letting the stability of religious practices keep our attention ON the grace and goodness of God, we are very, very far from God.

Likewise, the only way to return TO the Divine heart and voice within us is to remover ourselves from the center of the world—and replace ME with GOD and NEIGHBOR.   we can only remember two things after reading the Bible, Jesus instructs us to remember these two things, “Love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

How do we do that?  Kelly writes, “Yield yourself to God who is a far better teacher than outward words; yield yourself to your Inner teacher.”  What he is talking about is prayer—prayer as awareness of God—stilling ourselves—listening to inwardly without ceasing.  We take our loving gaze OFF ourselves and place it ON God. 
Did you know that as a religious man, Jesus prayed three times a day? As a faithful Jew, Jesus would have recited Israel’s sacred creed, the Shema, “Hear, O Israel:  The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might…”  He would have prayed the Eighteen Benedictions---a beautiful work of praise and petition. As he went about his work, Jesus would ponder the words of the Torah and the Prophets he heard discussed in the synagogue. Through his meditations Jesus would welcome the Holy Spirit’s planting of the words of Scripture deeply in his heart so that they permeated his prayer and informed his life.  How did he survive the temptation in the wilderness to use his life for his own profit instead of for God’s profit?   Scripture!
What I am talking about, then, is effort.  Jesus was born with the gift of the Divine life within him, like all of us—what a beautiful well!  And, like all of us, we have to do the work to stay close to that well.  In today’s lesson from Mark Jesus is talking about being ALL IN with God—we can’t hold on to the Divine light, the Divine life within us, if we are fickle and prone to waver because we don’t approach life like the majority of our friends; if we don’t have a stable prayer life and if can’t reconcile with suffering. 

To quote the Christian ascetic Evagrios of Pontus, “Do not worry about poverty or sorrow, such things lift our prayers to heaven.”

Why would we want to do the work to stay in God’s presence?  Thomas R. Kelly observes that even though we are unworthy, “God draws unworthy us, in loving tenderness, up into fellowship with His glorious self.” God makes of our unworthy life a miracle of faith and compassion!  “Self-renunciation means,” writes Kelly, “God-possession.” 

As Jesus teaches us, our whole being possessed by God is our real self.  We have at the core of our character a compassionate self, both tender and courageous—connectedness to all living things—so that when one person suffers, we all suffer—and when one person sings, we all sing!  We have, at the core of our being a light that shines in the darkness, filled with the beauty and grace of God, and Jesus came to teach us how to find it, and draw from it.  Jesus didn’t come to shame us (John 3:16) but to set our miraculous selves free!  All it takes is commitment.  Jesus calls this “picking up our cross.”  “Pick up your commitment and follow,” urges Jesus and I paraphrase, “pick up your daily returning to the source of your life and follow me to your best life.”
 
Let us pray:  Holy God, can we find 20 minutes d day for you?  What if we traded a meal for prayer, or an hour of television for an hour of reading the psalms? What if we picked a verse of scripture and repeated it quietly to ourselves a couple of times a day?  What if we sat quietly every day for 10 minutes and let you love us?  Amen. 

(This sermon was preached by Reverend Dana Keener at Billings Central Church on march 1, 2015.)