Intro Teaching Material on Lectio Divina from Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2012

 

The practice of Lectio Divina – or “Divine Word.” builds on our previous practice of Apophatic Prayer by helping us hone our focusing and our listening skills. As we hear a brief passage of scripture read aloud several times, we allow the silence and the words of the passage to enter into a sort of dynamic interplay.

As Westerners we must constantly remind ourselves that this practice is NOT about comprehending or figuring out the passage. Instead it is about cultivating an awareness of the Spirit speaking to us through this scripture. And it is important to remember also that what God’s Spirit wants to say to each one of us through this particular scripture may be completely different for each of us. Likewise, we have to be open to the fact that what that Spirit says to us may have very little to do with the literal dimensions of the passage itself. Daniel Wolpert puts it this way: “A small scrap of the story might remind you of something in your own life, something that happened years ago and ended unresolved or perhaps a dilemma with your friends or parents. You might find yourself transported back in time. Suddenly you are no longer reading the scripture but listening to your inner voice, your memory, your imagination.”

So this is a discipline that involves freeing our minds and our selves, letting go of preconceptions in order to be totally open to the Spirit as it uses these words, the silence of the room, and our minds and hearts. One of the words that Daniel Wolpert uses again and again in his discussion of this practice is “allow.”  We must allow the passage to speak to us…We must allow our minds to follow whatever words, images, memories, or thoughts impress themselves upon us during the silence…We allow ourselves to be drawn deeper into this divine and spiritual conversation, this dynamic interplay between the scriptural words, the silence, our minds, and our hearts…Allow…Allow…Pay attention to what happens and allow…

Tonight, I will read a brief passage from the Christian New Testament, the gospel of John, the first chapter. I’ll read it first three times in succession, which will be followed by 5 minutes of silence. Then I’ll read it again two time and follow that with another 5 minutes of silence. The third reading will be a single time through followed by another 5 minutes. Then we’ll break to stretch and move about, share what we heard or thought about before re-entering the practice a second time with a different passage.

1)

“The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.

 We have seen his glory…full of grace and truth.”

2)  

      “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby,

         keeping watch over their flocks at night.

        An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord

         shone all around them, and they were filled with fear.

        But the angel said, ‘Be not afraid. I bring you good news

         of great joy that will be for all the people.’”

 We hope you will join us on Tuesday, December 27 from 7:30-8:30 at Yoga Roots for the third and final segment of our Lectio Divina practice. Anyone and everyone is always welcome to join us! For more information, contact Toby Jones at tobyjones48@gmail.com    Peace...

December is Lectio Divina Month at Living Vision!

On Tuesday, December 13 the Living Vision Community held the first session of our December practice. Below you will find my introductory teaching segment that we used to kick off this profound practice. We hope you will join us on December 20 and 27 when we will continue this practice from 7:30-8:30 pm at Yoga Roots at 444 Mitchell St. in Petoskey. Everyone is welcome to practice with us regardless of religious background or perspective. To manifest and celebrate our openness, our Lectio readings over the three weeks of this practice will come from the Hindu, the Christian, and the Muslim scriptures respectively. See you soon!  

In Grace & Peace - Toby Jones

"In November, we familiarized ourselves with the discipline of apophatic prayer, which is a silent practice that helps us empty our minds. Tonight we begin to explore a slightly less silent practice that actually encourages our minds to play, wander, and explore through the medium of the “divine word,” or Lectio Divina.

All of the major religions of the world have some sort of scriptures, some sort of holy writ that their followers use for guidance in life and practice. Within each religious group and even within a single holy book, there are myriad ways of reading and interacting with that scripture. Modern followers are probably most familiar with Bible study or other devotional type reading models used to learn and grow. But Lectio Divina is quite different from such typical devotional and academic study.

One of our chief contemporary guides for this discipline, Daniel Wolpert describes Lectio Divina as “praying the Bible” rather than reading it. He writes: “Reading the Scriptures and praying them are two very different undertakings…” Modern followers often read their scriptures, Wolpert notes, in a consumeristic way, “to get religious information, to get right answers, to confirm our own ideas about God, or even to find support for our arguments with friends or foes.” But to “pray the Bible,” Wolpert notes, “is to apply listening and silence to the Word of God in order to hear God speak…It is a sacred reading of scripture.”

In Lectio Divina a small passage of scripture is read aloud two or three times in succession followed by a prolonged chunk of silence. Then the same verses are read again a couple more times followed by more silence, and then again, re-reading followed by silence. In those periods of silence, practitioners allow the reading to grab them somehow. Perhaps a particular word or phrase jumps out or maybe an image or memory pops into the listener’s mind. Rather than fighting off or silencing these thoughts, in Lectio Divina we welcome and pay attention to these thoughts, hoping that they might be the hand or voice of God.

It was the mystic Saint Benedict who included Lectio Divina in his Christian monastic order in 500 AD. For him, the purpose of this discipline was “to cultivate contemplative listening.’ It’s interesting to note that Benedict’s monks were illiterate. They could not read, and thus needed to be read to. Lectio Divina, with its small chunks and repetitious style, filled the bill perfectly.

Now, I noted earlier that in Lectio Divina, we don’t endeavor to shut our minds down, but rather to focus them on the passage we hear. Once focused, we then allow our minds to be led by the divine, living words. Wolpert believes that the key is NOT focusing too much on the literal surface meaning of the passage, for it is “quite possible that God will use the passage to speak to you about something completely unrelated to its literal content.” In other words, our focus should NOT be on figuring out what the passage means or on wrestling with the passage. Instead we enter the passage openly and see what happens. Maybe a particular word or phrase stands out and grabs your attention for awhile…Go with that. Maybe an image or picture comes to mind…Go with that. Or maybe your mind jumps to a situation or memory that was triggered by the passage…Go with that. Whatever happens in you, pay attention to it. Pay attention. We’ll have a chance after our first phase of Lectio Divina tonight to share where our minds and hearts went, if we so choose.

So we’ll begin. I’ll read tonight’s reading from the 6th chapter of the Bagavad Gita. First I’ll read it three times in succession, followed by 5 minutes or so of silence. Then I’ll read it another two times followed by another 5 minutes or so, and then a third time followed by 5 more minutes. And then we’ll break.

Let us pray….

From the Bagavad Gita,

Krishna says,

“I am ever present to those who realize that I am in every creature. Seeing all of life as my manifestation, they are never separated from me.”

 

Apophatic Prayer - Part III - November 22

I’ve come to lament the fact that for more than forty years of my spiritual journey, I thought that prayer was all about words…MY words to God. But as Peter Campbell and Edwin McMahon tell us in their book, Bio-Spirituality, “There can be so much self-deception in a talking-to-God kind of prayer…We can use talking to God as an escape from being in touch with the truth of ourselves.”

The silent, listening form of prayer known as "apophatic prayer" offers a stark alternative to all words-based understandings of prayer, and as such, it challenges us to the very core. For when it comes to our core - our spiritual, soulful core - words will always fail us. Language will always fall short.

In advocating the silent forms of contemplative prayer, McMahon and Campbell note that such forms "help us put our bodies and all that’s inside us where our good intentions are.” For in practices like apophatic prayer, “We must let go of the controlling mind and all its chatter, and let go into what the body knows…For in silence, we have to risk letting the answers come as they will, NOT just make them up ourselves [through our own words and wordiness].

Finally, McMahon and Campbell assure us that “There is wisdom IN our bodies…But this wisdom lies behind an obscuring veil within ourselves…It is even possible that our mind itself is that veil…The letting go required to pass beyond this barrier [of the mind] contradicts all our cultural conditioning," along with all our educational and religious programming as well. "This is because human transformation depends upon far more than information…The critical factor for deep spiritual change is NOT understanding, but an experience, a movement in the body’s awareness…Loosening the reins of control and letting ourselves experience such graced wisdom are the two essential ingredients of bio-spirituality.”

So that is what we are here to do again tonight…Set aside our words and our wordiness…Quiet our minds…Relinquish control…Loosen the reins…and let the genuine wisdom and grace of God speak to us, directly to our hearts…

We will share two periods of silence, each lasting 15 minutes. We’ll have a brief stretch break in between. If you find that you need an anchor to come back to as you fight off that monkey mind, try something physical, such as your breathing in and out, or a single syllable such as "Om," "Lord," or, given where we are in November, just "thanks."

Let us Pray…

Looking Ahead - On Tuesday, November 29, the Living Vision Community will meet at the Manna Food Bank on McBride Park Rd. in McBride Industrial Park off of W. Conway Rd. We will gather at 7:15 and work until 8:30 repacking food and assisting Manna as they address the hunger needs of our three county area. ALL are welcome to join us in the practice of no-strings-attached service to others. For more information email tobyjones48@gmail.com    

Shalom, Toby

Living Vision's Practice of Apophatic Prayer Continues...

On Tuesday, Nov. 15, the Living Vision Community gathered again at Yoga Roots for our second week of practicing Apophatic Prayer. Below you will find the introduction I offered as instructive material. I hope you will find it useful as you go further in this ancient and challenging practice. Please remember that EVERYONE is welcome at our gatherings. Invite your friends and share this blog address with them so we can broaden this important conversation....

Last Tuesday, we began our journey into the silent world of Apophatic Prayer. You will remember that the word “apophatic” comes from a Greek word meaning “to deny.” What is “denied” in apophatic prayer is the notion or assumption that God can be expressed or defined in words. The world of apophatic prayer is one that seeks to re-establish and reaffirm God’s ineffable, indescribable, mysterious nature.

Our interest in entering this practice is to see what happens to our faith when it is moved to a place or a realm that is beyond words. I like the way one of my fellow bloggers, Peregrinatus, puts it in the blog “Thin Spaces:”

“For a Western Christian, the use of language and rational understanding has been a primary mode for understanding and relating to God. This [verbal and rational approach] has essentially stripped God of His innate mystery by quantifying and theologizing God into language. We create a mental image of God…{without realizing that] our intellect, language and conceptions are simply insufficient to convey the transcendent otherness of God. The mental tools we use [in attempt] to describe our experience of Reality [Can actually] darken our understanding and hide us from the experience of God's unique otherness.

Peregrinatus continues, “Apophatic prayer and apophatic theology is one vehicle that allows us to move beyond our conceptual box and experience the living God just as God is.”

Daniel Wolpert, whom I quoted extensively in my introductory remarks last week puts it this way: “As we enter the practice of apophatic prayer, we come to the realization that we know nothing of God; and so we must simply surrender and wait for God to know us.” Wolpert continues: “This complete release, this ultimate letting go, catapults us to a space that appears completely empty…We are no longer in control…All our understanding about God is suddenly of no use to us.” And so, Wolpert concludes, “we can only admit that we are helpless before God…and we must trust our Creator to come and find us.”

As with all contemplative and spiritual practices, apophatic prayer may seem tedious and even fruitless to us at first. And that’s ok. But over time, there ARE some things that WILL begin to happen, particularly as we undertake this practice together, in our group setting…

1) You will begin to feel the support and presence of this group – a group that is abiding WITH you in this often challenging and empty silence…

2) Each of us will begin to “soften” through the practice – our minds WILL gradually slow down…with practice – and that’s why we call this a spiritual ‘practice’ – our monkey minds will relax, and be less consumed.

3) Another benefit of our practice together over time, Wolpert says, is that “the hard edges we set to get through the world will begin to rub away here, through our common practice…Our faces will relax along with our minds, our shoulders will sink down, and our hearts will begin to open up to each other,” in this realm beyond words. We will begin to feel tremendous love and compassion for each other as a by-product of our shared silence.

Remember that as we enter this particular form of silent prayer, we try not to rely on words or phrases or constant repetition to center us. We simply try to sit through the noise in our minds. We may use one single word or syllable as a sort of periodic, emergency anchor. We may also want to use a silent mental image as our anchor. I mentioned last week that I like to picture myself on God’s lap being held and cuddled.

We’ll share two periods of silence this evening – both of 15 minutes. Each phase will begin and end with the bell….Let us pray...

Please leave your comments below, sharing your experiences with apophatic prayer!

LV's Fall Series on Spiritual Practices Kicks Off!

Last night at 7:30, six of us gathered at Yoga Roots to begin practicing contemplative disciplines together. We began with Apophatic Prayer. For your edification, this is the introductory material I offered in case you want to try this at home! But better yet, join us next Tuesday, Nov. 15, when we'll continue our immersion in this challenging, humbling, and clarifying practice.

The anonymous author of the contemplative classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, says that “all human virtue is comprised in the twin qualities of Humility and Charity…He who has these, has all.” Our author goes on to define humility as, “self-knowledge, that terrible vision of the soul as it is…a glimpse which first induces self abasement and then self-purification, which is the beginning of all spiritual growth…”

We have come here tonight to begin or perhaps re-start our spiritual growth. And thus, we have come here to be humbled…and humbled we shall be. For the discipline we shall endeavor to practice tonight and through the month of November is one of the most humbling there is – apophatic prayer.

If you grew up at all like me, you probably have always thought about prayer as an expression in words. But tonight and in the weeks to come we will explore what happens when we seek to move our faith beyond words. We will explore what happens when we even seek to move beyond our thoughts about God, beyond our understanding of God. In a sense, we go back in time to the heart of faith, when, according to Judeo-Christian scripture, Moses asked God what his name was and God responded, “Yahweh,” which is not a name at all. “I am who I am. I will be who I will be.” Translation – ‘I am beyond your human words, your human names, and your human understandings, and I always will be.’ 

The word “apophatic” comes from a Greek word meaning “to deny.” It is also related to school of theology known as “negative theology” – negative in the sense that it rejects all attempts to define, describe, or even understand God. God, after all, is ineffable, utterly beyond human words, so in apophatic prayer we seek to move our faith and faith practices beyond words as well.

Apophatic prayer is not only an externally silent form of prayer, but it seeks to also be silent internally, where there are no words used or called upon for internal focus, except for a single syllable or “anchor word,” to which I’ll return in a few moments. Seeking this silence both without and within is likely to be extraordinarily uncomfortable for all of us, and particularly for American Christians. The very first thing we should expect to encounter in this form of silent meditation is what contemplative writer Daniel Wolpert calls, “the fallen reality of our minds.” While the novice to apophatic prayer may think he/she is about to encounter God, what he/she will most assuredly encounter first is him/herself…”our self loathing, our shame, our lack of self-worth.” And most of all, and here’s the humbling part, we are likely to encounter our complete inability to control our own minds. We find out in this discipline just how out of control our minds are and how powerless we are to do anything about that.

And so, in apophatic prayer we place ourselves - and our runaway minds - at the mercy of God. We admit how broken and unspiritual we really are and wait for God to come to us.

So what we will do in a few moments is sit in silence together. We may use the sound and rhythm of our breathing to focus us. And we also may wish to use a single word as an anchor to chase away at least some of thoughts that will plague us. Your single anchor word might be “God,” “Yahweh,” Jesus,” “Om,” “love,” or “mercy.” Come back to your one word as you seek to quiet your mind enough to listen for the still small voice of your Creator. We’ll share silence for two chunks of time – 10 and 15 minutes, with a little break in between, for a total of 25 minutes tonight. A bell will begin and end each period of silence.

I’ll close this introduction to tonight’s practice with one of my favorite stories about Mother Theresa. The late Peter Jennings was asked just before he died who his most memorable interview was with. He said without hesitating that it was Mother Theresa. When asked why, he said that he’d never forgotten one exchange they had. “I asked her, ‘Mother Theresa, when you pray, what do you say?’ She scrunched up her face in a confused expression and said, ‘Say?…I don’t say anything. I listen…I listen.”

And so, Let the listening begin…Let us pray…

 

 

Come and Join us for Living Vision 2011!

Have you ever wanted to be a part of a spiritual community that made sense to you, made a concrete difference in your life, and equipped you to be more present and effective in the world? Here comes your chance...

Living Vision is the brain, soul, and heart child of Toby Jones and his book The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age (Wipf & Stock, Eugene, OR, 2010) In that groundbreaking book, Jones offers seven principles that he thinks any group of spiritually-minded people can use to launch their own organic post-church community. His principles include the following:

Open Theology – No doctrine, dogma, nor list of required beliefs, but genuine, thoughtful, inquiring openness to the full range of religious viewpoints.

Discipleship – An emphasis on living/action/service, as opposed to adopting or accepting beliefs.

Rick Taking Adventure – An attitude and approach to life in community that stretches and challenges participants to do good and spiritual things they might not have the faith to do on their own.

Radical Inclusiveness and Hospitality – Everyone is equal and everyone is welcome all the time - PERIOD! All faiths, all traditions, all perspectives, all orientations.

Service Without Strings – Caring for others, particularly the poor and suffering, is done without expectations of reciprocity or gratitude. It is the right thing to do and is a value/practice that is elevated by all religious traditions.

No Building or Real Estate – Owning or renting a place to meet is an unnecessary distraction that too easily becomes the tail wagging the dog. Itis also a huge financial drain that drastically limits a community’s ability to reach out in service and generosity to those outside the community.

No Paid Leader – Originally, spiritual leaders of all religions were not paid. Paul, who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament and founded seven of theoriginal Christian churches, was a “tent-maker,” earning his living withoutasking his churches to support him. Paying a leader fundamentally alters the relationship between participants in a spiritual community and furtherlimits the community’s ability to serve the poor and the downtrodden.

   *Copies of Toby’s book are available at progressiveretreats.org or at Mclean & Eakin

In light of these seven founding principles, Living Vision seeks to be a “community of practice,” that is, a group that gets together not to talk about nor discuss, but to actually do the practices that will deepen our spiritual grounding and make us more present and helpful in the world.

With that conviction in mind, Living Vision is launching its fall/winter schedule of practices on November 8 with an emphasis on ancient contemplative disciplines. We will be meeting three Tuesday evenings a month (every Tuesday except the first one of the month) from 7:30-8:30 at Yoga Roots in Petoskey (located at 444 Mitchell St. in downtown Petoskey). Each gathering will begin with a 5-10 minute introduction to one particular spiritual practice (silence, centering prayer, lectio divina, breath prayers, to name a few), 30-35 minutes of the practice itself, and 5-10 minutes of shared insight from the experience to wrap up and send us on our way. Participants are to bring a comfortable cushion to sit on along with a notebook and pen.

Living Vision gatherings are free and open to anyone who is hungry to practice with us.

For more information contact Toby Jones at tobyjones48@gmail.com See you Nov. 8 at 7:30!

"Here I Go Again" Reflecting on the Evangelical Impulse

I was listening to my i-pod songs on shuffle the other day when a “Christian” song by Casting Crowns came on. It’s called “Here I Go Again.” The song helped me crystallize much of what has always bothered me about the evangelical impulse in so many branches of the Christian family tree.

The story the song tells is of a guy who feels the need to tell his friend the good news of Jesus’ love before it is “too late.” It isn’t quite clear if the unsuspecting friend is dying or just leaving town. But what is clear is that the speaker/singer feels tremendous pressure to tell his friend of God’s love, and yet he is also reluctant to do so because of a chronic and recurring fear.

            “But that old familiar fear is tearin’ at my words

             What am I so afraid of, cause here I go again

             Talkin’ bout the rain and mulling over things

             That won’t live past today

             And as I dance around the truth, time is not his friend

             This might be my last chance to tell him that You love him…”

Now I must confess at the outset that I spent a healthy chunk of my Christian journey feeling this very same tension, and on many occasions I swallowed the fear and forged ahead with the pious, evangelical fire required to say what I thought needed to be said, to give verbal witness of what I understood to be the Gospel. And each time I spoke, I did so out of the strong conviction that it was not only the right thing for a follower of Jesus to do but an actual requirement of true discipleship.

My underlying assumptions in those evangelical days were many:

1)    I knew Jesus and the other person didn’t.

2)    I was “saved” and the other person wasn’t.

3)    If I didn’t tell this other person of Jesus and the divine plan for salvation, it was possible that no one else would, which also meant that this person might be condemned to an eternity in hell, separate from God.

4)    That the only way God could communicate his love to this other person was through words, that God needed me, or someone like me, to reach this person’s heart.

At this point in my spiritual journey, I have found all of these assumptions to be false, arrogant, and completely demeaning to both the other person AND to God. But for now, I’d like to focus on the fourth assumption, for that is what listening to this Casting Crowns song really highlighted for me.

I believe that it is demeaning to the God of the universe to think that God “needs” me or any other human to convey His love. And it’s even more demeaning – not to mention highly unbiblical – to think that Divine Love should or could ever be adequately or accurately conveyed in human words. Does the God of the universe really “need” my words to make Divine Love real for another human being? Was Moses brought to a relationship of faith through human words? What about Samuel, David, or Nebuchadnezar? Was the Apostle Paul brought to faith through human words on the Road to Damascus? What about the twelve disciples? Wasn’t it the case in all of these examples that God didn’t need human words at all to capture the hearts, minds, imaginations, and souls of these people? Can’t God speak through a sunrise or a sunset? Hasn’t God been known to bring humans to faith through experiences like childbirth or suffering or unexpected mercy? What was it in Les Miserables that led Jean Valjean to trade his life of crime for a life of devoted service to the least of these? It was the loving, undeserved action of a priest.

And how can any of us dare to assume that God isn’t already present and at work in the heart and mind of another person, even and especially a person who doesn’t go to church or cop to the right creeds, or read the same Bible that we do? I’ve come to a place in my spiritual journey where the Quaker understanding of the Divine Light within every person makes the most sense to me. In every room I enter and in every conversation I engage I assume that God is already there, already present and at work. How dare I assume that God “needs” me or my words in order to be present in that room or that person!

So to the members of Casting Crowns and the millions of well-intentioned, faithful Christians who share the perspective given voice in “Here I Go Again” I offer the following, unsolicited advice: Try believing in a bigger God. Trust that God speaks even when you don’t and that most often, if the Bible is accurate, God doesn’t rely on words, be they human or divine. By all means love and reach out to your dying or departing friend. But do so with the strong sense that God is already there, loving and interacting with him in sighs and ways that go far beyond words. God doesn’t need nor want you, me, nor anyone else to create, force, or push for some verbal acceptance or response from your friend. God is bigger than all of that. Amen.

“What’s in A Name? (The trouble w/ G_D)”

                

                        The Third Sermon in a series on Humilty

               offered by Toby Jones at FPC Boyne City 9/25/11

           (Based on Genesis 2:19-20 Exodus 3:13-14, & John 20:11-18)

         For the last couple weeks, we’ve been on a journey aimed at trying to recapture the lost virtue of humility. Last week I re-introduced the ancient spiritual discipline of silence as one step on our journey. Today I want to take another step toward Christ and Christ-like humility, and it’s a step that is in an unusual direction. It’s a step backwards, WAY back, in fact. And that’s why two of our readings were all the way back in Genesis and Exodus, the first two books in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.

           In the Genesis passage, we read the portion of the creation story where Adam and Eve get to name the other creatures. Kind of a cool moment, where God gives the humans naming rights. They got to give names to various plants, animals, and other living things. But there was one thing they were NOT allowed to name. Did anyone catch what THAT was?

         That’s where the Exodus passage comes in. Moses has this incredible experience with a burning bush, where, not only does the bush that’s on fire NOT burn up, but that flaming bush talks to Moses. And toward the end of that little epiphany, Moses asks, “Who are you? What should I call you? When I go to Pharaoh and do what you ask, Who do I say sent me? (And you know what Moses is looking for here, right? He wants a name for You-Know-Who.) 

         What does the Creator of all that is say in response to Moses’ question? How did the Divine One answer? He said, “Yah-weh.” And those of us who know our Hebrew know that Yahweh is NOT a name. Let me say that again – Yahweh is NOT a name. “ It is a phrase, a statement, perhaps even a warning. Yes, a warning. Yahweh means “I am who I am.” I will be who I will be.” In other words, “whatever you do, Moses, DON’T try and name me…I am who I am…I will be who I will be…No name will EVER define, capture, or adequately express who I am.”

         Oh, how I wish we had paid attention to this very clear warning straight from the You-Know-Who’s mouth. If we had, I believe we would be a lot more humble than we are today. Let me try to explain. You see, whenever we name something, whenever we come up with a word to label something, we limit whatever it is that we’re naming. Think about it! We came up with the name “Dog” for, well dogs. How many of you have had and loved a dog? And then the dog dies or you have to put him down, as I had to do my 14 year old yellow lab/golden retriever this past week, and you sob uncontrollably and some insensitive friend says, “c’mon Toby. It’s just a dog! It’s not like it’s a person.” And I take offense because my dog IS a lot like a person. In some ways better and more human than many of the humans I know! That word “dog” doesn’t begin to cut it! Or what happens in the political sphere, when we don’t like a certain politician’s views? We say, “He’s a Socialist!” Or “she’s a right wing conservative!” We use these terms, these names to define – NARROWLY define – and in so doing we shrink the person into something much less, much less rich, much less complex, much less authentic than he or she is.

          This is why Yahweh didn’t want Moses or anybody else naming him. If you have any friends who are Jews, you may have noticed that when they are writing, they will never write the word G-O-D. Instead they write G-_-D. This wonderful and humble practice goes back to Exodus 3. It’s one of my favorite dimensions of Judaism. Not uttering or writing the name of Yahweh helps remind us that God is completely beyond our language, completely beyond our minds, completely beyond!

         Over time, we have shrunken God. And the more we shrink God, the less we appreciate God’s mystery, the more we elevate ourselves. There’s a really interesting moment in our New Testament reading from John, in the Easter narrative, that I think we tend to miss in all our trumpet filled resurrection celebrations. It may seem like a small, insignificant detail in verse 17 of John 20. It’s when Mary sees the risen Jesus for the first time and moves toward him, and Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me, Mary…Do not hold on to me.”

         It’s a curious thing for Jesus to say, don’t you think? I mean, who could blame Mary for reaching out to the risen Jesus, wanting to give him a huge hug? Mary’s actions are totally understandable, especially when we remember that Mary was the one who stayed with Jesus through the entire crucifixion process, until he breathed his last. Mary was there when they took the dead Jesus off the cross, and she prepared him for burial. No wonder Mary wanted to touch Jesus at this amazing moment. Perhaps she thought she was seeing was a ghost or some sort of apparition. Or maybe, having once “lost” her master, her teacher, her friend, her messiah, Mary wasn’t about to let Jesus out of her sight and grasp again. But whatever her reasoning, we can’t blame Mary for wanting to touch and hold on to the risen Christ. It’s Jesus’ response to Mary that’s a little hard to sort out. Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me,” “Do not hold on to me.” Why wouldn’t Jesus want to be held on to?

          It may help if we think about this passage metaphorically. We humans seem to always want to hold onto Jesus, to gain control of him, to make him “ours” somehow. The Pharisees and scribes wanted to “take hold” of Jesus. They wanted him to comply with their expectations of what a rabbi, a holy man of God should be. They didn’t want a messiah who fraternized with sinners and tax collectors. They couldn’t have that, any more than they could have a messiah who touched lepers and unclean women. “Come back over here, Jesus, where we can hold onto you and keep you in line, conform you to OUR idea of a holy man of God.” But Jesus refused to be held by the Pharisees.

         Peter also wanted to hold on to Jesus in a different way. He loved all of Jesus’ miracles – the healings, the feedings. Peter’s problem came when Jesus started to talk about having to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die. Peter yelled, “Never, Lord! You shall never be handed over and crucified! Not you!” Peter wanted to hold onto his notion of a messiah, one who was always victorious and mighty, not some weak, silent lamb led to the slaughter. Peter wanted to hold on to a victorious, warrior Jesus, one who would stay on top. But Jesus refused to be held by Peter and Peter’s notion of what a messiah should be.

         Or what about in Luke’s account of the resurrection, several of the disciples leave Jerusalem on foot, taking the road to Emmaeus. While on that road a stranger comes along side of them and asks them about what has taken place with Jesus back in Jerusalem. As it turns out this “stranger” is actually the risen Christ, but the disciples don’t recognize him. And do you remember what happens once the disciples realized that the man they were walking and talking with actually was the risen Jesus? He disappears! He vanishes! He refused to be held.

         And on Easter morn each year, part of what we’re celebrating is that even death couldn’t hold onto Jesus. Even that stone cold, tight locked, enormous tomb, in the end, could not hold or contain Jesus.

         Think of all the people in the Bible who tried, at some point, to grab hold of Jesus, to cling to him, to define him, to make him their own, to pigeon-hole him and limit him and keep him in one place. Satan couldn’t do it in the wilderness; the mother of James and John couldn’t do it when she asked Jesus to see to it that her two sons got to sit on each side of Jesus in paradise; Pilate couldn’t do it when he questioned Jesus about who he was; the Jewish leaders couldn’t hold on to Jesus, even when they had him imprisoned in chains and later nailed to a cross.

         People are still trying to contain Jesus today. Faithful men and women are still trying to pin Jesus down, confine God and ways of thinking about God. Do you know that in our own denomination right now there are people fighting about the doctrine of the trinity? There are many folks in our denomination for whom understanding God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit doesn’t work. It’s too limiting, too gender specific. It reduces God instead of magnifies Him. So these folks have wrestled to come up with other words to express God’s multi-faceted nature. And some other folks in our denomination are saying, “You can’t do that! You can’t change the way we’ve always talked about God. God IS Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and if you try to say that in some other way, you’re going to have to leave our denomination.” We’re fighting about words and doctrines that we humans made up in the first place to try and express something that’s beyond words.

         Jesus is more liquid than solid. He’s like the water I poured into the children’s hands earlier this morning. Jesus gets us wet, but we can’t contain or hold onto his living water. The living water of Jesus keeps flowing through us, squeezing out of the cracks and crevices of our lives, so that others can taste and feel and see his living water too.

         It is this deep truth of our wanting to contain Jesus and Jesus’ refusal to be contained that has led me to be very careful and very suspicious of doctrines and systematized, institutionalized beliefs. We Christians have a long history of trying to hold onto Jesus by constructing doctrines and then casting them in stone as a way of saying, “This is how we will understand and talk about Jesus forever and ever. Amen.” With both his actions and his words, Jesus was always saying, “Do not hold onto me!” Why? Because Jesus doesn’t want to be doctrinalized or institutionalized or put in some theological box. Even our best, most clever doctrines can only give us a tiny glimpse of God. They never have been and they never will be entirely accurate or True.  Every doctrine or statement or way of talking about Jesus that we’ve ever come up with is a bit misleading, incomplete, and seen through that foggy mirror Paul spoke of in 1^st Corinthians 13.

         I’ve wrestled long and hard with Jesus’ refusal to let us hold onto him. I’ve come to understand that Jesus is more like water than anything else – nourishing, cleansing, refreshing, but always flowing, always seeping out between cracks, always on the move. And because of that, because of the liquid, constantly flowing nature of Jesus, our theology has GOT to become more humble. Our words and ways of thinking about and talking about God and Jesus have got to become more humble, because trying to name, define, or explain God is like trying to hold water when it is poured into our hands.

God showed his infinite wisdom when He answered Moses’ “who are you?” question by saying, “I am who I am, and I will be what I will be.” “Yahweh” is so much more than a name. It’s a reminder that the God we worship is not to be quantified, categorized, nor contained in any way. We mustn’t seek to contain God in our human words, in our theological systems, nor even in our finite human minds.

And when Jesus said to Mary, that first Easter morn 2000 years ago, “Don’t hold onto me.” Jesus was saying the same to her that Yahweh said to Moses: “Don’t hold onto me…Whatever you do, don’t hold on to me.”

God is like water, and what He wants more than anything else is people and churches and communities that are willing to have that living water flow through us – not just INto us, but OUT of us as well, to ALL people. Yahweh is a liquid, not a solid, an ever-flowing stream with the hope of flowing in AND out of us, into a parched and thirsty world. Yahweh knew what He was doing when he asked us NOT to name him and NOT to try to hold onto Him. If we can remember and honor his request, perhaps we can find the lost virtue of humility again. Amen.

“The Road to Humility is Paved with Silence”

                 

                     The Second Sermon in a series on Humility 

             offered by Toby Jones at FPC of Boyne City 9/18/11

                 (Based on  Psalm 46:1-10a, Matthew 26:36-46)

Last week I introduced the “lost virtue” of humility. I argued – convincingly, I hope – that we Christians have lost touch with this crucial characteristic, this vital fruit of the Spirit. Our lack of humility in our speech, in our attitude, and in our behavior has made it impossible for others to see Christ in us. This week I am here to point the way back home, the way back to humility, the way back to Jesus and his Way.

Let me begin by stating as clearly as I can that just because I am preaching this sermon series on humility doesn’t mean that I am a humble person. I’m not. In fact, I have been guilty of many of the very things I spoke of last week – bad mouthing the president, judging people for their behaviors without knowing the specifics of their lives, and thinking I was seeing the whole picture clearly when, in fact, I was seeing only through a glass darkly. And, ironically, my being a preacher has only bolstered my lack of humility. Having been gifted with the ability to speak and write articulately, particularly in matters of faith, churches like this one have a way of putting me in the front of the room, up high in a podium. So the more I’ve talked and written about Christ, the more I thought I was doing well at the Jesus thing, and, sadly, the less humble I’ve become. Theologian Richard Rohr put it this way in his book Everything Belongs:

“Religion has not tended to create seekers or searchers. Religion has not tended to create honest humble people who [understand that] God is [truly] beyond [us all]…Religion has, rather, tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers.”

Rohr is right. The Way of Jesus is not a way of words. The spiritual life is not paved with sermons. In fact, it is paved with silence. I have come to believe that if we truly want Christ-like humility, we’re going to have to shut up, or as the Psalmist put it, we’re going to have to “be still” to “know God.”

Just before he died, long-time ABC News Anchor, Peter Jennings, said that his most memorable interview was with Mother Theresa. And in that interview, Jennings asked her one question that I’ll never forget. He said, “When you pray, Mother Theresa, what do you say to God?” She crumpled up here face in a confused expression and said, “Say?…I don’t say anything. I just listen… I just listen.” Maybe that’s why she did such great things for God’s kingdom.

But there’s a reason that we fill all our prayer time up with words, and it’s the same reason we turn the radio on the second we get in the car, and the same reason we turn on the TV the moment we get up in the morning, and the same reason we sign our kids and ourselves up for so many activities and church committees….Do you know what that reason is…?…

We don’t feel comfortable with silence…We don’t do well with sitting still. As Christian contemplative Daniel Wolpert puts it, sitting still and keeping silent confronts us with “the radical impotence of our nature…” and “demonstrates our radical emptiness.” In other words, being still and silent humbles us; it makes us feel less confident, less sure of ourselves. We no longer have words to hide behind. And yet, the great Psalmist teaches that the way to know God, to truly KNOW God, is to be still….

What does it take for you to be still? When was the last time you TRIED being still for a half an hour…for five minutes…or even for two minutes? And even if you succeeded in stilling your body, what about your mind? Good luck with silencing that, right?

I thought about taking time right here in the middle of my sermon to ask us all to be still and silent for just two minutes, but I decided not to. You know why? Because I already know what would happen. The first 30 seconds you’d try to get comfortable and keep from squirming. The next fifteen or twenty you’d be distracted by everyone else as they tried to get comfortable. Then you’d sneak a peek at your watch to see how much time had passed. Then, depressed that you had another whole minute to go, you’d start going through your grocery list or the list of things you have to do when you get home today. And then time would be up and you’d feel no closer to God than you did before we started the whole thing!

We run from silence with our bodies, and if we ever still our bodies, we run just as hard from silence with our minds. And do you know why?…Because we are empty and somehow we know it. We are powerless over our own busy and running minds. We can’t even shut off our grocery lists and our to-do lists for God, and we know it. We don’t sit still and we don’t quiet our minds because we can’t and it’s humbling, maybe even humiliating. Silence is humbling. Stillness is humbling. And so we run from it as fast as we can and with everything we’ve got. We even use Church and church activities to keep us running.

But look at where all our running has gotten us. William Butler Yeats said it best in his famous poem, The Second Coming:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

Do you really need me to remind you how stressed out and depressed and addicted and short tempered and fragmented we’ve all become? It’s because our center can no longer hold. When you strip away all our words, all our activities, and all our running around, guess what is left…? NOTHING! There is nothing there at our core. We ARE the falcons who can no longer hear our Falconer. In fact, we don’t even try to hear Him anymore. We don’t even listen. We won’t shut up. We can’t even quiet our minds.

So you see, my friends, it is, indeed, humbling to practice the ancient spiritual discipline of silence. In even attempting to give God 5 minutes of silence, 5 minutes of us listening to Him, we come up against our own inadequacy, our inability, our emptiness, and our utter fragmentation. But that’s no reason not to try to recover this ancient and vital spiritual practice. This is, after all, GOD and KNOWING GOD that we’re talking about!

And so I want you to try. I want ME to try. Ten minutes, five minutes a day, to sit quietly, silently without phones and voices and appointment calendars, NOT praying, as we’ve come to think of it. NOT saying words to God in our head, but just waiting on God, just listening, saying nothing, except maybe “Jesus…oh, Jesus.” And in that awkward, squirmy, uncomfortable silence, if all you accomplish is the realization of how weak, unspiritual, and distracted you are, that’s a GOOD thing, especially if you let that realization HUMBLE you.

But I have a hunch that if we practice and stick to this lost discipline, some other things may happen to us as well, things like what happened to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Do you remember that moment in Jesus’ life? Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane was certainly NOT filled with words. In terms of what Jesus actually said in this three-part prayer, the prayer was very short. In fact, let’s time it…Who has a second hand on your watch? (Call on a volunteer) Will you time me as I say the exact words Jesus said in Gethsemane? Ready?

     “My father, if it be possible, take this cup of suffering from me…yet not as I will, but as you will”….How long was that? ____ seconds! You know why that’s important? Because the text tells us that each of these little prayer times Jesus had lasted one HOUR! One hour! All Jesus said in that entire hour took 20 seconds! Yet he was in prayer for one hour - X 3! That means that each hour consisted of 59 minutes and 40 seconds of silence! Listening – not talking, not asking, not ‘God gimme’s’ – just listening!

Some look at this prayer Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and wonder whether it was answered or not? Some would say no, for Jesus went into the prayer time about to be arrested and killed…and he came out of the prayer time and was arrested and killed. Three hours of prayer didn’t change Jesus’ circumstances at all – not one bit!

But I see this prayer time much differently. I have come to see this prayer as one of the most powerful examples of what silence and listening to God can do. Why? Because while Jesus’ CIRCUMSTANCES didn’t change in this instance – Jesus HIMSELF DID. He came into the garden a fearful, troubled man. He said to his disciples that he was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, he then prayed to God, saying, “If it be possible, take this cup of suffering from me, Father.” Then he listened for 59 minutes and 40 seconds. Now the next time Jesus spoke in this prayer, his words were slightly but significantly different. Did you notice the change? He said, “If it is NOT possible for this cup of suffering to be taken away unless I drink it, thy will be done.” Can you hear how God had begun working on Jesus’s heart during Jesus’s listening. Gradually, through listening and silence, Jesus began to see, understand, and accept that God wanted Jesus to go through the suffering. God didn’t change Jesus’s circumstances; but God DID change Jesus.

 And finally, after his third hour of LISTENING prayer, Jesus was truly ready to face his circumstances and carry out God’s will. The passage says that Jesus rose, went to his disciples and said, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Look, the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let’s go! My betrayer is at hand.” And Jesus walked boldly, empowered by his silent time with God to meet his betrayer and his crucifixion head-on with bravery, determination, and the assurance of God’s presence with him.

     

My brothers and sisters, it is in silence that we find how humble, weak, and needy we are. And finding that out can keep us humble. And it is also in silence that we find out just how much God loves us, how present He really is, in spite of our weakness and frenetic distraction. In silence we find our center, our core, our true identity. In silence, God works on our hearts, just as He worked on Jesus’s heart in Gethsemane, giving him the power and the strength he needed to face his cup of suffering.

     

May each of us recapture this lost discipline of silence. May each of us come to understand what Mother Theresa understands – that true prayer isn’t about what WE say…it’s about listening for what God might say…and being humbled by it.

The road to humility is paved with silence…Amen.

“Our Beliefs: The Golden Calf of the 21st Century”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been able to relate to this Golden Calf story. I realize that it is an absolutely HUGE moment in Biblical history, dealing with the first and most important commandment – “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” While there is and always has been plenty of sin and sinful impulse in my life, I can honestly say that I’ve never – literally NEVER – felt like grabbing a bunch of precious metal, melting it down, and building an image of something that I would then bow down to instead of God. Of all the commandments and their various prohibitions, I’ve always felt pretty safe from this first one….At least until very recently.

What’s happened recently to make me reconsider my formerly rock solid confidence that I could never build a Golden Calf is that I realized that our own opinions and religious beliefs can be Golden Calves. I realized that the things we say and believe about the world, about politics, even about God and Jesus just might be the 2011 versions of the Golden Calf story.

Look at what has transpired in our national government lately.  And if one thing is completely clear from this heinous and debilitating debate, it is that both sides are so completely locked down and trapped inside their own ferociously held opinions that they truly have no interest in and no access to what is best for the greater good. What has happened in this debt debate is what always happens when two people or two sides become so attached to their own ideology that they can no longer listen, change, grow, nor serve in any effective way.

And let’s be honest…it ISN’T only our government that does this. We religious people – and, more specifically, we Christians - are pretty darn good at doing the exact same thing. We get so overly attached to our own words and views regarding God and Jesus.  We stop listening…we stop thinking…we stop allowing any new information or even any new ways of speaking about God to enter our hearts or minds. That is sad, and also arrogant.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel cautioned us that “Religion – ALL religion - consists of God’s questions and MAN’S answers.” But I believe that most of us mistakenly operate out of the assumption that “our” religion is uniquely made up of God’s answers. And once we stick those man-made answers on our hearts, convince ourselves that God both authored them and stuck them there, then we have entered the dangerous ground of idolatry. We bow down to these man-made words like idols or golden calves, words attempting to describe a God who is beyond description. How often we forget that ALL our words and thoughts about God – even those in the Bible – came from man, not from God.

What I’m here to tell you today is that I believe that our attachment to our own religious views has become idolatrous, a sin that is no less dangerous than building an idol out of molten gold. The great CS Lewis came to understand this shortly before he died. He wrote: the true disciple  “must constantly work as the iconoclast. Every idea of God that we ever form, we must in mercy shatter.” Lewis concluded,  “I suppose it was at such a moment of realization that Thomas Acquinas said of ALL his own theology: ‘It reminds me of straw.’”

So what are the religious slogans, bumper stickers, and sayings of Jesus or Paul that have stuck themselves onto your heart? What have you latched onto and clung to, thinking that your faithfulness to God will be measured by the tightness of your grip? What theological quip or biblical quotation has become your golden calf? What piece of your theology and views might need to be smashed in order to open yourself – REALLY open yourself – to the living God?

I know a lot of Christians who are wedded to the idea that in order to be “saved” – whatever that means? – one must “accept” Jesus as “Lord and Savior.” Never mind that Jesus never said such a thing. Perhaps he was gone or up the mountain for a spell, when that bit of Christian interpretation and particular lingo came into being. And when Jesus came back down the mountain, he found millions and millions of people bowing down to it…

What if words and beliefs about God can become idols?

I know some people who say and believe and teach that only followers of Jesus will be admitted into heaven. Where do you suppose that little gem came from? The only people Jesus ever said anything about not entering his father’s kingdom were – guess who? – the religious people who thought they were right while everybody else was wrong. Jesus told those people – those religious know-it-alls - that prostitutes and tax collectors would enter his father’s kingdom before they would. Perhaps Jesus told them that because he could see that their beliefs – and their arrogance about their beliefs – had become idols, golden calves that they were bowing down to. What if our words and beliefs about God can lead us into the sin of idolatry?

The older I get and the more I learn about Buddhism, the more I realize that our Christian problem with arrogance about our beliefs might be a problem of attachment. If there’s one thing Buddhists totally grasp, it is the idea of NOT getting attached to things, including their own ideas. In 2001, while I was teaching at Exeter in New Hampshire, the academy was visited by a small band of Tibetan Buddhists, who had come to construct a sand mandala. Have you ever seen one of these things or how they are made. These six or seven little monks in their maroon robes, sat uncomfortably on the cold, tile floor of our cylindrical library with tubes of colored sand, straws, and not much else. And for 12 hours a day for nearly a week, they created this beautiful, colorful design, the likes of which I have never seen. It was so complex, so unique, so artistic, so stunning in its beauty, that students and faculty alike would come to the library between classes, after meals, instead of meals, before bed time,  and climb up to the 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th floors to hang over the railings and watch in wonder at these patient, painstaking monks. Each day the design took on new dimensions and complexities, as the monks worked from before sun up through sunset.  And then, do you know what they did? As soon as the week ended, as soon as the mandala was “completed,” do you know what they did? They swept up the sand into a container, took it down to the Exeter River, threw it up into the wind, and watched as it settled into the river unceremoniously.

We were all stunned, even heartbroken! All this work! All this beauty! What were they thinking? How could they just let it all go so quickly? They weren’t attached to it, and THAT was the point. The Tibetan monks were completely unattached to their own work. The point of the mandala was precisely to see how focused, how careful, how artistic and how giving they could be without becoming attached to their creation. Tibetan Buddhist monks do not serve nor invest in their own egos. They serve and invest in a God who is all about reducing, even relinquishing ego.

I wonder what would happen if we Christians learned a little something about detachment from our Buddhist brothers and sisters? I wonder what might happen if we Christians came to the same conclusion that the great Thomas Acquinas did, when he saw ALL of his theology and beliefs as nothing more than straw? Are you willing to do that? Am I?

I have a dear and intensely spiritual friend who recently asked me a profound question: What’s more important, Toby… for you to defend your words and ideas about God, or for you to experience the spirit of God, particularly in and through someone else?”

I want to ask you and all Christians the very same question this day: Is it more important to you to defend your view of God than it is for you to experience God? For if it is, then you will definitely reap what you will sow. If it is more important for you to have everyone use YOUR favorite words and expressions for God than it is for you to genuinely experience the real and transforming presence of the living God, then you will surely reap what you sow. But if you are willing to embrace the fact that God is ineffable, utterly beyond our biggest and best words – even beyond those words penned in the Bible – then you just might be open enough to meet and experience the resurrected Jesus in a way that smashes your idols, makes a mockery of your words, and shows you what love can do.

You know, all that God ever really wanted with any of us is an authentic, living, breathing, dynamic relationship. That’s probably why he protested every time some well-intentioned, devoted disciple tried to build him a temple or a church building. As Acts 7 says, “God doesn’t dwell in temples made with human hands.” And I’m here to tell you that He doesn’t dwell in our words or in our theological systems either. God is ineffable, indescribable, and the fact that we are now fighting and further dividing ourselves over the question of which human words, which theological paradigms, and which man-made religion is the “best” or “truest” expression is a tragedy of Golden Calf-like proportions.

So, my brothers and sisters, I invite you today, this day, to lay down your arms, to turn the swords of your beliefs and the weapons of your theologies into ploughshares. I invite you to choose this day whom you will serve…Will it be the God of our own making, a God who has been reduced by our small minds and our myopic verbage? Or will it be the God who is Wholly Other, Unfathomable Mystery, Ineffable Wonder?

I’ll give CS Lewis the last word. In an amazing moment in his Narnian Chronicles, Lucy re-encounters Aslan after a long time away. The dialogue is as follows:

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”

“That’s because you are a little older, little one,” answered he.

 Lucy replied, “Not because you are?”

“I am not,” said Aslan. “But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

                  (Prince Caspian, Chapter X, p. 117)

Amen.

A Recent Sermon I Wrote and Delivered on Sin

                “Re-Thinking Sin”

          A Sermon Offered by Toby Jones to People and Churches All over the Place!

    (Based on Matthew 5:38-48, Luke 15:11-31 with inspiration from both Rev. Dr. Tom 

           Dickleman and Phillip Yancey in his book "What Good is God?")

         

What is sin…? How do you define sin? It’s a tiny little three-letter word that has been around for an awfully long time. And we all grew up with a certain awareness and understanding of this word, didn’t we? So what was yours? What IS your understanding of sin…?

For me, I grew up with a pretty clear and tightly defined notion of sin. It wasn’t complicated. God had made rules; the Bible spelled them out; You break those rules; it’s a sin, plain and simple. And you will pay a price. There will be consequences for sinful actions. Sin is the violation of the rules God made. God’s rules start with the 10 Commandments and expand to include the nuances and additions from Jesus. I wonder how many of us here today grew up with a similar definition of sin – the moral rule breaking definition?

Now, like I said, I grew up with that very same understanding of sin, so I’m sympathetic to it and am even willing to give it a certain level of respect and legitimacy. And it’s an understanding of sin that fits in very nicely with the moral world we humans have set up.

It’s plain to see that our world operates according to something very similar to Newton’s third law of motion, namely that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. If you lose your temper and yell at me, I’ll yell right back at you. If you hit me…I’m going to hit you back. If you and your country bomb me and my country…we’ll bomb you and you’re your country right back. This action-reaction stuff is written all over the annals of human history. And not only at the national or governmental level…it trickles right down to the individual ethics that govern each and every one of us.

We as a human race are still entrenched in the action-reaction mode of existence. It is the default drive in our heads and hearts, so deeply engrained, that at times we rightly feel powerless to break out of its clutches. But I’m here to tell you today that Jesus has no tolerance for this action-reaction way of living. When Jesus talks about and teaches about sin, he is even more concerned about the reaction we have to sin than he is about the initial perpetrator of it. Any follower of Jesus who wants to talk about sin has got to include a discussion of action-reaction living.

So let’ start by reviewing our two passages for the morning. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus distinguishes his teaching – or “yoke” – for how we must live from the other rabbis of his day. He says, “You have heard it said ‘an eye for an eye.’ But I tell you NO! Don’t live that way. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left…If anyone tries to steal or take your shirt, give him your coat as well.” Here we begin to see that Jesus has something different in mind for what sin is than the mere breaking of rules. For Jesus, sin begins with the instinct to react to what is done to us. Jesus’ attempt to root out sin from among his followers begins with calling us out of action-reaction living. “If anyone forces you to walk a mile with them, go two miles with them…You’ve heard it said, ‘love your neighbor.’ But I want you to love your enemy.” Paul picks up on this thread in Romans 12 when he says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. But repay evil with good.”

What Jesus was most bothered by in this world was not so much that people mess up and hurt one another. What bothered Jesus was the fact that people – even religious people – seem to always react to sin by perpetuating further sin. To Jesus, sin was this amazingly strong tendency to react to evil with more evil. And so when we examine his example, his teaching, his parables, his yoke, what we find is the consistent call to break this cycle of sin, to get out of this action-reaction mentality. Look at the Parable of the prodigal son, and you’ll see what I mean. What we find is the story of a younger son who sinned. He acted selfishly, insensitively, and even immorally by demanding his share of the inheritance while his father was still living. He sinned against his father and he certainly sinned against his older brother as well, leaving him alone to work doubly hard in the fields. It didn’t help that he squandered all his inheritance on prostitutes and licentious living. The parable doesn’t debate whether or not this younger son sinned. He did, plain and simple. But what makes the parable so challenging and so instructive is in the two reactions to sin that we get from the older brother and from the father.

The older brother is completely stuck in action-reaction mode. He sees his brother return and he wants nothing more than to punish him for his sin. The father, however, no less aware of the younger son’s sin, chooses to step outside of action-reaction living. The father chooses NOT to heap sin upon his younger son, but rather steps in a completely different direction – a direction of grace, forgiveness, and mercy. It is this choice – the father’s choice – that Jesus holds up in this parable and says, “THIS is how I want MY followers to respond to sin.” It is NOT an easy thing to do – this stepping outside of the natural human tendency of “an eye for an eye.” There is nothing easy or natural about it. But make no mistake: it IS what Jesus asks – even REQUIRES of us. I have come to believe that the single most important thing I can do in what remains of my life is to step off the treadmill of action-reaction living, to leave that utterly ineffective cycle behind once and for all, and replace it with Jesus’ radical M.O. of grace.

 If I want to call myself a follower of Jesus…if I want to claim that I am a Christian…I have no option but to force my way out of this action-reaction prison one decision at a time…one action at a time…one situation at a time…one relationship at a time. It can be done…It has been done in some quite remarkable ways. And when it IS done, when an individual Christian or group of Christians actually steps outside of action-reaction living, the entire world stands up and takes notice. Let me remind you of a few historical examples…

In 1999 in Mumbai, India a mob of Hindu fanatics attacked an Australian missionary named Graham Staines. Staines was working with Indian leprosy patients when he was burned alive by these thugs. They also burned his 8 and 10-year old sons with him. Everyone expected his widow Gladys to leave the country at once and retreat to Australia. She didn’t. She stayed at that same leprosy center for five more years, continuing her husband’s work. She said, “I have no bitterness because forgiveness is the only force that brings healing…and this land and all of us need healing from hatred and violence.” Do you think there is a power when someone steps out of action-reaction sinfulness to behave like Jesus instead?

Many of us remember the stunning events of October 2, 2006, when an armed gunman entered an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, PA and opened fire, killing 5 children before killing himself. We still remember how stunned we were when all the parents of those 5 children went to the home of the mother of the gunman to embrace her and to let her know they held no ill-will toward her and that they had forgiven her son for his act. Do you think there is a power when someone steps out of action-reaction sinfulness to behave like Jesus instead?

Remember Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned unjustifiably for 27 years in Apartheid South Africa? When he was released and elected president of the new South Africa, do you know that he asked his jailer to be a guest of honor at his inauguration. Mandela also hired white Afrikaner policemen to be his personal bodyguards. He then, along with Desmond Tutu, established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which would bring to light the atrocities that took place under apartheid, but with the specific mandate that no acts of revenge of any sort would be inflicted upon the perpetrators.

Phillip Yancey, in his book What Good is God, tells what happened in just one of the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It involved a white policeman named van de Brock. He and a few other officers had shot an 18-year old boy and then burned his body. Eight years later, van de Brock returned to the same house and seized that boy’s father. This time they forced the man’s wife – and the mother of that 18-year old -- to watch as they tied up her husband, poured gas on him, and ignited him. Now imagine the scene when years later this woman who had lost her only son and her husband to this horror sat in a court room across from Officer van de Brock, as a part of this Truth and Reconciliation Commission. When the evidence was finished being presented, the judge asked this woman, “What do you want from Mr. Van de Brock?” Do you know what she said…? She said she wanted Mr. Van de Brock to return to the place where he had burned her husband and gather up the dust from the ground so she could give him a proper burial. Then she said one other thing that stunned the courtroom even further. She said, “Mr. Van de Brock took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. I would like for Mr. Van de Brock to know that he is forgiven by God and that I forgive him too. I would also like to embrace him so he can know and feel that my forgiveness is real.” Do you think there is a power when someone steps out of action-reaction sinfulness to behave like Jesus instead?

Jesus was no dummy. He knew what it took to make people stand up and take notice of this revolution he had come to start. If you want to follow Jesus, there is really only one thing you HAVE to do…You HAVE to embrace a way of thinking and of living that steps OUT OF the world’s action-reaction living. It’s a BIG step, and it is NOT an optional one for the person who claims to follow Jesus. It is the road Jesus himself trod. It is the road that led him from the very cross of calvary to say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It is the road that Jesus painted so vividly for us and for his disciples when he told the story of the prodigal son, painting those two, radically different approaches to livingthe world’s way of action-reaction, brought to life in the character of the older brother, and the ways of Jesus, brought to life by that loving father, who did NOT react to his younger son’s sinful actions, but instead stepped outside of action-reaction living to do something truly Christ-like.

That little three-letter word S-I-N has stuck around for as long as it has because billions of people thoughtlessly continue to buy into the world’s notion that every action deserves an equal and opposite reaction. But the one we call Lord came to show us a better way, a way that, instead of feeding and multiplying the endless cycle of sin, vengeance, and violence, could actually break the cycle, stopping sin dead in its tracks, before it has the chance to multiply. That way is the way of forgiveness…the way of grace… the way of the cross. It is, in a nutshell, the way of Jesus. Don’t think you can follow Jesus or claim to be his disciple without walking this same path.

Make no mistake: there is tremendous power unleashed whenever someone steps out of action-reaction sinfulness to behave like Jesus instead. Who will be the next person who dares to step out of action-reaction living to unleash the amazing power of grace?…Why not one of us? Amen.

*** Please post a comment and let me know what you think!

My 2011 Easter Message - delivered at 1st Presbyterian Church of Boyne City on 4/24/11

                              Reflections on Resurrection

                  (Based on Ezekiel 37:1-14  & Luke 24:1-12)

  Offered to the People of FPC of Boyne City, Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011

         As the Apostle Paul said, “when I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” I did. That was me, particularly where the resurrection was concerned. I heard the Easter story as a child, was drawn to its power and hope like a child, and I believed it like a child. I guess you could say that growing up in a Christian home where church was a given every Sunday, I subscribed to that bumper sticker variety of faith that says, “God said it…I believe it…that settles it.”

         But, alas, I’m not a child anymore. And as Paul also said in that same chapter of Corinthians, “When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways.” As an adult, it hasn’t been so easy to “just believe” the whole resurrection thing anymore. Not that I suddenly lost my faith or my ability to believe, but it became a lot more challenging to simply accept that the entire course of nature could be reversed in the way that the raising of Lazarus or the resurrection of Jesus suggests.

         So over the course of my adult life, I’ve had to do some re-tooling and retrofitting of certain aspects of my faith, particularly where the resurrection is concerned. And so, what I’d like to share with all of you in 3 parts on this Easter Sunday, 2011 is what I consider to be my new and improved understanding of the resurrection and its implications.

Part I – It’s Written All Over the Natural World!

Close your eyes for a few moments…I want you to imagine something with me…I want you to imagine that you are Adam -- or Eve if you prefer. You are literally the very first person on this brand new planet. It is your very first day in your new body – although you don’t even know yet what “day” is – as you explore this amazing garden paradise. You’ve been walking all around the garden just checking out everything, sampling the fruits and vegetables, admiring the river and the stunning views. You can’t help noticing this huge, fiery ball in the skies above that seems to make everything else glisten with light. It’s so bright that you can’t really look right at it, but you see and feel its rays and recognize that it is the source of light and heat. You also can’t help but notice that this ball seems to be moving very slowly across the sky. In fact, lately, you’ve noticed it lowering a bit, as if it is falling toward the horizon. Not only that, but gradually everything in the garden around you seems less light. There is less warmth. Now that fiery ball is beginning to disappear into the ground far, far away. It’s getting dark and cold. You’ve never experienced this darkness before. There’s almost no light, just a tiny glow where the fiery ball seemed to burrow into the earth. And suddenly, all is dark. You can no longer see anything. There is no light at all, not even to see the hand in front of your face. Suddenly, this beautiful garden you were reveling in only hours ago is eerie and haunted. You feel something that will later be known as fear. You wonder why you were even put here on this earth in this garden. You lay down on the ground in a ball, hoping and praying that you would just stop breathing. Nothing could be so awful, so terrifying. Time stands still in this complete and utter darkness. You are so alone…so forsaken…so totally afraid. But wait, you see something on the other side of the sky. It’s a patch of light…then a distant glow. The sky seems to brighten incrementally….until…there it is! That same fiery ball that sunk into the earth on the other side of the sky…How did it get over there? It is coming back. It will give light and warmth to the garden once again. What a welcome and wonderful sight after that long and terrible darkness…And with each passing cycle of light followed darkness, you are a little less afraid, for you begin to understand that after darkness there is always light… You can open your eyes now.

         Every sunrise is a death, a time of complete and total darkness. But that deep darkness gives way to returning light…sunrise…sunset…sunrise…sunset.

         And it isn’t only the sun in our natural world that speaks of resurrection. Think of your flowers and plants. Last summer’s brilliant garden withered up and died last fall. Nothing could have been any deader than that garden. The snow came to finish the job, freezing to death anything that made it through the fall. And now, walk out in that same garden, and what do you see?…Little shoots and buds poking through the ground…tree branches begin to bud out as well. Nature’s nod to resurrection, it’s everywhere. You see, one of the reasons I still believe in the resurrection is because all of the natural cycles of our planet have resurrection within them.

         When we Christians talk about Jesus’ resurrection, we tend to talk about it as if it were some inversion of the natural order of things. We tend to think of Jesus as somehow going against the natural process of things when he died and then rose again. But I don’t think of it that way anymore. It seems to me that rising from the dead is exactly what the natural order of things requires. Maybe what Jesus did that first Easter morn was simply a participation in the natural order of things, sunrise sunset, sunrise sunset…the buds and flowers in your perennial beds…the trees and leaves…So the natural world and its many cycles is part of what has influenced my re-tooled resurrection faith.

Part II – Resurrection is Written in Our Human Stories:

We Love a Good Comeback!

By the time I was born in 1961, South Africa had been ruled only by whites since 1910, when an official act of parliament limited its membership to whites. Blacks weren’t even allowed to own land going all the way back to 1913. And in1962, the year after I was born, a young, South African anti-apartheid activist by the name of Nelson Mandela was arrested, for protesting this apartheid system. Mandela was convicted on bogus charges of sabotage and treasonous acts against his government and sentenced to life in prison. In that hot, dry S. African jail cell, Nelson Mandela was left to rot, to become a pile of dry and lifeless bones. 27 years later in 1989, Mandela was released from prison and led his party to power. In 1994, Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa. He served as president for 5 years, establishing a new multi-racial democracy that still endures today. I believe in resurrection because of Nelson Mandela.

In June of 1966, a horrible murder occurred at the Lafayette Grill in New Jersey, and professional boxer Ruben Hurricane Carter was falsely accused and arrested, charged with the murder he never committed. In May of 1967 an all-white jury found Carter guilty of this crime, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison.  In a New Jersey penitentiary, Ruben Hurricane Carter was left to rot, to shrivel and shrink into a pile of dry and lifeless bones.  Almost 22 years later in February of 1988 after three previous and unsuccessful appeals, “new” information came to light and all charges against Carter were suddenly dropped. He was free at last, 22 years after his arrest. In the 24 years since he was freed, Carter has dedicated every moment of his life to his non-profit organization, which seeks to free prisoners who have been falsely accused and unfairly tried. I believe in resurrection because of Ruben Hurricane Carter.

On January 7, 2001 at 12:20 am, I received a phone call from my oldest brother Jeff, telling me that my mother had been killed in a car accident coming home from Charlevoix from her 70^th birthday dinner. My dad was driving and was in critical condition. In that accident the other driver was a 16-year old boy and his 11-year-old little brother was also killed in the tragedy. My mother, by the way, died with 6 grandsons. She never had a granddaughter.  Fast forward to 2008. It’s January 6, at 10:15 pm, my wife Molly’s water broke and we rushed to Northern Michigan Regional Hospital in preparation for the birth of my one and only child. Her labor was rapid and intense and in the less than 2 hours, the midwives helped deliver a healthy baby girl, Eloise. When the midwife handed me my one and only child - a girl, the bright digital clock behind her shoulder read 12:20 am January 7. My jaw dropped, my heart skipped a beat, and I beheld my mom’s first and long awaited granddaughter. It was almost as if God took those dry bones of my mother’s death and breathed life into them in the form of my darling daughter Eloise. I believe in resurrection because of my mom and my daughter.

I also believe in resurrection because of the many recovering addicts in my life. From my own father to two of my closest friends,  I have seen up close the horrific damage that drugs and alcohol can do – not just to the user, but to their loved ones and families as well. My dad drank hard and heavy through all 18 years of my childhood and for the next 30 years after that. Due to his alcohol addiction, dad had become a lifeless bag of bones, dry bones, dry and lifeless.  But would you believe that next week on May 1^st, my father will celebrate 12 months of total sobriety? One year without alcohol. Now if any of you would have tried to tell me that my dad would ever, in my lifetime, go an entire year without drinking, I would have had you drug tested to see what you’ve been smoking. But he’s done it. He’s been raised to a newness of life. I believe in resurrection because of my dad and my many other recovering friends.

Sometimes death and resurrection occur in the here and now – in this life.  I think that Jesus rose so that we wouldn’t miss the many deaths and resurrections that occur in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones and heroes. We do God and the resurrection a great disservice if we only look for it in the life after death. Followers of Jesus ought to see God’s resurrection power in lives like Nelson Mandela’s and Ruben Hurricane Carter’s, and in the countless millions of friends of Bill W’s, who like my dad and my dearest two friends, seemed to be dying from the complications of addiction but somehow, through the recovery process, have risen again to new life.

 

 

Part III – Conclusions and Easter Wishes…

Yes, I believe in the resurrection, but not in the exact same way I did as a child. I believe in resurrection in a broader, deeper, and more profound way. And I hope that I’ve helped you broaden your understanding and belief in resurrection, so that it might come to be as much about this life as it is about the next one. I consider it a real shame that when most Christians hear the word “resurrection, they think only about the next life, life AFTER death. I think that for our faith in Jesus to be worth anything, it has to lead us to seek and tune into resurrection right here and now in THIS life. I believe that for our faith in Jesus and his resurrection to make a positive difference in our world, we have got to be seeking as many resurrections in THIS life as we possibly can, and not only for ourselves but for others --– resurrections from failure…resurrections from loss and from brokenness…resurrections from divorce and from lost love…resurrections from addiction and poor decisions…resurrection from illness and from financial hardship.  In fact, shouldn’t our belief in resurrection make us a people who are all about giving ourselves and each other second and third and fourteenth chances? Shouldn’t the people who claim to believe in the resurrection also be the people who forgive the most and hope the most and believe in one another the most?

May Easter 2011 be a day of resurrection for you and for your loved ones in the here and now. May our celebration this day be one that inspires you to be an agent of Christ’s resurrection power in the here and now, particularly for those who are down and out. Don’t belittle the resurrection or the God who authored it by pushing it off into the next life or relegating it to what happens only after we die. God resurrection power is about so much more than that. God wants to breathe that same breath into you that he breathed into those dry bones in that Babylonian valley. God wants to breathe that same breath that he breathed into Lazarus and into Jesus into YOU and into ALL the people LIVING on this earth, here and now. God wants to breath that resurrection breath into people who feel like giving up…people who feel like there is no hope…people who feel as if they are nothing more than dry, lifeless bones…

“The Spirit of the Lord set me in the middle of a valley…It was full of bones. And God led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of that valley, bones that were very dry and lifeless. And God asked me”…just like He’s asking you this very day…”Can these bones live?”… Well….can they…?  Open your eyes…Look around…Resurrection is everywhere…Amen.