The mystical poet of Islam, Rumi, put it
like this:
Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right. It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others and fall in.
I should be suspicious
of what I want.
I shoot an arrow right. It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others and fall in.
I should be suspicious
of what I want.
The equally mystical poet, Rilke, shared
essentially the same truth in Germany 700 years later when he wrote:
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
And walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
Because of a church that stands in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if
he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own
house,
Dies there, inside the dishes and in the
glasses,
So that his children have to go far out into
the world
Toward that same church, which he forgot.
Both poets know, like
the Apostle Paul that left to ourselves most of us will rarely go deep enough
into God’s grace and truth to be transformed into our best selves. That is the human condition – we know what we
could and even should do – but we cannot do it consistently, yes? And we will almost never do it if left to our
own devices.
And guess what?
WE are the evidence of this truth – we ourselves –
not my brother, not my sister but its ME, O Lord, that’s standin’ in
the need of prayer! So today I want to share with you some
thoughts about spiritual discipline.
not my brother, not my sister but its ME, O Lord, that’s standin’ in
the need of prayer! So today I want to share with you some
thoughts about spiritual discipline.
You can call it moral
or ethical training, the care and cultivation of the soul, authentic Christian
formation or just good old sanctification, the point is the same: we do not nourish our faith simply by doing
whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it. That is a stone-cold recipe for spiritual immaturity.
Rather, we have been invited and encouraged to know what every athlete, artist
or teacher will tell you: the spiritual
life takes practice. St. Paul gets it right here:
You've all been to the stadium
and seen the athletes race. Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win. All good
athletes train hard. They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes and fades.
You're after one that's gold eternally. I don't know about you, but I'm running
hard for the finish line. I'm giving it everything I've got. No sloppy living
for me! I'm staying alert and in top condition. I'm not going to get caught
napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself.
And in our tradition,
we have a very clear program for practicing the care and feeding of the
soul: worship. How do we put it in our mission
statement? Look at the bottom of your
bulletin and read it out loud with me if you will?
In community with God and each
other we gather to worship, to reflect on our Christian faith, to do justice
and to share compassion.
We gather to worship
– not to gossip, not to complain, not to criticize or kvetch, not build up our
businesses, not to tear down our enemies – we gather together with God and each
other be a community of worship. Don’t get me wrong, like the Scriptures tell
us, there IS a time for war and a time for peace, a time for dancing and a time
for mourning – dare I go so far as to say a time for carping and kvetching,
too?
·
In the Reformed tradition they call that… coffee
hour.
·
But our mission statement doesn’t say we’ve been
called into community together for coffee hour, it states we’ve been gathered
together for worship.
Because, you see,
there are 10 distinct practices or spiritual disciplines that we nourish within
and among us in worship. And each one
helps us become more consistent in living like Christ – becoming our best and
most true self – living into the kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of
self.
And here’s the thing:
unless we come together regularly in worship, not only will we NOT practice
these commitments in a consistent way, but we will grow to resemble the sloppy
agape selfishness that passes for spirituality in the culture that surrounds
us.
Here’s what I mean:
back in Arizona some of the retired men used to tell me, “Pastor, you know I
just feel more spiritual and at peace out on the golf course on Sunday mornings
than I do at church.” I know what they
mean – and I’ve heard a hundred variations on it, too: I feel more spiritual when I’m out running –
or walking in the woods – or sitting alone in the quiet of my room meditating –
or playing music – or baking bread – or reading poetry – or visiting with my
family.
·
Now look, all of those things have their place,
and I suspect the Lord’s name is used more out on the golf course than I could
ever imagine.
·
But all of those activities are essentially
selfish – the focus is upon self – and the hard truth about the human condition
is that if we always do what we’ve always done, then we’ll always get what
we’ve always got.
And what is the theological
word that best describes what selfish human beings have always gotten when our
hearts and souls are focused primarily upon the self? Sin – alienation – separation from God’s
grace in ways that diminish us individually and as a community: we call that sin. That’s why from the very beginning, our
spiritual ancestors have encouraged us to practice a unique set of skills and
disciplines that help us move beyond the limits of the kingdom of self.
The Shema – the
essence of Judaism – puts it like this in Deuteronomy 6:
Listen obediently, Israel. Do what you're told so that you'll have
a good life, a life of abundance and bounty, just as God promised, in a land abounding in milk and honey. Attention, Israel! God, our God, is the one and only! So love God,
your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that's in you, love him with
all you've got! Write these commandments
that I've given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get
them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or
walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning
to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a
reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
In our tradition, the Reformed Protestant way of being faithful,
we, too have a clear set of practices and disciplines that we have come to see
as essential for nourishing and healing the broken and even sinful soul. And
all of them – all 10 of them - are practiced each time we gather for public
worship. “Worship,” writes Stanley
Hauerwas, “is the activity to which all our skills and practices are ordered.”
It is where we come to see and practice what it means to live a God-centered
life. Anthony Robinson puts it like this:
The structured worship of the church is a rehearsal… a place where
we take our parts as sons and daughters of God and act as if we are the holy
church, a light unto the nations, the salt of the earth… In worship we practice
the patterns of life together before God, rehearsing them over and over again
until they become second nature to us.
So let me outline for you the 10 Key Practices of Worship that
point us in the direction of living as sons and daughters of the Lord. And you can take notes – or pick up a copy of
this list on your way out of worship – or go to my blog but let me be
clear: we need to know this stuff,
beloved. This is life or death
truth-telling – and not just for this congregation – but for our families, our
community and our generation.
· You know,
all too often we treat worship and growing into the love of Christ as cheap
grace: God accepts us whoever we are and
whatever we do.
· And this is
true – very, very true – but remember: it
is only a starting point for the Lord our God does not want us to remain in
bondage to selfishness and living in the much of our sins.
What did Jesus do in this morning’s reading from St. Mark when the
leper called out to him: If you want to
you can cleanse me? He cast out the
demon – he set the wounded soul free – so that he could be restored to
community to share his gifts fully. Like
we said last week, he was raised up so that he might do what…? Serve.
Now it is fascinating to me that in this story Mark tells us a few
important truths that we might not appreciate if we read it quickly. First, he tells us that the healed man
thought he was being faithful but he did not do as Jesus asked him, right?
·
Jesus told him
to keep the healing quiet, to go back and be restored to the synagogue
community as was the custom of Moses and to get on with his life.
·
But what did
the restored leper actually do?
He told
everybody he met – and while this may have made him feel great and it probably
did – it created a ton of problems for Jesus.
That’s what the closing verse in Mark is telling us: Jesus now had to keep to the out-of-the-way places, no longer able
to move freely in and out of the city because wherever he went, people found
him and came from all over.
· Did you get
that? By acting in a selfish and
self-centered way this healed leper created countless problems for Jesus: crowds that called attention to his ministry
when he needed to keep things quiet, attention from the religious and political
authorities of the day who were out to get him to say nothing of the
sensationalism involved in this healing ministry.
·
I guess we
can be grateful to God that we didn’t have the 24/7 news cable networks back in
first century Palestine: Christ’s
ministry may never have gotten off the ground.
That’s one insight from the story that speaks to the importance of
learning and practicing spiritual disciplines.
But there is another, too:
scholars tell us that there is some disagreement in the ancient
manuscripts of Mark’s gospel. Some say
that Jesus was moved with great compassion for this broken soul, but others
tell us that Jesus was moved by a great anger about the leper’s condition.
In fact, after the healing takes place the text says that Jesus
snorted his instruction to the leper NOT to speak of this to anyone. So what is going on here? Why would the Lord be so angry about healing
a leper?
·
What do you
think?
·
Could it be
– and I don’t think this is too much of a leap of faith – but could it be that
Jesus was infuriated and heart-broken over the way evil and sin brings such
suffering to real, live, living and breathing men, women and children?
That’s my hunch: Jesus is
heart-sick and furious about the fact that we have enough wealth to feed
everyone, but not enough compassion.
That we have enough medical resources to reduce HIV/AIDS suffering
throughout all of Africa but not enough soul to give up the profits – that we have
been so addicted to the bottom-line ideology of the marketplace that any
discussion of sharing gets polluted by words like socialism, welfare queens and
worse – so that all we can do is celebrate the kingdom of self rather than the
kingdom of God. That’s my hunch: then and now.
After all it is infuriating to be trapped on the treadmill
of sin like a lab rat always doing what we’ve always done so that… we always
get what we’ve always got. That’s one of the reasons I have to bite my tongue
when some well-intentioned knucklehead tells me, “You know I feel more
spiritual playing golf than I do going to church.” Ok… take a deep breath,
James: the rant is over. Let’s quickly
review the 10 Practices That Worship Teaches Us that lead us closer to a God
centered life.
First the discipline of keeping
Sabbath: many of us doing do this well, but Sabbath
keeping is a way of living that teaches us that God can do without our effort
for 24 hours. We are not the center of the universe – and if we can give up
being in control for 24 hours – maybe we can learn to live like God is really
God and we are not. It is a discipline
of rest and trust and refreshment. “To
keep Sabbath involves participation in a logic different from the logic of
control, manipulation and activism… in favor of reflection, rest and
receptivity.”
Second the discipline of praise:
We begin worship with praise – the praise of the Lord – so that we take
a break from our “preoccupation with our own needs and concerns and to attend
to what makes life good and healthy.” By
praising God we listen to a story and love that is bigger than ourselves so
that we might be open to grace and gratitude.
Third is the discipline of
confession of sin: Anthony Robinson writes that “at its heart,
sin seems to be centering life around oneself, acting and thinking like I am
the center of the universe and taking myself far too seriously.” Reinhold Niebuhr notes that sin is a fact of
life because while we know the good we should do, we can’t and won’t do it
consistently. So confessing this truth
in our lives and our world helps us own our part in the mess. Most of us can easily name the sins of
others, but confession brings it all back home so that we see the part we play
in the evil of the world.
Fourth is the discipline of
forgiveness: if confession is about us, forgiveness sets
us free from our guilt and failure. In fact, this practice helps us know that
there is new life possible so that we don’t have to fake it. We have been forgiven and raised up so that
we might serve.
Fifth is the discipline of
reconciliation: that’s what the peace of Christ is all
about. It really isn’t a time to say hi
to those you have missed. Rather, the
peace is all about extending to others the forgiveness you have experienced in
Christ. It is, as we say in the Lord’s
Prayer, forgiving the debts of others as we have been forgiven.
Sixth is the discipline of
listening for the Word of God: not a passive act but one
where we search both the scripture and the sermon for a word we need to hear and explore. Listening for the word of God helps us hear
the Lord on the radio – or in the movies – or on our computer or at work. It is practice in opening our heart, ears,
mind and soul to discovering the presence of God in the most unlikely places.
Seventh is the discipline of
prayer: and there are lots of different types of
prayer. Can you name some of the ways we
pray during worship?
·
There is
quiet or silent prayer – listening – and there are prayers we sing, too.
·
There are liturgical
– or printed prayers – and free prayers that come from our joys and concerns.
·
There are
prayers for us privately and for us as a community – there are prayers for the
world – prayers that ask for God’s presence – prayers for insight and healing.
The eighth discipline we learn in
worship is that of offering or sharing: we bring gifts to return to the Lord out of gratitude. Once
people brought grain and fruit and animals, later this became financial gifts.
And as one worship leader put it, “This is one of the most countercultural
practice the church offers… because without the encouragement of the community,
I doubt that I would have formed a pattern of giving away a significant
percentage of my income.” We’re asked to hoard, to practice looking out for
number one – the kingdom of self against the kingdom of God – and so we are
asked to go beyond what comes naturally and learn to share.
Ninth is the discipline of
sacrament: We are invited to come to the table of God’s
grace in Holy Communion, we are asked to surrender our control to God’s grace
in baptism. In both we are trained “to
look for the holy that is hidden in ordinary places and everyday things.” If we
can come to see and know God in bread and wine and water, then maybe we can
come to experience God in the rest of our ordinary lives, too. In the sacraments we learn to receive – to
open our hands in humility – and recognize that God comes to us.
And tenth is the discipline of
bearing witness: we end worship with a benediction – literally
a good word – to go out into the world to serve filled with God’s peace and
grace. That is, keep on doing in your
ordinary and everyday lives what you have started to practice here. We are to be witnesses to the world of God’s
love.
Now here’s the down and dirty truth: we won’t and can’t learn these commitments to
being God-centered people all by ourselves. Left to ourselves we will often act
like the leper in today’s story, running around like our experience is the
center of the universe and mucking everything up for Jesus. There are skills we need to practice. There are commitments we must rehearse.
·
And they
won’t happen at the gym – or the track – or the golf course – or at work – or
sitting by yourself in the woods or at home.
·
They only happen
when you gather together in community for worship. This is where we learn how to claim a
God-centered life.
So here’s an assignment – your homework for this week – bring
someone else you love to worship. Don’t pester
them – don’t hassle them – no guilt tripping allowed, ok? Just know in your
heart that you can help them become their best self by being a part of God’s
people together in worship. Don’t waste
your time with those who have a ton of excuses – I used to but don’t any more –
how did Jesus put it to his disciples:
sometimes you have to just shake the dust off your sandals and keep
moving, yes?
·
Just invite
gently someone you love or care about to worship – and keep inviting them
tenderly from time to time – because this is where we learn how to get over
ourselves and turn our hearts to the Lord.
·
And that is
the good news for today for those who have ears to hear.
(NOTE: I have used Anthony Robinson’s wonderful
booklet, The Art of Faith: A Worship Centered Approach to the Disciplines of
Faith, to guide my writing and these top ten are taken directly from this pamphlet with gratitude and respect.)
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