NOTE: We spent the better part of today resting - walking the the snowy scrub with Lucie - and bringing some more order to our cluttered little house. As I was cleaning out CDs I no longer want - and papers stacked high yet again on my desk - I can across this homily from last year's All Saints Day. I was pleased to see that it still rings true for me. What's more, I can see how this whole year after our sabbatical has been built upon small acts of tenderness, small steps into contemplation, and small invitations of solidarity with God and our neighbors. I'm going to make some pizza and salad for dinner tonight to bring our Sabbath to a close.
When I walk in the almost winter woods of
this season – with the low, rich sunlight of late October and early November
pouring through the almost naked trees - I often hear the voices of the saints in my
life. They are the ones who shared love with me in my family, my circle of
friends and the different churches I have served. They are Michael and Don -
Dolores and Roger - Rick, Vicky and Grace - Jim, Betty, Beth and Linda - and
let's not forget St. Lou Reed.
In some ways
these saints are very different; they are black and white, rich and poor, male
and female, gay and straight. They are well educated and street wise. Very,
very different – on the surface – but in one way they are all the same: they were vulnerable and open to God’s love.
They let me share some of their wounds and I felt safe enough to be fully human
with them, too. You see, all we
really have to share with another is ourselves:
our time, our love, our broken humanity. And when we take the risk to do
this – and it is received in trust – then something beautiful and even sacred
happens: God’s love becomes flesh within
us right here and now. This love –
peace – serenity is not JUST for life after death – it is for right now. Our
hungers can be filled at the Messianic banquet table and our wounds can be
soothed in a deep way right now.
I know that
modern people don’t believe this – most people throughout history haven’t
believed it – that’s why we have ministry. The late Henri Nouwen put it best:
Ministry is how
we make the world more transparent to the other so that the world speaks of God
and people are enlightened by the love of God... Ministry is to help others
open their eyes and ears, so to speak - to make what is cloudy and opaque clear
and beautiful - to proclaim to to others what we have experienced in prayer:
God's beauty, truth and wisdom is here for you, too... Life becomes an
unbearable burden whenever we lose touch with the presence of a loving Savior
and see only the hunger to be alleviated, thin injustice to be addressed, the
violence to be overcome, the wars to be stopped and the loneliness to be
removed. All these are, of course, critical issues and Christians must try to
solve them; however, when our concern no longer flows from our personal
encounter with the living Christ, we feel only the oppressive weight.
In other words,
the whole point of ministry – and church – is to help one another move deeper
into God’s love RIGHT NOW. It is all
about helping one another transform and convert our loneliness into solitude
with the Lord. That’s what I
hear promised in the reading from Revelations:
God will wipe away every tear from our eyes – in the great beyond, of
course – but also right here and right now.
There are three
road blocks, however, that we have to reckon with – three challenges that
always distract and dismay us – and they have been in existence since the
beginning of time: our culture, our
religious traditions and our inner emptiness. Our challenge – and it is only
work that WE can do – is to trust Jesus when he tells us:
You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all. God’s
kingdom is there for the finding. You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry.
Then you’re ready for the
Messianic meal. You’re
blessed when the tears flow freely. Joy comes with the morning.
Every person
I’ve ever met – myself and my spiritual guides included – wrestle with this
truth. We don’t want to believe we have to quit our allegiance to our culture,
our religious traditions and our inner neediness to move into God’s peace – so
we fight it most of our lives. We want to
believe we can make it happen all by ourselves. It has NEVER worked that way
and NEVER will, of course, but that doesn’t stop any of us. We are stubborn and
cantankerous and strong willed… until we become sick and tired of being sick
and tired… we will remain that way, suffering under the illusion that we can
really work our way into deep and lasting peace.
Let’s start with
our culture: we’ve bought into the lie
hook, line and sinker that if we work hard enough – and buy enough things – we
will be at peace.
We put great
effort into convincing ourselves and those around us that if we dress well,
live in nice homes and keep work hard to be upwardly mobile we’re on the right
track. But here’s the deal: no matter how hard we try, we are still racked by
insecurities, we still find it hard to love ourselves or others and we are still
destined at the end of all of our striving for a hole in the ground.
Now don’t be too
hard on yourself because that’s the message that inundates our culture. Get
The caustic and endlessly
charming commentator and writer Rex Murphy of Canada observed in 2005 that
'"a culture that offers intellectual hospitality to the chatterings of Dr.
Phil and the romps of Desperate Housewives doesn't have the stamina to pursue
the idea of faith and its agency.
Ours is a
viciously consumerist culture that is saturated with shallowness. What’s more, the effort required to keep up
with the latest junk is killing us and polluting Mother Earth. Another Canadian
religious scholar, Charles Davis, speaks of our addiction to busyness as
self-inflicted violence. Think of the
way Jesus operated: he was always going off to a lonely place to think and pray
to the Lord. He learned how to step away from his culture and convert his
loneliness into true solitude with God because without this effort, God’s peace
doesn’t come.
People hate to
hear this – in Christ’s time and today – but it is an essential truth: until we
disengage and unplug ourselves from the demands of our culture, there isn’t room
inside for God to grow and mature and heal us from the inside out. That’s why
when we talk seriously about nourishing a life of prayer – taking time to
convert our loneliness into solitude – some people get snarky and angry. It happened in Christ’s time – and not much
has changed. That’s why he taught us:
Count yourself
blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone
smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth
is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. You can be
glad when that happens—skip like a lamb, if you like!—for even though they
don’t like it, I do . . . and all heaven applauds. And know that
you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated
like this.
The first road
block to nourishing God’s deep peace that passes understanding is culture. The
second is our allegiance to outdated religious traditions. Israel’s prophets
were ALWAYS saying that following the rules isn’t at the heart of God’s way –
FREEDOM is – so if the rules get in the way of freedom, then the rules have to
change. That’s what Pope Francis is trying
to communicate to the world – and to his own bishops and priests – we are to be
a church of mercy he said – the embodiment of tenderness. He’s got a tough job convincing those under
35 because they’ve seen just the opposite.
Lawrence Freeman puts it like this:
It is puzzling and frustrating to try and understand
how the mainline Churches, despite all their determination and
resources, still seem unable to connect with the profound spiritual
needs of our time. Most young people are ready for idealistic and
sacrificial commitment and hungry for inspiration. And yet, instead of
discovering in the Church an inclusive vision and a comprehensive philosophy of
life and spirituality, they dismiss what they find as narrowness of
mind, intolerant dogmatism, internal feuding, inter-denominational sectarian,
medieval sexism and their most damning criticism: the lack of spiritual depth.
Did you hear that?
What most people in Western Europe and increasingly the USA say is missing from
the institution is spiritual depth. We
don’t teach the ways of contemplation – we don’t urge people to make some hard
choices – we sometimes don’t even believe it ourselves. Because choosing to
become hungry for the spirit is scary; it means we aren’t in control. Yes,
Jesus promises a Messianic feast – yes the promise of the Lord is that God will
wipe every tear away from our eyes – yes the prophets cry out for the way of
freedom… but we like to do things on our terms not God’s. We want a consumer religion where we come to
church, someone entertains us and gives us a product and provides education for
our children so that we can go back and keep on doing what we’ve always done.
To which Jesus
says: it doesn’t work that way. If you keep doing what you’ve always done –
even in your churches, synagogues and mosques – you’ll always get what you’ve
always got. And for the last 50 years what we’ve always got has been more and
more people fleeing our institutions because they don’t take us deeper. They don’t help us find peace and healing in
our real lives. They are often superficial and empty.
The second
stumbling block or challenge is often our religious institutions that are more
interested in their history than God’s liberating freedom. And the third truth
that keeps us from living into God’s grace, faith, hope and love is… our own
insecurities – or fears – or shames – or addictions – or emptiness. Most people
spend their whole lives trying to fill the God-shaped hole in their lives with
junk: things – sexy – work – booze – drugs – distractions – anger – shame… the
list is endless.
When we run out
of excuses, options and distractions, then God steps into the hole and fills us
from the inside out. What WE must do after this blessed gift, is nourish time
and space for the Lord to KEEP filling us.
A life without a
lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes
destructive. When we cling to the results of our actions as our only way of self-identification,
then we become possessive and defensive and tend to look at our fellow human beings more
as enemies to be kept at a distance than friends with whom we share the
gifts of life. In solitude we can slowly unmask the illusions... and
discover in the center of our self that we are not what we can conquer,
but what is given to us. In solitude we can listen to the voice of the One who
spoke to us before we could speak a word, who healed us before we could make
any gesture to help, who set us free long before we could free others and who
loved us long before we could give love to anyone. It is in solitude that we
discover that being is more important than having and that we are worth more
than the result of all our efforts... Our life is not a possession to be
defended, but a gift to be shared.
When we run out
of gas, Christ steps in to fill us. For what is the promise of mercy to those
who are not weak, forgiveness to those who have not sinned, grace to those who
do not need it or life to those not dead? It is at best meaning-less and more
likely downright offensive. That is why only, losers can appreciate the
blessing Jesus offers and confers.
Only as we
recognize our own existential and basic poverty of spirit can we grow less
afraid of actual poverty and less attached to our own security. Only as we
recognize ourselves as those losers for whom Christ died might we reach out to
those the world declares losers and embrace them as brothers and sisters. Over
time, this is what I have learned from the saints in my life. I give thanks to
God for all of them and rejoice particularly in Dianne, Jesse, Michal, Michael, Louie and Winton. Shabbat shalom.
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