Is God My On-Call Personal Interventionist or Calling us to Creativity?

10 Pentecost, Cp12, July 28, 2013  

Gen. 18:20-33     Ps.85:7-13  

Col. 2:6-15   Luke 11:1-13 

Lectionary Link

   What is prayer?  If we look to the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer we find this answer:  Prayer is responding to God, with or without words.  That is a rather embracing notion of prayer.  We probably are more used to compartmentalized and occasion specific prayers, like table grace or the corporate prayers of the church when we gather to offer the Holy Eucharist or one of the other prayer offices.  Perhaps, you have your own style and practice of private prayer in the morning or in the evening.  Maybe you practice centering prayers, or meditation or contemplation as a way of remembering the fullness of God everywhere.  In centering prayer we can practice a command of God, written by the psalmist:  :Be still and know that I am God.”  In a busy life, it is sometime a necessity to take time to be still

  Today, we have some lessons from Holy Scripture on prayer.  We read that even after the great man of faith Abraham bargained with God, he still could not change the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Apparently, Abraham did not get his prayer answered and his prayer ended up in talking himself into accepting what actually was going to happen.

  In a Gospel tradition, the disciples of Jesus asked Jesus to teach them to pray.  And in the example of prayer that Jesus gave to his disciple and in his ironic explanations, one can sense the motive that his disciples had for learning to pray and we are given some insights that are attributed to Jesus about prayer.

  I suspect that the motive of the disciple for wanting to know how to pray was this:  They wanted to have influence with God.  They wanted God to be their own on-call personal interventionist for their needs.  I think that one of the reasons people quit church and quit praying is that they find out rather quickly that God is not an “on-call interventionist” stepping in to fulfill what I need and on my time schedule.

  God, I want bread and how come it seems that I am getting  a rock?  God, I want fish and how come it seems as though I am getting a snake?  God, I want an egg and how come it seems that I am getting a scorpion?

  We are or can be so ego-centric as to think that the universe should follow our own schedule so that when we are confronted with a delay in our needs gratification, we can bemoan the inconvenience of our actual circumstances not to give us what we need and when we need it.  And we can protest, “but God, I only want regular things…food, clothing, shelter, good health, safety for myself and my family and friends.  And what’s wrong with wanting those sorts of things?”  Could it be that in this prayer dilemma, Jesus is also giving us the invitation to the kind of abstract thinking needed for invention and creativity?  Necessity is the mother of invention?  Stone, instead of bread?  Perhaps I am to earn my bread by being a geologist?  My fish by being an herpetologist?  My egg by being an arachnologist? 
Sickness?  Maybe God is teaching us something about health and how to be with the suffering?  And how to be really appreciative and thankful when we do have health.  Perhaps poverty, lack of church participation is the challenge for us to learn how to be relevant to the lives of people in a different way?

    In our age of skepticism, some people might question the value and the purpose of prayer.  Why should we pray?  I mean if you can’t see God’s immediate intervention why should we pray?

  I believe that the ironic response of Jesus indicates that Jesus wanted his disciples to be attuned to the spiritual flow of life itself, rather than just see God as an omni-present Santa Claus dropping gifts to us whenever we ask.  Jesus was trying to teach his disciples that his Father was a giver of good gifts and maybe his disciples’ definition of “good gifts” was much too narrow.

  During the development of modern psychology, psycho-therapy was sometimes referred to as the “talking cure.”  What if we could understand prayer as the “talking cure” that we can have in our relationship with God?    How can we come to health through persistent “talking with God?”  How can prayer become our talking cure?

  I think that it is important for each person in life to find his or her voice.  Each person needs to practice the words that each one has and be able to use them to tie together their inner lives with the events in their outer lives.  Part of finding our voice has to do with finding a way to name and categorize all of what we experience.  Part of maturity involves an honest assessment of what is actually happening in our lives.  An egg is desired, but a scorpion appears.  A fish is desired, but we seem to get a snake.  We want bread, but apparently we receive a rock.  In finding our prayer voice we learn to find a way to deal with delayed gratification and one of the results is to receive an increased appreciation for even the things that we desire even the basic things of life, the fish, eggs and bread.   When we find our voice, our prayer voice, our talking cure with God, our life experience becomes more expansive.  We begin to deal with a larger spectrum of human experience and so we become better able to deal with more diverse circumstances and we become more useful to the people who need us and depend upon us.

  A wise parent does not just yield to a child in a temper tantrum who is demanding immediate needs gratification.  Why?  Because a parent wants to teach the child many other ways of responding and acting to an apparent situation of need.  Always giving in and being an interventionist at the whim of a child is not wise parenting.

  So we have  prayer as a practice to find our talking cure with God.  And if we are persistent with this talking cure, if we can find our prayer voice, we will find that God’s Spirit has been given to us and that we are in a wonderful flow.  Then from our relationship with God, we can find ways to integrate the human experience that comes our way.

  Learning to pray is not treating God as our own personal interventionist; it is more about getting in tune with God’s Spirit so that we can know how God is already intervening in and through us.

  Perhaps you have heard it said that “Prayer changes things.”  I don’t think that is true.  What is true is that things can become seen differently as we are changed by prayer and as we understand that we are in the flow with God’s Spirit.

  The words of Jesus encourage us to find our “talking cure” with God today.  Prayer is a way to find our voice; if you need to keep a journal of your prayer talk with God, do it.  Work to bring to language everything in your inside world in interaction with your outside world as a way of finding your voice.  If you find your prayer voice, then you will also have words of wisdom to share with the people who need you to find your prayer voice.

  May God help us to practice the “talking cure” of prayer today, and may we find our voice, a voice that is able to integrate our inner worlds with the events that are occurring in our outer worlds.  As we read the circumstances as the "response"  to our prayers, let us also be willing to let need and necessity be for us the inspiration for invention and creativity today.  Amen.

Be Ready to Make the Contemplative Choice

9 Pentecost, Cp11, July 21, 2013   

Gen. 18:1-14    Ps.15  

Col. 1:21-29  Luke 10:38-42 

Lectionary Link

  What if you gave a dinner party and invited a special guest and a report of that dinner party become written down.  And what if the written report of that dinner party became a part of Holy Scriptures and came to be regarded as God’s word.  When there are only a few vignettes that are recorded in the life of Jesus, each vignettes or narrative become metaphors and theology.

  This is what has happened to the Mary and Martha story.  The Mary and Martha story has become typology for religious personalities, or for that matter it models lots family or community disputes.  One could see a parish dispute along this line.  One person thinks that church is only for contemplation, communion and prayer.  Don’t ask me to work in the kitchen or do clean up on my “spiritual” time.   One can see every flustered parish worker who is upset that people benefit from the practical work without feeling any obligation to help out.

  And it does seem as though Jesus takes the sides of those who are more interested in contemplation and devotion rather than the practical work of hospitality.

  To counter this apparent preference of Jesus for those who practice contemplation over work, the church throughout history has tried to rehabilitate the Martha tradition.  After all, the church that became a vast institution with lots of property has had an incredible need for a vast division of labor.  The church has needed “free labor.”  The church has needed to valorize works of hospitality as creative ministry.

  The Mary and Martha religious personalities have been perpetuated in a very conscious way by monastic orders.  Some religious orders have defined themselves as “Mary” orders, or committed to contemplative prayer and have very little or no contact with the outside world.  Other orders have defined themselves as “Martha” orders or committed to works of service, education  and hospitality.  And other orders have tried the balance the two; work and contemplation.

  One of the things that happens when we generalize a narrative event into theologies and types, is that we steal its significance as a singular event.  If we generalized we could say that Jesus prefers contemplation and devotion to him over the works of hospitality.  And we forget that this is just one event in the life of Jesus, Mary and Martha.  One event does not establish everlasting character.  One event with the exchange of dialogue does not establish the final pronouncement upon anything.

  I would like for us for our reflections today to honor this event as a singular event in the lives of Mary, Martha and Jesus.  And in so doing, I think we could make the following statements.  This one event does not mean that Jesus disapproves of the works of hospitality.  It does not mean that Mary was a perpetual space cadet who used contemplation to “get out of doing the work.”  It does not mean that Martha was against contemplation because she was just a nervous uptight obsessive compulsive hostess with the mostest.

  This story is just one event in the life of Jesus, Mary and Martha.  And you and I may have unique, singular events of this kind at times in our lives when we are confronted with three aspects of our personalities that conform to the behaviors, decisions and words of the persons in our Gospel story.  For short hand, we might say we have the Mary aspect, the Martha aspect and the Christ aspect of our personalities.

  Mary had arrived at a crucial time in her life.  She had discovered a friend and a mentor who was getting through to her like no one had ever done before.  What does one do when the invitation to have a mentor friend and to have the possibility of creative advance and new insight is set right before us?  What does one do when one’s heart has fallen in love with one who offers personal enlargement and hope?  When those events of invitation are put before us, all of us have a very practical side; we have a proverbial “Martha aspect of our personalities.”  “You can’t take time off for the luxury of contemplation; there’s too much work to do.  How can you justify taking time off to do this when there is so much work to do?”  And then we have the umpire of our consciousness, the Christ aspect of our personality.

  What does the Christ aspect of our personality recommend?  Whenever we have the opportunity to be mentored into peace, wisdom, joy or further excellence of any sort, we need to take the time.  We need to hear the Christ aspect of our personalities give us the permission to attend to contemplation when a new opportunity is presented to us even though the ordinary work of life might have to be delayed or restructured.  It is so easy to let all of the ordinary tasks that need to be done to keep us from taking the invitation to an opportunity that may not come again.  And this is when we need the Christ-wisdom to choose contemplation insight over the practical chores that need to be done.

  Why would I refer to the Christ-aspect of personality?  In the writings in the Pauline tradition we have the expression, “Christ in you the hope of glory.”  The life of Jesus and the word of Jesus have left the legacy of the Holy Spirit making the risen Christ as the guiding presence of wisdom to which we have access.  And so we can know a Christ-aspect of our personalities to access the guidance of wisdom with our lives to read the signs of our lives that continually invite us to further excellence.

  Mary took the opportunity which was offered to her in a session of learning from Jesus.  She was affirmed for making the right decision even though it meant that she neglected some of the ordinary duties.  There will always be meals to serve and dishes to wash, but there is not always the unique invitation to advance one’s spiritual life forever.  So Mary made the right decision.

  We too need to make the right decision when it comes to invitations to new breakthroughs for our spiritual, intellectual and emotional lives.  May God give us grace to hear the Christ aspect of our personalities when we need to take new steps of spiritual excellence.  Amen.

For Jesus, Neighbor is a Verb

8 Pentecost, Cp10, July 14, 2013   

Deut. 30:9-14   Ps.25:3-9  

Col. 10:25-37  Luke 10:25-37 

Lectionary Link

  Have you ever experienced in a time of need the kindness of strangers?

  In 1975, I decided to make my Journey East, to the walk the Razor’s Edge, in a Passage to India. (My apologies to Hermann Hesse, Somerset Maugham and E.M. Forrester whom I happen to be reading at the time).

I had gone through Afghanistan, Herat, Kandahar and Kabul (saw the Bamiyan Buddhas….the one destroyed by the Taliban).  I had passed through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan and then into the Punjab region of Northwest India; I spent several days in New Delhi before arriving in Agra.  One goes to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and it was all and more than I expected.  I also took day trips to Fatehpur Sikri to a complex built by the same dynasty and I returned to Agra in preparation to leave to go to the north through Darjeeling of tea fame, toward Nepal.   I left my hotel with my back pack in tow; got a ride on a rickshaw to the train station to wait for the train.  Sudden I was overtaken by fever and the worst feelings of nausea imaginable.  I decided to take on some fluids because the weather was hot and humid.  I purchased two bottles of orange Fanta and sat on a bench to wait for the train.  I weakened, so much so that I begin to lie on the bench.   And then I vomited; what a sight, here I was on an island train bench in an incredible large puddle of bright orange Fanta (I’ve never drunk an orange Fanta again in my life).   I had been struck by the infamous Delhi Belly.  Alone in a train station with thousands of unknown Indians.  Too weak to even get up and I knew I could not take the train.  As I lay there, my eyes were drawn to the area underneath the opposite train platform and what did I see?  It was teeming with rats.  How’s that for an image of helplessness?

  A young man saw my situation and asked me if I needed help.  I told him that I probably had a very bad case of amoebic dysentery and that I would need some medicine.  This young man from Calcutta, helped me get up and get into a rickshaw; he asked about a local doctor and took me to a local doctor who gave me some medicine.  This young man took me back to my hotel where I spent several days recovering.  I tried to give him some money for his trouble but he would not take it; after I insisted he finally took a few Rupees for his train fare back to Calcutta.

  The kindness of a stranger.  This is the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told when a young lawyer had recited to him the ancient summary of the Law: And love your neighbor as yourself.  The young lawyer interested in getting some legal qualifying information from Rabbi Jesus, asked a very dangerous question.  “And who is my neighbor?”

   Behind this question was really another question.  Who am I required to love?  The hated Romans?  The Samaritans?

  The lawyer was assuming like we often do a very limited meaning of the word “neighbor.”  Neighbor often means those who live closest to us in our immediate vicinity.  Neighbor is mostly used as a passive concept; we get designated as a neighbor because of where we live.  In the passive notion of neighbor we do not have to do anything to be designated as a neighbor.

  The parable of the Good Samaritan explodes the passive notion of being a neighbor.  And who is my neighbor? Wrong question. The question is: Am I a person who acts in a kind and neighborly way to the people who are brought into close proximity with me in my daily life?

  Jesus changes the word neighbor from being a noun into being a verb.  Yes, you are a neighbor by being in proximity to other people but neighbor is also a verb and let conjugate this verb.  I neighbor, you neighbor, he or she neighbors, we neighbor, they neighbor.  Past tense:  I neighbored.  We neighbored.  Future tense:  I will neighbor.  We will neighor.

  With the parable of the Good Samaritan (maybe that would be a good name for a hospital)  Jesus also expanded the meaning of being a good neighbor.  When is it the most difficult time to be a good neighbor?  When it is terribly inconvenient.  Exigent, arising emergencies are very inconvenient; they happen on no one’s schedules.  Accidents are not planned; they just happen and they are very inconvenient.

  The story of the Good Samaritan has the added dimension of the challenge of the inconvenient.  The notion of the suddenly random inconvenient event is the ultimate test of being a neighbor.  Ironically, people often are heroic in event of emergencies.  In fires, accidents, hurricanes, tornadoes, often people will be neighborly in heroic ways.

  Let us remember today the very dynamic notion of neighbor which we learn from the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The notion of neighbor is defined on a continuum of being a recipient of acts of compassion and empathy and being the one who performs acts of compassion and empathy.

  When you and I are in need of acts of kindness, we want to be regarded as neighbors. And we want someone to be an active neighbor towards us.  And we need to be ready to receive kindness from people who may not be our normal every day acquaintances.   And we too need to be active neighbors and be willing to respond in emergencies when it is inconvenient.  We need to know that anyone who is in need is our neighbor and respond accordingly.

  Let us learn from Jesus regarding this very expansive notion of neighbor.  Let us know that as disciples of Jesus we live today to have our hearts and lives be educated toward greater love and compassion.  Amen.

Evangelism and the Blessing and Cursing Traditions

7 Pentecost, C p 9, July 7, 2013  

2 Kings 5:1-14  Psalm 30

Gal. 6:1-18    Luke 10:1-12,16-20  

Lectionary Link

  A wrong assumption that we often make about the biblical writings is that the entire Bible is a like a single book with chapters and it is put together like a book in the same way that a modern book is put together by a single human author..  Since the Bible is not like that, if we try to force upon the Bible singular and consistent subject matter, we end up with contortions and the biblical writings can lose their intuitive reality in our lives.

  The Gospel of Luke is put together by an editor who was in possession of perhaps six decades of sources within the Christ communities.  These sources are presented in the speaking voices of Jesus; the early Christ communities believed that they were inspired by a continuing risen-Christ oracle that continued to be known within their various situations.

  In the Lucan collection of writings we can find policies differences and different understandings about the reception of the Gospel message with the people who were able to hear the early preachers of the Gospel.

  Sometimes the Gospel writers use agricultural metaphors; those who respond in a positive way to the preaching of the Jesus and the disciples are understood to be in the ripe condition of the harvest.

  So those who don’t understand or accept the Gospel preaching are not in the harvest condition; they are not ripe and ready to receive the message.  The people who harvest, the farmers have to know when to harvest and they need to know the conditions to bring crops to harvest.

  Persons who want to persuade others about good news need to have some psychological wisdom in order to establish mentor relationships that work for both parties.  If I try to force my good news on someone who cannot see the news as good, then they are going be angry and bothered at me and I am going to be challenged about how good my news is.  After all, if my news is not universally winsome, then I may have cause to doubt my good news or my ability to share it in the right way.

  It may really hurt when you are compelled to share one’s very best with someone and then be rejected.  In love we call this unrequited love; Boy loves a girl and that girl does not love the boy in the same way that he loves her.  Boy is unrequited.  Boy has dilemma.  “I can’t force her to love me when she doesn’t but why is this happening to me?  The power of love is so strong that it would seem ordained that she love me in a similar way.”  What does boy do?  Get’s angry.  Redoubles efforts to try to persuade love to happen.  Get’s angry at the one to whom he has just professed undying love (how ironic is that?) Get’s angry at self and goes into depression.  Sulks, pouts, and make life miserable for all around him.  Hurts self.  Writes poetry.  Writes a Country and Western song, makes a million dollars.

  There is this unrequited tradition within the Gospel.  It fits into the prayer tradition of blessings and curses that are found throughout the Bible.  In the Bible it is often presented as liturgically proper to use prayers and invectives to issue both blessings and curses.  This is for us a confusing tradition within the Gospel; why would Jesus who asks us in one place to bless and not curse, and to love our enemies; why would he in another place curse a village as a place deserving a punishment worse  than the fire and brimstone destruction of Sodom, simply because the people of the village did not respond positively to the disciple’s message about the kingdom of God.  If I were to say, if you don’t accept my sermon then you’re going to hell, you’d probably suggest that I might handle my rejection a bit better perhaps by writing a Country and Western Song.

  You see, we Episcopalians are not too good with this unrequited tradition of curses that is found in some threads of Gospel tradition.  Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and a host of other preachers embrace this tradition out of their certainty that they know the good guys and bad guys so clearly.

  We Episcopalians are more used to the tradition of cursing being exercised in scatological expletives when we’re angry at some one…”How many times have we heard, said or thought God damn someone….or Let him go to hell?”  We feel embarrassed about including our curse tradition under the umbrella of good religion, while others incorporate the cursing tradition because they believe they are so right and someone else is so wrong.  We as Episcopalians though often do get our dander up when it comes to basic social justice and we can feel in a “cursing” mood for those who foster injustice or delay justice.

  Within the Gospel today, we can glean some practical tips about sharing God’s good news.  No bag or extra shoes or money.  Travel light.  Why?  We don’t want the good news to be about our cultural baggage.  When I traveled and lived in an impoverished country, I determined not to carry a camera.  I did not want to be marked as a rich foreigner who had come over to observe the spectacle of poverty and ignorance in a foreign country.  Sometimes we can give the impression that the Good News means saying Thee and Thou, wearing fancy vestments, or being a King James Bible-toting American preacher with a white tie and white shoes.  Remember our Good News is about the people to whom we bring the message; not about them embracing an implied superiority of our culture.  We are not trying to make converts so that we can prove that we are right or better.  Remember we are not message; we are to prepare the way for the message of Christ.  And the message of Christ may come without us ever using religious words.  We need to be people who live and present ourselves in such a way that people can make positive transference upon our lives, because within us they see something of their fuller selves to which they are being called.  That fuller self is the risen Christ, within us.  We are to be bright and clear mirrors for people to find their fuller selves.  If our faith message comes across as egotistical people who think we have with the best religion; this is not going to be good news for others.  People can feel rightly put off when they are approached in this way.

  Next, take the message with peace.  If each one has found the place of peace in one’s heart then one can carry peace like a “vibe” as the hippies used to say.  If one has found inner peace, then that peace has a way of creating a safe and pleasing and attractive context for people to befriend one another and share their very best with each other.

  Next, don’t force the message or the encounter.  If there is not a receptive spirit for peace and befriending, be a good farmer and know that the harvest is not ready.  Put on one’s shoes and hit the road Jack.  Move on.  How many religious solicitors do we refuse to even let into our homes because they do not know how to read our non-receptive messages that we are giving to them.  People of entire faith communities get branded as “pushy solicitors.”  In regular life they may be kind people, but suddenly when they feel group pressure to “save other people” they lose their niceness because of their own group pressure.  This is not the wise evangelism of the good news of Christ.

  Finally, if we should not be discouraged if people do not accept us or our good news; we should be very modest about when we seem to blessed with “apparent” success.  Remember that we get to live and share our good news is self-rewarding whether it is received or rejected by others.  And rather than rejoicing in success, we should rejoice that our names are written in heaven.  To me, this simply means there more to do and become tomorrow so don’t get defeated by rejection and don’t get the ego inflated by success.  Keep looking onward and upward because that is hope’s invitation to continue to have a future in surpassing oneself.

  My Episcopal friends, probably you and I prefer the tradition of evangelism being like farming and waiting until people are ripe to receive the good news.   So you and I probably embrace the blessing tradition of the Gospel and not the cursing tradition of the Gospel.  But let’s be honest, we probably regard lots of religious people to be intellectual impaired because of the way in which they articulate their religion.  We have to admit we can be a bit snobbish in looking down our noses at “fundamentalists” and so that may be our subtle buy in to the cursing tradition found in the Bible.

  May God help us to find our Good News today, live in such a way that people can experience a peaceful presence, and be mirrors onto which other people can positively transfer a sense of their well-being because they see their fuller self in the risen Christ within us.  Amen.