Spirituality and Responsibility (Mid-week Reflection)

 

 Evelyn Underhill

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Reflection

February 25, 2015

Spirituality and Responsibility

Here in Ashland, we often hear the sentiment that spirituality is having a heart at rest in the oneness behind the universe, and mainly a contemplative effort.  I am not sure that this is a sound idea.  The great English mystic Evelyn Underhill wrote,

“More is required of those who wake up to reality than the passive adoration of God or communion with God…  [God] made us in order to use us, and use us in the most profitable way: for [God’s] purpose, not ours.  To live a spiritual life means subordinating all other interests to that single fact.  … I go back to the one perfect summary of [our] Godward life and call—the Lord’s Prayer.  Consider how dynamic and purposive is its character.  Thy will be done—thy Kingdom come! There is energy, drive, purpose in those words; an intensity of desire for the coming of perfection in to life.  Not the limp resignation that lies devoutly in the road and waits for the steam roller; but a total concentration on the total interests of God, which must be expressed inaction.  …We are the agents of the Creative Spirit in this world.  Real advance in the spiritual life, then, means accepting this vocation with all it involves.   ..it means an offering of life to the Father of life, to Whom it belongs; a willingness—an eager willingness—to take our small place in the vast operations of [God’s] Spirit, instead of trying to run a poky little business on our own.”  (The Spiritual Life, pp. 73-79)

The division between contemplation and action, while useful in discussing technique, at a spiritual level is somewhat artificial and less than helpful.  A glimpse of the beatific vision of God’s glory does not in this life reduce us to inaction and stillness.  It moves us to service, justice, compassion, and right doing.  Micah summed it up this way, “What does the Lord require of you? Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” (6:8). 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

Where the Magic Happens (Lent 1B)

 

Follow Me--Satan (Temptation of Jesus Christ), Ilya Repin 1903 

 

“Where the Magic Happens”

February 22, 2015

Homily preached at the Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

When I was a deacon in Hong Kong preparing to be ordained as a priest, I had a mentor who insisted that I try out at least one thing a month with which I was very uncomfortable.  “Stretch yourself, Tony.  If you don’t, you’ll never be a happy priest.  Do go out of your comfort zone.  Go for where it feels uncomfortable. Even very uncomfortable.” 

He wasn’t telling me to do things I felt guilty about, or knew were wrong.  But he was telling me to go into activities, areas, and ministries that I had in my mind bracketed out as impossible or just so distasteful I wouldn’t even try them.

One example was anointing with oil and blessings for healing.  I had grown up Mormon, and had a vivid memory of anointing and healings from my youth.  We believed the Epistle of James’ words: “¹⁴ Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:¹⁵ And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up…”  (James 5:14-15).  We also believed Jesus’ words “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Matthew 21:22).  So in order to make that anointing and healing effective, we had to try really really hard to believe that our prayer would be granted and the healing take place.  It was all a matter of working up the right way of thinking.  The problem with this, of course, is that miracles took place in God’s own time, not ours, and how much we believed or not had little apparent effect.  Having seen in college a spectacularly ineffective anointing and healing resulting in the slow and painful death of a newborn infant of a friend, I became very gun shy, reluctant to ask for healings or to give them. 

When I became an Episcopalian and I realized that they too followed James’ advice, I was puzzled.  But in the Episcopal Church, such blessings were small liturgical events, with set prayers and orders, all of which discouraged mechanistic thinking and the error of believing that we could coerce God into giving us what we want simply by playing fanatical mind-tricks on ourselves.   Here anointing and prayer for healing was a metaphor for the healing God sometimes gives here and now, and hopefully always ultimately gives, an expression of our deepest desires, and a visible way of not only invoking that grace, but also, gently giving it, but without the sloppy theology and bad psychology.  But such a practice still made me uncomfortable, given my prior experience. 

So when my mentor asked me to become a regular member of the rota for the anointing and healing service at the Cathedral, I balked.  “”I’m not really comfortable with that,” I said.  “Good,” he replied with a grin, “that otta knock out some of your pride and scruples.  Try it, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, for three months at least.  And then let’s talk.” 

 

So I learned the prayers and the rite, and began my duty as an anointer and intercessor for healing.  The experience was overwhelming.  I realized that this was a very different thing than what I had rejected earlier in my youth.  Here there was no superstitious rigamarole.  I learned the pastoral role of such healing, and how intimate the sharing was.  By stretching, going beyond my comfort zone, I realized I had different skills and gifts than I thought I had.  I realized the healing worked as a sacrament, like the Eucharist or Baptism: it was an outward sign of an inward grace that somehow bestowed the very thing it represented, whether actual physical healing came or not.   In the end I realized that the passage from James ended differently than how I had been taught as a child: “and if [the ill person] has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.”  A sacrament of reconciliation as well!  Even though anointing and healing were not what I had mistakenly thought in my youth, even though they had no petty magic—do this in this way and get this outcome—it nevertheless held mystery.  As a sacrament it held the transformative magic of deep truth, yearning expressed, and hope transmitted. 

Any of you who have been to the Thursday noon healing eucharist know how much I have come to appreciate and love this rite that I once found very uncomfortable. 

So what does this have to do with today’s readings and with the Lenten season we have entered? 

I can phrase it simply in the words of a popular internet meme:  a Venn diagram.  On this side, a circle labeled “My comfort zone.”  On the extreme other side, another circle:  “Where the magic happens.”  

Mark’s Gospel says that after Jesus’ baptism, immediately, the Spirit drove him into the desert.  Jesus went from the comfort zone of his life before into solitude and hunger in the Wilderness of Judah.   Suffering, trial, being “with the devil.”  But then he is served by angels. 

The story of the flood is similar:  Noah and his family must risk all, go into the ark and through the floods, before God grants the promise:  never again!   

Don’t misunderstand me.  We need to heed our feelings since they tell us much about ourselves.  Joy is a sure sign of the presence of God, and discomfort often is a sign of alienation.   My mentor wanted me to try something new that I had rejected out of hand because of initial discomfort.   He knew that if it fit, it would overcome the discomfort.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good” is how the Psalmist expresses the idea.  

It’s about building intimacy.  It’s about building trust.  As we read in the Psalm, and in the epistle, we trust and love God all the more when we have gone through hell.   

There are different ways of going beyond our comfort zones:  retreats, counseling, spiritual direction, special seasonal disciplines, doing something that our consciences have told us for years we need to do, but that caused us fear, accepting new callings in the Church that might not suit us but that need us.   Sometimes, what was once beyond our comfort zone becomes familiar and even commonplace, our default position.    When the magic stops happening, it is perhaps time, not to move on and abandon a practice or discipline that has helped, but rather, seek out another place beyond our new area of comfort. 

Psychologists say that relationships and intimacy are built when we respond to small biddings by our partner to come into closer relationship.  “Darling, I just saw a ruby throated hummingbird in the garden.”  She can reply, “Mm hum, that’s nice,” as she turns another page in her book, or “there you go again with that silly waste of time hobby!”  The first cools the relationship, while the second ices it.  But an affirming response, one that takes up the offer of relationship and warms it deeper, is something like “Oh that must have been amazing! You haven’t seen one yet here this spring, have you?”  

If there is one thing that is clear in the Bible, God loves his creatures.  That is the point of the rainbow in today’s Hebrew Scripture lesson.  God is crazy about us.  God wants to be in a closer relationship with each and every one of us.  God bids us into closer relationship at all times.   We have the voices of community and friends that sometimes are the voice of God.  We have our conscience, or at least what the epistle today calls an “appeal to a clear conscience.”  We have the yearnings placed in our heart by God. 

How do we respond to them?  How we respond cools or warms the relationship.  God is always bidding, always reaching out.   But we can turn away, or run to embrace. 

Going to a place beyond our comfort zone is a primary way we have of sorting things out, and learning to respond to God’s bidding with kindness, trust, and love.   That is why the magic happens there. 

That’s what lent is all about—stretching ourselves and learning to use new muscles and skills, listening in silence and finding the treasure God has already buried in us.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen. 

 Get Behind me Satan (Temptation of Jesus Christ), Ilya Repin 1903

Ash Wednesday

Now is the Acceptable Day

Ash Wednesday
18 February 2015; 7:00 p.m. Said Mass

With Imposition of Ashes
Homily Delivered at the Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10;

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21  

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

Saint Augustine is famously said to have prayed, “Give me chastity Lord, but not yet.” 

Repentance is not a pleasant thing.  It is particularly not pleasant if we have not intention of amending our lives.  In fact, it is not even repentance. 

To pray God for forgiveness without a sincere desire to amend one’s life, without a sincere desire to abandon sin, is like praying God to heal us without healing us.  It makes no sense. 

In the epistle today, St. Paul tells the Corinthians and tells us, “We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. … Do not accept the grace of God in vain. For God says (roughly quoting Isaiah 49:8),  "At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you."  See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”  (2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:2) 

Reconciliation is what repentance is all about.  Being acceptable or finding favor and grace is what it is all about.  Being saved from ourselves is what it is all about.  

The Christian Church established long ago the period of Lent, the preparation for Holy Week and Easter, as a period of penance and contrition.  We put away the “Alleluias” and overly joyous celebration.  Just as we imposed ashes today, throughout Lent we impose disciplines on ourselves, giving up meat, sweets, coffee, or fats, or adding additional service and devotions.   The goal is to help us recognize where we fall short, and, in the words of the prayer book, “worthily lament our sins.” 

As the Gospel reading and Isaiah say, this is not for show, not to impress others, not to impress ourselves.  This is to help us connect to God. 

God is a great sea of Mercy, a robust and powerful spring of grace:  undeserved, one-way, love and acceptance.   Jesus’ death for us on the cross and victory over the powers of darkness through God raising him from  death and hell is the way that God reaches out to us in love. 

Let us not accept the grace of God in vain.  Let us identify our failings, be contrite, turn to God and ask for help, and, God helping, amend our lives. 

For today is the day of acceptance, the day of favor, and the day of salvation.  Let us not procrastinate or delay. 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

The Light Gets Through (Transfiguration Sunday B)

 

 Mosaic at the Church of the Transfiguration, Mt. Tabor

The Light Gets Through

Last Sunday of Epiphany (Year B)
15 February 2015; 8 am Spoken Mass; 10 am Sung Mass

Transfiguration Sunday
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon  

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen. 

Light and fear: it’s in all the scripture passages today. 

The Gospel sees Jesus shining bright before his closest friends.  The light shining from the face of Jesus overwhelms Peter.  “Let’s build three small shelters commemorating this!” he says.   We shouldn’t hold the odd reaction against him, says the narrator—he was, after all scared out of his wits.

Paul in the Epistle says that people are blinded from seeing the light of the Gospel, the brightness of Christ, because of their lack of trust.  That what the word translated as “unbelievers” means: they lack trust in God.   Again, fear blinds us to the light. 

The Psalm says “Out of Zion, in its beauty, God discloses himself in brilliant light.” Surrounded by a raging storm and a fire devouring everything before it, God’s appearance pulls his people into a courtroom where only God’s Hasidim, can stand.  The word means those devoted to him, the kind ones. Their fear has been overcome by shared trust and commitment:  when the scripture’s shorthand says these gentle ones “have made a covenant with me and sealed it with sacrifice,” this means they have had a relationship of  mutual goodness, promises, and care between them and God, one involving serious self-giving.  Here, love and trust casts out the fear that would have blinded them to the light. 

Elijah goes to Heaven, He Qi 

In the Hebrew scriptures, Elijah gets ready for his last trip before death, or whatever it is that happens to him in the end.  The younger man he has mentored all these years, Elisha, asks to go along for the ride, afraid the old man is going to disappear.  When anyone reminds Elisha that this is after all Elijah’s last trip, Elisha tells them to shut up.  He is afraid to face up to his mentor’s passing.  Elijah is such a powerful prophet.  Elisha’s afraid he won’t measure up and be able to fill the old man’s shoes.   When Elijah gets to Jordan, that symbol of endings, new beginnings, death, and new life, Elisha insists on going on with him, and true to form, Elijah performs one last great marvel.  He takes his coat and smacks the water with it.  It divides it into two, and the two men walk across on dry ground.   “Now I really am leaving,” says Elijah, “What is it you want?”  “Gimme a double!” replies Elisha.  No, he isn’t trying to drown his fears with a double shot of spirits.  Afraid of his own inadequacies, he wants twice as much of whatever it was that made Elijah the prophet he has been.  “Wow! That’s a steep order!  If you face up to reality and actually see what’s coming, you might just get what you ask!”  When the fiery whirlwind comes to take his mentor, Elisha, having to taken to heart his mentor’s encouragement, sees the whole thing and receives Elijah’s cloak: he has indeed grown to fill the shoes left by his legendary mentor. 

Today is the last Sunday after Epiphany before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.  It is called transfiguration Sunday, after the Gospel reading.  But all of these texts talk about transformation and transfiguration:  change that we all must undergo if we are to come to love the light and not be blinded by it. 

Where are your blind spots?  What fears lie behind them? 

One of my besetting sins is procrastination.  I took 20 years to finish my doctoral dissertation—but the first 15 of those were wasted with procrastination. I was afraid to write something that might be rejected, or ridiculed, or even barely criticized by my dissertation adviser.   Fear of failure, but more important, fear of success:  actually submitting a draft meant subjecting myself to the process of editing and criticism.  It meant having to revise, having to change, actually stretching myself beyond where I was.  The dissertation had become the unmentionable subject at home.   I realized that if I saw one of my advisers or professors on the street, I would have crossed over to the other side to avoid greeting and having a conversation.  When we moved back into the area and Elena began her master’s degree at the same school, the time was right to put it behind me. Under spiritual direction, I decided to make amends, and straighten this out.  I made appointments to apologize and clear the air.  My adviser, though, surprised me and asked me to resume my work.   If I committed to finishing, he would commit to getting me readmitted and my committee reconstituted.  Here’s the thing—once I started again, it was not about finishing for me.  It was not about writing the perfect dissertation and getting it right on the first draft.  It was about putting in three hours a day and doing one day of library work once a week.  It was about putting in the time and effort, regardless of results.  That way, if I failed, at least I knew that I had given it an honest effort and would not have to go around hiding from topics of discussion or people.  Once I started, it only took four years. 

Procrastination is a sign of fear.  So is distraction, always missing the crucial point and focusing on side issues.  Another sign of fear is anger and control freak tendencies. 

What are the things in your life that make you want to look small so no one will notice you?  Go to the other side of the street?  Avoid someone?  What always pushes your justice button or makes you angry?  Where are your blind spots? 

What do you fear? 

Marianne Williamson, in her book A Return to Love has this to say: 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Sisters and brothers, know that God loves you and accepts you.  If you have fear, it stems from not accepting this essential fact and accepting   Fear blinds us, makes us crazy, and distorts us.  We become twisted and the world becomes broken. But as Leonard Cohen says in his song “Anthem,”     

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Loving Jesus is about facing the truth.  It is about losing our fear.  It is about being open to sudden astounding moments of clarity. 

As we prepare for Lent, I invite us to look at the areas where we are blind.  The most direct way is to find what deeply upsets our balance and joy, and then ask what it is in us that makes us so vulnerable here.   This is a practice commonly used in counseling and direction, and taught in Twelve Step Programs.  Jesuits call it an examination of conscience.  Twelve Steppers call it a moral inventory.  It is best done with a friend, a spiritual director, or even a "discreet priest." 

Ask yourself, “what is it about me that causes me to be so upset or undone by this action of others or situation?’  I think that if you ask yourself that question and observe carefully and honestly, you will find that fear it at the heart of most of our problems.   

A simple example might be:  I get over-the-top upset when I run into tech issues with the computer.  What is it about me?  I really rely on the computer to do a lot of things, more than some other people sometimes, and people think I am working harder or longer than I maybe am. I get angry when the computer goes out because I am afraid people will find out how much I use it to appear smarter and more industrious than I actually am.  I am afraid for my social esteem and, perhaps, my job. 

Again: what is it about me that lets this situation set me off? Why does it upset me?  What fear is at the heart of it? 

Letting the light in through the cracks, being open to sudden epiphanies, letting ourselves be changed from glory into glory as we bathe in the light coming from Jesus’ face, all this starts with recognizing our blindness, identifying our fear.  Once we have identified them, it will be time to work to overcome them. 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Jesus: the Message or the Messenger? (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Jesus: the Message or the Messenger?

February 11, 2015

“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true” (John 5:31).

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6)

I think many of us are struck by the contrast between these two statements on the lips of Jesus as portrayed in John’s Gospel: did Jesus teach about himself or didn’t he?  The contradiction is all the more sharp when we realize that the earliest Gospel, Mark, says that the message of Jesus was not about himself or his role, but about something else: “ Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the reign of God has come near; change your way of thinking, and trust in the good news!’” (Mark 1:14-15).  And when Jesus calls people, he asks them to “follow” him rather than sign on to a set of claims about Jesus.

 

Buddhism makes a distinction between devotional practice and transformational practice, between affirming allegiance to a teacher and agreement on the teachings on the one side, and pursuing those values and principles in acts and exercises on the other.   The distinction, I think, applies also to Christianity and helps us understand the dynamic interplay between what scholars call the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith.  

The historical Jesus’s primary message was about experiencing God and letting that experience help us have compassion for others.   Such love of God and love of neighbor, when pursued consistently, is revolutionary in many ways, and challenged the powers of Jesus’s religion and occupied homeland.  It got him crucified by the Roman Imperium. 

The experience of his followers after his death—what they called his bodily reappearance and coming forth from the dead—brought them to rephrase how they understood his teachings and what he had accomplished.  The person of Christ became much more central in these formulations than in his original teachings, and many of these were placed back onto his lips by third or fourth generation disciples. By the Fourth Century, the discussion was all about Christology, and we get the Creeds. 

Marshall McCluhan famously said that the medium is the message.  In the formation of Christian faith, in the growth of understanding and reflective meditation on what Marcus Borg called the “Post-Easter Jesus,” Jesus the messenger and medium of teaching becomes Christ the Message and Mediator.    Devotional attachment to the person of Christ as portrayed in preaching and the scripture replaced the transformational practice of following his original teachings, particularly as they applied to society, as the center of experience of the Christian community. 

One of the reasons we recite the Creed and also read and preach the original stories about Jesus in Scripture each week is to remind us that it takes both devotion and transformative practice to connect us with Jesus. It takes both to bring us—as individuals and in our common life—into closer communion with God. 

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

Far off, Yet Near (Epiphany 5B)

 

Far off, yet Near

8 February 2015

Epiphany 5B

9:00 a.m. sung Mass before Annual Parish Meeting

Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 ; Mark 1:29-39

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Recently John and Mindy Ferris presented a trip they took to Machu Picchu at our monthly Trinity Travelogue.  They concluded their wonderful presentation with a moving montage of photos John had taken of people he had met in Peru, set to the music of Bette Midler’s song, “From a Distance":

“From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.
From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.” 

The song says that many of the most troubling things in our lives—hunger, poverty, war, racial hatred—cannot be seen from a low earth orbit: they should not exist or be seen close-up at all.  It ends,

“God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.”

I was struck by the contrast between the song’s words and the very intimate, personal portraits that were flashing before us.  The photos’ intimacy is what connected those faces with us.  It was closeness, not distance, that established our common humanity.  But it was the distance—the fact that we here in Ashland are looking at these very individual faces of people in Peru, so very far away from us, and still seeing individuals with hopes, fears, and joys, that made the experience so moving.    

The passage from Isaiah today captures this contrast and interplay between distance and intimacy.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

…[God] sits above the circle of the earth,

and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.”

“The … everlasting God,

[is] Creator of the earth from end to end.” 

“[God] gives power to the weary,

and fresh vigor to the spent.

Youths may grow faint and weary,

and young men stumble and fall;

but those who patiently trust in the LORD shall renew their strength.

They will soar up like eagles:

they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint.”

The Psalm captures the idea too:

At a distance, “The LORD … counts the number of the stars,”
but intimately, “he calls them each by name.”

At a distance, “He covers the heavens with clouds
and prepares rain for the earth,”  

But up close up waters individual shoots of grass so they sprout and the plant food each of us eats grows. 

Most intimately of all, “The LORD heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” 

What strikes me in all this is that God is both overwhelmingly BIG and DISTANT (that’s why we look like grasshoppers to him), but also profoundly CLOSE and INTIMATE.   And he does indeed seem to be watching us, both at a distance and up close: “He lifts up the lowly, but casts the wicked [their oppressors] to the ground.”

The contrast is deliberate.  Theologians have special words to describe it. They call the distance the “transcendence” of God, God going beyond things.  They call the nearness God’s “immanence,” or God present in things.   

We often get this wrong, and tend to think of God completely one or the other. 

At one extreme, a God who goes beyond things only is remote and disconnected.  You get the watchmaker God of the Deists, who sets the natural processes in motion, winds the world up, and then never touches it again.  Or we get the God of supernaturalist theism who is “up there” or “out there” but not in the and behind the world.  This God might intervene in the natural world and human affairs from outside, perhaps.  If we think he does so often, we usually say this is because we have pleased him in some way, begged him in prayer to do something and he has favored us by listening.  

Such belief brings with it real problems: we end up wondering about the prayers that God doesn’t seem to have heard or answered, and why God puts up with so much evil in the world.  The God up there and out there is hard to believe in.  He is too much like that petty and vain being we see in that Monty Python and the Meaning of Life scene parodying a Church of England vicar at prayer: “O Lord, you are so big, so absolutely HUGE.  Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell You.  Forgive us, O Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying, and barefaced flattery.  But You are so strong and, well, just so super.”

If we think that the supernaturalist God doesn’t intervene all that much, we are left wondering whether anything we do or say in our lives matter at all:  if we look like so many little grasshoppers to God, then why worry about pleasing him or having any relationship? 

At the other extreme, we might believe God is immanent but not transcendent at all: pantheism, the belief that God is the universe and everything in it.  God ends up being seen as some sort of gas or fluid, and there is no personality or person to speak of.  And if we try to connect with such an impersonal oversoul in our hearts and meditations, it often ends up being pure solipsism: How I think and feel about god becomes paramount and absolute.  There is little or no room for community when it comes to faith, and our religious experience becomes idiosyncratic, and often, just plain weird. 

The Christian God is both transcendent and immanent, both at a distance and up close, both universal and personal.  Panentheism, or the belief that God is behind and in all things in the universe, but is not the same as those things, has traditionally been the way Christian mystics and philosophical theologians have expressed this.

It is easy to be misled by the kind of metaphorical and mythological language and images we see in parts of the Bible:  God is a jealous God.  God hears and answers prayers for his favored ones.  You can please or displease God, and God gets angry, sometimes to the point of wiping whole cities or nations off the face of the earth.  But these images do not describe God; they must be taken in context with other passages, ones like  “Thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy.  ‘I dwell in the high and holy place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isa. 57:15)    “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and full of compassion” (Psalm 103:8).    Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, expressed it this way:  “What the Bible puts before us is not a record of a God who is always triumphantly getting his way by doing miracles . . . , but a God who gets his way by patiently struggling to make himself clear to human beings, to make his love real to them, especially when they seem not to want to know or to want to avoid him and retreat into their own fantasies about him.”  Jesus taught us to call God by the very personal title Abba, father.  He said that God counts the sparrows and the hairs on our heads, and values each of us.  He said God is compassionate for all, blessing good and bad people alike with his sun and rain.  And we need to be compassionate like that. 

Our lives are hard.  The deaths in the parish this week of our friends Nick and Claire remind us of how short and fleeting life is.  But also how sweet and good it is.  I am thankful that I could be with both of them, and see their smiles of gratitude, before they died.  Another parishioner facing his final days told me this week that he has no regrets, except perhaps, that he wanted just a little more time with those he loves.  That regret is actually a thanksgiving, and tells us how sweet our lives are. 

God is overall and above all.  This means we can worship and stand in awe of him.  God is also beneath and behind all, including our own hearts. What do we pray at the start of each Eucharist? “O God to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.”  God wants to give us strength and comfort, wants to give us new hearts.  This means we can trust him.

Note that in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus seeks solitude and quiet time to be alone with God.  It recharges him.  It reconnects him with that distant Deity who somehow also is in our hearts.  It renews his relationship with Abba.  It changes his perceptions and his direction.  It is so important to him that he chooses to take a break from his busy schedule to make time for it.  The distant God can give him strength, so he can run and not be weary and walk and not faint.  It is the very busyness of his schedule that wearies Jesus; it is the reason he must seek rest solitude with God. “ 

We must do this too.  Personal prayer, in solitude and in silence, is important for us to let God recharge us, give us eagle’s wings, make us run and not grow weary, walk and not faint.

We will soon be starting Lent.  In it, we seek to follow Jesus and find a quiet place in the wilderness to commune alone with God.  Hymn no. 149 says it well (and note the distance and nearness talk): 

“Eternal Lord of love, behold your Church
walking once more the pilgrim way of Lent,
led by your cloud by day, by night your fire,
moved by your love and
toward your presence bent:
far off yet here the goal of all desire.”

I invite all of us this week to personal prayer alone.   God is at a distance, watching us.  But he is also in our hearts, renewing us, strengthening us, and giving us his own heart.  Jesus was the personal near expression of the distant God.  And so, like him, let us get up early, seek out a deserted place, and pray. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.