Count your blessings, name them one by one
Count your blessings, see what God has done
Count your blessings, name them one by one
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
A wee blast from the past for many of you, I’m guessing!
That was one of the staple choruses we sang in Sunday School when I was a child, and we all liked it because of its jolly tune, and we all lustily affirmed in song that it was indeed a good thing to count your blessings. But the truth is, we rarely did. We counted on them rather than counting them. In other words, we took them for granted.
And it’s the idea of blessing that we draw this series of sermons to a close with this morning. Over the past ten weeks, we’ve been trying to earth our spirituality – to discover an altar in the world of our daily living – and we’ve covered a lot of ground in that time.
We’ve reflected on the importance of paying attention, of waking up to God. We’ve thought about what it means to be embodied – to be a wearer of skin. With the children on Thinking Day, we remembered how creation speaks to us about God, not just the immense vastness of the universe, but in the small and the local. At the start of Lent we remembered that at times, it’s good to get lost because you learn things about yourself and God you wouldn’t otherwise learn. We’ve thought about prayer, and vocation, and the practice of learning to say ‘no’ when we need to.
And this morning, we end with blessing; most especially the practice of speaking a blessing. And that’s a good place to finish, both logically and liturgically.
So what is a blessing?
At its simplest. I guess a blessing is something good that comes into our lives. Love, children, grandchildren, a new friend, a new opportunity, appreciative or insightful words. The daily blessings we forget to count like food and shelter. We aren’t owed these things, they come to us as gift, and as the hymn says, all good gifts around us are sent from heaven above.
And blessings that come our way arrive in different shapes and forms. They can be tangible, or intangible. They can be something new, or something old re-discovered and experienced in a new way.
When I started to think about this, I remembered going back to Ireland last autumn with two friends who’d never been there before. And I remember one day in particular when we did a big swathe of the North Antrim coastline in glorious weather, and standing out on the clifftops at Carrick-a-Rede and the Giant’s Causeway, and seeing those familiar places fresh, through their eyes, was a lovely blessing.
Sometimes the blessing’s already there, waiting to be received. All it takes is for you and I to notice it and receive it with gratitude.
When we bless a child in a service of baptism, or we bless our food before we eat it. are we doing something that changes the nature of the child, or of the food? Is the child going to do better because it’s been baptised? Is the food going to taste better and be safe to eat because we’ve prayed over it and given thanks?
Or is the blessing already there, and our speaking of it, our noticing of it, is what matters? God we thank you for the blessing of a new life with all its potential, and we ask that this child of yours would grow up into all that you desire for her. God we thank you for the blessing of this food; for the everyday miracles of nature and farming and cooking that allow us to have this meal on the table before us.
There’s something about receiving or giving a blessing that involves seeing things right. I see the good that’s before me not just as it is, but as something that’s gifted from God – a blessing. And I speak my blessing of gratitude right back to God for his generosity.
And we all know that there are times when the blessing comes so well hidden that we don’t recognise it as such until much later. We speak about a blessing in disguise – a set of circumstances that none of us would ever choose, but which, in the long term, can still manage to yield some good. Often it’s only with the benefit of hindsight that we can see how a blessing has quietly grown up in the dark soil of disappointment or loss or worry.
Count your blessings, says the wee song. But it’s not just as straightforward as that. Before you can count them you have to notice them, however they happen to arrive, and that isn’t always easy.
So that’s a word or two about blessings in general; but our focus today is on the importance of speaking a blessing.
Barbara Taylor writes movingly of the last few days of her Father’s life, surrounded by his family at the hospital bed.
At one point, when the crowds had thinned for a few hours, she saw her husband, Ed, a beloved son-in-law, kneeling on the linoleum floor and putting his head under his father-in-law’s bony hand, which he held there for a few moments as the old man murmured something over him.
What were you doing, she asked him later? “I asked him to bless me” he said. “I asked for his blessing.”
Now only Ed could say why he wanted to do that, or what he was expecting from it. But I think what we’re seeing in his actions is a primal desire that all of us have – the need to be seen and valued for who we are – to hear words that affirm us in our place in the world.
I can’t put words into Ed’s mouth, but if it were me in his shoes, I’d want to know that I had pleased this man I loved, that he trusted me with what was most precious to him, that he willed the best for us all in the future. And I would want him to know that I valued and respected him enough to deeply desire his blessing.
As human beings, we crave words that affirm who we are, yet we’re often so scared to offer those words, or to receive them. As a general rule, we’re profoundly embarrassed to say or do things that deeply affect us, because we don’t know if we’ll be able to stay in control of our emotions.
I see this every time I have a wedding rehearsal. There comes a moment when I get the couple to turn to one another and take each other by the hands and recite their vows. After all the preparation and fuss that goes with a wedding, for the first time, they are a foot apart, looking one another in the eye and saying some of the most significant words they will ever utter.
And they always do one of two things – they start laughing or they start crying. It’s too much! They’ve been together for years, and it’s still too much. Which is exactly why we do it at the rehearsal – to begin to deal with the powerful emotions of really speaking the truth to one another.
And therein lies the paradox. We need the blessing of giving and receiving such honest, affirming words, of really speaking the truth to one another. But we’d rather run a mile than do that. We hate letting our defences down and becoming vulnerable. And so, more often than not, the things we need to say remain unsaid, sometimes until it’s too late to say them.
“Perhaps” says Barbara Taylor “we have a corporate agreement that we will not embarrass one another, even if that means never going very deeply into the things that matter most to us.”
And do you see where that leads, in time? That conspiracy of silence?
To a culture where we see and appreciate less and less. To marriages where both partners feel undervalued because appreciation’s hardly ever vocalised. To children growing up unsure of their place in the world because they’re rarely praised for the good they do, or lovingly reprimanded when they do things wrong. To churches where we take one another for granted and are quick to criticise and complain but slow to praise.
I chose this passage from Colossians today, with all its difficult names, because it struck me how Paul takes the time to affirm these men and women in their work.
Tychicus – a faithful worker and fellow servant.
Onesimus – a dear and faithful brother.
Aristarchus, Mark and Joshua who have been a great help
Epaphras who prays hard for you all.
Luke, our dear doctor, and Demas, who send you greetings.
Remember what I said earlier about the relationship between seeing and blessing? Well in these closing remarks in his letter, Paul is blessing these folk. He’s saying “I see you! I’ve thought about you! I appreciate you!” He takes the time to see, but then to say that he’s seen. He blesses them.
That’s the thought I’d like us to take away from today. Who in our lives do we need to express our gratitude to? Who do we need to bless a little more? Who are we inclined to take for granted?
Could be the person who puts tea on the table each night, or does the washing, or brings the bacon home. Could be the person who does the job no-one notices until it’s not done. Could be the person who’s been going the extra mile, and over time we’ve come to expect that extra mile and maybe a bit more.
You alone know.
But may God help us all to begin seeing where we’ve stopped seeing; to overcome the conspiracy of silence where we’re paralysed by embarrassment, and to bless one another with life-giving words that affirm not just what we do, but who we are.
Tom Gordon is a Church of Scotland minister working in a hospice in Edinburgh and I remember him telling us a story about an elderly man called Frank who was dying. He and his wife Mary had been together for many many years, and they’d had a good marriage. But as Tom spent time with Mary, he began to realise there was something going on in her above and beyond the usual upset at losing your life partner.
As the weeks unfolded, Mary finally managed to get it off her chest. They’d had a good life together, her and Frank, and he’d been a good husband to her, but in all that time he’d never once told her that he loved her. And that was her only regret as she looked back on their time together. He’d never said what she most needed to hear from him.
Tom waited for the right time and brought the subject up with Frank, and as you’d expect, at first he was upset. “She must know that I love her – I’ve been with her all this time and we’ve done everything together. Of course I love her!”. But as they talked it through, Frank came to understand that what was so obvious to him in his heart and mind, still needed to be vocalised for Mary’s sake.
And the following day, he was able to find the courage to say the words that Mary needed to hear before he slipped away.
o0o
Count your blessings, name them one by one.
Good advice, but maybe there should be a second verse to go with it.
Speak your blessings, name them one by one
Speak your blessing over what's been done.
Speak your blessings, name them one by one,
And folk will be grateful that you’ve found your tongue.
Monday 26 March 2012
Wednesday 21 March 2012
The Practice of Saying No - Sabbath
Just over 3 years ago Barak Obama won the American Presidential Election on a huge wave of optimism. Three years in, reality is beginning to bite and it won't be long before he's fighting to win a second term.
But one of things people remember from 2008 were the iconic images of Obama, with the three brilliantly chosen words that carried him to power – “Yes We Can”.
“8 “Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.
But one of things people remember from 2008 were the iconic images of Obama, with the three brilliantly chosen words that carried him to power – “Yes We Can”.
I have to admit, I had a laugh to myself imagining how that campaign would translate across to Scotland. The first minister with the subtext "Aye, Mibbe...." or if he's having a bad day, just "Naw".
They’re a go-ahead, pioneering people, the Americans, and their whole culture is permeated with this can-do attitude which I guess we could learn from. As long as they’re willing to learn a wee bit of measured humility from us in return!
“Yes” is a word that most Americans love. It’s a word that allows them to participate and experience and commit and succeed and has made them the nation they are today. And it’s a good word to have in your vocabulary.
But let’s not kid ourselves that giving our ‘yes’ is always a good thing. It depends on what you’re saying ‘yes’ to.
America says ‘yes’ to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to pursue happiness, the right of any man or woman to make their way in life regardless of where they start from.
It also says yes to unbridled consumerism, the right to bear arms despite 30,000 firearms related deaths every year, to a fifty hour working week and until recently, a Darwinian health-care system which amounted to the survival of the richest.
“Yes” isn’t always good. It depends on what you’re saying ‘yes’ to.
And saying “yes” indiscriminately can end up making you a slave to your culture.
It seems like in all developed, or developing countries, we’re coming to measure our well being, maybe even our worth, by how busy we are and how much we own.
I’m told that inChina
When people ask me how I’ve been doing, my first inclination is to talk about what I’ve been doing and how busy I’ve been, and more often than not I have to work hard to find something else to say. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. It’s ingrained in all of us.
And the church, which should be an escape from that culture of busyness, can end up being no different. Even here, where we know our worth is based on God’s love for us and nothing else, we can end up running ourselves ragged with busyness - becoming grumpy Marthas instead of contented Marys.
I heard a sketch a while back by a guy called Adrian Plass in which a man comes to faith.
“So what do I do now?” he says to his Christian friend….
“Well there’s the Bible Study on Monday, the Prayer Meeting’s Wednesday evening, on Thursday there’s a new Nurture Group starting – you’ll need to get to that. Friday there’s a bus going to hear an American Evangelist, Saturday there’s a day long conference on next years Mission and on Sunday it’s service in the morning, Cambodian meal at lunchtime and communion in the evening.”
"Free at last” says the new convert.
Of course, we need to say ‘yes’ to some of these things. But we also need to say ‘no’ without guilt, and that’s why, today we are looking at the Spiritual Practice of Saying ‘No’, and it might surprise you just what a long tradition that practice has in Scripture.
Life would have been a lot easier if Eve had said ‘no’ to the serpent, or Adam had said no to Eve when the subject of forbidden apples came up. But they didn’t
And when the Christ was conceived to sort out Adam’s sin, the church celebrates Mary’s ‘yes’ to God in consenting to bear his Son. but we often forget Joseph’s honourable ‘No’ – No, I won’t divorce her. No, I won’t send her away in disgrace, even though I don’t fully understand.
We’re in Lent just now, a season of ‘no’s’ as Christ refused food and company in the desert to help him concentrate on God. And in his weakness, the tempter came calling once more….
“If you’re the son of God, turn these stones into bread” – NO
“If you’re the son of God, throw yourself off the temple” – NO
“I can give you everything that you want; all you have to do is worship me” – NO
And though there were three years between that experience andCalvary , that testing stood him in good stead when it came to the end, and the old men gathered round the cross to mock him: “If you’re the Son of God, then come down from the cross”. NO.
There’s a time for ‘no’. And our readings for today focus in on one way we can practice saying ‘no’ in a very positive and counter-cultural way. And it’s the practice of keeping a Sabbath.
Interesting piece of trivia. The first thing that God declares holy in the Bible isn’t a place, or an altar or a temple or even a person. It’s a day.
It says in Genesis 2 that “God rested on the seventh day, and hallowed it”.
And in today’s Old Testament reading, that hallowing is codified and set down in the form of the fourth commandment:
They’re a go-ahead, pioneering people, the Americans, and their whole culture is permeated with this can-do attitude which I guess we could learn from. As long as they’re willing to learn a wee bit of measured humility from us in return!
“Yes” is a word that most Americans love. It’s a word that allows them to participate and experience and commit and succeed and has made them the nation they are today. And it’s a good word to have in your vocabulary.
But let’s not kid ourselves that giving our ‘yes’ is always a good thing. It depends on what you’re saying ‘yes’ to.
America says ‘yes’ to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to pursue happiness, the right of any man or woman to make their way in life regardless of where they start from.
It also says yes to unbridled consumerism, the right to bear arms despite 30,000 firearms related deaths every year, to a fifty hour working week and until recently, a Darwinian health-care system which amounted to the survival of the richest.
“Yes” isn’t always good. It depends on what you’re saying ‘yes’ to.
And saying “yes” indiscriminately can end up making you a slave to your culture.
It seems like in all developed, or developing countries, we’re coming to measure our well being, maybe even our worth, by how busy we are and how much we own.
I’m told that in
When people ask me how I’ve been doing, my first inclination is to talk about what I’ve been doing and how busy I’ve been, and more often than not I have to work hard to find something else to say. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. It’s ingrained in all of us.
And the church, which should be an escape from that culture of busyness, can end up being no different. Even here, where we know our worth is based on God’s love for us and nothing else, we can end up running ourselves ragged with busyness - becoming grumpy Marthas instead of contented Marys.
I heard a sketch a while back by a guy called Adrian Plass in which a man comes to faith.
“So what do I do now?” he says to his Christian friend….
“Well there’s the Bible Study on Monday, the Prayer Meeting’s Wednesday evening, on Thursday there’s a new Nurture Group starting – you’ll need to get to that. Friday there’s a bus going to hear an American Evangelist, Saturday there’s a day long conference on next years Mission and on Sunday it’s service in the morning, Cambodian meal at lunchtime and communion in the evening.”
"Free at last” says the new convert.
Of course, we need to say ‘yes’ to some of these things. But we also need to say ‘no’ without guilt, and that’s why, today we are looking at the Spiritual Practice of Saying ‘No’, and it might surprise you just what a long tradition that practice has in Scripture.
Life would have been a lot easier if Eve had said ‘no’ to the serpent, or Adam had said no to Eve when the subject of forbidden apples came up. But they didn’t
And when the Christ was conceived to sort out Adam’s sin, the church celebrates Mary’s ‘yes’ to God in consenting to bear his Son. but we often forget Joseph’s honourable ‘No’ – No, I won’t divorce her. No, I won’t send her away in disgrace, even though I don’t fully understand.
We’re in Lent just now, a season of ‘no’s’ as Christ refused food and company in the desert to help him concentrate on God. And in his weakness, the tempter came calling once more….
“If you’re the son of God, turn these stones into bread” – NO
“If you’re the son of God, throw yourself off the temple” – NO
“I can give you everything that you want; all you have to do is worship me” – NO
And though there were three years between that experience and
There’s a time for ‘no’. And our readings for today focus in on one way we can practice saying ‘no’ in a very positive and counter-cultural way. And it’s the practice of keeping a Sabbath.
Interesting piece of trivia. The first thing that God declares holy in the Bible isn’t a place, or an altar or a temple or even a person. It’s a day.
It says in Genesis 2 that “God rested on the seventh day, and hallowed it”.
And in today’s Old Testament reading, that hallowing is codified and set down in the form of the fourth commandment:
9 You have six days in which to do your work,
10 but the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no one is to work — neither you, your children, your slaves, your animals, nor the foreigners who live in your country. 11 In six days I, the Lord, made the earth, the sky, the sea, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That is why I, the Lord, blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.
Now what does it say about us that that commandment often reaches our ears not as a gift, but as a bind?
God is saying “I insist that you rest! I insist that for this one day in the week you don’t work!” but somehow that doesn’t reach us as good news.
In part, I guess, that’s the legacy of dour Sabbatarianism in our corner of the world, where folk seemed to be frightened of enjoying themselves on a Sunday in case God took offence.
Even in my childhood, Sunday was the day when nothing happened except church and the odd visit to a relative, and I wasn’t allowed out to play – not even to kick a football in the back yard. But it was all show because in the privacy of our home we read the Sunday papers and got to watch TV like everyone else. It wasn’t like God was especially on the agenda. Boredom was on the agenda.
So with that kind of cultural baggage, small wonder the word Sabbath has such negative associations. But let me try to re-enchant you this morning!
The best definition of Sabbath I’ve heard is that it’s the day when your work’s done, even when it isn’t.
There is always more to do. You could fill every moment of every day with more profitable work that could be done. The only person who can police that is you. So police it. Cordon off one day in the week when you remember to be a human being rather than a human doing. When you get back in touch with the deep and important truths that you are not indispensible, that life does not revolve around consumption, and nor are you a machine that can keep running indefinitely without a break.
You need a Sabbath. They’re good for you. As Jesus reminds us, they were made for us, not us for them.
Note, please, that I’m talking about taking a Sabbath, not observing THE Sabbath. I believe that what God was hallowing was the principle of a Sabbath’s rest, not one particular 24 hour period in the week. If you wish to get shirty with me on that one, remember that if we’re going to defend the holiness of a particular 24 hour period, it’s actually Friday evening ‘til Saturday evening we should be defending, rather than Sunday, because that was the Jewish Sabbath!
And I love that the Jewish Sabbath, on Friday evening, begins with food and then sleep, and not just because they’re two things of which I am particularly fond! Practically the first act on the Sabbath, for Jews at least, is to turn in for the night and leave it all in God’s hands. Can we do that, for 24 hours? Or will the world fall apart if we don’t run it?
Now I know there are tasks some of you need to do every day – and there’s no escaping them. But I bet you could build some rest in around those tasks if you tried.
We function better with rest, we feel more alive with rest. We go back to our work with more reserves when we’re rested.
It’s like when you’re hiking and you’re tired. If you allow yourself to stop for half an hour, to put down the big heavy rucksack for a while and have some lunch and splash your face in the water from the burn. When you come to pick up the load again, it feels much more manageable.
So for one day in the week, God says ‘don’t work’. Simplify. Slow down. Do less. Be more. Leave your email unopened. Step away from the phone. Breathe the fresh air. Go and do something that will enlarge your heart and your soul and your mind. And be mindful of God in all of it – that is your worship. Thank him for blessing you with the Sabbath, and your finding the will to keep it.
I know that sounds impossible for many of you. And it sounded impossible to me too. But sometimes little voices come into our lives that make us realise it’s actually the way we are living that’s impossible.
That kind of voice came to Eugene Peterson when he was working as a pastor in a new church, and it came through the person of his five-year old daughter. She asked him if he could read her a story and he said he couldn’t because he had another church meeting to go to.
“Daddy” she said. “This is the thirty eighth night in a row that you have not been home”. And she was right.
He felt so convicted by that that he went to the Session Meeting fully intending to resign, but his people had the good sense to burrow down into what was going on and put some practical solutions on the table that would allow him to be about the work he felt called to. And out of that, came his practice of Sabbath keeping.
I read that story about 5 years ago, and since then my colleague Matt Canlis and I have been trying to keep a Sabbath and we hold each other to account for it. I know Monday’s usually a minister’s day off, but that wasn’t working, so where possible I take a Friday.
And on a Friday, depending on the weather, I get in about the vegetable patch, because that doesn’t feel like work to me, or I write, or I go for a walk or a cycle, or I do some reading. Sometimes I take Rhona or one of the kids out for lunch. I don’t open the email, I screen my calls and only answer the important ones.
I used to think it was impossible to have a day like that. Now I think it would be impossible to get through the week without a day like that. I love my Fridays – my Sabbaths – because in saying ‘no’ to all the other things that I might be doing, I’m saying ‘yes’ to God, to my family and to myself.
Your Sabbath will look different – I’m aware I have a freedom in organising my time and work that few others have. But the important thing, whatever your circumstances, is that you choose to try.
One of the lovely things about the fourth commandment is that other people get the blessing of your keeping Sabbath. According to Exodus 20, your spouse, kids, servants, the strangers in your care, even your animals and your fields will benefit from your taking rest.
For one thing, you’ will be a better person to be around. But I wonder how theUK
It’s a profoundly counter cultural choice to keep Sabbath, and not an easy one.
I wonder what kind of voice would make you seriously think about it?
The voice of a five-year old you haven’t read to for 38 nights in a row? The voice of a husband or wife who’s becoming a stranger to you? The voice of your own body, feeling stressed and exhausted because of the burdens you’re carrying and the fact you never get time to tend it. Maybe the voice of a desire you fear will never be fulfilled because you have no time to pursue it.
I hope you’re not too busy to hear those voices when they speak, because they usually whisper rather than shout. And I hope you can hear the voice of God through them, reminding you that one of the blessings of being a child of God is that our Father positively encourages us, for the best possible reasons, to learn to say ‘NO’.
Now what does it say about us that that commandment often reaches our ears not as a gift, but as a bind?
God is saying “I insist that you rest! I insist that for this one day in the week you don’t work!” but somehow that doesn’t reach us as good news.
In part, I guess, that’s the legacy of dour Sabbatarianism in our corner of the world, where folk seemed to be frightened of enjoying themselves on a Sunday in case God took offence.
Even in my childhood, Sunday was the day when nothing happened except church and the odd visit to a relative, and I wasn’t allowed out to play – not even to kick a football in the back yard. But it was all show because in the privacy of our home we read the Sunday papers and got to watch TV like everyone else. It wasn’t like God was especially on the agenda. Boredom was on the agenda.
So with that kind of cultural baggage, small wonder the word Sabbath has such negative associations. But let me try to re-enchant you this morning!
The best definition of Sabbath I’ve heard is that it’s the day when your work’s done, even when it isn’t.
There is always more to do. You could fill every moment of every day with more profitable work that could be done. The only person who can police that is you. So police it. Cordon off one day in the week when you remember to be a human being rather than a human doing. When you get back in touch with the deep and important truths that you are not indispensible, that life does not revolve around consumption, and nor are you a machine that can keep running indefinitely without a break.
You need a Sabbath. They’re good for you. As Jesus reminds us, they were made for us, not us for them.
Note, please, that I’m talking about taking a Sabbath, not observing THE Sabbath. I believe that what God was hallowing was the principle of a Sabbath’s rest, not one particular 24 hour period in the week. If you wish to get shirty with me on that one, remember that if we’re going to defend the holiness of a particular 24 hour period, it’s actually Friday evening ‘til Saturday evening we should be defending, rather than Sunday, because that was the Jewish Sabbath!
And I love that the Jewish Sabbath, on Friday evening, begins with food and then sleep, and not just because they’re two things of which I am particularly fond! Practically the first act on the Sabbath, for Jews at least, is to turn in for the night and leave it all in God’s hands. Can we do that, for 24 hours? Or will the world fall apart if we don’t run it?
Now I know there are tasks some of you need to do every day – and there’s no escaping them. But I bet you could build some rest in around those tasks if you tried.
We function better with rest, we feel more alive with rest. We go back to our work with more reserves when we’re rested.
It’s like when you’re hiking and you’re tired. If you allow yourself to stop for half an hour, to put down the big heavy rucksack for a while and have some lunch and splash your face in the water from the burn. When you come to pick up the load again, it feels much more manageable.
So for one day in the week, God says ‘don’t work’. Simplify. Slow down. Do less. Be more. Leave your email unopened. Step away from the phone. Breathe the fresh air. Go and do something that will enlarge your heart and your soul and your mind. And be mindful of God in all of it – that is your worship. Thank him for blessing you with the Sabbath, and your finding the will to keep it.
I know that sounds impossible for many of you. And it sounded impossible to me too. But sometimes little voices come into our lives that make us realise it’s actually the way we are living that’s impossible.
That kind of voice came to Eugene Peterson when he was working as a pastor in a new church, and it came through the person of his five-year old daughter. She asked him if he could read her a story and he said he couldn’t because he had another church meeting to go to.
“Daddy” she said. “This is the thirty eighth night in a row that you have not been home”. And she was right.
He felt so convicted by that that he went to the Session Meeting fully intending to resign, but his people had the good sense to burrow down into what was going on and put some practical solutions on the table that would allow him to be about the work he felt called to. And out of that, came his practice of Sabbath keeping.
I read that story about 5 years ago, and since then my colleague Matt Canlis and I have been trying to keep a Sabbath and we hold each other to account for it. I know Monday’s usually a minister’s day off, but that wasn’t working, so where possible I take a Friday.
And on a Friday, depending on the weather, I get in about the vegetable patch, because that doesn’t feel like work to me, or I write, or I go for a walk or a cycle, or I do some reading. Sometimes I take Rhona or one of the kids out for lunch. I don’t open the email, I screen my calls and only answer the important ones.
I used to think it was impossible to have a day like that. Now I think it would be impossible to get through the week without a day like that. I love my Fridays – my Sabbaths – because in saying ‘no’ to all the other things that I might be doing, I’m saying ‘yes’ to God, to my family and to myself.
Your Sabbath will look different – I’m aware I have a freedom in organising my time and work that few others have. But the important thing, whatever your circumstances, is that you choose to try.
One of the lovely things about the fourth commandment is that other people get the blessing of your keeping Sabbath. According to Exodus 20, your spouse, kids, servants, the strangers in your care, even your animals and your fields will benefit from your taking rest.
For one thing, you’ will be a better person to be around. But I wonder how the
It’s a profoundly counter cultural choice to keep Sabbath, and not an easy one.
I wonder what kind of voice would make you seriously think about it?
The voice of a five-year old you haven’t read to for 38 nights in a row? The voice of a husband or wife who’s becoming a stranger to you? The voice of your own body, feeling stressed and exhausted because of the burdens you’re carrying and the fact you never get time to tend it. Maybe the voice of a desire you fear will never be fulfilled because you have no time to pursue it.
I hope you’re not too busy to hear those voices when they speak, because they usually whisper rather than shout. And I hope you can hear the voice of God through them, reminding you that one of the blessings of being a child of God is that our Father positively encourages us, for the best possible reasons, to learn to say ‘NO’.
Sunday 11 March 2012
The Practice of your Passion - Vocation
Back in the day, there were three folk who tended to be held in particular esteem within their communities.
The teacher, the doctor and the minister.
These were men – and in those days they mostly were men – who were understood to have a vocation. A calling to a particular role in society which involved academic rigour, a degree of selflessness, and a commitment to place and people which blurred the boundaries between the professional and the personal. They weren’t just doing a job, they had chosen a way of life.
And that’s still the case in some places inScotland
And even on the mainland, where things have moved on a little, the word still has currency. We think of people with a vocation as those whose jobs tend to be particularly demanding in terms of time and dedication, and who aren’t just in it for the money. There’s some other motivation there that plays a big part in their work life.
I’d argue that farming’s a vocation. It’s a way of life. You’re always at your work, and your work’s never done. You don’t clock in and clock out, and you’re constantly on call especially in the springtime when you’re calving or lambing. And you have this deep connection with place and with people that goes back, in many cases, for generations.
Motherhood’s a vocation, although it’s a terribly undervalued one in a world where we seem to need either one good wage or two average ones to get by with some degree of comfort.
Mothers, you too, are always at your work. You’re constantly on call. Your labours are labours of love and most of the time you set about them with a remarkable selflessness.
We could go on. But for all that the definition has widened over the years to include other kinds of work and workers, we still have this idea of vocation. A demanding call that comes to some people with particular roles to play in society, often at considerable cost.
I remember being at a wedding a while back, not long after I’d decided to ditch Chemistry and train to be a minister. And we were sitting opposite a nice young couple and got into conversation with them, and the guy was really interested to hear my story. How had I decided to change direction? What were the signs that this was the right way to go?
And all the time I was chatting to him and enthusing about finally finding what I really wanted to do, I could see his girlfriend glowering at me. And it turned out, half an hour into the conversation, that these were live issues for him because he was a Catholic and he was beginning to wonder if he had a call to the priesthood!
Like I said – vocation often comes at a cost.
So that’s our entry-level understanding of the word. A job that in many ways becomes your life.
But I want us to get away from the idea of vocation as work for a moment, because there are other aspects to that word that are worth exploring.
I don’t know if any of you caught the Stargazing programmes that were on BBC2 a month or so ago, but they reminded me of a guy I read about a while back called Bob Evans.
Bob’s a retired Methodist minister inAustralia
A supernova is a star that’s reached the end of its lifespan, and when it does it explodes with the force of a trillion nuclear bombs. If you’re standing within 500 light years of a supernova when it explodes, you’re toast.
But seen from the other side of the galaxy, these enormous explosions generate a mere flicker in a night sky already laden with stars, and the flicker may only last a few weeks.
The author Bill Bryson puts it this way – imagine a standard dining room table covered in a black tablecloth and throwing a handful of salt across it. The scattered grains can be thought of as a galaxy.
Now imagine 1500 more tables like the first one, each with a random array of salt across it. Now add one grain of salt to any table and let Bob Evans walk among them. In time he’ll spot it. That new grain of salt is a supernova.
Up until 1980, when Bob started his search with a simple ten-inch telescope and no fancy computer technology – there had only been 60 supernovae found in the whole of astronomical history. After 30-odd years of looking, Bob’s identified a further 42 by himself.
He’s just made for this particular task.
And that, I think, is another way of looking at the question of vocation. What were you made for? What do you love to do?
What do you feel you must do? No-one else can answer that question for you – you have to work it out for yourself.
I’ve always loved these words of Rainer Maria Rilke, the German poet, penned to a young colleague starting out in his writing career and plagued with doubt. Rilke writes
"You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart.... This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer."
What must I do?
Given the person God has made me, what is it that I have to be about?
Have you ever asked that question of yourself, or have you let other people, or mere circumstance, answer it for you?
This isn’t to do with work, though it may be. It’s about what you – the person you are – love to do, whether it’s building, creating, crafting, organising, nurturing, caring, growing, mending. discovering. Whatever it is you can lose yourself in for hours without realising it.
Athletes and artists of different sorts talk about an experience called ‘flow’ when you find yourself doing something that seems to come naturally, and maybe even in a few blessed moments – effortlessly.
It’s in those moments when we feel most alive and most like ourselves. And there are good reasons for that.
The apostle Paul often uses the metaphor of a body to describe the church. We are all different, he says. Some are ears, some are eyes, some are hands, some are feet.
If you’re an eye, you were made for seeing, not walking. If you’re a foot, you’re designed to go places, not feed the brain with sound waves. We feel most at home when we’re doing that for which we were created. That’s why it’s so important for all of us to find out what that might be.
Some of us, by the grace of God, end up in careers that match our vocation. but that’s not essential. Square pegs can fit in round holes. What matters more is that you’re able to pursue your vocation at other times, if your work doesn’t encourage it. But you first have to find out what your vocation is.
God’s made you – but what has he made you for? What is your role in blessing the body of the church, and the world beyond? Dig down, says Rilke. That’s the only way you begin to find out.
Some folk have a call to a particular kind of work that expresses their vocation; but all of us need to find out what our vocation is, because that’s where our deepest happiness lies.
But that’s still not the heart of it, at least for a Christian.
Because for a Christian, there’s a vocation that comes before all others, and it’s that that Jesus spells out in our gospel passage this morning.
“What should we do in order to do what God wants us to do?” the people say, as they gather round Jesus looking for more bread or another miracle.
In other words – what is God wanting from us? What’s he calling us to do? Feed the poor, save the planet, keep our noses clean, fight the Romans? What’s the big picture?
Jesus answer? “The work God’s given you to do, is to believe in the one he has sent”.
And you’ve heard me say it often enough to know that ‘believe’ in that sentence isn’t about agreeing with a set of ideas about God; at least not just that. It’s about trust. The overarching work God’s given you to do, your main vocation in life before all others, is to learn to trust in the one he has sent.
Trust that the love which took him to the cross in self-surrender, is extravagantly, unconditionally yours without your earning it, working for it or even deserving it. It’s a thing we call grace. God’s inexplicable love aimed foursquare at every man and woman in the whole of creation, not because we merit it, but because he knows that kind of love is the only way to mend us.
Trust that to give your life into his hands with the kind of abandon he expects of disciples, isn’t going to mean the end of your life, but the beginning of it.
Trust that what seems like foolishness to the world – the way of Christ and the cross – is actually the wisdom of God for the salvation of the world.
Trust that there’s a place in his plan for you, in all your uniqueness, where all that you love and treasure and are enthused by, can be taken up and used by him as a sign and a blessing to the world. That vocation, set so deeply within you was put there by God, and he put it there for a purpose.
So whether it’s farming or flower arranging, teaching or caring, music or writing or painting, child-rearing or activism – whatever in life your vocation might be. Give thanks to God for it, but remember to give it back to God however you can, for his glory and for the sake of his Kingdom.
The teacher, the doctor and the minister.
These were men – and in those days they mostly were men – who were understood to have a vocation. A calling to a particular role in society which involved academic rigour, a degree of selflessness, and a commitment to place and people which blurred the boundaries between the professional and the personal. They weren’t just doing a job, they had chosen a way of life.
And that’s still the case in some places in
And even on the mainland, where things have moved on a little, the word still has currency. We think of people with a vocation as those whose jobs tend to be particularly demanding in terms of time and dedication, and who aren’t just in it for the money. There’s some other motivation there that plays a big part in their work life.
I’d argue that farming’s a vocation. It’s a way of life. You’re always at your work, and your work’s never done. You don’t clock in and clock out, and you’re constantly on call especially in the springtime when you’re calving or lambing. And you have this deep connection with place and with people that goes back, in many cases, for generations.
Motherhood’s a vocation, although it’s a terribly undervalued one in a world where we seem to need either one good wage or two average ones to get by with some degree of comfort.
Mothers, you too, are always at your work. You’re constantly on call. Your labours are labours of love and most of the time you set about them with a remarkable selflessness.
We could go on. But for all that the definition has widened over the years to include other kinds of work and workers, we still have this idea of vocation. A demanding call that comes to some people with particular roles to play in society, often at considerable cost.
I remember being at a wedding a while back, not long after I’d decided to ditch Chemistry and train to be a minister. And we were sitting opposite a nice young couple and got into conversation with them, and the guy was really interested to hear my story. How had I decided to change direction? What were the signs that this was the right way to go?
And all the time I was chatting to him and enthusing about finally finding what I really wanted to do, I could see his girlfriend glowering at me. And it turned out, half an hour into the conversation, that these were live issues for him because he was a Catholic and he was beginning to wonder if he had a call to the priesthood!
Like I said – vocation often comes at a cost.
So that’s our entry-level understanding of the word. A job that in many ways becomes your life.
But I want us to get away from the idea of vocation as work for a moment, because there are other aspects to that word that are worth exploring.
I don’t know if any of you caught the Stargazing programmes that were on BBC2 a month or so ago, but they reminded me of a guy I read about a while back called Bob Evans.
Bob’s a retired Methodist minister in
A supernova is a star that’s reached the end of its lifespan, and when it does it explodes with the force of a trillion nuclear bombs. If you’re standing within 500 light years of a supernova when it explodes, you’re toast.
But seen from the other side of the galaxy, these enormous explosions generate a mere flicker in a night sky already laden with stars, and the flicker may only last a few weeks.
The author Bill Bryson puts it this way – imagine a standard dining room table covered in a black tablecloth and throwing a handful of salt across it. The scattered grains can be thought of as a galaxy.
Now imagine 1500 more tables like the first one, each with a random array of salt across it. Now add one grain of salt to any table and let Bob Evans walk among them. In time he’ll spot it. That new grain of salt is a supernova.
Up until 1980, when Bob started his search with a simple ten-inch telescope and no fancy computer technology – there had only been 60 supernovae found in the whole of astronomical history. After 30-odd years of looking, Bob’s identified a further 42 by himself.
He’s just made for this particular task.
And that, I think, is another way of looking at the question of vocation. What were you made for? What do you love to do?
What do you feel you must do? No-one else can answer that question for you – you have to work it out for yourself.
I’ve always loved these words of Rainer Maria Rilke, the German poet, penned to a young colleague starting out in his writing career and plagued with doubt. Rilke writes
"You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart.... This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer."
What must I do?
Given the person God has made me, what is it that I have to be about?
Have you ever asked that question of yourself, or have you let other people, or mere circumstance, answer it for you?
This isn’t to do with work, though it may be. It’s about what you – the person you are – love to do, whether it’s building, creating, crafting, organising, nurturing, caring, growing, mending. discovering. Whatever it is you can lose yourself in for hours without realising it.
Athletes and artists of different sorts talk about an experience called ‘flow’ when you find yourself doing something that seems to come naturally, and maybe even in a few blessed moments – effortlessly.
It’s in those moments when we feel most alive and most like ourselves. And there are good reasons for that.
The apostle Paul often uses the metaphor of a body to describe the church. We are all different, he says. Some are ears, some are eyes, some are hands, some are feet.
If you’re an eye, you were made for seeing, not walking. If you’re a foot, you’re designed to go places, not feed the brain with sound waves. We feel most at home when we’re doing that for which we were created. That’s why it’s so important for all of us to find out what that might be.
Some of us, by the grace of God, end up in careers that match our vocation. but that’s not essential. Square pegs can fit in round holes. What matters more is that you’re able to pursue your vocation at other times, if your work doesn’t encourage it. But you first have to find out what your vocation is.
God’s made you – but what has he made you for? What is your role in blessing the body of the church, and the world beyond? Dig down, says Rilke. That’s the only way you begin to find out.
Some folk have a call to a particular kind of work that expresses their vocation; but all of us need to find out what our vocation is, because that’s where our deepest happiness lies.
But that’s still not the heart of it, at least for a Christian.
Because for a Christian, there’s a vocation that comes before all others, and it’s that that Jesus spells out in our gospel passage this morning.
“What should we do in order to do what God wants us to do?” the people say, as they gather round Jesus looking for more bread or another miracle.
In other words – what is God wanting from us? What’s he calling us to do? Feed the poor, save the planet, keep our noses clean, fight the Romans? What’s the big picture?
Jesus answer? “The work God’s given you to do, is to believe in the one he has sent”.
And you’ve heard me say it often enough to know that ‘believe’ in that sentence isn’t about agreeing with a set of ideas about God; at least not just that. It’s about trust. The overarching work God’s given you to do, your main vocation in life before all others, is to learn to trust in the one he has sent.
Trust that the love which took him to the cross in self-surrender, is extravagantly, unconditionally yours without your earning it, working for it or even deserving it. It’s a thing we call grace. God’s inexplicable love aimed foursquare at every man and woman in the whole of creation, not because we merit it, but because he knows that kind of love is the only way to mend us.
Trust that to give your life into his hands with the kind of abandon he expects of disciples, isn’t going to mean the end of your life, but the beginning of it.
Trust that what seems like foolishness to the world – the way of Christ and the cross – is actually the wisdom of God for the salvation of the world.
Trust that there’s a place in his plan for you, in all your uniqueness, where all that you love and treasure and are enthused by, can be taken up and used by him as a sign and a blessing to the world. That vocation, set so deeply within you was put there by God, and he put it there for a purpose.
So whether it’s farming or flower arranging, teaching or caring, music or writing or painting, child-rearing or activism – whatever in life your vocation might be. Give thanks to God for it, but remember to give it back to God however you can, for his glory and for the sake of his Kingdom.
Thursday 8 March 2012
The Practice of the Presence of God - Matt 6:5-8, 1 Thess 5:12-18
It took me a long time to get going with the sermon this week – longer than usual, that is.
In the book we’ve been dipping into over the past couple of months,. Barbara Taylor invites us to reflect on what she calls the Practice of Being Present to God, which is really a way of talking about prayer.
And I’ve spoken about prayer with you often on Sundays. I scanned back over the years and I’ve tackled the subject in lots of ways at Belhelvie. It was one of the first things I preached about when I came here nearly seven years ago. Prayer as asking, prayer as listening, prayer as companionship with God. Silent prayer, praying with the Bible, intercessory prayer, the problem of unanswered prayer. We’ve pretty much covered it all.
Anything I need to say about prayer, I’ve already said twice over, so here endeth the sermon. Amen. We will now take in your offerings!
I did think about changing tack, but I felt guilty about that. Prayer is so central to the Christian life, how could I possibly say there’s nothing more to say?
And then I found myself listening to that sentence I’ve just said. Prayer is so central to the Christian life.
Is it really? I know it should be. We all know it should be; but is it?
Is it central to yours? Is it central to mine?
Let me be honest here, without laying on the guilt because that’s not what this morning is about.
I’m pretty sure that most of us manage to get through our days just fine without much in the way of prayer. The sky doesn’t fall in, our lives don’t collapse, we don’t descend into anarchy. We continue to be nice people and model citizens, at least most of the time. On the surface, it looks like we can get by just fine without praying.
The scientists tell us we can manage without food for weeks, but we can’t last more than a couple of days without water. Whatever prayer is, it’s not of that order. We know from experience that we can do without prayer for as long as we like.
Sure, there are times when it feels more urgent – when some crisis comes along and we’re completely out of our depth. And so we pray and we plead with God for a resolution. But once the crisis has passed, and we’re back on a more even keel, the desire to pray quickly dissipates.
Take a straw poll in any church and ask if prayer should be central to a Christian’s life and 99 out of 100 respondents will say a hearty ‘yes’. Ask them how central it is to their lives, or suggest they pitch up to the midweek prayer meeting, and the majority will start studying their shoes.
Pushing guilt to the side, that’s where we need to begin today. We agree that prayer should be central to a Christian life; but in practice few of us are living as though it were.
Clergy are no exception to this, by the way – we’re the chief of sinners. We are often so busy talking about God, writing about God, arguing for God, working for God that we overlook the centrality of just being with God; which is what prayer is all about.
In our haste to be useful, and to be seen to be useful, we become – in Richard Lischer’s memorable phrase – “a quivering mass of availability”. Saying yes to everyone and everything, except the God who called us to this work in the first place.
So there’s the dichotomy. Prayer is central – we all agree. But much of the time we don’t live as though that were true.
I wonder why? Why do we find this so hard?
Part of it’s busyness, I guess. If you’re a young mum with three or four kids, a house to manage and maybe even a job to hold down, time’s at a premium. How can you find twenty quiet minutes to pray when you can’t even get to the bathroom on your own?
If you’re up with the larks to get to your work or out in the fields as the sun rises and not home ‘til the sun sets, a big slice of your time’s already accounted for. By the time you’re back home you just want to shut down for a while before it all kicks off again tomorrow.
Prayer can feel like having to make more effort, and you’ve already put enough effort into your day.
Maybe part of it is that we’re not sure what kind of reception we’d get if we tried to pray. Who is this God ? How does he think of us? If we’re worried he’s going to come down on us like a ton of bricks, that’s hardly going to act as an incentive.
And how do you pray anyway? How do you carry on a conversation with someone you can’t see and can barely sense? Is there a right language? Are there things you’re supposed to say? Ways you’re supposed to feel?
We learn our native tongue from the time we’re in our mother’s arms. But where do we learn how to pray, if we want to get beyond the set prayers that we were taught as children?
In church? Well, maybe, though I often wonder if you’d be better served if all of us threw away the prayers we craft for a Sunday morning and instead stumbled our way through whatever words come to mind and heart in that very moment. If nothing else, that would do away with the notion that all prayer to God has to be carefully crafted prose. It doesn’t.
But the last, and probably the biggest hindrance to prayer is the question everyone wants to ask- does prayer work? Does it change things?
And that’s a natural question to ask, but it betrays an inadequate view of what prayer is.
We ask if prayer ‘works’ as though it were just a matter of cause and effect. Say the right words, and you’ll get what you want.
Put the right coins in and the machine will deliver.
Do any of us think that way about our husbands or wives, or kids, or friends? Do we forget that even the simplest request we make of them reaches their ears through the vast network of associations that make up our relationship? Our loves, our dislikes, our history, our experience, our commitments, our desires, our obligations?
I ask my wife to lend me a tenner – no problem. I ask a stranger on Union Street and I get raised eyebrows.
And this is the heart of things.
Prayer, rightly understood, isn’t a duty, any more than having a friend or a spouse is a duty. Prayer is how we pursue and develop our own relationship with God, in all its marvellous uniqueness.
Sure, at times, that will mean asking for things. But that asking doesn’t happen in a void. It happens in the vast network of associations that make up our relationship with God. We’re dealing with a person, not a slot machine. The better we know the person, the more likely we are to understand how they think and how they answer us.
So how do we get to know God better?
Simple – by keeping company with him as and when we can. And today’s texts give us some good advice about how to do just that.
Jesus’ words this morning come to us in the context of a long and daring speech where he’s turning a lot of the religious conventions of his day on their heads.
“You have heard that it was said…” he begins, “But now I tell you”…..
Time and time again.
And he takes this tack with prayer. Don’t pray for show, he says. Don’t be like the Pharisees, who do it all in public to be seen and make a name for themselves.
No. When you pray – go to your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father. You don’t need to use lots of fancy words. He already knows what you need. Just take the time to be with him and ask him for what you need.
And that’s the basis for a prayer life. Make the time, find a place, say what’s on your heart in as many words as you need. If there’s nothing in your heart, bring that to God in prayer. Remember to spend a little time listening as well as talking. What does God want you to take with you into the day?
At its simplest that’s all there is to it.
You alone know how feasible that is for you, given the realities of your day, but what’s being asked here needn’t take more than 10 or 15 minutes. If you can get into a rhythm and find a regular place to sit where you feel at ease and aren’t distracted, so much the better.
Now that’s the kind of prayer practice I was inducted into as a young Christian, and those times really helped.
But what I wasn’t taught was the other way of praying that Paul speaks about in 1st Thessalonians. “Pray at all times” he says. Pray continually. What’s he on about?
Well some in the Christian tradtion have taken that very literally. There’s an ancient form of prayer called hesychasm where folk repeat a short prayer of a few lines thousands and thousands of times, building up the repetitions until the words themselves enter their consciousness and become as much a part of them as their breathing or their hearbeat. The folk who’ve gone down this line of praying speak of it as a great blessing.
But I’m not sure how practical that is for most of us, or even if that’s what Paul had in mind.
Instead, I think he’s urging us to find ways to use the ordinary stuff of our day as occasions for prayer.
Brother Lawrence, the 17th century monk who wrote the classic work “The Practice of the Presence of God” put it this way:
“A little lifting of the heart suffices; a little remembrance of God, or one act of inward worship are prayers which, however short, are nevertheless acceptable to God”.
Our Celtic forebears knew this too – they found ways to faith even the most mundane practices in life – like this one for lighting the morning fire:
I will kindle my fire this morning
In the presence of the holy angels of heaven
Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
But the Holy Son of God to shield me.
God, kindle Thou in my heart within
A flame of love to my neighbor,
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all
There are prayers for the farmer going out to sow the seeds, the weaver at the loom, the fisherman, and the crofter. Even the milkmaid recognizes and claims the sacredness of her work.
Bless, O God, my little cow,
Bless, O god, my desire;
Bless thou my partnership
And the handling of my hand
The homemaker gets a look in too.
I make this bed
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
In the name of the night we were conceived,
In the name of the night we were born,
In the name of the day we shall die,
In the name of each night, each day,
Each angel that is in the heavens.
And I quote these examples only to encourage you to reflect on your own life and how you could faith your own practices – making them occasions to turn to God in prayer.
Could you pray before you step into the classroom or the byre? As you sit in traffic? Before you lift the phone, or put on a washing, or change a nappy, or plant the flowers?
“A little lifting of the heart suffices” says brother Lawrence. That’s enough. A way of staying in tune with God that even the busiest of us can learn to do.
This morning, as I’ve said, is not about guilt. It’s about honesty. Most of us, at least to some degree, want to pray or feel we ought to pray. Most of us struggle to do so for a host of reasons.
The most important thing to remember is that prayer is personal – it’s between you and God. You have to pray as you can, not as you can’t. If the sitting still in a room thing doesn’t work for you just now, don’t feel guilty and don’t give up. Find another way that does work. The main thing is not how you pray – it’s that you pray.
Mike Yaconelli is one of my heroes purely for the common-sense honesty of his book Messy Spirituality. In one of the early chapters he talks about going to visit a woman who was known as a person of real depth when it came to prayer. He writes:
“This woman had spent most of her life resisting the noise and activity of the world to seek God in silence and solitude. She had spent literally hundreds of weeks in silent retreat. This was a woman saturated with her faith. You could almost smell God when she came into the room.
We were talking about prayer. “It’s embarrassing to be sitting with you, “ I blurted out. “You spend days, weeks, even months in prayer. I’m lucky if I spend ten minutes in prayer. Compared to you, I’m not very spiritual I’m afraid”.
Her eyes caught mine, flashing with anger, and she fired back – “Oh Mike – knock it off. First of all, you don’t spend every day with me. You don’t know me at all. You are comparing what you know about yourself to what you don’t know about me. Secondly, I battle depression daily and it has won during several periods of my life. I never told you about it. I don’t have a family – I like to be alone and silent. Trust me – I am no more spiritual than you are”.
Then she said “you think about God all the time, right?”
“Well, sort of”, I said.
“Thinking about God is being with God. Being with God is spirituality. Thinking about God is praying. So shut up with this guilt stuff! You’ve been praying most of your life. You are a spiritual person!”
I was shocked. I had no idea that spirituality came in unlimited shapes and sizes.
(What I learned from her that day is that) spirituality looks like whatever you and I look like when we’re thinking about Jesus. when we’re trying to find Jesus, when we’re trying to figure out what real Christianity looks like in the real world.
That, my friends, is a liberating insight. You don’t have to feel intimidated by anyone else in prayer, you don’t have to be anyone else in prayer. You don’t have to feel guilty.
W hat you have to do is find a way of prayerfully keeping company with God that works for you, right where you are.
Set your heart, mind and soul to that, and I know that God will bless you.
We close with a prayer from the Celtic Tradition.
Even though the day be laden
and my tasks dreary
and my strength small,
a song keeps singing
in my heart.
For I know that I am Thine.
I am part of Thee.
Thou art kin to me,
and all my times
are in Thy hand.
In the book we’ve been dipping into over the past couple of months,. Barbara Taylor invites us to reflect on what she calls the Practice of Being Present to God, which is really a way of talking about prayer.
And I’ve spoken about prayer with you often on Sundays. I scanned back over the years and I’ve tackled the subject in lots of ways at Belhelvie. It was one of the first things I preached about when I came here nearly seven years ago. Prayer as asking, prayer as listening, prayer as companionship with God. Silent prayer, praying with the Bible, intercessory prayer, the problem of unanswered prayer. We’ve pretty much covered it all.
Anything I need to say about prayer, I’ve already said twice over, so here endeth the sermon. Amen. We will now take in your offerings!
I did think about changing tack, but I felt guilty about that. Prayer is so central to the Christian life, how could I possibly say there’s nothing more to say?
And then I found myself listening to that sentence I’ve just said. Prayer is so central to the Christian life.
Is it really? I know it should be. We all know it should be; but is it?
Is it central to yours? Is it central to mine?
Let me be honest here, without laying on the guilt because that’s not what this morning is about.
I’m pretty sure that most of us manage to get through our days just fine without much in the way of prayer. The sky doesn’t fall in, our lives don’t collapse, we don’t descend into anarchy. We continue to be nice people and model citizens, at least most of the time. On the surface, it looks like we can get by just fine without praying.
The scientists tell us we can manage without food for weeks, but we can’t last more than a couple of days without water. Whatever prayer is, it’s not of that order. We know from experience that we can do without prayer for as long as we like.
Sure, there are times when it feels more urgent – when some crisis comes along and we’re completely out of our depth. And so we pray and we plead with God for a resolution. But once the crisis has passed, and we’re back on a more even keel, the desire to pray quickly dissipates.
Take a straw poll in any church and ask if prayer should be central to a Christian’s life and 99 out of 100 respondents will say a hearty ‘yes’. Ask them how central it is to their lives, or suggest they pitch up to the midweek prayer meeting, and the majority will start studying their shoes.
Pushing guilt to the side, that’s where we need to begin today. We agree that prayer should be central to a Christian life; but in practice few of us are living as though it were.
Clergy are no exception to this, by the way – we’re the chief of sinners. We are often so busy talking about God, writing about God, arguing for God, working for God that we overlook the centrality of just being with God; which is what prayer is all about.
In our haste to be useful, and to be seen to be useful, we become – in Richard Lischer’s memorable phrase – “a quivering mass of availability”. Saying yes to everyone and everything, except the God who called us to this work in the first place.
So there’s the dichotomy. Prayer is central – we all agree. But much of the time we don’t live as though that were true.
I wonder why? Why do we find this so hard?
Part of it’s busyness, I guess. If you’re a young mum with three or four kids, a house to manage and maybe even a job to hold down, time’s at a premium. How can you find twenty quiet minutes to pray when you can’t even get to the bathroom on your own?
If you’re up with the larks to get to your work or out in the fields as the sun rises and not home ‘til the sun sets, a big slice of your time’s already accounted for. By the time you’re back home you just want to shut down for a while before it all kicks off again tomorrow.
Prayer can feel like having to make more effort, and you’ve already put enough effort into your day.
Maybe part of it is that we’re not sure what kind of reception we’d get if we tried to pray. Who is this God ? How does he think of us? If we’re worried he’s going to come down on us like a ton of bricks, that’s hardly going to act as an incentive.
And how do you pray anyway? How do you carry on a conversation with someone you can’t see and can barely sense? Is there a right language? Are there things you’re supposed to say? Ways you’re supposed to feel?
We learn our native tongue from the time we’re in our mother’s arms. But where do we learn how to pray, if we want to get beyond the set prayers that we were taught as children?
In church? Well, maybe, though I often wonder if you’d be better served if all of us threw away the prayers we craft for a Sunday morning and instead stumbled our way through whatever words come to mind and heart in that very moment. If nothing else, that would do away with the notion that all prayer to God has to be carefully crafted prose. It doesn’t.
But the last, and probably the biggest hindrance to prayer is the question everyone wants to ask- does prayer work? Does it change things?
And that’s a natural question to ask, but it betrays an inadequate view of what prayer is.
We ask if prayer ‘works’ as though it were just a matter of cause and effect. Say the right words, and you’ll get what you want.
Put the right coins in and the machine will deliver.
Do any of us think that way about our husbands or wives, or kids, or friends? Do we forget that even the simplest request we make of them reaches their ears through the vast network of associations that make up our relationship? Our loves, our dislikes, our history, our experience, our commitments, our desires, our obligations?
I ask my wife to lend me a tenner – no problem. I ask a stranger on Union Street and I get raised eyebrows.
And this is the heart of things.
Prayer, rightly understood, isn’t a duty, any more than having a friend or a spouse is a duty. Prayer is how we pursue and develop our own relationship with God, in all its marvellous uniqueness.
Sure, at times, that will mean asking for things. But that asking doesn’t happen in a void. It happens in the vast network of associations that make up our relationship with God. We’re dealing with a person, not a slot machine. The better we know the person, the more likely we are to understand how they think and how they answer us.
So how do we get to know God better?
Simple – by keeping company with him as and when we can. And today’s texts give us some good advice about how to do just that.
Jesus’ words this morning come to us in the context of a long and daring speech where he’s turning a lot of the religious conventions of his day on their heads.
“You have heard that it was said…” he begins, “But now I tell you”…..
Time and time again.
And he takes this tack with prayer. Don’t pray for show, he says. Don’t be like the Pharisees, who do it all in public to be seen and make a name for themselves.
No. When you pray – go to your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father. You don’t need to use lots of fancy words. He already knows what you need. Just take the time to be with him and ask him for what you need.
And that’s the basis for a prayer life. Make the time, find a place, say what’s on your heart in as many words as you need. If there’s nothing in your heart, bring that to God in prayer. Remember to spend a little time listening as well as talking. What does God want you to take with you into the day?
At its simplest that’s all there is to it.
You alone know how feasible that is for you, given the realities of your day, but what’s being asked here needn’t take more than 10 or 15 minutes. If you can get into a rhythm and find a regular place to sit where you feel at ease and aren’t distracted, so much the better.
Now that’s the kind of prayer practice I was inducted into as a young Christian, and those times really helped.
But what I wasn’t taught was the other way of praying that Paul speaks about in 1st Thessalonians. “Pray at all times” he says. Pray continually. What’s he on about?
Well some in the Christian tradtion have taken that very literally. There’s an ancient form of prayer called hesychasm where folk repeat a short prayer of a few lines thousands and thousands of times, building up the repetitions until the words themselves enter their consciousness and become as much a part of them as their breathing or their hearbeat. The folk who’ve gone down this line of praying speak of it as a great blessing.
But I’m not sure how practical that is for most of us, or even if that’s what Paul had in mind.
Instead, I think he’s urging us to find ways to use the ordinary stuff of our day as occasions for prayer.
Brother Lawrence, the 17th century monk who wrote the classic work “The Practice of the Presence of God” put it this way:
“A little lifting of the heart suffices; a little remembrance of God, or one act of inward worship are prayers which, however short, are nevertheless acceptable to God”.
Our Celtic forebears knew this too – they found ways to faith even the most mundane practices in life – like this one for lighting the morning fire:
I will kindle my fire this morning
In the presence of the holy angels of heaven
Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
But the Holy Son of God to shield me.
God, kindle Thou in my heart within
A flame of love to my neighbor,
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all
There are prayers for the farmer going out to sow the seeds, the weaver at the loom, the fisherman, and the crofter. Even the milkmaid recognizes and claims the sacredness of her work.
Bless, O God, my little cow,
Bless, O god, my desire;
Bless thou my partnership
And the handling of my hand
The homemaker gets a look in too.
I make this bed
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
In the name of the night we were conceived,
In the name of the night we were born,
In the name of the day we shall die,
In the name of each night, each day,
Each angel that is in the heavens.
And I quote these examples only to encourage you to reflect on your own life and how you could faith your own practices – making them occasions to turn to God in prayer.
Could you pray before you step into the classroom or the byre? As you sit in traffic? Before you lift the phone, or put on a washing, or change a nappy, or plant the flowers?
“A little lifting of the heart suffices” says brother Lawrence. That’s enough. A way of staying in tune with God that even the busiest of us can learn to do.
This morning, as I’ve said, is not about guilt. It’s about honesty. Most of us, at least to some degree, want to pray or feel we ought to pray. Most of us struggle to do so for a host of reasons.
The most important thing to remember is that prayer is personal – it’s between you and God. You have to pray as you can, not as you can’t. If the sitting still in a room thing doesn’t work for you just now, don’t feel guilty and don’t give up. Find another way that does work. The main thing is not how you pray – it’s that you pray.
Mike Yaconelli is one of my heroes purely for the common-sense honesty of his book Messy Spirituality. In one of the early chapters he talks about going to visit a woman who was known as a person of real depth when it came to prayer. He writes:
“This woman had spent most of her life resisting the noise and activity of the world to seek God in silence and solitude. She had spent literally hundreds of weeks in silent retreat. This was a woman saturated with her faith. You could almost smell God when she came into the room.
We were talking about prayer. “It’s embarrassing to be sitting with you, “ I blurted out. “You spend days, weeks, even months in prayer. I’m lucky if I spend ten minutes in prayer. Compared to you, I’m not very spiritual I’m afraid”.
Her eyes caught mine, flashing with anger, and she fired back – “Oh Mike – knock it off. First of all, you don’t spend every day with me. You don’t know me at all. You are comparing what you know about yourself to what you don’t know about me. Secondly, I battle depression daily and it has won during several periods of my life. I never told you about it. I don’t have a family – I like to be alone and silent. Trust me – I am no more spiritual than you are”.
Then she said “you think about God all the time, right?”
“Well, sort of”, I said.
“Thinking about God is being with God. Being with God is spirituality. Thinking about God is praying. So shut up with this guilt stuff! You’ve been praying most of your life. You are a spiritual person!”
I was shocked. I had no idea that spirituality came in unlimited shapes and sizes.
(What I learned from her that day is that) spirituality looks like whatever you and I look like when we’re thinking about Jesus. when we’re trying to find Jesus, when we’re trying to figure out what real Christianity looks like in the real world.
That, my friends, is a liberating insight. You don’t have to feel intimidated by anyone else in prayer, you don’t have to be anyone else in prayer. You don’t have to feel guilty.
Set your heart, mind and soul to that, and I know that God will bless you.
We close with a prayer from the Celtic Tradition.
Even though the day be laden
and my tasks dreary
and my strength small,
a song keeps singing
in my heart.
For I know that I am Thine.
I am part of Thee.
Thou art kin to me,
and all my times
are in Thy hand.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)