God is in the world, not just the church. And it’s there that God is waiting to be found.
That’s where we left things last week in this new sermon series which is loosely based on a book by Barbara Brown Taylor called “An Altar In The World”.
Taylor’s central argument is that we have placed too much expectation on this hour when we’re gathered for worship, and not enough expectation that God will meet us during the rest of the week.
We remembered Jacob last Sunday, that budding Patriarch, as he lay down in a patch of red earth in the middle of nowhere and had a vision of angels and ladders that changed his life. Nothing special about the place he laid his head down, nothing at all. What made it special was the encounter he had with God there.
And it’s the same for us. Most of our days are redolent with ordinariness – the work we have to do, the mundane tasks, the people we walk past in the corridor or in the shops, the routine functions of the day. Unpromising places to start looking for God, we might think. But nothing could be further from the truth because it’s in these very places that the spark of a spiritual life can begin to fan into flames.
The good news is that we don’t need to start doing a host of different things to encounter God in our ordinary world. We can find him just fine if we learn to do the same things with a different head on.
And the first practice we need to nurture – the one that underpins all the others, I think – is the practice of paying attention to the people, the places, the things around us. That involves slowing down, and spending time. In other words, it comes at a cost. It’s called PAYING attention. after all! But it’s an investment of our time that’s well worth making.
It’s no accident, I think, that when I asked folk last week to reflect on an occasion when they felt close to God, almost invariably those encounters happened when folk were slowing down and spending time.
They fell ill and were in hospital. Suddenly the merry-go-round of life ground to a halt; all the things they thought were non-negotiables became negotiable. The world didn’t stop spinning. For once they had time on their hands. Maybe too much time. And in that state of enforced slowed-down-ness, faced with illness as an uncomfortable reminder of their own mortality - thoughts of God came to the fore.
Or they were sitting with someone who was ill, or dying. Or a woman who was giving birth. Waiting. Because these things don’t happen to order. And in the long suspended hours in which all they could do was keep company with them and hold their hands and offer them whatever little comfort they could bring, somehow they knew that God was in the waiting with them. A palpable presence in the room.
Some were working, but found themselves taking time to be grateful for the graces that lay behind their work. I am fit enough to lift this heavy basket and walk outside in the fresh air to hang up these damp clothes. I am glad I have a machine that washes them for me. I have people I love and share my life with, whose clothes I am now suspending on this line. Today is a good drying day and I know that this wonderful fresh air, and this sunshine on my face will dry these clothes, and the smell of the outdoors will linger on them when I bring them back into the house and place them in the drawers and hang them in the wardrobes.
Some spoke about work, and others encountered God when they had time to spare. It was as they stepped aside from responsibility for a while and slowed down that they met God – in the hills, by the seaside, cantering through the countryside on horseback, walking along the clifftops.
For a spell, voluntarily or involuntarily, these folk all opted out of the game for a while – the game that says life is all about doing and achieving and amassing rather than being and attending and savouring.
They spent time. They paid attention to what was going on, around them and within them.
In our culture that doesn’t come naturally.
The little book “The Papalagi” published in 1920, is a fictional account of western industrial society from the point of view of a tribe of South Sea Islanders. The “papalagi” is their name for the white man whose life and activity they just can’t understand.
The chieftan, Tui-avi, describes the papalagi in this way:
“Assume the white man would like to go out into the sun, or travel in a canoe on the river, or love his girl; he mostly spoils his pleasure by fastening onto the thought: There is no time for me to be merry…. He names a thousand things that take his time, he squats grumbling and complaining about a job that he has no joy in. But then, if he suddenly sees that he does have time, that it’s there after all, or give him another time, then he gets no pleasure from it – he’s tired from work without joy. There are papalagi who claim they have never had time.. That’s why most of them run through life like a thrown stone.”
How much have we changed in a hundred years, I wonder? Not much. I’m guessing most of us recognise ourselves as papalagi to some degree. This is the culture we’ve learned. Perhaps it’s time we unlearned it.
If our stewardship of time leaves us little room to savour the experience of living, and makes us feel that we can’t afford to spend time with God, maybe we need to review our stewardship of time. Do you really want to go through life like a thrown stone?
No-one’s going to change that for you, but it can be changed. You have to make a conscious, counter-cultural choice to slow down and to spend time.
And lest you think this is self-help psychobabble, let me underscore that this is Biblical thinking.
I’ve never been a shepherd, but I’m guessing that like every job there would be busy times and quieter times.
The Bible is silent on the question of whether or not Moses had a sheepdog, but I think it’s safe to assume that the custody of the sheep and goats was down to him and his staff.
So to leave the flocks behind for a while; to leave that vantage point where you’ve been keeping a weather eye on the horizon for wild animals, and go and explore the strange sight of a bush that burns but doesn’t burn up, is no mean thing.
And on that choice, you could argue, not just Moses life, but the life of Israel and her god-daughter Christianity, hang.
Moses paid attention, slowed down, spent time.
If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been Moses – at least, not the Moses we know and love, who squared up to Pharaoh, and parted the Red Sea, and had to get a second set of stone tablets off God because he smashed the first lot when he came down the mountain and found the Israelites behaving like a group of drunken teenagers at a house party.
It was paying attention at this particular moment, that tilted the entire balance of his life.
He could have seen the bush and said – ‘Wow – that’s interesting! I must make a point of coming back tomorrow!" But the thing is, tomorrow never comes. And who knows if the bush will still be burning 24 hours from now?
Now is the day of salvation, says Paul. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” says the Psalmist. "Don't miss it" they're saying.
And we find exactly the same thing in the teaching of Jesus:
“Consider the lilies of the field” said Jesus. “Consider the birds of the air”. Consider - that's a word that discourages us from hurrying.
And on one occasion, Jesus said to his friend: “Martha, Martha – you are busy with many things. But only one thing is necessary”.
Slow down. Spend time. Pay Attention.
Ok Paul – but pay attention to what?
To whatever patch of red earth you happen to be standing on today, I guess – with all its contrasts and contradictions and potential and disappointment.
In the weeks ahead we’ll be thinking more about that. How we encounter God right where we are, through our bodies, our labour, our pain, our vocation, our rest, through friend and stranger, through words of blessing, through the beauty and wildness of the natural world.
All I want to do today is leave you with this seed of a thought. More often than not, it’s those who pay attention who discover God.
Did you notice in the reading of Moses’ story this morning that God doesn’t speak to him until he goes over to see the bush? It’s almost as if God waits ‘til Moses has decided to pay attention before he speaks to him.
Remember what I said last week? I have a strong notion that God is canny. He responds to those who seek him out.
Don’t get distracted from the task. Don’t get fooled into believing that other things are more important than this. What could be more important than learning to live in tune with the God who made you, who’s saving you, and who holds the name of your becoming?
Don’t miss him because you’re in a hurry.
Barbara Taylor offers us this reflection as we close.
I’ve never been presented with a burning bush, but I did see a garden turn golden once. I must have been sixteen, earning summer spending money by keeping a neighbours cats while she was away. The first time I let myself into the house the fleas leapt on my legs like airborne pirhana. Brushing them off as I opened catfood and cleaned litter pans, I finally fled through the back door with the bag of trash. I could hear the fleas inside flinging themselves against the plastic, so that it sounded as if a light rain were falling inside the bag.
I couldn’t wait to be shed of it, which was why I was in a hurry. On my way to the cans, I passed a small garden area off to the left that was not visible from the house. Glancing at it, I got the whole dose of loveliness at once – the high arch of trees above, the mossy flagstones beneath, the cement birdbath, the cushiony bushes, the white wrought-iron chair – all lit by stacked planes of sunlight that turned the whole scene golden. It was like a door to another world. I had to go through it. I knew that if I did, then I would become golden too.
But first I had to ditch the bag. The fleas popped against the plastic as I hurried to the big aluminium garbage cans near the garage. Stuffing the bag into one of them, I turned back toward the garden, fervent to explore what I had only glimpsed in passing. When I got there, the light had changed. All that was left was a little overgrown sitting spot that no-one had sat in for years. The smell of cat litter drifted from the direction of the garbage cans. The garden was no longer on fire.
I had noticed, but I did not turn aside. I had a bag full of fleas to attend to. While I made that my first priority, the fire moved on in search of someone who would stop what she was doing, take off her shoes and say: “Here I Am”.
May God grant us the wisdom and the strength to slow down, spend time. and pay attention – that we might find him, flaring up in our little worlds – for our souls’ good, and the sake of his kingdom.
Amen
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