August 26, 2007
Ephesians 3:14-19
This is the final last sermon of an 8 week series this summer on Spiritual Practices. The series was the outgrowth of a sermon I preached in the spring, “The Way of the Way,” which you can find on the church website.
Marcus Borg says in The Heart of Christianity, spiritual practices are the ways we seek to “become conscious of and intentional about a deepening relationship with God”. A relationship that helps us birth and nourish the new life – as we are dying to an old identity and living into a new way of being.
The writer of Ephesians says it a little differently, but the nourishing and new identity are certainly stressed, praying that:
God may grant you to be strengthened with might
through God’s Spirit in the inner person,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that you, being rooted and grounded in love, (nourished)
may have power to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
(Living into that new way of being, filled with all the fullness of God.)
Being intentional about one’s relationship with God, being rooted and grounded in love…living into a new way of being…are not just nice theological phrases….they are the foundation of a way of being that can help us both through the pain an suffering that comes with living…but also give us tools to keep on loving in those times.
This summer I discovered in a new way the importance of spiritual practices…first of believing that no storm can shake my inmost calm…while to that Rock I’m clinging….and then achingly learning to release, let go of my mother, my 2 day old grandson….and cling to God, trusting in that deepening relationship with God that intentional spiritual practices have helped nurture.
Six years ago, as preparation for the surgery to remove a cancerous kidney, I began working with a hands-on healer. When I found out she was willing to be with me during surgery, I asked the surgery for his permission to have her there. I will never forget his answer. “Absolute, use whatever arrows are in your quiver.” I realized I had a lot of arrows in my quiver ….and they were all about this long (jack of all trades, master of none). So I intentionally began to develop and practice more. This 8 part series, was a sampling of spiritual practices. I could preach for a year on practices, and still not finish.
Did any of the spiritual practices mentioned grab you?
1. The Practice of Community - Make a call each week to members and friends of the church to see how they’re doing – the call of the community.
2. The Non-fast fast - Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Food our grandparents would recognize as food.
3. Prayer on behalf of - Wake up each morning and think and feel the things that give you joy and thanksgiving? Then send that energy out on behalf of others?
4. Examen of conscious and consciousness – go to be reviewing your day, remembering you are loved…and then where you messed up….and practice discovering the observer part of us…observe our self, our thinking ego self…instead of just living in that self.
5. Lectio Divina - sacred reading of scripture by reading, meditating, responding and contemplating. We’ll practice this when adult class starts in a couple weeks.
6 .The practice of compassion and justice – that Allan Henden so gracefully preached for me - be compassionate as God is compassionate.
7. The practice of silence - learning to be still, to be by focusing on a breath mantra - hammmm
I got a lot out of this series. I hope you did too. My challenge though as your pastor is to discover a practice or two that you most connect with. When it comes to spiritual growth, human being are like tomato plants, we need some kind of structure and support in order to grow and bear fruit. Otherwise our spirituality, if it grows at only – often gores in a haphazard, confused way. We need a little structure in order to have enough space, air and light to flourish. In spiritual terms, that structure is called a life practice. It’s a practice we have, whether we need it or not, to help us grow in our relationship with God…and to have it there when we do need it.
The Rev. Martin Luther King asked everyone who joined with him to agree to certain practices for their life:
Meditate daily on the teachings an life of Jesus.
Remember always that the nonviolent movement in
Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation, not victory.
Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love.
Pray daily to be used by God in order that all might be free.
Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all might be free.
Observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of
courtesy.
Seek to perform regular service for others and the world.
Refrain from violence of fist, tongue, or heart.
Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.
Follow the directions of the movement and the captains of a
demonstration.
If you don’t have a spiritual practice or two that you are practicing…or if you have a lot, but they’re all too underdeveloped, my encouragement to you is this: Ask yourself, what am I deeply attracted to, and why? Where do I feel God is calling me to stretch and grow? What kind of balance do I need in my life? Then pray about, think about, read about (books added to library), play with various practices to discern which might be most helpful to your spiritual life, to your relationship with God, to nurturing your self as you die to an old identity and live into a new way of being, rooted and grounded in love, filled with the fullness of God.
This would be a good place to stop, if we were just a collection of individuals. But we’re not. We are a community, a faith community, a church, the gathered. And what is true for us as individuals is equally true for us as a community.
In fact, one of the books I’ve been reading is called, The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church. In this book, Diana Butler Bass writes that a new kind of mainline congregation – the practicing congregation has been born which weaves together Christian practices- activities drawn from the long Christian tradition (and for us broader spiritual traditions) into a pattern of being church that forms an intentional way of life in this community: practicing healing, prayer, hospitality, silence, discernment, stewardship, peacemaking.
Butler Bass believes the future is the practicing Church, “In an age of fragmentation, it may well be the case that the vocation of congregations is to turn tourists into pilgrims—those who no longer journey aimlessly, but, rather, those who journey in God and whose lives are mapped by the grace of Christian practices”
Now is a good stopping point, for this is an area that the Stewardship Council and the Congregational Life Committee are beginning to discuss. So you’ll be hearing more about Lyndale becoming more of a practicing Church. Want to help? Look at the insert in your bulletin about the Pilgrimage Retreat in October. Talk to me if you want more information, I’m on the Spiritual Development Team of the Conference that is offering that retreat to train people to bring practices back to their congregations. Go for yourself, come back for the congregation. That’s a great practice.
