Mark 4

Needed Rest

Immanuel, June 14, 2009

A famous philosopher (whose name I can never remember) once said, “If you find your inner silence, others will find their salvation near you.”

Now I can imagine what some of you are thinking. That’s easy for her to say, she’s leaving for some vacation time soon. And that is true.

But first I would like to point out that I will be spending a week up at Bay Lake with our 7^th and 8^th Grade Confirmation students. Now how you find your inner silence on an Island with nearly 40 kids from 8 VIBE churches will remain to be seen. (It will be “silence” of a different kind!) J

Except that the theme for Confirmation camp is “finding God in mystery…” a perfect phrase for this Pentecost Season when we honor the abiding presence of the spirit. A perfect phrase to suggest that God can be found in creation. And a perfect phrase to capture the essence of our gospel text which suggests that the mystery of the kingdom can be found in something so quiet, so intangible, so invisible, as a seed growing secretly.

“If you find your inner silence, others will find their salvation near you.”

This week at Bay Lake and in these summer months hopefully each of us will find a place of beauty, at some point, a place of rest, a place close to the creation, where seeds are growing secretly, and where the winds of god’s spirit can breathe in us and through us….for the sake of not only our salvation…but the salvation of others, near us.

Being close to creation in the summer time reminds us…even…that at that very first Creation, at that first Sabbath when none of us obviously were around; that even God had the entire Sabbath to himself or herself; when after six days of relentless labor, of wild creativity, God took the seventh day off to Rest.

You’ll remember that God did not hallow the day on which god made the beasts of the earth, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. God did not hallow even that day on which she made you and me, male and female in the image of God, created us. No, God hallowed that day and that day only… on which God did nothing but rest.

God must have been exhausted by the seventh day, and if God needed to rest, you can count on it, so do we. It’s dangerous theology to think that you can enlarge upon God, we call it human pride or grandiosity or just plain arrogance….which is no doubt why at Bay Lake, our Confirmation students will see themselves more clearly than ever in the “context “ of the whole creation…where the mysteries of God’s Love and God’s Presence can be seen and felt and heard most clearly in the quiet silence, in the stillness, in the simple natural beauty all around them.

O Wind that sways

A poem for Pentecost by Garth House begins..

O Wind that sways

No branches

Fire that does not burn,

Unimaginable Light

That does not blind

Fountain of Life

That has no end

Infinite river of Joy

Flawless mirror

Of God’s power

Kind laughing agent

Of God’s mirth

Gentle consolation

Of God’s mercy.

O Holy Spirit of god

Abide with your people, come to us now…

The “abiding” presence…is why it is so restful to be with God and why God is so readily found in Rest and in Creation. “Be still and know that I am God.” “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you Rest.” “O Holy Spirit of God, Abide with your people, come to us now…”

Which brings us around to our parable for Today where Jesus sees the kingdom of God growing secretly like the mystery of a tiny seed growing secretly. Jesus himself as a child no doubt stood outside the hospitality of the synagogue. And so we have these simple parables of one who lived close to creation, seeing the mysteries of God in the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field, in the sparrow that does not fall to the ground without the creator knowing… and in the mystery of something so tiny, so invisible as one small seed growing secretly.

In other words, the images from Creation that we find in Jesus’ parables remind us that the Christian life can never be separated from Christian spirituality. That Christian activism and activity can never be separated from Silence, Receptivity, and Rest. (Again) In the Christian Life, Action can never be separated from Reflection. As Liberation Theologians know better than the rest of us, Praxis is never possible without Contemplation. In short, the Christian Life is not possible without Prayer.

Some of you have heard me tell about my one and only Experience at least formally with the Contemplative Way of Life. It was a requirement…. for A Course that I took in Seminary from Henri Nouwen who was himself a noted Jesuit Scholar and Activist as well as one familiar with the Contemplative Life….the requirement was that each of us spend our January Interim month in a cloistered community of one type or another. I chose a Carmelite Monastery that sat on a hill overlooking the Ocean off the coast of Rhode Island.

Because it was a requirement that didn’t mean anything to me personally at the time…I hadn’t taken it that seriously. And so I showed up at the large Gothic Entrance to this massive Gothic structure sitting on the ocean with my guitar under one arm… and a bag of books under the other. The Mother Superior who met me at the door, smiled, took the guitar out of one hand and the books out of the other and said, “You won’t need these here.”

It was a community of 25 Carmelite sisters, one German Shephard and 2 cats living a life of silence and contemplation. There was no contact with the outside world. But there was much time spent with creation…in the beautiful gardens that surrounded the place and in walking along the ocean shore. I was given a tiny cell that had one small window that looked out over those beautiful gardens and the ocean in the distance.

And, It was so quiet inside the place…that it was Loud. The kind of profound Silence that made it possible for God to be heard because you are Taking the Time to Stop and Listen. Heard…breaking into the Silence…

+Like the Cry of a Seagull out across the water

+Like the Sound of a Clock ticking at midnight

+Like the Roar of a Kitten purring in the Middle of the Night

+like the Perfect 3^rd (or 2^nd) of a Cardinal outside of a window in the early morning hours.

It is the Profound Place on the other side of Silence of which author Charlotte Bronte speaks when she says that to write you must be quiet enough so that you can hear the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat.

Now I remember once thinking that newborn parents need to be given an exemption from this part of the Christian Life for a time….and I think that is true. And then I also remembered what a gift something so routine as naptime could become, how much I had taken silence for granted, what a gift it truly is. (I think that is true for pastors and counselors at Bay Lake Confirmation Camp as well, we understand the gift more there than at other times.)

And when we turn to scripture, where Jesus speaks of a seed growing secretly, of the birds of the air and lilies of the field…we learn that attentiveness to creation, to the spirit, and when we have a moment, to silence in prayer is not peripheral but central to the Christian Life. What is important is to remember that one without the other, Action without Prayer, activism without contemplation, in the end cancels out the very best intentions of the Christian Life. In other words, Action and Reflection, like parenting and naps, are absolutely inseparable in the Christian Calling in the World.

“If you find your inner silence, others will find their salvation near you.”

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” Jesus says in Luke Chapter 4…The Spirit of God is upon me…because The Spirit has anointed me to preach Good News to the Poor, bind up the broken-hearted. The Spirit of God, Jesus says…acknowledging that it is not him so much as the Spirit of God who is at work in the world…through him and through us in our ministry. Jesus often in his ministry withdrew to Pray…Acknowledging that without time for Prayer, for God, for renewal, for reflection, indeed for even Rest, the work of Love in the world would never be possible at all.

“Be Still and Know that I am God..” “The heavens are telling the Glory of God,” the Psalmist spins out. Occasionally in life we do meet someone who has achieved the Grace of Silence and often we do find our Salvation near them. Those rare persons who have achieved the balance between the Active and the Reflective Christian Life.

And It is not a Silence that is pious or pretentious, but a quality of character, born of struggle and attentiveness to the voice of god that shapes and guides their lives in faithful love and service for others. It is as if they have learned that life moves from silence to action and back to silence again….like the movement of the spirit this Pentecost season….and when they speak, their words reverberate out of a depth of wisdom and mercy that is not distracted but grounded in Divine presence and love, for the sake of others, for the sake of the world.

The Pentecost Poem concludes….

We remember that your church O God

Was born in wind and fire,

Not to sweep us heavenward

Like a presumptuous tower

But to guide us down

The dusty roads of this world

So that we may lift up the downcast,

Heal the broken, reconcile what is lost,

And bring peace amidst unrest.

May God grant all of us at Least one Moment of Rest and reflection this Summer. And if you can’t get all the way to Bay Lake or to the Ocean you can watch just one tiny seed or one tiny plant grow in your garden or in a pot in the sunlight on your window sill.

And who knows, if you find a little inner silence, maybe others will find a little Salvation near you too. Amen.