A Bold [Difficult] Mystery
“A Bold [Difficult] Mystery”
Psalm 34:15-22 Ephesians 6:10-20 John 6:56-69
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, August 22, 2021
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
Sometimes when I attempt to write a sermon, suddenly there’s a need to clean my desk, or check my email, or take that online survey I’ve put off. Maybe there’s a new request called in to the church and I need Session input, so an email string begins. Although the invitation is there to reflect, write, and prepare for preaching, procrastination is easily unleashed. It doesn’t take much to derail even the best plan to sit and write.
The same is true for Centering Prayer and setting aside 20 or 30 minutes to simply be in God’s Presence. 20 minutes somehow becomes 10, which then morphs into 2 minutes, which then gets forgotten. It’s amazing how one distraction leads to another until eventually the end of the day comes and the silent prayer sit never happened. Intentions are there, but…
Our dominant models of Christian faith and the paradigms that shape American culture tend to promote action and demand productivity. Even in church, we talk a lot, read scripture out loud, share verbal prayers, and listen to preaching, all of these engage the mind with cognitive, cerebral thoughts.
Christian Prayer is often done in what’s called the Cataphatic mode, or what we might call, object focused. Prayer is usually an active time of talking, and we list our requests such as prayers of intercession and petition, which is fine. Even when prayer involves listening, it’s often concentrated by focusing on something, such as breathing or walking in a meditative way. These all have their place, but it is difficult, even in prayer, to let go of everything, to simply be, to focus on what appears to be nothing, doing nothing, getting nothing done. Distractions, procrastinations, and keeping busy are strategies our ego latches onto for validation and control.
Contemplative Faith, or experiential faith, invites spiritual disciplines designed to help us embody divine mystery: the deep realities of life that we often only skim over as we respond to the pressures of daily living. Procrastinations are a strategy which bolsters our ego and keeps spiritual experience predictable as we hold Mystery at arm’s length. Spiritual disciplines such as Centering Prayer and sitting in silence are other strategies that swing us the other way and help us restrain ego and clarify it into a healthier, translucent expression. Contemplative faith takes us deeper into something beyond comprehension. It’s a way of knowing, to invite perception of the unknowable, to trust and lean into the un-figure-out-able.
Where are you, right now? Are you fully present in your body, or is your mind wandering? Are you thinking about the clock, or what your week ahead has in store? Have you thought about any of the last 30 breaths you’ve taken? Are you only seeing through your eyes, and hearing through your ears, or have you sought to explore through perceptions of the heart? The world is a lot different through the heart. We move away from competition and into collaboration, from systems of domination and control to relationship of inter-abiding and cooperation. We notice that our default mode is often one that objectifies the world, and what is viewed as “other” gets treated as objects. Some of these, whether they be experiences or people, we try and push away because we fear them or they trigger anxiety and discomfort. But a deeper perception shows the world in this present moment, and we notice we are part of a larger whole, with the power and presence of life and love. What we’re noticing is God, not as a being, or even a supreme being, but as Being itself.
Contemplative faith involves living in ways that raise awareness of Being, and the light of Being shining through everything. As awareness grows, we begin to learn that each moment is powerfully connected to all other moments, and we gradually notice that we don’t need dominate others, that even when we face challenges or struggles, under it all there is a deep love perfectly present holding everything together. The good, the bad, everything held in a unified field. In that way, one moment is not independent, but representative, as it holds all moments within it, perfectly at that!
So often we tend to be like the crowds in that story from John’s Gospel, the crowd that follows Jesus because they have expectations. They have expectations of the future, they assign him in their minds as a political savior, a revolutionary, a prophet and a king who will liberate the people, someone who saves from oppression. When he starts talking, instead, about abiding and unity and he uses eating flesh as a hyperbole, as he paints a picture that points to deeper truths, the crowd decides to leave. Mystery is too difficult. They don’t like that metaphor. It doesn’t support their focus on the outer purpose, but the disciples begin to see glimpses of the inner purpose, and Jesus is squarely in the power of unity and love as he talks about the living Father, and his followers abiding in him as he abides in them. They say, “where else can we go? There is no place separate from this abiding. Christ is in all things, and you, Jesus, are full proof of this.” This is the Incarnation as the Living Christ is expressed through the life of the world, in and through all things. The life of Jesus is archetypal, and he’s the blueprint for everything else.
I talked with a person who’s homeless this week. He said he knows Jesus is coming back, someday, on a cloud, in victory as our Savior. This is part of Christian theology that is very much alive and well in our culture, and it’s based on Revelation 1:7, Act 1:9, a few verses that literally picture Jesus coming back on a cloud. But as a metaphor, in the Bible a cloud can symbolize a human form. This is another way of saying Christ comes in human form. Why are you look up? The Christ is revealed in and through you.
People who focus on things literally don’t tend to like metaphors. The downside of this doctrine involves separation. It presumes the future is separate from the present, and not yet realized. It confuses aspects of the Incarnation and the subtleties of Christ. To futurize salvation and God’s presence, to externalize the Living Christ, is to miss the point of what Jesus shares in this story from John. You are the Living Christ. God in Christ, Christ in you, you in Christ, you in God. Inter-abiding, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as your life, your True Self is hidden in Christ with God.
Abiding, what a word! Abiding love mingles lives together, united with a larger Source. Abiding is a word that implies intimacy, closeness, familiarity, acceptance, welcome, and simply being. Jesus uses the word Abiding, then says later that “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” For a crowd that wants revolution and a violent overthrow of Rome, simply being is too difficult.
Does the inner purpose of abiding in the living God through the eternal Christ-consciousness in the moment we call now, resonate with you? It is a difficult Mystery. We can’t get our minds wrapped around it. When Peter answers Jesus, saying, “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” This is not an intellectual enterprise Peter describes, but one of trust and life experience, an inner transformation. We come alongside the disciples’ deep trust of God through the Living Christ. Because we abide in God through Christ, then we are also, like Jesus, holy ones of God, we are also Christ. It kind of sounds weird, and many people reject this. But the term, Christians, literally means little Christs as it describes abiding, embodying, and living as the light of the world, just as Jesus says we are in another Bible verse, Matthew 5:14. You are the light of the world, a city built on a hill cannot be hid.
It is a gift of grace to learn how to be, simply be, to quiet our minds, open our hearts, and decide to stay present, especially when the distractions and procrastinations and dominant paradigms of power and control stroke our egos and can feel so right. In those moments, Jesus asks us, “Do you also wish to go away?” To dwell, abide, and be in the Presence of God in each moment is lovely, and our souls long for this. Our heart sings, and our ego becomes healthy and helpful when we sing for joy to the living God. May we have a desire to desire awareness of Being. Contemplative Faith is a journey deeper into the Mystery of Divine Purpose, held in trust and love. In each moment, may God be glorified, NOW, even as forever. Amen.