“Be”
“Be”
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B August 26, 2018
Psalm 84 John 6:56-69
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Sometimes when I sit down to write a sermon, I suddenly need to clean my desk, or check my email, or take that online survey I’ve been putting off. Although the invitation is there to reflect, write, and prepare for preaching, a good bit of procrastination is in order. 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. It’s amazing how one distraction leads to another until eventually the end of the day comes and the silent prayer sit never happened.
Christian faith tends to promote action, especially toward justice. Even in church, we talk a lot, read scripture out loud, share verbal prayers, and listen to preaching, all of these engaging 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, listing our requests such as prayers of intercession and petition, or even listening 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 the deep realities of life that we often only skim the surface of as we respond to the pressures of daily living. If procrastination is one type of strategy which bolsters our ego and keeps spiritual experience predictable, spiritual disciplines such as Centering Prayer and sitting in silence are other strategies that swing us the other way as our ego is restrained and clarified into a healthy, translucent expression. Contemplative faith tries to take us deeper into something larger, even beyond comprehension.
Today, in our final installment of a sermon series called, Be(e) Keeping: A Journey Into Contemplative Faith, this sermon concludes the explorations into being honest, aware, humble, patient, grounded and sent, along with the importance of being present, connected, wise and thankful. This sermon series ends by focusing on simply being and what’s involved when we talk about what it means to “be.”
Part of this “being” is pointed at as the Psalmist says, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” Heart, soul, body, and mind all unite in a wholeness filled with joy in the presence of God. Where God is involves loveliness, and this is a great reminder to us especially when we get caught up living upside down lives filled with distractions, busy-ness, and detachment from the present moment.
On my cell phone there is a calendar feature. You can push the button and a calendar appears and through the power of electronics you can scroll back in time or look to the future. It’s a handy way to stay organized, and if you set up an event on the calendar the phone will even give you reminders that something is coming up soon. When you open the calendar and look at the format which lays out the current day, listing hour by hour, you not only see the past and the future, but there is a red line on the cell phone calendar. That narrow, red line slowly moves along, because it marks the present moment, and one moment continually leads into the next moment.
We can come alongside Eckhart Tolle as he calls the present moment, the NOW. He also reminds us that even though we have calendars, even though we make appointments for the future and have done things in the past, really, all we have is the NOW, the present moment. The Past and the Future basically exist as concepts that we assume are real. Because we assume they are real we assign the future and the past power to define us and shape us. But really, the NOW is the only moment with power, because it’s the present moment that is connected to the timeless qualities of life and all that is seen and unseen.
In his book, The Power of Now, Tolle talks about life’s journey and how everyone has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. He says, “The outer purpose is to arrive at your goal or destination, to accomplish what you set out to do, to achieve this or that, which, of course, implies future. But if your destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take up so much of your attention that they become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey’s inner purpose, which has nothing to do with where you are going or what you are doing, but everything with the quality of your consciousness at this moment.” (The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle, New World Library, 1999, pg. 73).
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. Is the world revolving around you as the subject, everything else being object-ified? Or are you, in this present moment, noticing you’re part of a larger whole, noticing the power and presence of life and love, noticing God?
Kind of like my cell phone calendar has the days and weeks listed, showing the past and future, what Tolle calls the outward journey is the horizontal dimension of time and space, kind of like the cross with the beam going side to side in a linear way from one side to another. He says, “Your outward journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.” Kind of like that red line slicing into the calendar, or the vertical beam in the cross coming down to a specific point, our inner purpose is linked to NOW.
Contemplative faith involves living in ways that raise awareness of that one step, the inner journey, the great beauty and quality of that step “into Being, and the light of Being shining through it,” right now, in each moment. As awareness grows, we begin to experience each moment as powerfully connected to all other moments, so that even when facing challenges or struggles, we get a sense that a deep love is 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!
Inner purpose and outer purpose of life’s journey. 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 of the future, and 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 us from oppression. When he starts talking, instead, about abiding and unity and he uses eating flesh as a hyperbole, an extreme metaphor used to paint a picture pointing to deeper truths, the crowd decides to leave. They are focused on the outer purpose, but the disciples are beginning 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.
We use that word, Abide, from time to time. Just yesterday at the wedding of Abby and Brandon, the words were used when they exchanged wedding rings, saying they give the rings as a sign and token of “constant faith and abiding love.”
Abiding, what a word! Abiding love that mingles two lives into one, united with a larger Source. Living that shares its essence as it lingers each moment in a unified way. 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.”
If you are focused and interested in keeping faith designed around the outer purpose, very much past and future-oriented, then you will likely not understand these images or have a concept of what Contemplative Faith is introducing. But if you are focused and interested on the inner purpose of abiding in the living God through the eternal Christ-consciousness in the moment we call now, then the words of Peter may resonate as he tells Jesus, “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’s describing, but one of trust and life experience, an inner transformation. As we come alongside the disciples in this deep trust of God through the Living Christ, and because we abide in God through Christ, then we are also, like Jesus, holy ones of God, we are also Christ. Does that sound weird? It kind of does, 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.
I hope the cross and the horizontal and vertical beams take on a new meaning as the power of God, in the Now, claims you in grace-filled ways. We can continue to learn how to be, simply be, as we quiet our minds, open our hearts, and decide to stay present when the distractions and procrastination echo Jesus’ question, “Do you also wish to go away?” and we’re tempted to ignore our closest friend, the LORD.
Dwelling, abiding, being in the Presence of God in each moment is lovely, and our souls long for this. Our hearts sing, our ego becomes healthy and helpful when we sing for joy to the living God. May we continue to have a desire to desire awareness of Being, united with the living God. Contemplative Faith is a journey, and as we navigate the outer purpose and the inner purpose, held in trust and love, may God be glorified, NOW, even as forever. Amen.