Be Grounded and Sent
“Be Grounded and Sent”
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year B July 8, 2018
2 Corinthians 12:2-10 Mark 6:1-13
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Well we are starting to hit those one-year anniversary marks. As the days move along, Shawna and I remember where we were one year ago on last summer’s Sabbatical. For example, on this day a year ago I was at Glenstal Abbey in Ireland, beginning the three month Sabbatical with a private retreat in the God-Pod on the outskirts of that property. Memory brings back images, such as walking along the county road and those stone fences on my way into town, and strolling along the pathways of the Abbey passing massive oak trees, farm fields, and gardens. I remember the incense they used in worship, the refreshing conversations in the lunch room as I met other spiritual pilgrims, and the visits to the bees once I found out where their apiary was located. The last visit, I was escorted away down the lane by one of the diligent guard bees who started bombarding my head.
The Sabbatical was an amazing three months with a structure and purpose and theme, contemplative prayer through bee keeping, that is unlike any other time I’ve ever had in my life. I could really brag it up. I could tell story after story about place after place, and we’d get exhausted trying to capture it all. In fact, it is impossible to capture. A three month Sabbath rest working at a soul level is nearly impossible to put into words; but it affected my life, deepened my experience of faith, and I am forever changed because of this opportunity. As I look back during this time when the one-year marks start floating by, there is a mix of thankfulness for having had that time, and grief because it’s done and I can’t believe it’s been a year and I wish it could all start over again. Mostly, those glimpses back are reminders that no matter how wonderful it was, the same God who shares those Sabbath moments is just as powerfully present with me now.
The passage from 2 Corinthians where Paul talks about someone he knows in Christ having been swept up into heavenly realms, either in the body or not in the body, he’s not sure, and experiencing amazing divine grace that is beyond words, has lots of things that sound confusing. Basically, though, he’s talking about himself. It wasn’t fashionable to brag, but to talk in terms of someone else having an amazingly extraordinary spiritual experience was acceptable. To say it’s beyond words is similar to what I just talked about regarding the Sabbatical. Heavenly visions, unity with the divine Source of our being, experiences of the past that have helped shape who we are today and yet cannot be clung to or allowed to stifle the present; Paul is reminding the Corinthians that he is exceptionally, spiritually grounded, in Christ. He has had spiritual encounters that cannot be described by human language because words are too limiting to capture Paradise. He also knows he needs to let it go because even heavenly visions can take our focus off of what God is doing, who God is for us now, here, in each moment. But Paul wants to make sure they notice that it’s because he’s grounded in Christ that his life is proof enough to display this spiritual reality. He refrains from putting himself on a pedestal too much, “so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations.”
Where the rubber hits the road in terms of faithfulness and spiritual grounded-ness really involves how he handles his weaknesses and the challenges of life. This is where Paul the mystic lets his contemplative faith claim God’s sufficient grace – in the cruciform nature of following the Jesus way of Kenosis, of dying to the self, Paul knows that “power is made perfect in weakness.” The power of Christ changes everything, and transforms suffering.
Lynne Twist writes in her book, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life, about what people really want in the world. She says,
“We really do want a world that works for everyone. We don’t want children to go hungry. We don’t want violence and war to plague the planet….We don’t want torture and revenge and retribution to be instruments of governments and leadership. Everyone wants a safe, secure, loving, nourishing life for themselves and the ones they love and really for everyone….I also believe that under their fears and upsets, even the deepest ones, everyone wants to love and be loved, and make a difference with their lives….I believe people also want an experience of their own divinity, their own connectedness with all life and the mystery of something greater than we comprehend.”
(Quoted in Richard Rohr’s daily devotional on email, https://cac.org/the-power-of-money-2018-07-02/).
This is what Paul’s talking about, living into who we are, in Christ, and even through the challenges, to allow love to keep us grounded in our True Self. And this is what Jesus is up to as he visits the home crowd in Nazareth. These are people who know the entire family of Jesus, parents, siblings, and they’ve seen him active in his trade of carpentry. The story from Mark has deeply spiritual wisdom, divine union, and contemplative heart perception played off and against misunderstanding, conflict, and lack of awareness or enlightenment. Mark says that Jesus in his hometown, “could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.” But this is Mark’s way of saying that even Jesus experiences weakness and failure. The cross itself is a symbol of this on one hand, but on the other is a symbol of God’s power and grace. God’s power is perfected in our weakness, as these passages are trying to share.
But we don’t like to be weak. We resist struggle. We even prefer to limit God’s action and activity because it’s too much to comprehend. As Richard Rohr puts it,
“Normally we find it very difficult to let God be greater than our culture, our immediate needs, and our projections. The human ego wants to keep things firmly in its grasp; so, we’ve created a God who fits into our small systems and our understanding of God. Thus, we’ve produced a God who requires expensive churches and robes, a God who likes to go to war just as much as we do, and a domineering God because we like to dominate. We’ve almost completely forgotten and ignored what Jesus revealed about the nature of the God he knew. If Jesus is the ‘image of the invisible God’ (see Colossians 1:15) then God is nothing like we expected. Jesus is in no sense a potentate or a patriarch, but the very opposite, one whom John the Baptist calls ‘a lamb of God’ (see John 1:29). We seem to prefer a lion.” {Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spring Within Us: A Book of Daily Meditations (Center for Action and Contemplation Publishing: 2016), 214-215. https://cac.org/let-god-be-god-2018-07-01/}.
As Jesus sends the disciples out to other villages in pairs, he gives them a list of do’s and don’ts. These things are, basically, intended to express humility and trust in God working through the community. Not taking two tunics, for example, means they won’t sleeping outside, but need to trust that they’ll be taken in by someone. Staying at the first place they are welcomed is another, encouraging satisfaction and contentment. Rather than jump on a better offer at a nicer house, just stay where they are and be thankful. Or to shake the dust off their sandals if they are not received by a village can have some intensity to it, like some sort of insult. More likely, Jesus was simply saying that if you are spiritually grounded and you try and share the amazement of what you’ve experienced, not everyone is going to be open to what you’re trying to share, and that’s alright. Simply trust that God is with them and allow God to work in their lives where they’re at, and not to waste your time with those who are not open. Instead, focus on those who are, and give your time and attention where it makes a difference.
This is the contemplative journey, grounded in Christ, looking for the world to experience the love, grace, and peace of God, sharing heart perceptions that are beyond words with those who are open and receptive, seeking awareness and desiring a desire for transformation. Grounded, looking, sharing, seeking, desiring.
There is resistance, and soul-work is difficult and involves struggle and our weaknesses. But once you know, you can’t un-know. Once you’ve experienced inner illumination, then the light just grows brighter, even as we go about shadow work to heal those deep wounds, what Paul calls, thorns in our flesh. There is something inside us that needs tamed, and it takes the power of God to tame it. But just as Jesus gives the disciples “authority over the unclean spirits,” so too in our weakness, God’s power is perfected. Through God’s grace we journey on with Jesus, grounded in Christ and sent from a foundation of love, unity, peace, non-violence, generosity, calm, and confidence to make a difference with our lives.
Contemplative prayer helps us in this process of humility, intentionally inviting Christ Jesus to receive and reveal, to hold us and fill us, to transform our hearts so our hearts may welcome Christ even more. Contemplative prayer and spiritual disciplines are tools, and if practiced, they not only create spiritual space and divine depth in our life experience, but they shape and compel us into action. Just as the Lord’s Supper is received in spiritual power, we are also sent out from the table to be Christ’s body in the world, as we re-member Christ.
What is God doing in your life? In what ways are your weaknesses pointing beyond themselves to a deeper need? Are you open to receiving Christ on Christ’s terms, as the image of the invisible God, as a lamb and not a lion? Does taming the animal within resonate, or does it not make any sense? Either way, invite God into your heart space and give God room to work. God’s grace is sufficient for you. Whether in the body or out of the body, it doesn’t matter because the point is God is found everywhere; it’s our awareness that wavers, sometimes keen and other times blocked.
As we come alongside the Apostle Paul who had a spiritual encounter with the Living Christ, opening our heart and soul; and as we journey with those disciples who are sent out by Jesus to share love and the call to enter a larger mind, a Truer Self, to tame our animal nature by God’s grace and provision, we hear these words by poet Peter McWilliams:
Come to the edge, he said.
They said, We are afraid.
Come to the edge, he said.
They came.
He pushed them…
And they flew.-Peter McWilliams, 1949-2000
(Suzanne Guthrie’s blog, http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/proper9b.html)
God bless you as we are grounded in Christ, invited to the edge, and sent to fly.
May God be glorified now, even as forever. Amen.