Be Patient

“Be Patient”
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B July 1, 2018
Psalm 130 Mark 5:21-43
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly

Today is the fourth look at a larger series of messages called, Be(e) Keeping: A Journey Into Contemplative Faith. Because faith is experiential and the biblical story in which we participate is largely explored through metaphor and images, practicing bee keeping is a time-tested art that has much to reveal when we relate it to spiritual matters. The ancient species, Apis mellifera, which means honey-carrying bee, has millions of years built into the citizenship of their life systems. Today, through bee keeping and other reflections, we consider how it’s important to be patient, to step back and take that larger view as we put our hope in God in deeply meaningful ways.

My original plan for today was to look at patience as the theme. The idea comes from the dynamic, where beginning a spiritual practice, such as Centering Prayer, starts out like a good idea, something that will help us. However, because spiritual disciplines, like Centering Prayer, are often more involved that they may appear, and that when you give God room to work in your heart and the depth of your spirit, things get churned up at first, things that may be uncomfortable or disturbing as they dislodge from the nooks and crannies of our mind. Richard Rohr calls this the cleansing of the
unconscious mind. Many people stop Centering Prayer disciplines at that point because it’s too painful. But many others who hold on through that time discover a tremendous energy. Once you stop holding things down, inside; once you shine a light on the shadows through this “shadow work,” then the energy used to hold it down is released, freed up. But it takes patience to participate in this soul work.

It also takes gentleness because its easy to judge ourselves or feel guilty about not instantly becoming a saint. Sometimes it feels like the failures outweigh the breakthroughs, so it helps to be not only patient but gentle.

The other day I transplanted veggies and flower seedlings that I’d started in my greenhouse. Working the soil, carefully taking the plant out of the small pot and putting it in the expansive garden space, trying not to break too many roots in the process; this was fun to finally have all the greenhouse starts out there in the big world. As I watered the garden to make sure their move wasn’t too traumatic, I could imagine the full size plant producing the fruits or vegetables. I wanted those zucchinis and squash and corn and beans and other veggies for dinner that night; I was ready! But it takes time for plants to grow, for food as a sacred gift to ripen. It takes patience to trust that the roots below the surface are taking hold, and gentleness to nurse these along for a while.

Then the theme of patience and gentleness linked up with another aspect of life through the scripture readings of Psalm 130 and Mark 5:21-43 as they involve waiting and healing and we see the Psalmist lamenting because life has collapsed around them, and in Mark, Jesus is on the move, dealing with the crowds while he tries and focus on people in desperate situations. The theme grew to include hope, because sometimes our patience wears thin or only gets us so far, and although we try and be gentle, when push comes to shove and there seems no other way, we too cry out to God and hope is the only thing we have left.

In Mark, did you notice the imagery that starts this scene? Jesus “was by the sea,” and Jairus comes to him. Jairus literally had nowhere else to go, his situation has pushed him to the very edge, and the next step involves death itself. He sees Jesus, falls at his feet and begs over and over and over, pleading for Jesus to come and lay his healing hands on his daughter, because she is about to die. Then there’s also the woman with a bleeding issue that has tormented her for twelve years, meaning a very long time, and she is out of money, considered unclean by society, and only has hope enough to touch the tassel of the Messiah’s robe fringe because it brings healing according to religious understanding.

Jairus is the only one mentioned by name, and he is one of the leaders of the synagogue, so he has power, wealth, and influence. The woman in the crowd is not named, nor is the twelve year old girl, but Jesus calls them both by a relational term, “daughter.” All three of these characters occupy different segments of society and religion’s spectrum, and all of them have exhausted their ability to handle what it is they’re trying to cope with on their own. They share some things in common. Each of them becomes vulnerable, each of them have an encounter with Jesus, and they all discover in this process something more than they expected.

Cynthia Bourgeault, in her book Mystical Hope, reminds us that,

in our usual way of looking at things, hope is tied to outcome […,] an optimistic feeling – or at least a willingness to go on – because we sense that things will get better in the future. I hope I get the job, or I hope it’s not cancer. But sometimes situations don’t work out like we had hoped, and then we say things are hopeless. If the pain doesn’t end or the healing doesn’t come or the diagnosis is terminal, it is very hard to be patient, and it seems even worse when our religion lets us down, as if God has abandoned us. That’s why, like these three people and the Psalmist crying from the depths, we need a deeper and broader receptivity so we can fall into the mystery of a joy and a hope that does not disappoint. “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.

This is a different kind of hope.

Bourgeault says,

I simply want to observe that there is another kind of hope also represented in the Bible that is a complete reversal of our usual way of looking at things. Beneath the ‘upbeat’ kind of hope that parts the sea and pulls rabbits out of hats, this other hope weaves its way as a quiet, even ironic counterpoint. (pg. 5).

Then she explores biblical stories where all is lost and yet people hold fast to a thin thread of praise and trust in God. One situation after another that has no resolution, no positive outcome; the crops are gone, the people are enslaved, the agony and dysfunction even become normalized. Yet even in the midst of all of this, there is a lightness, which she calls, Mystical Hope.   She says,

In contrast to our usual notions of hope, 1) Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions. 2) It has something to do with presence – not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand. 3) It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction: an ‘unbearable lightness of being.’ But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it seems to produce them from within. [Also,…] the experience pulls us out of the linear stream of hours and days and imbues the moment we are actually in with an unexpected vividness and fullness […], a wider field of presence, a direct encounter with Being itself. […] The spiritual life can only be lived in the present moment, in the now. When we go rushing ahead into the future or shrinking back into the past, we miss the hand of God, which can only touch us in the now.” (pgs. 9-12).

Jesus touches the people he heals; takes the little girl by the hand, knows power has connected when the woman touches his cloak, and he is with Jairus as they journey from the sea. United with Jesus in the moment of Presence, trusting with mystical hope, they receive more than they could have imagined as they are welcomed and restored. They are united with the Living Christ in power and love.

Contemplative faith puts experience into practice and develops over time. Long term commitments to spiritual disciplines and prayer practices cultivate layers of our lives down to the deep, raw material, like the Psalmist is tapping into in that Psalm of Lament, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.” Like the Psalmist, contemplative prayer links us with hope, but at a deeper level, waiting for the Lord in a mystical hope. This has less to do circumstance and outcome and more to do with identity and inner transformation.

This past week I worked my bees. I pulled out some honey frames from the Slovenian A-Z Hive system I have set up in my Apiary, my bee zone. It has taken months for the empty frames to get to this point, and it’s amazing how much work goes into one drop of honey.

One kilogram of honey is about 2.2 pounds, which is an average size for a small mason jar. To make that amount of honey, bees travel 90,000 miles, which equals flying around the earth three times! The average worker bee produces only about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. It takes tens of thousands of bees all working together to make that full kilogram of honey. But first, for both storing honey and making new bees, the Family of bees need beeswax to create comb with hexagon shaped cells. But to make one pound of beeswax, the bees need to eat six to eight pounds of honey. That is a very resource-intensive process. On a collection flight, a worker bee will visit 50 to 100 flowers to do her part; but for that kilogram of honey, this can take nectar from over four million flowers. As you can see, the work of an individual honey bee is very important, but it’s as a collective, bees working together, that makes life possible. With such daunting amounts of work to be done, it helps to take the long view, to step back and see a bigger picture, to gain perspective, appreciation, and patience.

Bee keeping helps us journey into contemplative faith by teaching us patience, and appreciation, and to realize that we may not even get any honey, but the enjoyment comes through connecting with the bees and trying to do our part to help them.

Just like building an appreciation for the amount of work going into one drop of honey, our spirit needs a deeper hope, a larger perspective to help us do our part in the grand arch of history. Patience and mystical hope are gifts.

The woman was healed of her bleeding and it says, “she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned around,” and he knew that it was more than someone bumping into him.

Are you content bumping into Jesus, following the crowds in what seems to be a good thing? Or are engaged in Kenosis, the art of letting go so we can die before we die? All three of these people are fallen down before Jesus and the Living Christ meets them there, with transformational touch. And just like a daughter is a living extension of the parent, of one who creates, so too, we are the Body of the Living Christ.

To summarize this spiritual exploration of patience and mystical hope, I’d like to share a poem that calls us closer to our True Self in Christ. Written by St. Symeon the New Theologian, he lived from 949 until 1022. About a thousand years ago he reflects on our true identity as the Body of Christ. As I read these words from a deeply perceptive mystic, keep in mind images of those stories, with Jairus begging for Jesus to come save his daughter, for the unnamed woman reaching out to touch the tassel on the fringe of Jesus’ robe, and that 12 year old girl as Jesus raises her by the hand from death to life. Let’s also listen with the ears of our own heart as we seek to perceive this transformational, timeless message:

We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ. He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
he appears in a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? – Then
open your heart to Him

And let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love him,
we wake up inside Christ’s body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us utterly real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light.
We awaken as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

(Mystical Hope, Trusting in the Mercy of God, by Cynthia Bourgeault, Cloister Books, A Cowley Publications Book, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2001, pages xi & xii in the front).

May we patiently receive the gift of God’s self, the core of our being. And may God be glorified, now, even as forever.  Amen.