Spirit Wisdom Within
“Spirit Wisdom Within”
Psalm 146 Mark 12:28-34
Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, October 31, 2021
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
This is Reformation Sunday. Protestant churches, like the Presbyterian Church (USA) trace their roots back to the 1500’s and the Protestant Reformation in Western Europe. As we look back four years ago, to 2017 and our Sabbatical time, that year was the 500th anniversary of the official start of the Reformation, thanks to Martin Luther in Germany. Shawna and I visited Wittenberg in Germany, where Luther preached, taught, and lived, and the city had various displays set up around town, kind of like an Expo with interactive exhibits. We bought this candle there as a gift to the church for that time of Sabbatical. (light the candle).
Luther in Germany, John Calvin in Geneva, although he was originally French, John Knox in Scotland. We’ve all heard of Lutherans. Presbyterians are sometimes called Calvinists because the church is shaped by the teachings of John Calvin. But we also tend to use bagpipes for special occasions as we claim Scottish heritage because it’s John Knox who studied from Calvin who went back to Scotland and started the Presbyterian Church. In the 1500’s this movement of reform, of protest, was in the larger context of civil wars and political unrest.
Ulrich Zwingli of Switzerland was no exception to this. Since it’s Reformation Sunday, let’s take a little historical glimpse at Zwingli, one of the main, and yet lesser known, Reformers from the 1500’s.
Several years ago Shawna and I rode the Selkirk Loop and during this week-long bicycle tour we stayed two nights at Nelson, B.C. in Canada. We met another couple who were also cycling and we had supper together at the Outer Clove restaurant. They were from Switzerland, and we stayed in touch. We visited them in 2017, and then again just three weeks ago. They live in Glarus, a smaller town like Sandpoint, tucked up in their part of the Alps less than two hours from Zurich. Little did I know that my life with personal connections to the town of Glarus, in Switzerland, where our friends live and where Shawna and I spend time hiking the Alps with them, would overlap as the very place Ulrich Zwingli got his start in 1506 as the priest in the Roman Catholic Church.
Zwingli involved in politics, and he joined the Swiss mercenary armies as their chaplain to invade Italy, just over the mountains. He was such a strong supporter of the Pope that he received a special pension every month. This worked great, until they lost one of those battles, then the French invaded Glarus, and things got a little heated for people like him who supported the Pope. So, he moved to Zurich.
This month, Shawna and I were in Zurich, right downtown at Zwingli square along the Lammat River, and we walked the neighborhood around Grossmunster, the landmark 12-century cathedral where Zwingli preached. We went just across the bridge to visit another church, Fraumunster, which started around 1200 and served as a Catholic Convent until Zwingli got the City of Zurich to buy it. That’s when, under his leadership, they took away all the artwork, statues, and icons, stripped the place down to a plain, bare, cathedral that features a raised pulpit. He insisted that people stop drinking, gambling, and focus on the word of God directly from the Bible, and as rightly preached by people like him. Zwingli was hardcore, probably kind of a jerk, but he knew how to use power and position to get what he wanted, all in the name of Reform, for the sake of Christ.
Shawna and I, by the way, on our short visit to Zurich and Fraumunster, were more focused on the Marc Chagall windows that are now featured as large, stained glass panels. Marc Chagall was a Russian-French artist who lived until 1985. Those particular windows were commissioned and created in the 1970’s. They are lovely, as most of his work is, and it speaks without saying a word, inspires through color and image, interprets scripture stories without preaching, and if you sit quietly, something in your heart shifts and you leave the church a little different than when you came.
One of the temptations is to idealize Reformers like Zwingli, and get stuck in a rearview mirror toward the good old days, whether they be the 1500’s or the 1950’s. “Once Reformed, Always Reforming,” is a verbal attempt to inspire ongoing faithfulness as the Gospel, the Good News of God’s Love in the world, leads us forward.
How can someone who served in wars as a mercenary chaplain be given such foundational appreciation today? Even though his support for the Pope shifted during his life and the political landscape in Europe was fluid and a difficult context to navigate, people like Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, and Knox, were intensely political and entire towns and countries were fighting battles over which identity they would assume, Catholic or Protestant. Each side had to prove it was right, and this has been the storyline ever since.
This storyline is failed and is part of the reason the church is in need of a new Reformation, one that connects with a deeper, more ancient, perennial Wisdom, the Spirit Wisdom within, otherwise known as the contemplative mind, one that doesn’t have the need to be right, one trained in dying to the self, letting things go, in unlearning those things we cling to in order to focus more clearly on God’s Living Presence in the moment. The training for such a mind is difficult, involves suffering and yet is infused with great love. Love is the core of who we are as beings, part of creation, and this morning’s scriptures help us move, not backwards into idealized history, but forward with open hearts, even through the clutter and chaos of shifting contexts, political upheaval, institutional decline including the Church, and existential threats to life on the planet through military and environmental threats that seem to be heating up rather than de-escalating.
In Mark, we hear Jesus share commands and laws, such as Deuteronomy 6:4 as he begins, saying what’s known as the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Jesus then speaks of love, that we “shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” This verse resonates with us, although, we’ve been trained to interpret it dualistically, and we assume separateness, that God is external, somewhere up there, and our heart, soul, mind, and strength are autonomous to everything and everyone else as we claim the liberty of the individual as a sacred right. We also like the divine part, called to love God, we’re good at focusing on the God part, we even put Jesus in the God category. Then, just when we thought he was done, Jesus as a human being, throws in a second command, not separate from the first: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The church that gave us birth, as Reformed Christians, got it’s start in life in the 1500’s by declaring what it is against, what it is not. In this Protest and call for Reform, Protestants and Catholics got locked into the deadly game of comparing, with an “anti-energy” toward others who are different, and it redrew political and religious boundaries for hundreds of years.
Even statements, or commands, like “love your neighbor as yourself” get picked apart based on any number of unexamined biases, largely driven by ego-centric thinking that keeps us at the center and excludes anyone or anything that is unknown or unwelcome. Christians go out of their way to claim their truth as The Truth.
But then the scribe pulls a fast one. He calls into question the importance of his entire religious tradition. He quotes back the reality of God’s unity and the life-giving power of love to a transformed heart, soul, mind, and strength. He agrees with Jesus, and then points out that some of the most important aspects of religious devotion, which are burnt offerings and sacrifices; these rituals are relativized.
We can see through this conversation that once you’ve experienced conversion, a transformed heart, Unitive experience of the Christ Consciousness, the contemplative mind, then the light that shines cannot be hid. Jesus sees this one scribe answer wisely, and it seems like a tone of relief and appreciation as he puts words to the soul-language-moment they share, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
Not far. This is not geography, this is an observation of consciousness, of awareness. Maybe call it enlightenment, or illumination, or conversion. Unity, Love; these become the focus. Sacrifice and offering, as important as they are, can only get you so far because they are external practices, outward symbols. The inner transformation is where the energy is, the dynamic of union. That when “Neighbor” is not external, or a separate other. “Yourself” is not individualistic, isolated, or disconnected. For a contemplative, through a unitive view, “Love your neighbor as yourself” is saying the same thing as “Love the Lord your God with all you are.” These commands, together, through experiential faith, express the divinity of everything. Christ is in all things, and all things are in Christ. You and your neighbor are one because God’s image resides in both, the very image the first command calls us to love, the very unity involved as the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Our world suffers because people, including the Church, especially since the Reformation and the need to be proven right, have forgotten the contemplative mind and allow dualism to run the show in pursuit of power and control. The separate, false-self, the ego, is allowed to run the show over unitive thinking, and what’s needed now is not revival or getting back to the basics, or a renewal of the good old days, but what’s needed is an entirely different way of thinking, a new level of consciousness and spiritual perception.
Institutions like the church can get you started, point you in the direction of love. It’s God’s Wisdom within that works in your heart, soul, mind, and body in ways that cannot be done decently and in order through systematic theologies and dogmas and doctrines.
To fall deeper into Silence, that space of an open, beginner’s mind that trusts eternal connection with divine Presence, the quality of an everlasting love that’s unconditional and beyond contextual wrestling. This is a new Reformation, one that claims ecological expression and care, non-violence and turning spears into pruning hooks. A Reformation Sunday based on divine indwelling and love helps us grow up from the limited visions of historical Reformers, the foundational stones they placed that have become doctrinal stumbling blocks to authentic inner transformation. Nothing less is needed than a shift in consciousness, setting aside dualism and claiming unity as we are called to reflect the image and likeness of God.
There is a new Church emerging, what it looks like will be very different than the institutional forms that gave it birth. May we continue to be “once reformed, always reforming,” and open to the Spirit’s movement of Wisdom within. Thanks be God for the creative power and presence of the living Christ, both now, and forever, Amen.