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The other day I was doing research for a future sermon on Alfred Swan, former longtime pastor of First Congregational Madison. I discovered that some of what ails us and what we are seeking to address in this sermon series on spiritual practices is not new. In a sermon titled, How to Make Religion Work, preached in the early 1930’s he said, There is no more frequent malady in the religious community than this (that we can’t make our religion work). ..this inability to apply religion is exceptionally prevalent among us who call ourselves liberal…we Protestant liberals especially have emphasized theology, and have insisted that our theories be correct…(but) we find ourselves rather in the fog about how to make the religion we have evolved from the past effective in our present lives. He went on to say that while some people claim to find God more readily on a golf course, even there paying attention to form and effectiveness is important. The same is true for our spiritual lives.
We are still trying, as a community, to build faith practices that work. This means many different things to us, but in some way, we want a faith that matters to our lives and gives us strength and joy as we make our way through the world.
Central to this question of a faith that ‘works’ is the context of our faith. Many of us are coming from distasteful or troubled religious backgrounds, and are often a people whose basic orientation to faith is NO.
I’m spiritual but NOT religious.
I DON’T believe this.
I DO NOT accept the teachings of my youth.
I CANNOT be a ________ (fill in the blank) anymore.
What we can’t be is less what binds us here in this church than that we can’t be something else. It is why the UCC is often considered a ‘refugee’ denomination. We are refugees from some other tradition.
Without doubt, saying no is part of the journey, (it was one of our 12 simple words) and it is part of our need for truth telling. To be people willing and able to say NO is laudable. At the same time, it is a difficult place to settle in the life of faith. At some point, we need to say YES.
A year ago, I had a chance to lead a retreat with chaplains from Catholic colleges. These were devout people, who lived on the edge of the Catholic Church. There were priests and nuns as well as lay people. As a group, they lived with deep frustration for the way their church often hindered their work, creating roadblocks for faith and community.
At first, I was a bit curious why they stayed in their church. Not because I dislike the Catholic Church, but because I could see they were relegated to a place in their tradition with little voice or power. After only a day, however, I realized that my orientation to their ‘plight’ was to say ‘no.’ No to silly rules, no to outdated theology, or no to closed minded social norms.
They, on the other hand, were saying ‘yes:’ not to the imperfect institution of the church, but to a deep spiritual tradition that fed them, that sustained their work, and spoke to their personal lives. They lived with few illusions about their ability to change things in their church. But, rather than spending all of their energy fighting what they didn’t like, they lived on the margins and said yes. This choice exists within any denomination or religion. But, in saying yes, these folks had moved beyond the spiritual angst so often found in our tradition.
This then, is the first word in our final Sunday looking at 12 simple words of faith. The practice of saying yes, or ‘surrender’ doesn’t mean to acquiesce, it means to embrace what we can with humility and with gratitude. It means to be guided not by resistance, but by a life-giving choice to say yes to the life-giving grace of God.
As much as we struggle with various aspects of God, spirituality, the church, and our own lives – history reminds us we are not unique. People have struggled forever, and have sought to find a way to say yes in spite of that struggle.
In the most recent edition of Sojourners magazine, Civil Rights historian Vincent Harding reflected on the state of our democracy and the state of our nation, quoting Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall, by then an old man in the 70s,: Just think of it – the slave owners and slave traders said they were building a democracy. What do slave owners and slave traders know about building a democracy? But Marshall didn’t stop there. He continued, What that means is that every generation since then has got to do the job they couldn’t do, that they weren’t qualified to do. We have to build that democracy that does not yet exist!
Harding continues, “We started with a beginning that was essentially flawed, trying to put together democracy and slavery, trying to put together democracy and capitalism. And, praise God, some of us crazily trying to figure out how to put together democracy and following Jesus. That’s where we are.
Some may ask, how do you struggle when folks are constantly pushing back? I can only say, how else do you struggle? That’s what makes struggle – not constant victories, but getting up after you have been knocked down, again and again. That is what makes for …faith… you are a follower of the One who took up the cause.” (Sojourners, March 2012)
The spiritual practice of saying yes is our answer to the forces of oppression and evil, the distractions and the disappointments that come to our lives. Saying yes to a loving, grace-filled, possibility infused God does not deny those negative things, but acknowledges we will not give up hope.
What we pray for, especially those of us saying ‘no’ or ‘maybe,’ is – “give me the wisdom to know what I can say yes to so I can say it with all of my heart.” In a week when abused children are imprisoned in a basement, we can’t say yes to everything, but we pray for the opportunity to say yes in some small way. In a week when we say “yes” to another state approving gay marriage, we live with no illusions that tomorrow will bring yet another challenge.
We can do this, I think, it part because of the next and final word of faith, what McLaren simply identifies as … – the practice of contemplation and rest, or being with.
Contemplation, in almost any spiritual tradition, encourages us to let go of our illusions – of control, of power, of perfection. “It takes a contemplative mind to see one’s own inner contradictions, the failures, and inherent betrayals within our own lives and the institutions that we help to create. Those who take this journey of descent into their own sacred wound understand that what is flawed in them is somehow intimately connected to the unique gift that they have to offer to a broken world.”
Letting go is one of our gifts to a broken world, embracing a faith in the God who exists beyond the realm of specific beliefs or answered questions, that finds hope beyond the realities of our lives.
This practice of contemplation, or rest, or ‘being with’ takes many forms. We associate it with being quiet, but that’s not always the case.
Recently I was with a group of people that included five gifted musicians. One was a singer with amazing harmony, 4 of them played guitar and one of them also played a mean harmonica. Together the five of them worked for hours creating a fun song for an ‘entertainment night’ toward the end of our shared retreat.
After their ‘performance’ these musicians continued to play together. They led the larger group of 20 in singing old folk songs, and one of them taught songs that he had written. Eventually, most wandered off to bed, but these musicians kept playing. As they jammed together, handed the three guitars back and forth, gave each other turns playing solos – it was clear that they had moved into a transcendent experience in which the music ushered them into another sphere. Not only did they not seem to care about time, some of the anxiety and angst that had been on their faces throughout the retreat fell away.
“The highest moments of human experience and fullness occur when we lose ourselves (and find ourselves) in flourishing (with others)…And this is because it is in each rare moment …that we most resemble the One whose image we bear; God whose oneness is…a relational oneness..(and we know that) God is love.” (McLaren, p. 227)
These moments are essential to our life of faith. It is the faith of what Marcus Borg called the ‘second naiveté’ – or what another compared to a ‘blade of grass daring to rise from a crack in the sidewalk.”
This is the invitation of a practice of ‘being with.’ That amidst all the pain and tragedy, we listen for a way to respond to God’s grace with our simple lives. We listen for a way to ‘be with’ ourselves so that we can ‘be with’ others around us. We listen from a place of deep and solid wisdom, not frantic or scattered anxiety. We embody the faith of the psalmist, who said in Psalm 131,
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
Like a child who needs no words to know their mother’s lap is a place of comfort and joy, we trust in God.
