Beseeching God – 26 July 2013

This is from Lady Julian of Norwich, in her writing, “Revelations of Divine Love”.   So our customary practice of prayer was brought to mind: how through our ignorance and inexperience in the ways of love we spend so much time on petition.  I saw that it is indeed more worthy of God and more truly pleasing to him that through his goodness we should pray with full confidence, and by his grace cling to him with real understanding and unshakeable love, than that we should go on making as many petitions as our souls are capable of.

The Gospel lesson for next Sunday is perennially misunderstood.  Jesus had been away, praying, on his own.  The disciples asked him to teach them to pray, because, they said, John the Baptist had taught his disciples.  We don’t know what John had taught about prayer.  Jesus proceeds to give them a somewhat abbreviated version of what we know as the Lord’s Prayer.  He then goes right on to teach, by parable and by direct instruction, that there is no need to keep asking God for things.  True prayer is trust and love, in the knowledge that God not only knows precisely what we need -- which may not be what we think we need – and is love, mercy and goodness toward us.

As a student, long ago, I spent two summers working with a senior minister in Auckland’s inner city, and got to lead Sunday worship quite frequently.  After the first occasion my boss suggested that I ceased using words like “Beseech” in the prayers.  He said it was unnecessary and demeaning.   We do not need to beseech God.  And as Lady Julian points out, all the beseeching in the world simply shows what she calls our ignorance and inexperience in the ways of love.

But the fact is, most people, if they pray, do so to ask God for something, often with some urgency.  Christopher Robin wanted God to bless everyone, although to his credit he did seem to think God shared his fun in the bath.  A lot of praying is scarcely distinguishable from superstition or voodoo.  Some modern extempore prayers are simply excruciating.  But I suspect, the notion that God provides things if we ask often enough or in the right way, or that God has somehow to be propitiated or beseeched, is all too basic ever to be altered much.

The journey into contemplative life and prayer however is a journey away from all this, because it is a journey out of fear.  While we still try to live sensibly and prudently, we are learning to set aside fears of the future, of what might happen, and of mortality.  The silence and the stillness, with only the rhythm of the mantra, clears the space for our consent to God.  Lady Julian writes somewhere, Utterly at home, he abides lovingly within us.  St John has Jesus saying, Abide in me, as I abide in you...   It is enough to know, in Lady Julian’s most famous words, that all will be well – not because nothing will go wrong, but because in St Paul’s words, my life is hid with God in Christ.   

Martha and Mary – 19 July 2013

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.  She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.  But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”  But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”  [Luke 10: 38-42]

But neither the church nor the world is neatly divided into Marthas and Marys.  Of course there are different personality types, and different people express themselves, gain their satisfactions, make life meaningful, in very different ways.  There is nothing new or insightful about that.  Through contemplative eyes this story is much deeper – it is about any one of us.  (Incidentally, it is interesting to read this story while substituting male names for Martha and Mary – Martin and Malachi, perhaps...)

If the Martha within us is predominant, then of course we are pretty good at being busy.  We may feel guilty if we are not busy.  We may even be pleased if someone tells us we are overdoing it.  We are good at hospitality and enjoy it – and as we know, hospitality is a major obligation in the Bible and in Middle-Eastern culture.  So we as Christians know how to generate food, and how to tidy up, how to preside at the barbecue and how to make people feel at home.  Sometimes it can be quite a burden and a worry – especially if others are not pulling their weight, as they were not, it would seem, in the home at Bethany.. 

Try reading this story as a personal analogy.  The home in a certain village is your personal life or mine.  Jesus arrives, as it were -- in some way and at some stage becomes a factor and a challenge in my life.  The Martha in me is very receptive and excited.  I am hospitable, appreciative, busy for Jesus – all those things and 15 others.  I may even get involved in the church, more and more, and become quite important.  I hear a lot in the church about using the talents God has given me.    But if one day you take away the things that I do, or somehow they are removed from me, what is left?  Whom does Jesus then meet in my home?  Is anyone else home?  Mary’s first priority is different, it is to encounter the guest, to be taught by the teacher.  I am sure she helps with the chores – after all, in this culture, you do need to have “team player “on your CV.  But that is not where her heart is, and she is hopeless in committee work. 

Perhaps the Martha in me eventually, in maturity, finds ways to let go of the activism from time to time, to be still, to learn to listen, to cease trying to impress or need stroking all the time.  Mary is able to listen to the teacher within.  And the teacher points out what is obvious after all – that Martha one day won’t be able to do all these things.  Who is she then?  But what Mary has chosen can’t be taken away from her. 

My neighbour – 12 July 2013

Only Luke gives us the story of the Good Samaritan, and it is in answer to a lawyer’s worldly-wise question, Who is my neighbour…?  I expect the lawyer was a little peeved because Jesus had tricked him into quoting the most basic part of the Law, the commandment to love God and to love one’s neighbour.  To recover face, as it were, the lawyer in effect says, Ah yes, but it’s more complicated than you think.  Who is my neighbour…?  He implies that some are most definitely not.  Samaritans, for instance, are heretics and beyond the pale. 

Jesus’ story seems to be saying something truly startling.  If my neighbour has need of me, then that takes priority over religious beliefs and duties, however devout.  The levite and the priest assumed that whether they were neighbours to someone, with neighbourly obligations, depended very much on whom the someone was.  And so it was the Samaritan, the foreigner and the heretic, who proved to be the neighbour to the injured and bleeding man. 

I think back to a parish in Scotland which was rigidly divided into Catholic and Protestant.  I got spat on at the bus stop because I was wearing a green jacket, and green was of course the colour of Ireland and the Catholics.  These people were indeed living next door to each other, but they were far from being neighbours.  They regularly vandalized each other’s church properties.  And so we could go on to mention all the other great divides of our times, Sunni and Shi’ite, Moslem and Christian, and all the many possibilities in racial, sexual and gender difference.

Looked at through contemplative eyes, this story reminds us that God does not share our prejudices.  Our contemplative disciplines of silence and stillness steadily conform us more and more to the view of the world Jesus does seem to have, in which the first obligation is to see past the fences, the memories, the misunderstandings, and the wounds. 

Interestingly, the lawyer’s reply to Jesus was that, of the three candidates, it was the Samaritan who was the true neighbour, because he showed mercy.  Mercy is the love you show and do whether it is deserved or not.  Deserving has nothing to do with mercy.  It is the test of our relationship with God.  The lawyer could see it.  Yes, the world would fall to bits if we all behaved like that.  It’s falling to bits anyway, as we stringently demand answers and who’s to blame, and require people to be punished – and pour scorn on concepts such as mercy and forgiveness.  Maybe even so, it is the contemplatives and those in our world who show mercy who continue to hold things together. 

Peace to this house – 5 July 2013

Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’  [Luke 10: 3-5]

Once again it is important that we leave our literal minds at home, preferably in the recycling bin.  Jesus sends his disciples on ahead, with a list of formidable  instructions.  We however are not living in 1^st century Galilee.  We live in another world, undreamed-of, incomprehensible, to Jesus and his disciples. And it is in our world, not theirs, that we respond with hearts and lives – and with our intelligence -- to Jesus.  It is in our prayer, in the times of silence and stillness and consent to the Spirit of God, that we are inwardly formed as followers. 

Greet no one on the road, perhaps, is best understood – at any rate it is by me – as a growing dislike of the mindless, idle chatter that passes for communication so often these days.  A perfect example of it is on the National Radio morning programme each Friday, in the last 15 minutes or so before they wrap up for the week at midday.  They import celebrities able to talk over the top of each other and shriek with laughter.  It’s not that we contemplatives are supposed to be humourless– just that we keep a healthy respect for the gift of time.   No purse, no bag, no sandals... is surely an invitation to journey unencumbered by useless baggage.  Of course we need purse, bag and footwear, credit cards and mobiles.

Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’  Well, that would certainly stop the conversation.  Of course we don’t say that.  However, entering someone else’s house is a moment to be still, receptive and observant.  It is pointless to bless the house with peace if we ourselves are not carrying peace, love, reconciliation and justice.  If we are men and women of peace, then presumably we will be keener to practise it than talk overmuch much about it.

I am constantly struck in these sometimes difficult Gospel passages, that Jesus seems to expect his followers to be contemplative people.  I am not sure that Jesus ever envisaged the church – it’s hard to say what he envisaged – but certainly in his company one would have to take seriously contemplative themes, based on contemplative life and prayer, paying attention to human need and frailty, making good use of the gift of time, imparting peace, love, reconciliation, justice, by being formed that way oneself, travelling light, or as light as is possible and sensible.  The shedding of excess baggage is very much the effect of the disciplines of silence and stillness, over the days, months and years.