IV Epiphany – January 30, 2011 – Year A (RCL)
In this morning’s Gospel lesson Jesus takes his disciples up a mountain to acquaint them with the way life is in the kingdom of God.
The writer of Matthew says that Jesus did this “when he saw the crowds”—so it’s possible that Jesus did it for a reason.
He may have done it because he was afraid that what he had to say might not be heard in the marketplace or wherever the crowd had gathered.
Or maybe he himself just wanted to get away from the noise and the hassle.
Whichever it was, when Jesus chose to take refuge on the mountain from the crowds that had gathered (maybe in hopes that he might perform one of the miracles he was becoming known for), his disciples had the sense to tag along.
Were they prepared to hear what they heard from his lips?
Did they realize that in order for them to really “hear” what he had to say to them they couldn’t just be anywhere, doing anything?
And did they know yet that when they were with Jesus they were closer to God than they had ever been before?
When we gather for worship together, are there ways we can open our hearts more completely to the presence of God?
It’s not the easiest thing in the world, especially if the noise of the marketplace, the worries of everyday living, the constant interruptions in our hectic schedules echo even here, at this moment in the recesses of our fevered brains?
There are some folks, not just clergy, who know that giving oneself up to something like a silent retreat can make all the difference in the world, but unfortunately clergy are pretty much a privileged minority, since our society in general hasn’t yet learned enough about the benefits of taking time apart for silent reflection to promote the practice more widely.
The Episcopal Church has a long way to go to catch up with our Quaker brothers and sisters, for example, who build long periods of silence into their meetings in the expectation that God will speak if they listen; if you’ve ever been part of a Taize service I know you’ve experienced the power of silence in worship.
Still we are learning to build moments of silence into our busy liturgy, moments when we can pause and, perhaps, clear our brains and calm our spirits enough to hear God’s voice.
For me, one of those moments in the liturgy is the time that is set aside for our prayers, for the Prayers of the People.
There was a time not that long ago in the Episcopal Church when there was no place in our prayers for silent recollection—no time to center ourselves so that we could pray individually; the officiant, usually the priest, said our prayers for us, using a text whose tight construction left little room for individual petitions and intercessions, especially if the officiant became caught up in the sweep of its elegant phrases.
Fortunately, this finely crafted form of our prayers has been preserved in the traditional language of the Rite One service in the Prayer Book, but, thankfully, provision has been made for members of the congregation to insert their own petitions, intercessions, and expressions of thanksgiving when this prayer is read, in the same way that opportunities are provided for individual petitions, intercessions, and thanksgivings in the forms of the Prayers that are available to us in the Rite Two service.
In making suggestions to those who volunteer to lead the Prayers, I usually urge them to pause long enough after reading a name on our prayer list so that a picture of the person we are praying for might possibly form in the mind, and I always request that reasonable periods of silence be observed, where called for, so that members of the congregation will have sufficient opportunity to pray as God moves them to pray, either silently or aloud; the longer the silence is, the better.
For me, the silence surrounding the Prayers of the People can be and should be one of those points in our liturgy when clock time, or time as we know it, stops, a place where we can “be still and know that [God] is God.”
And what are we likely to hear, when we listen for God in the silence?
We are likely to hear the same thing that the disciples heard that day on the hillside: that you and I are recipients, as were they, of the most improbable blessings we could ever imagine.
How else can we possibly characterize the bestowing of God’s favor on the spiritually needy, the sorrowful, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who show mercy, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted, living as we do in a society that preaches success at any cost, unwavering self-reliance, and the survival of the fittest?
The apostle Paul, writing in his First Letter to the Corinthian church, ironically named the counter-cultural message that comes with the Good News of Jesus Christ “the foolishness of God”, “the weakness of God” because the promise of new life in Christ sounded like nothing but foolishness and weakness to those who were sure that they knew all the answers and thought they personally were invincible.
Only those who are called by God, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, could ever hope to understand that “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom” or that “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
This is why Jesus took his disciples up the mountain away from the noise of the teeming marketplace: to introduce them to the foolishness that is wiser than human wisdom, to introduce them to the weakness that is stronger than human strength, to hear God’s voice, to hear God’s call to them in the holy silence.
And God’s call was liberating, when Jesus told the disciples how blessed they were; God’s call was the beginning of their conversion.
“Conversion” is a word we’re not likely to hear much in the Episcopal Church (though I chose to use it last Sunday when I talked about the dynamics of repentance).
One of the reasons we Episcopalians often shy away from the word “conversion”, much as we often shy away from the word “evangelism”, is that some of the more zealous Christian denominations have given “conversion”, as well as “evangelism”, a bad name, at least in our opinion.
Terms like “evangelism” and “conversion” and “being born again” set off triggers of distrust in the average Episcopalian.
“Evangelism” and “being born again” especially strike us as pushy and vaguely undignified, and the term “conversion” is equally suspect, particularly when the context suggests that conversion occurs as a sudden, irrational response to an emotional stimulus.
We Episcopalians are very wary of sudden, irrational responses to emotional stimuli.
But “conversion” is what Jesus in those pronouncements we have come to call “the Beatitudes” was trying to describe to his disciples—not conversion in the sense of a sudden, irrational response, but conversion in the sense of a gradual, relentless transformation, a steady turning of all things in the direction of God—conversion as a process, conversion as an endless blessing.
The disciples, as they listened to Jesus, would have recognized that this blessing was already at work in their lives.
With little in the way of worldly success to distract them they could sense the kingdom of heaven coming to life in their very midst.
Just so the Church—even the local parish church—can be an ideal setting, a laboratory, if you will, for the discovery of the kingdom of heaven at work in our lives, especially to the degree that we are willing to free ourselves from the distractions of what the world calls “success.
In that sense, having less may truly be better than having more.
The stumbling block and the folly of Christ crucified—the “weakness” of the Cross must remain the source of our strength; preserving our trust in this paradox is a task that every part of the Christian Church must be about.
The steady turning of all things in the direction of God can seem like a painfully slow process.
It takes time for people to realize that they are becoming part of the Body of Christ in the world.
At times we are more aware of what is happening to us than we are at others.
But, like the first disciples, we, too, are on a journey; we, too, are on a pilgrimage.
We have not yet arrived at the perfection of our faith, but we are on the way.
And we still have a long way to go.
But one thing keeps us going: We don’t need to toil away, trying to please God, trying to earn God’s blessing.
Like the first disciples on the mountain, we have already received it.
That is the most unbelievable part of the story.
But it’s true.
Every one of us has been assured of God’s blessing.
Thanks be to God!
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