My Grace Is Sufficient For You (2Corinthians 12:9)

So, Scripture thinks that human contrivance – whether wealth, intellect, family, honour, or longevity – is a problem. But … not in itself. It is a problem when human contrivance drives us, forms us, and replaces God. What’s the alternative? It is tempting (I use this word deliberately because this is a temptation to be resisted) to think that we have to renounce human wisdom, wealth, planning, etc. As though it is either one or the other, and because human ingenuity is bad we need to evacuate all human agency from our lives to let God do the planning and ingenuity instead. Either one or the other.  But it just isn’t true. To think it is either us or God is using the same currency/coin in both cases. They are just on either side of the coin. 

As disciples of Jesus we renounce all false gods, including human will and ingenuity, wealth and intelligence that is not in the service of the kingdom. But, the kingdom needs our intelligence, ingenuity, wealth, etc. The problem is not human ingenuity, planning, and wisdom. Of course, the problem is when we replace God with human agency, ingenuity, wisdom, etc. But the more relevant problem might be that we try to use human ingenuity and intelligence to make sure that we don’t let human ingenuity and intelligence replace God in our lives! And that’s why this is harder than it seems. So what is the solution? It is to be rebuilt differently than the simplistic one or the other approach. We want to be people who live out of a heart that hears, "my grace is sufficient for you.” And we do that not by trying hard to stop misusing our wills, intelligence, and ingenuity, but by surrendering to God’s sufficiency. It is the hard work of grace. Of being remoulded into Christ. We do this through all the ways the Christian tradition has learnt and now teaches us. And this way includes scripture, prayer, liturgy, and doing all this in a community of faith. But to do it with intent. Not too seriously, but with intent. Human ingenuity, no matter how spiritual, will not pull us into grace. It is because God’s grace is sufficient that my human will and ingenuity can be pulled into grace. The currency, if you like, is the sufficiency of God's grace. This is the centre that God wishes to build within us and within the church.

Incomprehensibility and the Image of God

In theory, could human beings come to know everything about the universe? Putting aside the kind of human arrogance that thinks all is possible because they think they are God, is it at least theoretically possible to know and understand, to comprehend, the universe?

It’s too big. OK, agreed, probably a bit big. But, in theory, what would be encountered on the other side of the universe, could such phenomena be investigated and understood?

No, it is too complex. OK, but if we did have the right tools and equipment, the right technology, would it be possible? In theory, yes. Our intelligence seems mapped to understanding the reality around us. (If it were not so, it would be difficult to understand how and why the Western scientific method has been so successful.

And then, there is mystery. Mystery, in the Christian schema, is not the currently unknown, but that could be known under the right circumstances. In Christianity, mystery refers to the incomprehensible, beyond our understanding, even in theory. We can’t slice mystery into manageable bits, and we can’t wrestle it into shape and compare it to what we do know to therefore grasp it, at least partially. I’m talking about God. God can reveal Godself, in all God’s glorious incomprehension. God can become human in Jesus, but that does not mean we comprehend God. Jesus reveals the incomprehensible God, who remains incomprehensible. That is, God is not our plaything, and cannot be put to our use as we do with everything else we understand (even partially understand). When people of faith try to control God terrible consequences follow. Hence, the prohibition against idols and misusing God’s name embedded in the Ten Commandments.

And we are made in the image of this incomprehensible God. Attempts to identify the image in us with certain attributes or capacities abound. And whatever the benefits of such approaches, we should never think that somehow, we have made the image comprehensible. That would be to break the second commandment. Reductionism has its place in the study of our humanity, but the irreducible remains. Kathryn Tanner sees an imitation of God’s incomprehensibility in the plasticity of our nature. In comparison to other species, we are born with little hard wired in us. We grow, learn, change, exponentially so. Our nature is “in a sense unlimited, unbounded by a clearly delimited nature, in virtue, in the human case, of an expansive openness and initial indefiniteness.” This natural openness is a negative imitation in that God’s incomprehensibility is from complete fullness, whereas our imitation is a “lack, through an initial failure of predetermination, not by being anything in particular in any very concrete way to start.” (Christ the Key, p. 53)

If God is beyond our understanding, incomprehensible, what is an appropriate response to God? Awe, joy, bliss. Prayer, thanksgiving, faith.

Prayer of Abandonment (And a Discipline of Mind)

Four o'clock in the morning, or thereabouts, when I often have to get up and tend a child, is a dangerous time for my discipline of mind. I get back into bed, and generally, having had enough sleep not to fall back to sleep immediately, start thinking. Thinking about what I should have done yesterday, what I have to do today or this week, what so and so said yesterday and what I should have said in response, etc. And it is easy for these thoughts to chain themselves to other events or thoughts, and before I know it I am agitated or worried, with no possibility of getting back to sleep. And worse still, I enter the new day with those thoughts and feelings in the background. This is not uncommon, and can happen to people during the day or night. There is a traditional spiritual practice that provides an antidote. Pray! At 4AM, once I realise that my mind is spiralling out of control, I say to myself, "I surrender", over and over. The trick is to stop thinking about anything else and saying the word without thinking about anything else at all. Don't concentrate on the word too much because the idea is that the word reflects a confidence in God, to whom you are surrendering. When I do this I am asleep within minutes.

It is the clue for the day as well. Experiencing a rise in aggravation of any kind? Thoughts, feelings building a momentum of negativity? Then say the surrender prayer above, or better still, during the day, try this prayer from Charles de Foucauld.

Father,

I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you:

I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul;

I offer it to you

with all the love of my heart,

for I love you, Lord,

and so need to give myself,

to surrender myself into your hands,

without reserve,

and with boundless confidence,

for you are my Father. Amen.

Meditation (Quote)

Meditation is . . . about stillness. It is like the stillness of a pool of water. The distractions that we have when we begin to meditate are only ripples and currents and eddies that disturb the water. But as you begin to meditate, and stillness comes over you, the depth of the water becomes clearer and clearer in the stillness. The experience of meditation, the experience to which each of us is summoned and of which all of us are capable, is to discover that depth within us which is like a deep pool of water, water of an infinite depth. (John Main)

It's About God Not Us

When Abraham barters for the lives of the inhabitants of Sodom through the presence of a few righteous individuals, he does so not because of a sense of his personal standing in God's eyes, and it is not because prayer (if you have enough faith) always 'works'. Abraham does this because of the God with whom he is speaking. It is about God, not Abraham. Interecessory prayer is like this before it is anything else. It is not grounded in our fullness or standing. The very fact we are asking tells us of our need and incompleteness. We ask God.

Evil and Suffering

There is no neat explanation for the apparent contradiction of a God of love and a world of suffering and evil.  And it wouldn't make much difference anyway.The Bible tries a couple of times to present a cause, but it is not the comprehensive answer some look for that magically solves the contradiction. Instead the Bible is more interested in the future metamorphosis of the present rather than explaining the past cause of our present suffering. Christianity affirms that God is creator of all that is and will bring it to its final conclusion. All shall be well. Eventually. It is the gap between our present experience and that future that makes us cry out in lament and fury now. The lament expresses not just our grief,disappointment, rage and confusion, but also expresses our desire for the kingdom to come now. "If the kingdom were here now, this wouldn't have happened. Marana tha, Come Lord Jesus!" It is this desire for the kingdom which is important to remember in intercessory prayer. We ask legitimate questions about the point of intercessory prayer, but intercessory prayer is an expression of our desire for the kingdom to come now in some place or in someone's life.

Worship Without Expectations

 Following on from a previous post, worship without expectations is a good thing. It hollows out space in our hearts free from our own self-centredness ready for the living God. it is easy to see expectations regarding God and spirituality at work in contemporary Australia. Although church-hopping until the hopper finds the church they like has made churches more honest as they cannot assume people's allegience, overall it is unhelpful in the spiritual journey. Supermarket spirituality encourages people to think they know how God wishes to be gracious to them and so they search until they find it. This assumption might be hidden behind the search for uplifting music or a gospel minister, but it still assumes the person concerned knows what God wants for them.

Contrary to this, I don't think we really know what God wants for us, and how much goodness God wishes to shower upon us, and the sheer weight of goodness we miss because we have tunnel vision: we only receive the goodness that our expectations allow. Breaking our addiction to ourselves by not coming to worship with expectations of what God should do and how God should achieve it can be painful. People confuse this spiritual correction going on within us as boredom, or poor preaching, or bad liturgy, etc.

Another example of this is when people stay at a church because they are receiving what they want. If you think about it, it is just the other side of the coin of people leaving because they don't get what they want. Coming to church without expectations of how and what God should do broadens our experience of God, and our hopefulness. Sitting in church when you don't particularly feel God's presence is good practice for those times when God seems particularly absent. Feeling like God is absent at church will also give us a new sense of how shocking the crucifixion of Jesus must have been for the first disciples, not to mention a new sympathy for Jesus hanging on the cross is desolation. We are in good company! And if you are sitting in church and you wonder where God is in all of this, well focus on the Eucharist: it proclaims the death and resurrection of the Lord until he comes. Talk about presence in absence. And the next time we find ourselves nailed to the cross, there will be some formed practice to fall back on.

At the Heart of Worship, Truth

 A Pentecost sermon from the Revd Ron Keynes

Stop me if you have never been in a situation where           - in hindsight at least—you have not felt that you missed an opportunity to say something helpful and supportive to someone who needed support. If you could turn back the clock, you would have spoken gently and carefully, and maybe provided someone some room to move ahead, But you did not …..  Or maybe you stopped someone else from offering support ……. 

This is going to be a bit of a convoluted journey this morning, but I hope that you will find the value as we travel. On this Pentecost Sunday it has to do with being rather more open, and aware—and game. And find that it is important to be so.

Quite some years ago, I was Diocesan Youth Co-ordinator at the delicate age of late ‘50s. And one of the things that kids complained about, then, long before and long after, was ‘Pops, Church is so boring.’ My youngest daughter—married to a priest—still says the same thing. So what has gone wrong?

I suspect that part of the answer lies in that we are not at all sure quite what we are doing here. What is worship anyhow? What the hell is supposed to happen? Is this feel good stuff? Is this heart-warming? Or is it dead routine—as it seems to be for many? And all that is why this morning I follow up a pattern I engage in occasionally, and take us through the reasons for why we do what we do in Church. And to start, I take you out of Church to do it.

You will know what I am talking about when you are trying to rebuild an old relationship that has been broken by mistrust or misbehaviour. It does not matter if it was you at fault or the other person. The strain is there is it not. And you hover between total honesty and some sort of fluffing around the edges. Polite or honest. If you are trying to avoid hurt, then forget any real progress. Be polite? If you want real resolution, you will be stuck with honesty. At whatever cost. It is hard work, and sometimes quite delicate, but almost invariably, well worth the effort.  And the process in worship is remarkably similar.   Remember that.

Relationships are worth keeping and building on. That is what worship is all about. And that is where our form of worship almost always begins. Recognizing that there are issues that need attention

Back to Church and APBA ……… what is happening?

Almighty God  to Whom all hearts are open…………. No room for bumf –read the words again. This is no witch-hunt; no standing in judgement. It is a facing of ordinary human reality, with the powerful matter of resolution totally possible. Honesty only.

Shema Israel To compare me with you is to miss the point. I need a higher canon, a loftier standard. No room to move about here with the Shema—the ultimate standard, canon, high jump. This is not to make you feel lousy or pathetic. It is there to help us face the realities. It may sound hard, but refer back to the prayer of preparation. Honesty. And steep hills to climb.

Just like in a real-life conciliation, eh? 

The atmospherics of all this is wonderful: and then the facing of the truth. ‘I am responsible; I am not perfect. And that means that I need to accept that fact that others aren’t perfect either.’

Confession is not there to make your little soul sparkly again. It is to face the fact that God knows and you know and you do not have to hide from anyone. Christians cannot be blackmailed. If I have done something I ought not, I have only to say ‘Yes, that was me.’ Only when I can face the truth about myself am I able to move forward with any reality or permanence about it. It is freeing, redemptive. Yes, that is me—and now I can move on from there.

And then there is forgiveness. This is no easy step, and you will know that if you have had to forgive someone else. ‘Forgive and forget’ is pious twaddle. Never forget that.

Two things to note: forgiveness is not repeat NOT  a feeling. It is a decision. It is the turning of one’s back on revenge.

If I offer repentance, I am offering my word not to repeat the failure—so don’t forget; just be careful.

Resolution. Restoration. But having taken all issues seriously and the people seriously. And now life can begin again. We can talk again to each other, and listen—and work together and learn.

No wonder the Gloria—shout of delight.

No wonder the readings—for now I can listen to the Father and relish the restored relationship.

Once all that much has been dealt with, we have the Scripture readings. We can listen to God, be open to the Spirit, and perhaps even find the sermon has some help along our way.

And dare I say it, you may find no need of a sermon sometimes, for the dialogue between you and the Father is exhilarating enough.

One final word. Only last week I had a conversation with someone who was telling me what the Lord was saying to them.

If there is one thing we need to learn, it is, as Scripture says, ‘to test the spirits.’ This week’s news about Agape Ministries (what a misnomer!!!) shows how easy it is to lead some folk up enormous garden paths to a very destructive outcome.

Test your sense of God speaking with the clear picture of Jesus in the NT. Truth does not operate outside its own parameters. Never

Worship is About God and We Are the Beneficiaries!

In the last post I said that we should come to worship minus our own demands of how God should be present in worship. Worship is about God not us. But we shouldn't misunderstand this as though God needs us to worship God. I can't remember which new atheist rabbits on about this, perhaps all of them. "What kind of megalomaniac needs millions of people to worship him?" is the usual way of putting the loaded question. A very Hitleresque kind of megalomaniac is the answer. But let's not confuse this with God. Worship that is about God is worship for our benefit, not God's. We don't come to worship with our benefit in mind, and we don't come with our demands, but when we do come empty we are the beneficiaries. To come to let God be God reorients us in our relationship with God: we let God be God, rather than seek to take the burden of  the messiahship to ourselves. (See Genesis 3) God is a completeness of love beyond platitudes and flattery. Flattery and platitudes are offered to false messiahs.

Worship is About God

I have had reason to revisit an earlier post on worship because of some continuing comment. The point of that previous post is that worship is not about us and receiving what we think God should give. Of course, different styles suit different people, and bad liturgy and worship is still bad. Yes, but the point still remains that worship is about God, not us, and coming to worship with minimal expectations is best. If we could do this then our perceived absence of God in worship might become a gift that leads somewhere deeper. Instead the temptation is to be complacent with the boredom or to seek variety (and move churches). Spiritually it is tougher, but potentially more important, to remain worshiping where you think God is absent without being complacent. 

Moreover, such a practice (of remaining where we perceive God to be absent) is a spiritual practice that will serve us well when we face those intense times and places of God's absence, like sickness and death. Working with our need to tell God where and how God should be present is a spiritual practice that can lead to spiritual maturity. This 'working with our need to tell God' will include questioning God ("Where are you?" "Why have you deserted me?"), but that is part of the faith experience. But if we rant at God from a position of waiting for God, then such questioning is productive and does not need to lead to atheism.

Listening to God (Kids' Talk)

A kids' talk on prayer as listening to God.

Get someone up to talk about something. Prearrange with them that you will interrupt them continually by telling what they should be saying, or "What about ..." They take the interruptions gracefully, but eventually challenge you to let them speak as this is what you asked them to do. The point to the kids: we think of prayer as talking to God, but it is also listening to God.

Surrender

Dear God,
We loosen our grip.
We open our hand.
We are accepting.
In our empty hand
We feel the shape
Of simple eternity.
It nestles there.
We hold it gently.
We are accepting.
Amen.

Help Us To Change

God, help us to change. To change ourselves and to change our world. To know the need for it. To deal with the pain of it. To feel the joy of it. To undertake the journey without understanding the destination. The art of gentle revolution. Amen. (Michael Leunig)

A Prayer to Accept the Wonder and Mystery of Faith

When your Son lived on earth he gathered the children into his arms and rejoiced in the simplicity of their faith. Give us such faith, that we who are bowed down by doubts and fears may know, deep in our hearts, the truth of your love, and with the children be ready to accept the wonder and mystery of faith without seeking always to understand. Amen.

Enough

Transcendent and eternal God,
how in our finitude, how in our humanity,
can we even pretend to know very much about you -
you, God of all creation, God of all ages,
God of all history, from everlasting to everlasting?

But we praise you that we know enough - enough because you have come to us in Jesus,

Because of his birth in Bethlehem, not in Jerusalem,
his childhood in Nazareth, not in Rome,
his healing of the sick, his teaching of the kingdom,

Because Jesus is the Good News, the Good News about you and from you,
Because of the people who followed him and were his friends,
the disreputable and the poor with whom he was identified,
his trial as a criminal, his execution as an outcast,

Because your love cannot be killed and no tomb can contain you.
God of Jesus,
when reason fails and hope lies dormant,
break into our wilderness with the news
that because of him we know enough:
enough for our trust to be restored,
enough for our faith to be renewed,
enough to hold because we are held.

Enough to know that you are our God and will never let us go. Amen.

(Terry Falla)

In the Stillness

Eternal God, show us how deeply important it is to care and not to care, to let go and allow you to be Lord.

Lord, teach us the silence of humility, the silence of wisdom, the silence of love, the silence that speaks without words, the silence of faith.

Lord, teach us to silence our own hearts and minds: that we may listen to the movement of the Holy Spirit within us and sense the depths which are God. Amen.

A Prayer for the Heart

Let us pray for wisdom. Let us pause from thinking and empty our mind. Let us stop the noise. In the silence let us listen to our heart. The heart which is buried alive. Let us be still and wait and listen carefully. A sound from the deep, from below. A faint cry. A weak tapping. Distant muffled feelings from within. The cry for help.

We shall rescue the entombed heart. We shall bring it to the surface, to the light and the air. We shall nurse it and listen respectfully to its story. The heart’s story of pain and suffocation, of darkness and yearning. We shall help our feelings to live in the sun. Together again we shall find relief and joy. Amen. (Michael Leunig)

Prayer, the Most Crucifying Thing

Prayer, in the sense of union with God, is the most crucifying thing there is. One must do it for God’s sake; but one will not get any satisfaction out of it, in the sense of feeling “I am good at prayer. I have an infallible method.” That would be disastrous, since what we want to learn is precisely our own weakness, powerlessness, unworthiness. Nor ought one to expect a sense of the reality of the supernatural of which I speak. And one should wish for no prayer except precisely the prayer that God gives us – probably very distracted and unsatisfactory in every way.

On the other hand the only way to pray is to pray. And the only way to pray well is to pray much.

If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. And if circumstances do not permit even regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray – and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God.

As to beginning afresh, or where you left off, I don’t think you have any choice. You simply have to begin wherever you find yourself. Make any acts you want to make and feel ought to make, but do not force yourself into feelings of any kind.

You say very naturally that you do not know what to do if you have a quarter of an hour alone. Yet I suspect the only thing to do is to shut out everything and just give yourself to God and beg for God’s mercy and offer God all your distractions. (Dom John Chapman)

Prayer: Experiencing the Relentless Love of God

What we try to do in prayer is to experience deeply and consistently the undeserved, relentless love of God for us, despite everything. (Katherine Marie Dyckman & L. Patrick Carroll)

Desire

To desire God is to pray. (Rene Voillaume)