Words for the Journey

A Thomas Merton quote came to me this morning while doing some reading. "We are often confronted by questions that we cannot answer because the time for answering them has not yet come."  I have turned the page and closed the book, but the words still linger in my mind.  Oh, I have gone on about other things; yet, when my mind comes to a neutral position, the quote comes again with such force that it cannot be ignored. Is it, perhaps, a word that helps us understand the silence from God that often follows some question we are asking Him?  Does it explain the moments when He seems to be saying "No" when we want to hear "Yes" ?   

While these thoughts are possibilities that might help us unlock the meaning of the quote, the authors of the book highlighted it to enable the readers to understand that the spiritual life is a journey.  A spiritual journey is a venture into the unknown.  The prototype for the sojourner is Abraham who heard God calling him to go to a land not yet revealed.  Regardless of how much of a planner we might be, if we choose to walk with Jesus we are going to walk into unplanned moments and unchartered territory. It might be said that when we travel with Jesus, we do so on a need to know basis.  

The questions that we cannot answer may be the Spirit's way of pushing us forward into a season of knowing what cannot be understood until we get further along the way.  Such a way is hard to embrace in our culture of instant gratification.  It is hard to accept when a hand held device can be asked any question and an answer comes instantaneously.  Culture's way is not God's way.  God's way is the way of not knowing.  It is the way of mystery.  It is the way of trusting that when the time for answering the unanswerable questions comes, what we strive to know will be revealed to us. 

A Grandfather's Gift

I ran up on an essay today about John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress."  As many know it was written while Bunyan was enduring a twelve year imprisonment.  This allegory of the Christian life is a religious classic.  When I finished the essay I thought about the man who gave me my first copy of the book. His name was the Rev. William Raymond Wilder, Sr.  When his son married my widowed mother, he took on a grandfather role in my life.  

Actually, my copy of Bunyan's book came to me when he died in 1970 and I was given a number of the books from his personal library.   The books I received from him were the first ones which went on the shelves of this young about to be a preacher.  His books introduced me to G. Campbell Morgan, E. Stanley Jones, Charles Spurgeon, G. Ray Jordan, and someone as unusual as Billy Sunday. "The Pilgrim's Progress" was then and continues to be regarded as a treasure.  It was an old worn volume when I got it and so it has remained.  It's pages had been turned many times and I continued turning them over the years. 

Anyone who has yet to read Bunyan's allegory would do well to pick up a copy and begin to read.  It describes a character known as Christian as he leaves the City of Destruction and journeys toward the Celestial City.  The trials and temptations he encountered will resonate with each one of us as we continue our own personal journey with Jesus.  When I gave my five minute retirement speech at Annual Conference back in 2010, I was proud to identify myself as a third generation Methodist preacher. 

Matthew 6:24

The preacher whom I heard this morning preached from a great story in the book of Acts.  Of course, the book of Acts is full of great stories, but this one was about Paul and Silas being thrown into prison for freeing a young woman of a spirit of divination.  She made money for her owners by telling fortunes and when Paul ordered the spirit out of her, it took away a source of income from the man who owned the slave-girl.  Anyone who knows anything about anything knows that upsetting the economic cart of anyone or any church can result in serious consequences.  

Paul and Silas ended up in jail.  Preachers have freedom to preach about most anything, but if serious sermons start coming from the pulpit challenging people to examine how the use of money and faith in God are connected, there are liable to be people who will tell the preacher to get back to preaching the Bible.  The truth is the Scripture has a great deal to say about our attitude toward wealth.  Jesus was about as forthright as one can be when He said, "No one can serve two masters...You cannot serve God and wealth."  (Matthew 6:24).  Jesus also told that parable about the rich young ruler who would not follow Jesus because he could not turn loose of his money.  

It has come as a rude awakening to many to realize that the money they hold actually has a hold on them.  Not only does it have a hold on them, but the accumulation of money can have such power over us that it becomes a spirit that controls us as surely as the young slave-girl was under the influence of an evil spirit.  It is really not hard to figure how much having becomes more important than giving.  Look at the church budget and figure how much is spent on maintenance and how much is spent on missions.  Look at the household budget and figure how much is given and how much is kept.  When all the pencil work is done, go back and figure on Matthew 6:24 again. 

Epiphanies in the Ordinary

After I had been here at the farm for a spell, I began to realize I was somewhere I had never been before.  While I had stood in awe at many a sunset, marveled at towering mountains, and felt I was standing at the edge of eternity when I saw unending waves crash onto the shore, I never saw the majesty of the minutiae in  the unfolding creation in which I was immersed.  I had never considered the fact that I could never see the same river twice.  It never occurred to me that the trees which seemed like forever were actually changing each day.  Neither did I know that the God who moved in the first Garden could still walk midst the garden I was growing.   

One of the most surprising things discovered as I learned about life in this place was the ordinary.  Through the ordinary God could make His presence known.  The crosses and candles and altars of the church were special things, but none of those symbols were required for God to make Himself known.   In the ordinary God quietly and softly spoke as surely as His voice thundered through the voices of Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah or Jeremiah.  Every day was a moment for something new to appear.  There were birds hatching in the blue bird boxes, pecans moving toward maturity in the trees, and wind that brought a cooling breath into worn, tired, and hot bodies.  

I could never have imagined God bringing such epiphanies into my life.  I knew about Epiphany Sunday, but not about daily epiphanies of grace.  Of all the lessons learned through creation's baptism, it is the lessons about grace that have been most constant.  I have learned and continue to learn that nothing is really about me, even less is about what I have done, and everything is about the grace of God.  The grace of God is at the beginning of everything.  It is like a strong thread which holds life together.  It is what has brought me this far and as the old song says, "it is grace which will lead me Home."  

Celtic Spirituality

Celtic spirituality had its beginning in Ireland and Scotland back as early as the third or fourth century.  It is often frowned upon as being so focused on nature and creation that it is pantheistic. It is true that the Celtic Christians often baptized places and rituals associated with pagan Druid worship so that what was pagan became Christian, but what was embraced was not pantheism, but panenthesim.  For example, some grove of trees associated with Druid worship was regarded as such sacred space that the emerging saints of Celtic spirituality re-imaged it into a sacred place for Christian worship.  

One of the things which makes Celtic spirituality a unique creature of religious life is that it came into being without being under the influence of the institutionalized Roman Church.  The theology developed by its saints was not influenced by Roman thinking; thus, what came into existence was an order of religious life not bound by the theology being developed by Augustine who preached total human depravity.  Celtic spirituality looked into the face of the baby and declared that it was not evil which was present, but goodness.  It was a faith established on the belief that there were two books of authority.  One was the written Scripture and the other was the creation.  One was the little book and the other was the big book.   

It is not surprising that when the Roman culture began to move back into the regions of England after some two hundred years of being absent that there would be a theological clash.  The conflict between the institutionalized Roman Church and Celtic spirituality came to a head in 664 at the Synod of Whitby.  The outcome of the Synod affirmed the Roman tradition and the stream of Celtic spirituality began to lose influence until it became a fringe element in the religious life of the land and its people. It has only been in recent years that the practice of the Celtic traditions has found a new place in a church that has become so institutionalized that it could be losing its heart. 

Working up a Sweat

This Sunday I am going to be preaching just up the road at a small church I served as pastor immediately after retiring.  I could say that I got an invitation which sounds better than the truth which is I volunteered.  When they get the word that I am coming, there may be a lot of weekend trips planned!  Regardless, I will show up to preach.  When I started preaching back in 1971, I had three small churches on a Charge.  It was in the day of Sunday evening worship.  The congregations were all small and sometimes evening worship crowds really did not measure up to the definition of a crowd.   

I can remember times of preaching to a single digit congregation.  Most of the time the standard length of my sermons was a little less than ten minutes; however, there was one night I got to going and could not find the conclusion so I just kept on preaching till I could think of nothing else to say.  When I finished a laymen told me that I did not need to shoot the whole load on so few people.  It could be a problem this week as well since I only preach now and again.  I will have to be careful not to unload four months of not preaching into one sermon!   What I have learned is that regardless of the frequency of preaching, or the size of the congregation, it is still serious business to stand in the pulpit to speak a word which meets the criteria of being "the word of God for the people of God." 

I find myself pondering the Scripture more intensely this week.  As I pray I am mindful of my need for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  It is only Tuesday, but Sunday is beginning to loom large on the horizon.  The other day I came in from tractor work soaked with sweat, but I was not complaining.  After months of battling the residual weakness of chemo, it felt really good to be able to work up a sweat.  When Sunday comes, it will feel good to be able to sweat a bit while I am gifted to once again preach the Word of the Lord. 

The Gift of Silence

The farm has given me its silence.  It allows me to share in it, be a part of it, and to be blessed by it.  It is a gift I never really sought, but once received, it has been life changing.  It is as if I have been dropped in a deep river able to know nothing but the water all around me.  So, it is with the silence.  I am immersed in it, deeply immersed.  Immersed within it, I am learning to live, to think, to be, to know myself, and to know who created me.  The gift of this silence is like the gift of a stone thrown into the pond, there is no end to the rippling power in my heart.  

There is no edge it has not touched.  There is no depth it has not gone.  There is no barrier which stands in its way.  The silence and I have become the same.  There is a oneness in those moments when I simply allow myself to be, asking nothing, expecting nothing, but experiencing everything.  This silence is surely a living silence as surely as everything in creation lives.  As the trees and the grass has been given life, so has the silence in which I am immersed.  I can feel it moving as it breathes.  I can hear the beat of its heart.  It, too, along with me and every living thing which God has placed here is alive and to it and everything else I am connected and joined.  It is a gracious and undeserved blessing.  I am grateful.

In the silence of the farm I have read the first chapter of Genesis.  Not once, but many times.  Many, many times.  What was there before the noise of the animals?  What was there before the waves of the sea touched the shores of land?  What was there before the sounds of men and women talking in the Garden? Before things were created for the ears to hear, there was the silence.  It is a silence that was not quenched by the sounds created in Genesis, but a silence that continues to exist as surely as does the created earth and air itself.  As did all created things, we came into being out of the silence.  When we learn to live in the ever existing silence, we will know what it is to live.  We will know what it is to be home.