Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.
We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.
Psalm 123 (124) Vs. 6,7
A few weeks ago, I made my annual week long retreat. In the title of this series of posts I have put the word ‘Retreat’ in quotation marks as here. To remind us that Lent is not a time for retreating per se, but rather a time for engagement, which is the proper understanding of a Retreat. It is not a time for ‘getting away from it all’ – quite the opposite. Indeed if we retreat well, then we begin to understand that we cannot ‘get away from it all’, but that is another matter.
On my retreat I was Graced with several healing gifts – in particular gifts of disconnection, or better, disconnection from my disconnectedness. The Poustinia which I occupied was ‘Off Grid’, that is there was no electricity – and off the net. Both of these gifts had a profound effect in reconnecting myself – more explicitly to my body, which is and always will be part of me.
Firstly I want to think about the effect of being off-grid. The gift of this for my body was that I observed my day by the light of the day. It was not artificially prolonged. Our bodies, which are and always will be part of us, are tuned not to the fires we have lit for ourselves, rather they are tuned to the rhythm of light and dark which is part of our existence on earth. This is a connection we have lost and in no small part is responsible for our lack of knowledge of who we are, and as always, who we are before God. In other words artificial light it is part of the Illusory experience which has caused us to lose touch with Reality.
During my retreat, day broke at 6 am. It was then that the rhythm of prayer began, prayer and small labours such as tidying my room and preparing food. As night fell, 15 hours later, after a brief time of meditative prayer, I slept.
As has been noted, when we observe proper rhythms, we often wake for a period in the night. This time could profitably be given to prayer until such time as sleep kicked in again. (A mirror of the need to rest in the middle of the day).
I paid attention to my body. And my body thanked me for it. I disconnected and discovered how disconnected I was.
Lent is a time for such disconnection, healing disconnection. Not to reconnect, but to discover the truth of our disconnected existence, to recover who we are as created beings, souls AND bodies, which are and always be part of us. In ‘getting away from it all’, we rediscover our identity.
‘If you are . . . ‘ ‘If you are . . .’ ‘If you are . . .’
Whilst we are well into Lent – there are many, if not all of us in the Western Protestant tradition who need to restart Lent. Good intentions have led us where they always do . . .
Right on time, just when we need it, God sends us what we need, which is less of my words and more words from one who sees better than I.
Again, I offer a link to Fr Stephen Freeman’s latest writing. Words which might help us whatever our state, whether it is to continue faithfully in the fast given us, or to step aside from that which we have chosen, or to begin again, or indeed to enter into Lent for the first time
Sermon for Lent 2 – Year A – Sunday 16th March 2014
Genesis 12:1-4
John 3:1-17
“you must be born again”
The story is told of a preacher called to a new ministry. On his first week his text was ‘You must be born again’. The elders of the church who had appointed him all patted themselves on the back for it was a fine sermon that stirred their hearts. Indeed it was SO good that the following week, they were only Slightly disturbed when he announced his text for the week, John Chapter 3 and verse 7 ‘Do not be astonished that I said to you, you must be born again!’. Again the sermon was excellent and all went home to say what a fine preacher they had appointed, and they looked forward to the following week. On the following week however, their disturbance reached a new height. The pastor walked to the pulpit, and announced his text ‘you must be born again’. Hurriedly after the service, the elders got together, and clled the pastor into the vestry. ‘Pastor. We are Very very glad you have come to us, you are a very fine preacher’ – always beware of flattery . . . ‘but we are concerned that you only seem to be preaching only from one text. Why? And the pastor responded , because ‘You must be born again!’
Last week I spoke about the illusory nature of much of our existence. That we Needed above all to be awakened to the Reality in which we ‘live and move and have our being’. And it might be tempting to say that that means that we need to hear the same sermon series. But our situation is not the same, indeed the preacher was wrong in what he said. He just had a view of Baptism out of line with the teaching of the catholic [sic] church down through the ages. Not that new Birth is not Necessary and Essential (of the Essence / Core of faith).
In the words of Jesus to Nicodemus ‘you must be born from above’. Jesus does not put this as an option or a choice – it is an Imperative. You Must be born again. And the reason for that imperative is made clear in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’ ‘You cannot enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit’ The new birth is Essential to our Lives as Christians, indeed it Is our life.
Most of us have grown up with an understanding of Christian faith that is part of that widespread Illusion about the nature of the world in which we live. That Christian faith is a set of ideas about the way the world is – one amongst many religious understandings – that the Christian life is ‘the moral life’ – one not dissimilar to that of many good lives. Even that it is a ‘Spiritual’ life, like indeed we might care to imagine everyone can access in some way or other.
But it is not. Christian Faith, Christian Life is the life of Jesus Christ – it is a whole New way of being in the world – a participation in the Life of God in the world, for the sake of the world and to the Glory of God without parallel, anywhere. We cannot say ‘it is like this . . .’ or ‘it is like that . . .’ for it is not like anything we can name, except Jesus Christ. It is a Life given to us – it is the product of a second birth – the sacrament of which is baptism.
This week Bishop Kelvin has begun his Hikoi – once more proclaiming the Good News throughout the Diocese. And the only Good News we have as Christians is the Life, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with Anglicans across the Diocese we are invited to participate in this proclamation of Jesus Christ as we renew our Baptism vows.
For our Baptism is God’s chosen way of New birth – of bringing us into the life of Jesus Christ – but for so many and to a certain extent for us all, either the Devil has snatched away the seed of the Word of Life, or persecution has meant that we’ve given up on it, or, and this is true of us all to a greater or lesser extent, the thorns and weeds of life in the world with its myriad distractions, its hall of enticing mirrors, or its pain and sorrow – these have robbed us of the Joy of life in Jesus Christ – of our New Life. Our problem is not that we have not been born again, our problem is that we have forgotten. We have forgotten who we are – we have forgotten that we have been born again into a living hope and we have become comfortable with an illusion – about faith and our Life before God. We have become comfortable with a faith that is no faith at all.
Of course to speak of Baptism in this way is troublesome for us Modern people. For so many in the modern church ‘being born again’ is something we choose along with Baptism. Nicodemus question ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old?’ echoes this. When we were born did we think ‘How can I be born?’ Why then do we think we can ask ‘How do I go about being born again??’. It is nonsense, not that the modern church is not replete with those who will tell you HOW to be born!!!! . . . For We moderns are trained to be in charge of our own lives. The thought that our Baptism, the second birth was something we had no say in is offensive to us. And the more control we vainly imagine we have over our lives, through wealth or education or family circumstance – the more we chafe against the idea that our re-birth – our Baptism was ANYTHING except Our choice. We thus deny who we are, Living not as children of light, but as children of this present evil age.
As one writer so clearly puts it ‘Much of the rhetoric of [this modern age] is aimed towards those with wealth and power. It privileges their stories and mocks the weakness of those without power . . .’ And anyone who was baptised as an infant, with no say, powerless and weak will know the power of the ‘mockery’ dressed up as ‘Christian Concern for Truth’ that suggests that lack of choice made your baptism second class. How often have we heard the declaration – ‘I was truly present at my baptism. I chose that path’ – a rebuke (occasionally unintended) to the weak who were baptised as infants.
To say ‘the point is not whether you have chosen Christ, but whether He has chosen you’ – frankly that is too much for us moderns to swallow. ‘This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?’ The offense of the gospel is that it is Not about you – it is totally and utterly about the Glory of God. And many turn back from life for that reason and construct something more in keeping with their own understanding – the Protestant Error. {It is worth remembering that the rise of Protestantism coincided with the birth of Individualism. Indeed Scholars of secularism, Individualism’s offspring find it all but impossible to discern which caused the other.
But Baptism is not even an individual matter. For God in Christ does not call individuals, he calls a people. This is why we renew our vows together. We might hear the call of Abram as a call to an individual but it is not – for Israel is in Abram. In calling Abram to Life, God calls Israel. ‘Abram and his seed for ever’ as we shall sing in the Magnificat tonight. Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation . . . So Abram went, as the Lord had told him. So Abram went . . . So in the fulness of time, Obedient Israel – Jesus the Christ was sent into the World to be Life for the World – to be the Life of a People – to be not my life or your life, but to be Our life
We renew our vows together to remind ourselves of this – to remind ourselves that Christ is our Life – that it is nothing to do with us – that we are being led into something which has no parallel. That by God’s Grace – free and unmerited in All regards, lest we should boast – We have been born from above.
Bishop Kelvin’s question ‘how do you convert a diocese’, has This merit – that Christian Life is the life that we share. That we need together to wake from the illusions which constrain and seek to limit our common Life. May we together wake up to who we are; by Grace alone, those born from above. Not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but [born] of God.
It is perhaps no surprise that in the age of the disembodied faith [‘faith’ as a set of beliefs – discipleship as bible classes or devotional reading (usually solitary)] – this discipline which has been a central discipline of the faithful for most of history, falls into disuse.
It often seems as if modern Christians have descended into a form of gnostic docetism. That is faith which denies the body and its part in our salvation.
(Indeed, you may like to pause here to ask yourself the question ‘What is the role of my body in the salvation of my soul?’ . . . We live in a generation which largely has no comprehension about the significance of the body. Perhaps that is why the church is so consumed over issues of sex?)
We have lost sight of the person As body – we are trained in seeing the body only as a container, which at best we have to look after for the pitiful reason ‘that we might live longer’.
Fasting is the most powerful way of coming to understand that apart from your body you will not be saved. It is the key discipline for waking up to the SPIRITUAL mess we are in. Fasting is the fastest route to understanding that things are not as we have come to believe. It strips our illusions away. We no longer live a mental fantasy. It is the way to awakening to Truth.
As I have remarked elsewhere, Lent is declining in significance in much of the Church. In large part this is down to its relation to Easter.
If we compare Lent with the other season of preparation, Advent, this becomes clear. Blogs are full of ‘getting ready for Christmas’ because ‘Christmas’ is so enticing, it occupies a vast space in our emotional psyche. What is more, for those of us in post-Christendom cultures, Christmas holds the attention of the vast majority of those amongst whom we live – and for similar reasons although we might loudly demur . . .
Whereas Lent is preparation for Easter, The explicit zenith of the Christian year. Christians are far quieter about Lent than Advent. Truly this is yet one marker of the decline of Faith amongst ‘the faithful’
Of course Lent also goes against the zeitgeist, for it calls us to bodily restraint, to fasting. [I will not pursue this in depth, but the constant warnings in contemporary writing about fasting, about the need to check first with your doctor, about the many ‘alternatives’ to fasting from food, are in and of themselves troubling markers of the decline of Faith] Fasting is a discipline of the body, as is mutual confession . . .
Fasting is a reminder to us that we Are bodies!! That our Existence is bodily. And mutual confession, about which I’ve already written much is bodily. It involves our whole being. We do it in the presence of others whom we see hear and smell, whose own bodies take up space in more or less close proximity. We are Aware of others in ways that before the Last Day we cannot be aware of God. Mutual confession like fasting is a Lenten discipline. It reminds us of who we are, before one another and thus before God.
‘My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.’ Galatians 6:1,2
Some of the most tragic words I ever hear are the words of an elderly person ‘I do not want to be a burden’ [I hear many that are tragic and I miss the tragedy of them, in all likelihood most of our words are tragic]
This is a denial of our dignity as persons, and that it comes so readily not only to the lips of the elderly is a sign that we have chosen Cain’s lie. ‘We are individuals! Are we our brothers’ keeper??!!’ I am not responsible for you, neither are you for me.
To be ‘an individual’ – refusing to be a burden is to live a double lie. In truth we cannot help but be a burden – our lives are all interconnected however much the prince of this present age tells us otherwise. Every word, every action of our lives impinges on others, those we see and those we will never know. We are burdensome – and if we cannot see it in those around us, surely we can see it in the Creation of which we are an inextricable part. ‘All Creation groans’ . . .
And secondly we lie for the word of LIFE is that in burden bearing we are fulfilling the law of Christ. He who bore our burdens gladly commands us so to do. It is the way of discipleship.
Of course we shy from ‘being a burden’ for we understand ‘burden’ in negative terms – again our vision is distorted by the evil one. We do not hear the words of the Life Giving One – ‘my yoke is easy, my burden is light’. Burden bearing is understood to be grievous to us, and thus being a burden is transformed from part of God’s intention for us, to a form of sin.
At its darkest this is expressed through our rush to kill all those who are burdensome to us. Starting with the unborn, moving on to those who are terribly ill, then the elderly, ‘next they came for’ . . . we have been here before . . . Evil teaches us we are individuals, denies that our Life is with the other.
For now briefly I will pursue this alien thought that burden bearing Is a Joy.
A couple of days ago I spoke about a community of healing, where the burden of lives were gladly shared one with another. [HERE]
I make two comments in this regard. Firstly, in the eyes of the world these people were nothing – the bottom of the pile, the despised, the ‘tax collectors and prostitutes’ of our day. For many it was their sense that there was no value to their lives that had led them into drug addiction. Now they found themselves amongst a group of people who loved them, not because of any status or what they could do for one another. They saw that they were under the same condemnation and received mercy, one from another.
As I said, there were some for whom the time in community did not work. Those for whom the light of freedom was too bright – those imprisoned and institutionalised in one way or another. Those behind black iron bars, and those in gilded cages, who could not believe that Life was to be found amongst the poor and destitute, amongst the tax collectors and Prostitutes, who denied that they had been humbled and that the door of Life stood open.
Secondly, they were joyful for knowing the wonder of being relieved of their burdens – the healing power of Grace and forgiveness they were quick to extend the hand of Grace to those amongst whom they found themselves.
They saw themselves in the other – they recognised their common condition – they gladly threw away pride. Burdens gladly born in a community of healing, a community of LIFE.
For some years I acted as client advocate for a small drug addiction recovery facility in our village. My encounters there I will never forget.
Each morning the clients met in a small group for a check up amongst themselves of how things were. As the followed a 12 step programme the opening lines were always the same. ‘Hi, my name is x and I am a drug addict’ Then followed what they called their check in – finding out how each one was. In and through it there was huge mutual acceptance – gentle calling to account (they knew instinctively when someone was masking what was going on) – and forgiveness.
Part of the recovery required the clients to write up their life story – including an honest accounting and responsibility for their actions, those they had hurt and the rest. This they would retell to their fellows. Again the group Accepted the individual – Called them to account and to full honesty – and found ways on a daily basis to express their love and care for their recovering friends – for friendship grew naturally when lives were laid open. Like the thief on the cross, they each knew ‘We too are under the same condemnation’.
They were people who knew they were ill, knew they needed healing and knew that the path laid out if faithfully followed would bring them back to Life.
They bore one anothers’ burdens and thus fulfilled the Law of Christ – for burden bearing is Love in action.
And utterly remarkably 3 out of 4 folk who walked the journey were transformed.
I still think that it is as close as I have ever come to seeing the Kingdom of God in startling clarity – and also that as when The King walked this earth, the Light of his presence, the offer of Life was too much for
What was sad was of course those who could not stay the course and almost all of them fell into one of two groups. There were those who had spent so long in prison that they were terrified of Freedom. The other group were those who had come from more ‘Respectable’ backgrounds. I am very aware that there are many ‘respectable people’ whose addiction to drugs is hidden – they are perhaps wealthy and don’t have to steal to satisfy the craving – or their addiction is covered up by those close to them. Such people had too much ‘face’ to lose. Their lives perhaps more than the lives of most of the clients had been hidden behind the mask of respectability. ‘Good’ homes, well thought of in their professional life . . . fill in the blanks . . . all those things which go to make up socially respectable people. Indeed they’d often paid for the programme themselves . . .
It was too much for them to admit that they too were ‘under the same condemnation’ as those who came from poor and broken backgrounds and homes. The discipline of honest accounting before others of their lives and failings was too much – they could not face the truth about themselves. They could not bear to see the tax collectors and Prostitutes entering life ahead of them. Perhaps, like the Rich man in Jesus’ parable, they chose not to see Lazarus at their gate and to see themselves in him.
The chaos of the lives of most clients was so on the surface, masks were at times hilariously obvious to all – the Respectable amongst them had had more opportunity to work at our deceptions 🙂 ‘It is harder for a Rich man . . .’
We Are All under the same condemnation – we all hang next to the one ‘who has done nothing amiss’ – like us in every way yet without sin. That is our predicament – and the curse perhaps of our churches is the masks that we are taught to wear There of all places. How little often our lives in the gaze of the church bear little or no likeness to the reality of our lives at home and in the workplace. THE place, the body of Christ In which we are healed, is the place very often of our greatest deception. Fine music, pastors with a wall full of academic citations, beautifully robed choirs, inconsequential conversations over coffee, and of course we ourselves dressed in Sunday Best . . .
Our churches are to be places of formation, and formation in Christ is perhaps entirely a process of healing. Church is a hospital – there our distorted selves, often hidden from the gaze of those around us in the world find a place where it comes into Light and is healed. The body of Christ – the church. If we come to know the love of God, the significance of his healing grace, perhaps our churches might come better to resemble that drug addiction clinic, perhaps we too might see remarkable healings and people restored to life?
I’m reminded of the opening of those meetings
Perhaps after saying – the Lord be with you, and also with you – we might say ‘My name is Eric, and I am a sinner’ . . . just a thought
(NB Of course I’m NOT saying that belonging to Church means you have to change your name to Eric . . . 😉 )
On Saturday we unmasked Pride – the Proud One who is ‘the father of lies’. The one whom Jesus encounters in the Wilderness. How in his cunning he fools us, not only into denying his presence, but then, and this is much easier given we do not accept the reality of his existence, whispers in our ears to keep us from our true healing.
The example of this action was the deceit that we do not need to confess our sins one to another – that all that is necessary is that we confess them before God. Apart from the fact that this is not what the scriptures teach us is the way to our healing – and thus we are not healed – it also unmasks our determined individualism – the pride which says ‘I do not need my brother and sister!’, masked as the pietistic ‘I have my own private relationship with God’. Pride will always keep us separated from one another, and THEREFORE also from God. The ‘god’ of our pietsitic imagination is only the echo of our own heart. As the beloved evangelist puts it ‘Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.’
So our refusal to confess one to another, and that is what it is, is born out of hatred for them. Most certainly it is the fruit of Pride. It is, as I shall show shortly, the result of not having heard the Gospel.
But for now, I wish briefly to examine a very important principle of our growth in Christ. The Doctor of souls, St Benedict in his Rule for monks begins by talking about the different types of monk. He speaks of with the ‘eremitic’ – those who live as solitaries. He comments that they can only do this because they ‘have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time . . . [and so] go from battle line in the ranks of their brothers to the single combat of the desert’
Here we find the root of the idea that we cannot pursue the spiritual life on our own until we have learned to live it in community – otherwise we are easily deceived. Of course by and large we have grown up in churches where the exact opposite is thought to be true – that living in close community was a more difficult call than going it alone (even as I write it I can see how foolish we are in this regard)
Thus also, to take a slightly different tack, one cannot carry the Poustinia of the heart out into the world, until such time as through years of training we have lived in a Poustinia learning the discipline of service to the community.
In these and many other ways we are deceived into thinking we can go it ‘alone with God’, avoiding the school of the Lord’s service which is the Christian community.
Anyone who thinks they can confess truthfully to the Lord whom they cannot see and know purely by faith, and yet who cannot confess truthfully in the assembly of Christ’s body – anyone who does not discern Christ in the body – is in grave spiritual danger.
Tomorrow we read of this in action – in a situation where Pride has been torn down.
the elves are heading west 