This sermon was preached in two parts on February 11th. This is the first text : Isaiah 58:9b-14
It might not make sense at first, but I’d like to start with an illustration. I have brought some visual aids with me this week. I have a raw potato, a bowl of porridge and a piece of cake. I once heard a very wise and experienced teacher of contemplative practice say that Jesus approached life like one of these. Can you tell me which one, and why?
It’s the cake.
When you are baking a cake, how do you test for doneness? You poke a cocktail stick or skewer into it and if it’s done then nothing sticks to it. If it still needs more time, then crumbs and batter cling to the stick.
Now, if we tried that same kind of test on the potato or the porridge, we’d get a whole lot of resistance from the one, and a whole lot of goop from the other.
Jesus is like a perfectly baked cake. He was one who moved through life without resisting anything – not even death. And he moved through life without clinging to anything – not even life itself. Before he even sets his face for Jerusalem, he tells the disciples what will come. He accepts it, goes out to meet it and receives it. He forgives the ones who act out their fear and anger on him.
He doesn’t resign himself to the cross as if he is powerless to change anything – because he is not powerless. If he chose differently, he could offer the kind of firm resistance a potato only dreams about. Neither does he submit to torture out of despair of ever changing anything. He doesn’t give up in frustration. Those are the ways of porridge.
Instead he surrenders to the will and wisdom of God – a surrender he has been practicing for his whole life in his silent prayer in those deserted places.
And this is what Isaiah is getting at.
Put aside the ways of the potato and the porridge, the clinging and the resisting. Aside from anything else, the effort it takes is exhausting, and you take that same effort into your sabbath. If our rest is just so we can keep going, or if we pause so we can stew over what happened this week – pointing the finger and offloading onto someone else- then it follows that we’ll end up parched, dissatisfied, weak, even ruined.
This isn’t a threat…it’s just a description of the destination that these roads head towards.
The sabbath rest is meant to be a time of delight, a time of release and nurturing inner quiet and calm, meeting with the One who is love, who loves you beyond your wildest imagining. This is what sabbath is for. For peace and serenity – for the peace of being and not doing. For the serenity of knowing that this peace is always there with you if you will surrender into God’s arms and be held in the quiet.
I love the images that Isaiah gives for what flows forth from that surrendered place: the light of noonday in the gloom of our darkness; the lush, watered garden; the deep, unfailing spring; the restoring of places to live; the repairing of ruptures; there is simultaneously a promise of being grounded in a firm foundation and being lifted up and fed.
So…are you more potato or porridge?
And if you are thinking that Jesus is special, has a fully human fully divine advantage over us, please think again.
Jesus is the Way. We follow him, we learn from him, we practice resting, delighting and being with him – and by grace, little by little, we become like him…able to move through life without clinging and without resisting. Able to perceive the wisdom needed in each moment. Able to see the light, sense the inner flow that leads us to acts of peace, nurture, restoration and repair.
Let’s pause with this for a moment, and allow the music to draw us into a deeper place.
Slow me down – you can listen here.
The second reading is Mark 9:2-9
Like every piece of spiritual wisdom, the path of peace and serenity is simple and also very hard. I do not underestimate how challenging it is to let go of resisting and clinging. Those habits were formed in childhood and we are so deeply immersed in the grooves that we can’t see anything beyond them. We don’t really know any other way of meeting life except resist or cling.
We basically have two ways out of that rut, and we need them both to happen.
We need to be jolted out by some outside force or event, and if we want to stay on a new path, we need to exert ourselves to rise over the hump and create new pathways. You can be jolted by going on a retreat, you can sign up for a life changing experience or choose a career path that will land you in challenging and confronting situations. Or, you can love so deeply your heart breaks open, you can have an accident that leaves you paralysed, you can lose a child, a parent, a friend.
The jolt alone is not enough though. We also need a discipline of awareness and attention where we exert ourselves in finding the practices that work in our own lives to train us to let go of our potato and porridge reactions and instead to be present with God’s love and light, to receive love and light, grace and joy.
It’s weird, I know, but we need to learn how to be, and to practice being in God’s presence, because this is the only way for us to be led into real rest.
I find it very comforting to notice that Jesus gave the disciples many shocks. This story is one of those moments where the disciples are rocked out of their ruts. And Peter, bless him, shows us what we do when that happens. He feels a sense of utter bewilderment… and maybe a desire to cling to something. And then he proposes making a shrine. It’s like he shows us how hard it is to be there, just soaking it in, just letting the light shine on him and not trying to somehow make it a bit more normal, manageable and accessible – a bit less jolting.
We each have a million ways of distracting ourselves from just being with the Divine, even of the discomfort of being with the Divine. Some of those ways are coming to church, reading the bible and praying – honestly, we can very comfortably hide out in those all the time telling ourselves we are actively seeking God. We resist for loads of totally good reasons, all of which will very effectively keep us from the love we want.
So, beginning this lent and going on through the next six months or so, I’m going to invite you to come on a deepening journey with me. We’ll go deeper into peace, we’ll explore areas of the Christian tradition you may not be so familiar with, and we’ll do it in the company of saints like Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich and Benedict of Nursia.
We’ll do it with some great spiritual teachers like Catherine of Sienna, Thomas Kelly, Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen.
And together we’ll practice being present with God, learning to let go of our resistance and our clinging.
Let’s pray.
