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Sermon 06/05/2005
Walking With God ~ by
Tom Kinder
June 5, 2005, Third Sunday after Pentacost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont,
UCC
Micah 6:6-8; Matthew 9:9 - 13, 18-26
Today’s sermon is about walking with God,
and finding the sacred way in the midst of all
our living. We find the call to follow and walk
with God on the sacred way everywhere we look
in spiritual teaching.
The prophet Micah says, “What does the Lord
require of you but to do justice, and to love
kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
The Tao Te Ching, the sacred text of Taoism, says,
If I have even just a little sense
I will go along the Great Way
And my only fear will be of turning from it.
(Chapter 53)
We pledge in our covenant that we will walk together
in God’s holy ways, and in the way of Jesus
Christ.
In today’s gospel lesson Jesus says just
two words to Matthew: “Follow me.”
Last week we heard Jesus warning us that the way
is hard and the gate is narrow that leads to life
and few find it, whereas the gate is wide and
the way easy that leads to destruction. If we
have even just a little sense, we will see that
there is a way we can go that can make all the
difference in our lives, a way that is blessed
and that leads to life and light. If we have even
just a little sense, our only fear will be of
turning from that way onto ways that lead to destruction
and darkness and death. If we are wise, this will
be the one central question and concern of our
life, as it has been of good people for thousands
of years: how can I walk with God on the sacred
way in my life?
The trick, of course, is that the answer is different
for us each. There are certain basic principles
that can be applied to a variety of situations—
like doing justice and lovingkindness—but
there is no road map of the sacred way. The most
important thing we need for our spiritual journey
is to learn how to find the way in any given moment.
My mother used to say that her education hadn’t
taught her everything, but it had taught her where
to look it up. We cannot possibly be taught everything
we will need to know to walk with God through
every situation of our lives, but if we know how
and where to find out what we need to know, then
we don’t need to worry.
Our spiritual tradition has a three-part approach
to discerning God’s will. The first is prayer—to
watch and pray. To keep on the sacred Way, the
Tao Te Ching says, we should be “watchful,
like someone crossing a winter stream. Alert,
like people aware of danger.” (Chapter 15)
The danger is that we might fall into distraction
or temptation and get sidetracked and end up walking
with something other than God leading us.
This is easy to do. We are like the little girl,
Sal, in the book Blueberries for Sal, by Robert
McCloskey. Sal goes up a wild blueberry hill in
Maine following her mother, but soon Sal is so
distracted by eating blueberries that she loses
track of her mother. She ends up following a mother
bear, instead.
Like Sal, we get distracted easily by life’s
pleasures or cares. We get lost in them and end
up following a path that turns out to be more
of a bear than a mother. We need to watch our
steps with careful attention if we want to find
and stay on the sacred way.
Prayer helps us discern where God is leading in
our life, especially if it is not the kind of
payer where we talk, but the kind where we listen
and watch. Prayer can open our senses to hear
God’s still, small voice or to see the signs
written in invisible ink that mark our path, or
to smell the scent of the way as a dog smells
a deer track. Listening prayer takes practice
and patience. It is not a tool we can plug in
and turn on instantly. It takes consistent discipline
and work on our part before we gain clear spiritual
vision—but any level of effort in prayer
begins to improve our sensitivity to God’s
presence.
Prayer is the first and greatest help to finding
the way and walking with God, and it makes the
other two much more effective. The second one
is reading the wisdom of the saints and sages
in scripture and elsewhere. No sacred writing
describes exactly who you are or what situation
you face. No one has ever stood in the exact time
and place where you stand, and no other person
is exactly like you. But through reading the Bible
and other sacred writings and great literature
we can find perspectives from other people’s
paths that might help us better understand our
own.
C.S. Lewis explained why reading was so important
to him, saying, “My own eyes are not enough
for me.” The Methodist pastor and author
Lawrence Wood says, “Reading is seeing with
a thousand eyes.” If we read prayerfully,
it is amazing how often we find just the word
we need right now to help us find the way to walk
with God. We find insights that we might not have
seen with our own eyes.
The third tool is human help—the help of
a pastor or counselor or other kind of spiritual
guide, and also the help of a supportive group
or congregation. It can be dangerous to rely on
the first two approaches without the third one.
A classmate of my brother’s decided that
he was called to fast, based on his interpretation
of spiritual reading and prayer. He did it on
his own, without guidance or support. He fasted
so long and so extremely that he died alone in
his apartment. His case was the most extreme,
but we can get ourselves in all kinds of trouble
by trying to do this work on our own. Just as
a lawyer who represents herself has a fool for
a client, a person who is his own spiritual teacher
has a fool for a student.
Reading might be seeing with a thousand eyes,
but it is still just one mind interpreting the
signs we find. It helps to have at least one other
mind considering our choices, and the wiser and
more experienced and more compassionate that mind
is, the better. If nothing else, other people
can hold up a mirror for us, helping us to see
ourselves more objectively. We may think that
we are walking upright and straight on the way,
but another person might help us see that we are
leaning or veering left or right. It is hard to
be sure by ourselves that we have not taken a
side path or gotten out of balance.
Here is how the popular contemporary writer Stephen
Mitchell translates the same Tao Te Ching passage
I quoted earlier about our only fear being that
we might turn from the sacred Way. Mitchell writes:
The great Way is easy,
Yet people prefer the sidepaths.
Be aware when things are out of balance.
Stay centered within the Tao.
(Chapter 53) It helps to have another wise person’s
perspective on how balanced and centered we are,
and how well we are reading the signs of where
God wants us to walk.
But in the end, we are the ones who have to take
the steps to walk with God. Even with prayer and
reading and guidance, we may still not have the
perfect clarity of vision we’d like to have.
We may have to choose to get up and follow without
much to go on, like Matthew, the tax collector
in today’s gospel story. A stranger walked
by his booth and said nothing but, “Follow
me.” We may be watchful and wise enough to
know that voice when we hear it, or we may have
to go on a hunch. Either way, we need to be able
to let go of our pursuit of money or our allegiance
to empire. We need to be ready to leave our old
path behind to follow where God is walking instead.
Or we may need to be like the synagogue leader
who came to Jesus after his daughter died. We
may need to be able to give up the comfort of
doing what our society would approve. We may need
to give up our pride in our abilities and accomplishments,
and get down on our knees and beg for help. Then
we may have to be willing to get up and walk with
God even when those around us scoff and scorn.
Walking with God requires this sometimes. If we
want God’s healing love, it is something
we may have to do.
Or, like the woman with the hemorrhage, we may
need to have the faith that walking up and touching
God will help what nothing else has been able
to help. We need to believe that God wants to
walk with us and help us find the way to healing
and wholeness—that God loves us no matter
how imperfect we are.
The Psalms say that “the fear of God is the
beginning of all wisdom.” (Ps. 111) I have
struggled with that verse because I do not believe
in a wrathful, vengeful God who wants us to live
in fear. But maybe the Psalm means the same thing
the Tao Te Ching means when it says,
If I have even just a little sense
I will go along the Great Way
And my only fear will be turning from it.
When our lives get out of control, out of balance,
off center, and they do not feel good and things
go badly, it is not necessarily that a wrathful
God is punishing us. It may be just that life
doesn’t work as well off the way as it does
when we walk with God.
Once we get back in step with God, it feels so
good. Then we know the good news Jesus was so
excited to share. Then we see why it makes sense
to trade everything else we have to get this one
thing right. (Matthew 13:44ff) Then we know why
the work of prayer and reading and spiritual direction
are so worthwhile. Then we know what it means
to walk humbly with our God.
Let us pray together in silence, asking the Holy
Spirit to show us how to find the Way through
whatever situation is confronting us in our lives
now. Let us pray a listening prayer in silence…
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