August 30, 2009 Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 15, Mark 7:1-23
The title of this sermon is “Choosing the Way of the Heart.” The subtitle is
“What I Did on My Summer Vacation (and Just After).”
The day was hot and humid, but the sun was out, so we were not
complaining. Lesley and I were walking the new Strafford Cross Town Trail,
built by Alice Pierson’s son, Mike Hebb. We climbed from the top of Alger
Brook Road up along the shoulder of Whitcomb Hill. At the height of land, where
the main trail began down, we took a short spur up to Moses’ Pasture. Even in the
haziness of an August afternoon the view was spectacular, looking down the
Ompompanoosuc to the Connecticut River Valley and the White Mountains
beyond. We stood in the heat and unseasonable bugs and gazed and gazed,
absorbed in the beauty and majesty of God’s creation.
That is how it is on a good day.
But it is not always that way. A New Yorker cartoon a few years ago
showed a man and a woman who could be Tom and Lesley sitting up on a high
open ridge-top looking out at a beautiful view of mountains and valleys, a place
just like Moses Pasture on Whitcomb Hill. The man is talking, and you can
imagine him saying, “I could sit here all day looking at this beauty.” But instead
the New Yorker caption says, “I could sit here all day thinking about my
problems.”
That is how it is on a not so good day.
The day on top of Whitcomb Hill was during our blissful vacation, which
we spent semi-camping in the cabin I built during my sabbatical. We read, we
wrote, we hiked, we had campfires—no phone, no electricity. It was heavenly.
Then the vacation ended, and I confess that every day since has been more like the
cartoon. I returned to the world from being unplugged and found an unusual
amount of heavy news waiting for me, including the challenges many here are
facing—most of all Eleanor Zue, Calling and Caring coordinator and beloved
saint, who has been diagnosed with a second occurrence of cancer, and a very
aggressive one this time. During Joys and Concerns I will talk more about what
we are putting in place to help Eleanor, but during this sermon I want to talk about
what we each can put in place to help us deal with our grief and our struggles.
This week I have not been able to stop thinking about problems much of the
time, even when walking on beautiful paths or visiting with good friends. But
there have been moments when I have felt deep peace and rest, when I have been
surprised by quiet joy rising up through struggle. I have felt moments of grace,
transformed and transported off of that hill where I sit thinking about my problems
onto God’s holy hill where I let go of my problems. I believe that the moments of
grace have come because of a choice I have been making during the moments of
struggle.
Today’s scriptures relate to that choice. The Psalm asks, “O God, who may
abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?” And it answers, “Those
who walk blamelessly, and do what is right.” Then the Psalm lists nine things we
need to do in order to walk blamelessly.
I have a problem with that answer—that the ones who abide in God’s tent
and dwell on God’s holy hill are only those who perfectly obey certain ethical
rules. It seems that Jesus had a problem with that answer, too. The problem is not
that it is too demanding, but that it does not go far enough.
In the strange and complex gospel passage that Bill Thrane read, the
Pharisees and scribes are blaming the disciples for not walking blamelessly. They
complain to Jesus that the disciples have not followed the traditional rules of the
elders, and have eaten with unwashed and therefore ritually impure hands. Jesus
was not opposed to the Jewish tradition. He praised and obeyed it himself. But he
knew that it was not what mattered most. By itself, it was not enough.
It is far easier to perform all the rituals and duties of the Pharisees than it is
to transform our heart, but that is the choice Jesus is asking us to make. He says,
“Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people
honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’”
Jesus is calling on people to choose the way of the heart. This is the way of
Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet completely focused on him, as opposed to her sister,
Martha, who was in the kitchen clanging her pots and pans, stressing out trying to
do everything blamelessly. The way of the heart is what Jesus describes in the
Sermon on the Mount, when he says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart
will be also…. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life….but strive first
for God’s realm and God’s paths of righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring
worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:21-34)
Sometimes today’s trouble is more than enough for today. Sometimes we
are overwhelmed and we have a hard time not worrying constantly and not
scrambling compulsively like Martha trying to fix things. Sometimes life gets
excruciating, crucifying, and like Jesus, we cannot help descending into hell. But
even at those times, or especially in those times, we need to choose the way of the
heart. If we do, we can open ourselves to grace, we can find ourselves on the way
of peace and joy even as we pass through hell, we can find that our hearts are in
God’s tent even as we struggle or suffer.
The way of the heart is a term that comes from the ancient Desert Fathers
and Mothers, those monks who went out into the wilderness around the rim of the
Eastern Mediterranean in the early centuries of Christianity. The theologian Henri
Nouwen wrote a book entitled The Way of the Heart explaining how the monks
tried to live out Christ’s way. He describes a process of inner transformation, of
overcoming our self-will so that Christ’s Spirit can live in us as the true self God
created us to be.
One of the great illustrations of the way of the heart is a story told by the
Desert Father, Abba Elias. An old man was living in a temple. He was attacked in
the night by a host of demons who said to him, “This place belongs to us. You
have to leave.” The old man said, “No place belongs to you,” but the demons
began to throw everything around, palm leaves and cushions and candles. The old
man was frantically trying to restore order, but then the devil himself came and
took him by the hand and pulled him toward the door. When the old man reached
the door he grabbed the lintel and cried out, “Jesus, save me!” Immediately the
devil went away. The old man collapsed on the floor weeping. Then Christ came
and said to him, “Why are you weeping?” And the old man said, “Because the
demons dared to come in here and treat a righteous man like this.” Then Christ
said, “You have been careless. As soon as you turned to me again, you see I was
beside you.”
Henri Nouwen says that this story shows “the encounter with Christ does
not take place before, after or beyond the struggle with our false self and its
demons. No, it is precisely in the midst of this struggle that our Lord comes to us
and says, as he said to the old man in the story: ‘As soon as you turned to me
again, you see, I was beside you.’” (p 28 f)
We do not have to be entirely rid of the false self or our self-will in order to
dwell in God’s tent. We do not have to be blameless. All we have to do is choose
to call out to God or Christ or the Spirit in the moment of our struggle. But to do
that, we have to be present and aware enough to know what is happening and that
we have a choice to make. That is not easy when the demons are attacking.
I have been greatly helped in doing this by the book The Mindful Way
through Depression by Mark Williams, Jon Kabat-Zinn and others. This book is
useful not just for people who suffer from depression or anxiety, but for anyone
who struggles or takes spiritual practice seriously. It lays out the Mindfulness
Based Cognitive Therapy that Nancy Kilgore’s classes teach. It talks about the
choice we have between two ways our mind can work, the doing mind versus the
being mind, or what you could think of as the Martha mind versus the Mary mind.
The doing mind is bustling in the kitchen, it is the problem solver mind
busy trying to fix things. It has its uses—we would be in trouble without it—but
the drawback is that it can take over the running of our lives. It can convince us
that we have to sit and think about our problems all day instead of seeing the
beautiful thing God is doing right in front of us.
The doing mind is a legitimate part of us, but the being mind is, too. The
book The Mindful Way through Depression is careful to say that being is not better
than doing, just different, but Jesus calls it “the better part” and asks us to choose
it first. The being mode does not sit thinking about life, it lives life directly, fully
present in each moment, not ruminating on problems of the past, not worrying
about tomorrow. It deals with things as it needs to, including planning or working
in the kitchen, but not with Martha’s anxiety, and not at the expense of sitting at
Jesus’ feet absorbed in his guidance or loving presence.
The Mary way of mindfulness opens to the truth within us and around us
with unflinching courage and compassion, with curiosity and good will. If the
truth is that we are going through hell, that we are overwhelmed with grief or
struggle, then that truth is what we delve into and explore with courage and
compassion. Of course, some of us who could live in Garrison Keilor’s Lake
Woebegone have a harder time accepting joy than accepting struggle, and so we
bring the same mindful courage and compassion to our joy. We try to ungrit our
teeth and relax and accept what happiness feels like, and try not to judge ourselves
too harshly for it!
I believe what has led to my moments of grace has been not only accepting
what I have been going through, but also turning to God in those moments: first
being aware; then welcoming what I am experiencing; then letting go my desire to
do something to change it; and then handing it over to God’s care.
I know that the natural thing is to want to leap up and do something to help
Eleanor in her crisis, or anyone else we love in theirs. It is natural to respond to
our problems by obsessing about them until we get them fixed. And certainly we
will always have plenty of opportunities for action, and they are important to do.
But first things first. Jesus says, first seek the realm of God, and all these other
things will work out for the best. First allow the Holy Spirit to guide and comfort
and transform you, and whether your hands are clean or dirty, whether you are
conforming to all the rules or not, you will be walking blamelessly. First, allow
yourself to be mindful in each moment, intentionally choosing the way of the heart
that loves and seeks God’s way, and you will abide in God’s tent and dwell on
God’s holy hill. First be present to God, and then what you do will be of God.
Let us pray in silence, which is the language that God speaks in the heart.
Let us pray like Mary, just being in this moment, waiting for the Spirit to speak
and show us the way to be and what to do…
Sermon 08/30/2009