April 30, 2017
John 20:19-31
You don’t have to think about what to say…
You don’t have to think about what to do…
You don’t have to plan dinner…
You don’t have to worry about work…
You don’t need to write your sermon, or create your agenda, or make sure you are ready for what is next…
You don’t have to make your shopping list…
You don’t have to determine how you are going to get the kids to all of their appointments…
You don’t have to feel guilty…
You don’t have to reclaim your faith…
You don’t have to clean the house…
You don’t have to answer that text…
You don’t have to do any of that right now and in the next twenty minutes. That’s the starting point for centering prayer. The premise is that the only thing that matters, what you need most, and what will color how you handle all those other things, is the peace of resting in Christ. It is the peace of having nothing more important to do than to belong to Christ, to be in Christ’s embrace.
In the movie, The Shack, Mack meets a God who very calmly dispels Mack of his notions of God. Around every corner God’s patient, tender grace reshapes how Mack understands his life. God says, Look at that bird Mack. Look at its beautiful wings. That bird was meant for flying. You Mack, you were meant to be loved.
That’s what drives the kind of prayer I’m talking about. It’s the kind of prayer that ties us to our purpose and connects us to what we were meant for. It says, You too were meant to be loved.
It is funny how hard centering prayer can be. Your only job is to sit there silently being loved, and yet what your mind wants to do is fill that silence, fill that space, with words and feelings and memories, with responsibilities and potentialities. Your prayer time becomes the making of your shopping list until you wake up to what you are doing, and you say your sacred word, and you bring yourself back to God, and you let yourself simply be loved.
I think it is hard because our minds are conditioned to be forever active. What are we if not our thoughts and the activities that our thoughts generate and organize? What are we if not the things we make of ourselves? That, I think, is often our known or unknown assumption. But, that’s not what God says to Mack. It’s not: you were meant for thinking. It’s: you were meant to be loved.
At the Maundy Thursday service that Pastor Todd put together a few weeks ago we were encouraged to sit for three separate silences. During each of these silences we were given questions to guide our thoughts. I can’t recall the specific question, but I found myself wanting to progress, wanting to connect more deeply with God, wanting more of what I have and yet don’t have enough of. The answer from God came surprisingly quickly and easily. Pray this way, take the time to be with me, to rest in me.
Right away I found myself resisting. I’m not good at it. I can’t keep it up. My mind wanders. But, it was clear to me that there was more to my resistance. Something about the job of being loved was too simple, and it took the power out of my hands. Shouldn’t I at least have to first make myself loveable? Shouldn’t I have to purify my mind? Shouldn’t I have to care more passionately, act more passionately, about more stuff? After all, what about all that I’ve worked so hard to make of myself? …And then, what is it that you, God, are going to make of me, anyway?
I want to shift gears for just a moment. Did you know that Thomas is really no different from the rest of the disciples? You’ll remember from Easter that Mary, even though the stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty, and angels appeared to her, didn’t believe in the resurrection until she saw Jesus. And now the disciples, even though Mary told them all about it, even though they recall his promises, don’t believe until Jesus comes and shows them his hands and side. Thomas is called the “doubter,” but they all doubt, and they all doubt because we all doubt. How can we not doubt? What’s happened cannot happen! A man rose from the dead, and dead men don’t rise. Dead men don’t walk thought locked doors with the scars from their death on display. But, it is more than that. It is not just that a dead man rose. It is that God became a man who would die. It’s that the Eternal would become creature. It’s that the Creator would identify so personally with what He created. It’s that Jesus was who he said he was. It’s that he and the Father truly are one. It’s that to know him truly is to know God and to know that God would be willing to suffer even death at our hands out of love for us.
What the risen Christ shows us is that this God comes back. No matter what we throw at him; despite any and all of our rejections of him; and even when we bestow on him the greatest of rejections, he comes back. God the eternal becomes God the son, becomes the crucified God, and what’s the first thing he says when he comes back? It isn’t, how could you? It isn’t, I thought you were my friends. It isn’t, you better shape up.
Rather, it is “Peace be with you.” And then he says it two more times in case we didn’t get it. Peace be with you. My peace I give to you. It is not the world’s peace. It is not the peace we make for ourselves. It is not the peace of being highly effective. It is not the peace of being well organized. It is not the peace of being comfortable. These things can change and fall apart. It is the peace of being unbelievably loved. It is the peace that comes from God’s tenacious will to be with us.
My faith is this: to be so loved is worth the risk. It will take us out of the driver’s seat and it will rob us of control, but it will give us our true selves along with the kind of life that is worth living.