15 Pentecost, Proper 18B
5 Sep 2021
Lord God of our Fathers; God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.
Does this sound familiar? It comes from the closing words of Eucharistic Prayer C.
I was dwelling on those words this week, in particular “for pardon only and not for renewal.” I come to the table to be pardoned and comforted, renewed, and sent into the world. When the walls of my world seem to be crumbling, I need to know that I can come to the table and leave, fed and prepared for whatever comes and whatever it is that I am called to do.
It is like an exchange. There is only so much room inside me. That is why are parents saved desert for last; they knew of we ate the chocolate cake there would be no room for the peas and carrots. So it is with our spirit and our emotional life. If we are filled with anger and hatred, there is no room for laughter and love. This week I come filled with sadness and anger and I want to leave this place with heart and soul renewed.
Steven Charleston calls this the rung of renewal; it is the seventh rung of the Ladder to the Light. It is hard to reach towards the light when you are burdened with anger or hatred; it is hard when hope is not even a small flickering candle. But we can be renewed. In the tradition of some indigenous Americans is the sweat lodge. While often co-opted by non-natives for their own purposes, the real purpose is renewal. You enter the lodge unclothed; symbolically leaving everything behind. That means your presupposed notions of religion. In a sweat lodge creeds and statements of belief do not matter. As you sit in the intense heat, steam, and darkness, prayers are offered to the great and holy one. The leader chants, asking God to come and hear the prayers of God’s people. Prayers are said and burdens released, with the sweat of the people the symbolic outpouring of those burdens. When the ritual is complete one emerges into the light, renewed, or as Charleston puts it, having completed an exchange. “It is the fire, the heat, the energy, and the spiritual linkage at the center of the lodge that brings about exactly what the people feel when they step out into the fresh air: renewal.”
By giving up our pre-suppositions, metaphorically giving up all our outward trappings and clothing and then enter the sweat lodge, we can open ourselves to renewal. This is not from the intellect; this is from the heart, the place where our deepest longings dwell. We open our hearts.
Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your holy Spirit…..
The world is full of the Holy Spirit; it is all around us. We are a part of creation as are all the creatures and the glorious array of flowering plants, the rocks, and the waters. Our life and our faith must be constantly re-imaged and reimagined. We must experience, literally experience with our senses, the renewal and with it, the hope. While we must unburden ourselves of our firmly held beliefs, those things we hold as if our lives depended on them, we must not lose the wisdom that comes from the past. We study scripture and inwardly digest it; it is paradoxically ancient and yet always new. For native peoples, it is the wisdom of the ancestors and the wisdom of community that speaks to them in their stories and from the dark and heat of the sweat lodge. What if we thought of our Sunday gathering as something akin to a sweat lodge? We come here and leave not tradition, by which I mean respect for the wisdom of our elders and forebearers, not a dogged attempt to cling to things that no longer serve us or even do us harm. Let us enter our worship space open to the lifting up of prayer and the reception of the gifts of the Spirit. That same spirit which intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words calls us to community with each other, with those with whom we profoundly disagree even wish to do us harm, and to the whole earth.
Perhaps Jesus entered the sweat lodge when he went to the desert to be tempted. Too often we think of Jesus as perfect; we ignore his human-ness. In the Gospel reading for today he is caught up short; bested by a gentile woman in the Roman city of Tyre, which was and is on the coast of the Mediterranean. It is very far from Jerusalem. Jesus had gone away, perhaps looking for some time alone in a place with a great view of the Mediterranean. It was a pretty cool place to go; plenty of fresh water and good air. He wants to hide out, but this woman manages to find him there. Mark wants you to know without any shade of doubt she was not in the least bit Jewish. Think on this for a bit. Jesus throws off his own presuppositions as much as says, “you are right and I am wrong.” Now if Jesus could do that we surely have permission to be wrong and to admit it. That is the key: we must all admit that the vague ideas of truth to which we hold are often wrong. Beliefs are not what matter. By that I do NOT mean faith does not matter; faith is crucial, but beliefs are far less important than our actions towards one another.
I see many recent laws and policies, and for that matter some that are longstanding as well, based on retribution and totally lacking in compassion or restorative justice.
Jesus goes on to heal a deaf man, not with words but actions. It is very physical. He does not merely say, “OK dude, I give you your speech and hearing back.” He puts his own spit on the man’s tongue!! If you read a bit further into the next chapter, Jesus and his disciples feed thousands with plenty of leftovers, in one case 7 baskets and in another 12. Why?? Because seven means everyone; twelve means all of the Israelites. God tells us over and over: we are all of one family. Everyone deserves to be fed and to be healed and, as James says, we are to show no partiality and we must, yes must, take care of one another. If there is a litmus test for any law or any action it is this: are we showing compassion and loving our neighbor, that is everyone, as ourselves?
Let us then be always ready and willing to strip off all that burdens us and ties us to things which do not give life; life comes from faith and from caring for all of creation. Life in Christ comes from being willing to constantly renew, not by throwing out the wisdom of our ancestors, but by dispensing with our own prejudices.
Remember: God is love and if what we do does not show love, it does not come from God.
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