"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Wednesday, 30 June 2010 | |||
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Accepting Advice | |||
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"Spiritual direction" is a growing dimension of our pastoral community in the Covenant Church. A couple years ago I sought out a colleague with some training in spiritual direction and asked him to meet with me and offer some guidance. It was a helpful time with a person who asked good questions, listened well, and helped me find some peace at a difficult time in my life and ministry. Yet when it came to the actual direction part of the experience I think I found myself feeling a little like Naaman in our text for this week: II Kings 5:1-19a. During our second or third meeting, after having listened to my description of my current spiritual life and issues, my spiritual director handed me a photocopied list of Scripture texts as a prompt for prayers and encouraged me to use it in my daily devotions between then and our next meeting. I confess that my first reaction was to be underwhelmed. Like Naaman expecting Elisha to come out and offer loud invocations of God and wave his hands over his leprosy, I had expected spiritual direction to be a little more dramatic, a little more complex than an invitation to read some Bible verses and think and pray about them. Yet as Naaman's servants point out to him in verse 13, the simplicity and mundaneness of the direction should not count against it. God is throughout this story speaking to the Aramean (Syrian) commander in quiet and rather homely ways, beginning with the captured Israelite servant girl. For a belated Father's Day outing, my family took me Monday to see "Iron Man 2." It was an enjoyable diversion, yet a very clear reminder that we are taught by our culture and the entertainment we view to believe that life's problems are resolved by dramatic, explosive measures accomplished with heroic struggle and stunning brilliance. Yet true life, true spiritual life in Christ is not like that at all. As the Gospel lesson ( Luke 10:1-20) shows, the life of discipleship is a quiet plod from one place to the next, often meeting with rejection and failure and needing to move onto the next point in life. And when the dramatic does happen, when the leprosy is healed or the demons flee, Jesus says not to rejoice in those things, "but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." So when the advice I hear is to kneel down and do the same old daily prayers yet once more or open the Bible to read a verse I've read a couple hundred times before, I'd like to recall Naaman heading down to the muddy, ordinary Jordan River to dip himself not once but seven times over in its water. A great miracle of healing was given to him, but it came through AND was followed by a humble submission to an ordinary and less than spectacular spiritual practice. Writing to a fellow monk about how to study, the great Thomas Aquinas said, "Do not wish to jump immediately from the streams to the sea, because one has to go through easier things to the more difficult." It's good advice for spiritual life as well, and my hope is that you and I can accept such simple advice without scorn and follow it faithfully. | |||
Thursday, 10 June 2010 | |||
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Get What You Want | |||
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In Garrison Keillor's
column that appeared in our newspaper last Sunday, he reflects on the
fact that he recently found himself looking at pictures taken by
underwater cameras of the inky plumes of oil leaking out of the sea floor
in the Gulf. The irony was that at the time he was viewing those images
he was 37,000 feet in the air in a jet that demanded hundreds of gallons
of fuel derived from oil. He felt his own complicity in the Gulf disaster
by virtue of his own desire to travel quickly and far. Our text for this week from I Kings 21 calls us all to reflect on our own desire, greed and covetousness and how it may lead to disastrous consequences, not merely for our own lives, but for people around us. King Ahab's petty wish for a particular piece of ground, which he is unable to obtain, is a pretty apt metaphor for the many petty desires which drive so much of what we do. We come by coveting naturally and it is constantly fueled by advertising. I "know" I need a better, faster laptop, the latest book by my favorite fantasy author, and a newer car with less miles on it. We might congratulate ourselves on having avoided Ahab's particular depth of covetousness, for we commit no unscrupulous acts to get what we want. Yet we might want to worry if we are not headed in the bad king's direction when we find our happiness marred by the lack of things we desire. Ahab's childish sulk is not too a far cry from the place I find myself in occasionally when I begin to dwell too much on what I wish I had. It may not be a very large step past such a sulk to obtaining what I want by some compromise of honesty or integrity. It's helpful then to consider the unplanned pairing of the story of Naboth's vineyard with the Gospel lesson from Luke 7:36-50. The woman who anoints Jesus' feet is not motivated by covetousness at all. As parallel readings tell us, she gives up an enormously expensive jar of perfume for a single act of worship. She is motivated by thankfulness, especially, Jesus points out, thankfulness for forgiveness. It's good strategy to combat a vice with a virtue. Our lessons this week invite us to combat covetousness with thankfulness. When we begin to sink into the dark place created by wishes that cannot possibly all be fulfilled without the darkness entering our own beings, we may be redeemed by simple thanksgiving for God's grace to us in our wretchedness. Now that I think about it, I'm reminded of seeing the opera "Faust," early this year with my opera-loving wife. The old man Faust is ruined by his unrepentant coveting of youth and his lust for a young woman named Marguerite. Though she gives into his seduction and even ends up murdering her own illegitimate child, in the end angels proclaim Marguerite's salvation because she turns away from her desire for Faust and is humbly repentant. May such repentance and turning from our own rampant desires deliver us from fates like Ahab's and Faust's and lead us deeper into our Lord's grace and salvation. | |||
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Profile |
I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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