Deep Peace

Deep Peace

Sermon for MCC Key West

Sunday October 9, 2011; 10am

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Good morning MCC! It is a pleasure to worship with you today and to have the opportunity of sharing the good news with you. For those of you who I have not yet met, I am Rev. Brian Hutchison. I serve as a staff minister at Sunshine Cathedral MCC in Fort Lauderdale. When I visited Key West for the first time over Labor Day weekend, I really enjoyed worshiping with you and could not turn down the invitation to preach for you today. Of course, you don’t have to pull my leg to get me to come to such a beautiful place as Key West, but what really makes me glad to be here is the warm hospitality that you showed me on my last visit and since I arrived yesterday. This time, I brought along my partner, James.

Would you pray with me? “Divine Love, we recognize your presence in this room today: in each other’s eyes, in warm smiles, in laughter, in the touch of a hand, in the beauty of music, in the wisdom of written and spoken word. I pray that in this holy instant that your presence may be revealed by the words of my mouth and by the meditations of all of our hearts. We give you all the glory, our Source and our Strength. Amen.”

While James and I were celebrating our love in New York City, a political storm was brewing. Within hours of our departure from the city, thousands of protestors filled the streets of the financial district. Not all have a full understanding of the complexities of the United States economic system or how exactly the people who work in executive offices on Wall Street are connected to our country’s economic downturn. But they know that something isn’t right. They know that something has to change. And they have lost faith that their government has the humility to come to an agreement that will create jobs and revive our economy. If you have been watching or reading the news at all in the past week, you have seen picket signs such as “Wall Street is our street,” “Join Us: Save Our Republic,” and “We are the 99%.” It seems that a sleeping America is beginning to wake up to reality and take its future in its own hands.

We are used to living in a repressed culture. Expressing emotion is largely said to be a sign of weakness. When we experience pleasure, it often follows with a feeling of guilt that we aren’t supposed to feel pleasure or that we don’t deserve it. These feelings all too often especially plague intimacy with our partners. We also live with a sense that we are not accomplishing enough, making any action less that multitasking less than satisfying. And since we are not able to do two things at once at full brain-power, our work suffers as well.

On top of pressures to stay composed, be normal (whatever that means), be polite, keep up with the latest fashions and technology, and face the realities of living in bodies that don’t always function the way we want them to, we are bombarded with the realities of our world. This past Friday marks ten years since we entered the war in Afghanistan. Since October 4, 2001, 2,676 coalition troops have died in the war. In addition, let us not forget the tens of thousands of Afghan civilians who have been killed in the crossfire.

Poverty and disease continues in our country and around the world at alarming rates. People choose greed over compassion every day. And how our minds can get wound up in the tragedy of it all! Many of us choose to escape these realities with excessive drinking, drug use, and misuse of about any distraction you can think of. And I don’t say this to judge anyone. There are enough people out there saying we are sinners in the hands of an angry God. I bring up these realities because if our faith is a relevant faith for today, it must have something liberating to say of these things.

Retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong thinks that loss of what some call “old time religion” is at the center of our cumulative anxiety. Spong suggests that as the scientific age came along and the ways we have come to explain the world have changed, people of faith have strongly resisted allowing their understanding of God to change. Fundamentalists, for example, still attribute disease to demons and bad luck to the work of the devil. We also know all too well that they also tend to disregard scientific research that shows that different sexual orientations are simply variances on a wide spectrum of what can be considered “normal” and “natural.”

Increasing numbers of Americans have succeeded in shedding such an antiquated faith, but have not found the right entry point to a new, relevant, vibrant, empowering, Spirit-filled faith. This leaves us with a human existence that feels extremely lonely. After all, if Father Sky is not really up on that cloud handing out extremely selected curses and blessings, lightning bolts and rainbows, then what am I supposed to trust in? Not that that kind of God ever gave anyone but the most stereotypically pious any sense of security anyhow. But at least they had assurance, right?

Spong suggests that if the church of the 21^st century is to survive, then we must embrace understandings of the Divine that reflect the real-life experiences of people. And not just some people, but people of all cultural backgrounds. He says, “Could not our growing self-consciousness also enable us to relate to that in which our being is grounded, that which is more than who we are and yet part of who we are? Could we not begin to envision a transcendence that enters our life but also calls us beyond the limits of our humanity, not toward an external being but toward the Ground of All Being including our own, a transcendence that calls us to a new humanity?”

Let’s see what light the words of Jesus might shine on our struggle with anxiety and on our relationship with God. Let’s remember that Jesus too lived in a very oppressive society. The Roman Empire kept the occupied Palestine, especially Jerusalem, under very strict rules. Any sort of public stand against Rome was met with imprisonment or execution. And we all know that execution was the eventual result of Jesus’ anti-empire stance. Jesus knew that this was possible. The walls of Jerusalem were surrounded by fellow Jews hanging on crosses 24 hours a day as a warning to all that the power of Rome is absolute. And yet Jesus still lived out his ministry of love day by day.

So in the Gospel reading we heard today from Matthew, it comes as no surprise that Jesus is seeking to heal his followers’ anxiety. When he says not to worry about what you will eat or drink or wear, he isn’t just warning against materialism. He isn’t scolding them for bad behavior. Instead, he is saying, “Turn your attention away from the illusion of the temporal and instead to God, the Eternal.” In the words of Marianne Williamson, “Return to Love.” It is our instinct to cover all of our basic needs: food, water, shelter. And it is an art to decorate our homes and to enjoy the beauty of the spaces we create. There is nothing wrong with that. Jesus is saying here, “I know it seems like all you have is at risk: your property (mamman in Aramaic), your livelihood, the pattern of life you are used to. Yes, it may all be taken away from you as happened to the prophet Job of old. But even as you lose all, you gain all.

And how do you gain all you ask? You gain all because in your time of need, you will seek the kingdom, the kinship of God; you will seek community. You will seek the God in others. The blinders of distractions are removed and the possibilities of sharing love in the world are revealed. Stripping away all of life’s “things” most always has the effect of making us aware of what we have. Even if all material things are gone, we still have our body. We still have family, some biological and some family of choice. We still have community (if we choose to embrace it). And one of the most powerful things we still have is our God-given mind.

Nearly 60 years ago, in 1952, in the middle of the tense period called the McCarthy Era, a Dutch Reform minister at New York City’s Marble Colligiate Church named Dr. Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book that has become iconic in the US and around the world: The Power of Positive Thinking. It sat on my family’s bookshelf as I grew up and I read excerpts over the years, but not until recently did I decide to read it in its entirety. And though some of it just seems like self-hypnotism, Peale does reveal spiritual truths that still work for us today. And even as Peale was praised in the hay day of his career by conservative evangelist Billy Graham, Peale’s work and the long positive spirituality tradition he drew from still apply to us MCC folk today.

Peale made the simple and yet profound suggestion in the midst of the troubled post-war world that the common person could find inner peace through the practice of positive affirmation, meditation, and prayer. On affirmation, he taught that feelings of insecurity and anxiety are not from God. Affirming that there is a Helper and Guide always available to us right here and right now, he said, would eliminate anxieties. He specifically quoted Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” and Romans 8:31, “If God is for me, who can be against me?”

On prayer, Peale taught that it is done in many ways, most not having anything to do with saying a formal prayer with hands folded. One form of prayer he suggested is mental visioning: using the mind’s power to focus on how a more abundant life might look. In such visions, we can eliminate obstacles to joy. And in that holy mental space we can also imagine the beauty of who we really are and not the person we sometimes fashion ourselves to be based on other people’s standards. In this space, we can also come to know ourselves.

On meditation, Peale suggests practicing silence. Not just reading a book or doing some activity in silence, but rather simply sitting in silence and allowing all thought- good or bad, however we judge it- to leave the mind. This, he says, is where the still small voice of God is found.

Of course Peale was not the first or last person to suggest these ideas for healing spirituality. Mystic Christians, followers of New Thought Christianity over the centuries, Buddhists, and followers of other so-called “Eastern” faiths have been doing such things for generations. We even see evidence of this kind of practice in our reading from Philippians today. The apostle Paul encourages the Christ-followers of Philippi in telling them to keep a positive attitude. He tells them to hand their troubles to God in prayer with gratitude and you will find a miraculous result: you will experience peace deeper and more profoundly than you ever have before, peace beyond human comprehension. He says, “Your mind will be safe as it is in union with the mind of Christ.” And his prescription for practice is much like that of Dr. Peale: focus on things that hold truth, that are noble, just, love-centered, and honorable. Paul says if you put this into practice, you will have no doubt that God is with you and is working through you.

Now let’s say that you have attained a peaceful state in your life and think you really have a good personal spiritual practice down. I hear the criticisms of this goal already, “My job requires that I am under a lot of stress so that I meet deadlines.” “I can’t be relaxed all the time or I will never get anything accomplished.” Or another criticism that most would not be willing to admit, “At least my anxiety give me a sense of control.”

In God’s reality, attaining inner peace does not require quitting your job to sit at home and meditate all day (after all, this can be just one more means of escapism). But it does require that as we move from places of spiritual practice into our daily lives and routines that we continue to allow the Divine within to work through us.

I know that when I hesitate going into a mental space of prayer or meditation, it is usually because out of a place of fear I am slipping back into assuming a God that I fear. This is actually a rational response. After all, who wants to spend their precious extra time with someone who’s judgmental, hot-tempered bigot, who also happens to be almighty?

If you have this trouble too, start with the simple premise that God is Love. It’s a biblical premise, if that matters to you. Don’t worry about what else God might be. Just know in the holy moment of your pausing that God is Love and the only task God has given you to do in life is love. And maybe, just maybe, if you have had trouble entering that place with God in the past, you can find a starting point.

There is obviously a lot of work to do out there in the world. It is overwhelming to think of the number of ways the world needs healing. I know you have recognized the need by the ministries you run here during the week. With pausing just in this holy moment, you will find yourself a much better springboard than anxiety to do the work. And not just to get the work done (as there will always be work to be done), but to be the hands, feet, and face of God in the doing. I have faith that you can and will… and I have an inkling that you do too. And this is the Good News. Amen.