A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Easter

May 8, 2011

This morning’s story of the walk to Emmaus is probably my favorite gospel story. It has everything. Clueless disciples, to help us easily find ourselves in the story. It has Jesus whom the disciples don’t recognize even when he is walking next to them, which again sounds all too familiar. And then it has this great message about how we will discover what is most important in the most unlikely ways--in a chance meeting, in the blessing and breaking of bread, and in the whispers or the burning of our hearts. This story does such a wonderful job of opening up a place of mystery and possibility around the risen Christ, that I don’t want to tamper with or set limits on its meaning by dealing with the story as a whole. I’d rather focus today on one little line in the Emmaus story. I’m interested in what the disciples said after their experience with the Risen Christ. “Weren’t our heart burning within us?” They had had a clue about who their companion was and they had missed it. I wonder if we don’t all do that more often than we know. Chances are, we could all use some practice at listening to our hearts.

We spend most of our time in our heads where we plan and calculate and solve puzzles. Our brains are marvelously crafted so that we can keep all sorts of problems in front of us at the same time, working on several levels at once. We can drive seventy miles an hour while thinking about how much fuel we still have in the car as we listen to and maybe even sing along with our favorite driving music, all while noticing that the car we are passing is the one that passed us just a few minutes ago, and oh oh, is that a blue light up ahead….. and isn’t the sun on those tree tops amazing. We rely on our brains and our thinking ability even when we we’re not thinking about our thinking ability. What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable….and think how far we’ve come since Hamlet.

We create machines as if they were extensions of ourselves, from Swiss watches to smart phones we prize that which functions swiftly, dependably and with great precision. We rely on our ability to use our heads. We expect so much from ourselves, and those around us. The one-word office sign you used to see sometimes said it all…..THINK! It is as if that is the commandment for our species in our time. THINK! Our brains can be fine tuned, taught, filled, sharpened. What a piece of work indeed.

Our hearts…..our hearts on the other hand are messy. While we can take charge of our heads and train them in the ways we would have them go, as it were, our hearts are almost by definition, unruly. They will not be tamed or taught. Hearts feel pain and love and yearning and joy. Hearts leap and break, they swell and ache. Our hearts speak to us in a language we don’t always understand, in a language we are not even sure we want to learn. Our hearts can surprise us, interrupt us in our daily routine, they can change the course of lives we have carefully put in order. Maybe the best defense we have against the messy incursions of our hearts into our ordered lives is to try to ignore our hearts as much as possible.

We can fill our time with all sorts of busy-ness in order to try to drown out the calling of our hearts. We can keep moving, drive to the store, watch TV, read the paper, manicure the lawn, twitter, read the statuses of a hundred of our closest friends, surf the internet. We can oil and tune our brains, work our way up to evil level Sudokus. We have a million ways of tuning out the voice that speaks from deep within and still it tries to get our attention like my cat scratching at the back door. “Go away, you can’t come in.” “Then I’ll just sit and stare at you through the glass.”

Of course we all live and work out of a mix of head and heart. We practice caring for others, we work at relationships, we sometimes seek out a friend or someone else to talk to, someone who can listen with us to what our hearts are trying to tell us. But in the busy, business world of high achievement, in the day to day world of simple chores, our hearts can can be drowned out by the storm of all that has to be accomplished in a day. And because our hearts are so uncontrollable, we can’t easily imagine how they can help us get our work done, so we turn up the radio and get back to work.

But here is the thing. It is precisely because we can’t control our hearts that we need to listen to them. Our hearts aren’t meant to be used as tools, they’re not meant to be trained or focused by us, they are meant to instruct us….to lead us…..to speak speak to us about deeper, less graspable things. Heart does speak its own language, and we can practice, not so much to change and shape our hearts, but to let them change and shape us. It is in our hearts that God is creating us, singing to us, whispering deep truth that we might miss unless we are very attentive. I find it interesting that the disciples who walked with Jesus that day were involved in a deep discussion about scripture and all the while they missed the message their hearts were trying to deliver. It is in our hearts that God touches us, becomes real for us, greets us.

John Wesley said of his profound experience of deepening faith, “my heart was strangely warmed.” St. Augustine said “our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.” And Mary treasured the promise of God delivered by the angel in her heart.

We don’t have to choose between head and heart, we have been given both because we need them. It’s just that since we spend so much time in our heads, most of us could use some practice learning the language of our hearts.

So…. and I hate to say this as the days are getting pretty and the beauty of nature is beginning to call, but I am beginning to understand those who tell me that they can be with God in their gardens just as easily as they can in church. In the quiet of such times we have a chance to listen deeply, to be aware of the one who is always with us. I have no doubt that many people encounter God in the garden or at the beach. They say the same thing about golf, but I don’t believe them. I’ve played golf. Learning to recognize the language of our hearts involves spending some time in solitude. If we can commit just some of our time to being present, available to God--if we take our hearts out for a walk or sit with them in silence or let them fall open as we pull wild onions, we, like those disciples on the road, may discover our divine companion right there beside us, known, familiar, greeting us as friend. We desperately need the council of the voice only our hearts can hear. Only by giving our hearts some room in our days can we ever come to trust them. Only by believing in our hearts can we come to know that the messages they would bring us are as important as anything else in our day.

“Were not our hearts burning within us” they asked. Would that it were so for all of us.

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter

May 1, 2011

Today we have the story of Thomas. One of my favorites. I have always loved Thomas the skeptic, the pragmatist who isn’t going to be taken in by wild stories and emotional outbursts. Thomas who’s motto is, “seeing is believing.” My people come from the show-me state so I’ve always liked Thomas because his story suggests that there is room in this faith of ours even for people like me.

So...every year on the second Sunday of Easter I get to go off about the great contributions doubters and skeptics have made to Christianity down through the ages. I like to use this Sunday to remind all you doubters and skeptics in the congregation that you--that we--are a necessary part of the mix, that we are welcome here and needed.

So when I realized I was preaching this Sunday, I was all ready to get on my soapbox again and do my doubters-are-faithful-too routine. But then something happened and I find myself paying attention to Thomas in a new way this year. I’m not even sure after all these years if this story really has that much to do with doubt and skepticism. Maybe it has more to do with how difficult it can be to reveal and claim our deepest longings, and to hold any hope that they might be realized.

Mary and I have this great new screened porch with a couple of rocking chairs. That porch and rocker have already made a great difference in my spiritual life. It’s a great place to sit and meditate and read. A place for thinking about sermons. Recently I have been reading a collection of articles written for the Shalem News by Gerald May. The Shalem Institute here in Washington has provided support for contemplative living and leadership for thirty years. They train lay people and clergy in deepening their personal spiritual lives and connecting that spirituality with their work in the community. Gerald May was a teacher, mystic, and writer in the area of contemplative theology and psychology. I have been reading the articles he wrote for Shalem because I will be doing some work with Shalem over the next year and a half and I want to find out more about what I am getting into.

As I was reading the other day, I found myself pulling back a bit from the words on the page. Something there was a bit uncomfortable, and I soon realized it had something to do with his talk about love. May was talking a lot about love. He used the word a lot. He was talking as if love was really at the heart of everything. He was speaking in such a personal way about love that I thought I was hearing things I shouldn’t be hearing. And then I heard myself ask a question that surprised me. I asked, to no one there on my back porch, “do guys really talk like that?” Now let me assure you right now that this isn’t going to be a sermon about men and feelings and the need to open up and all that sort of thing. I just mention the reaction because it surprised me. Soon I was thinking about all the ways that love can mean trouble. I thought about all the ways that love can change the landscape of one’s life and realized that I was going to have to get past some barriers if I want to get serious about deepening my spiritual life.

Thirty years ago, before I started courting Mary, I got my pilot’s license. I had a couple of friends who flew for the airlines and who owned little planes. We would sometimes spend a whole Saturday out by a little grass strip, tinkering with engines and wires and such and flying over the farms and fields of northern Mississippi. One of my flying buddies, Jim, reacted when I told him about Mary. I said I had started dating someone and was in love. He said, oh that’s too bad. “Love’ll really screw up your flying.” And of course he was right. My relationship with Mary really cut into my flying time. I haven’t flown in over twenty years.

As I wondered about my reaction to Jerry May’s articles, I began to think about love and how much trouble it can be. I thought about all the great love-is-hard songs. Great country moaning songs about the pains of love. Folk, country, rock…..Love is a hard waltz…..Love Hurts….and the songs of encouragement….Give yourself to love…. If you listen to the radio at all, or read or are awake on the bus, you know that our culture talks about love all the time. It fascinates, frustrates, wounds and woos us. We can’t let go of the idea that it holds something we need…..that it can make us...complete us.

And…..

We are smart, self-reliant people who know enough to protect ourselves. We have all been fooled at some point and we aren’t going to be taken in easily. Loving too quickly can expose us to pain. Loving too broadly might demand too much of us. Love is...and I love this word...fraught. Some of us discover the depths of love for the first time when it is lost, a death...a leaving. Having loved someone to the brink of sobriety, a relapse exposes love’s danger. Love makes us vulnerable, so we tend to be cautious. We are advised to be cautious. But if everything does depend on our opening up more and more to love, then how do we ever get there? In our Easter story, Jesus helps us by giving it all up first. The story is that Jesus loves us until it hurts, until it does him in completely, and in the end that ultimate kind of love is redeemed.

So as I pondered my reaction to Mays writings, I was put in touch with how much I long for the call to a deeper level of love….and….I was very aware of my defenses against that same love. And then I thought about this sermon and looked at today’s story from John’s gospel. There stood Thomas, not unbelieving, but torn between his deep hope that there might be some truth in the others’ story about the resurrection that there might be something real to answer his longing--caught between that hope and the habit of protecting his heart from disappointment. Sometimes the strength of our hesitation is directly proportional to the depth of our longing. And then something finally tips. For Thomas it took a lot of help and an invitation from Jesus. Touch me. Feel my side. Your longing is not in vein.

So that’s where I was as I turned the corner with this reading. Thinking about that invitation from Jesus. Wondering where this sermon would end up. I went back to my rocker read a little further. Instead of telling you about what I read, I just want to read it to you.

May says about this piece: At the end of a Shalem, Psychology/Spirituality Day I read some words that seemed to be whispered by God to me.

I know what is inside your heart.

I see your courageous impotent love, and your fear,

and the tears you would cry if you could.

And I do so love you.

I feel how you hate your own selfishness.

When you see the poor ones in the street,

I melt as you detest your defenses against them.

I feel your deep heart-secret:

You wish you would not run away

but could embrace those poor ones, kiss them,

love them completely, caress their souls.

And I do love you so.

I know how you feel, deep, so deep,

when you bar your doors and secure your house

and invest your money and try to enjoy your possessions.

I know your dis-ease, your unrest,

And I love you.

and I drink from your discomfort, and find it good.

No, it is not guilt, nor shame;

I know the tastes of them, and spit them out.

It is your impotent love, your stifled love, your helpless love,

your yearning love that feeds me,

Yet I starve, I thirst. With you.

You are so rarely aware of me,

how I embrace you as you read the morning paper,

My arms cradle you, my breath is on your hair

as you listen to the news.

I know your unspoken feelings, for II am closer to your heart than

you are now or will ever be.

I feel your love, screaming out against injustice,

bleeding, wounded from the pain of others,

love become revulsion when the agony is too much,

The starving children, the hungry homeless, the tortured innocent,

and all the broken, broken hearts.

You cannot bear it, so I must

almost alone.

I drink up what I can from your love

in little sips, but I starve, thirst, and ache for you.

And I love you and cry for you when you cannot,

And I love you and cry in you when you must turn away

and go about your business.

ANd qwhen you can cry, I kiss your blessed tears

and drink them.

You feel my pain, you see my beauty,

You ache for my goodness,

And that is me, loving you and birthing in you,

Again and again, coming to you

in utter surrender.

Oh how I wish you could know

How completely I am surrendered to you,

For if you knew that, even just a little,

You could not help but surrender to me.

Your love would awaken

And we would become a mountain spring and a sparkling ember

And we would grow, into river and flame,

into ocean and lightening

Cleansing, searing, burning, renewing the earth.

Your love would grow wings of power and wisdom

And together in unbearable passion we would fly and die and fly again;

Our courage would encompass the heavens.

Knowing nothing but our love we would look

straight into the heart

of every broken being, every creature,

every plant and mountain

And live in them and caress their wounds,

and bring them nourishment,

and die for them and with them.

We would be relentless, my love.

We will be forever.

Gerald May in Living in Love, 2008 Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation