SERMON, May 25, 2008

Psalm 131, Isaiah 49:8-16a; Matthew 6:24-34

I begin with a confession. Years ago I remember a day, when shortly after my second child was born I drove to the market and back home. The baby fell asleep on the ride home. When I got home I got Eric, the toddler, out of the car, all his gear, and the groceries and went into the house. I’d been there for several minutes when suddenly I realized that I had forgotten the baby! I’d left the baby in the car in the driveway. I’d forgotten I had an infant. I picked up Eric and raced outside. Chris was still asleep. I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I was a mother who’d forgotten her child.

God speaks through Isaiah to us to assure us that as hard as it is to imagine… even though a woman (some woman) might forget her nursing child, God will not forget us. The whole description of God in this passage is comforting. God addresses his servant—we’re not sure who that is—but in any case God speaks of bringing the people home out of exile—you have the image of the shepherd leading the sheep along the highway—protecting, caring, guiding—bringing them home. The passage comes out of the time of exile and the people who hear these words of comfort are still not at all sure they can trust them. After all they are far from home and it’s been a long time. Just where has God been? They’ve felt forsaken really, forgotten. “Sing for joy, O heavens and exult O earth!” for God is the One who comforts the people and has compassion on them. This is who God is. No matter how hard the times—no matter how absent God seems. God is more dependable than even a nursing mother!

Psalm 131 echoes this imagery. The one who prays to God is humble—not striving for things beyond his or her capacity. Not trying to make the world go round by his own power. Not trying to fix everything by her own determined effort. No, “still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast my soul is quieted within me.”

What could be more foreign to our lifestyle? I mean really. We are a nation of get up and go! Make things happen! Takin’ care of business! How often to you see an image of someone quieted—someone with a soul quieted within? Our heroes are take charge types. Control is the name of the game in our culture. Do, do do. Achieve, achieve, achieve. Get while the getting is good. Earn your place. Grab as much stuff as you can and then protect it. Insure it. Put it in the bank. Install gates. Hire a guard. Add on another garage.

Which of course brings us to Jesus and his discomforting words from Matthew’s gospel. You know the words where he suggests that we can’t serve two masters at once. Just the metaphor of serving—of slavery—is enough to cause us to shut down. We have been raised to view ourselves as having no masters. Or, perhaps we understand ourselves to be the masters of our own fate.

And then all those words about the birds of the air and the wild lilies in the field and about how we can stop worrying about our needs for food and clothing. God will take care of us. I’m reminded of that old song, “Don’t worry. Be happy!”

If you are like me you have a hard time swallowing these words. Because I have other images—images of refugees, hungry children, diseased children, people walking across deserts in rags seeking refuge. People are hungry all over the globe right now—the price of rice is skyrocketing. The new world order has some painful realities. We know about this. So, what could it mean that God will take care of our needs? If that’s the case, where is the evidence? That’s the kind of thinking I get into when I hear this passage.

I forget the context of these words. They are part of Jesus sermon on the mount. After the beatitudes—come these words, and they are focused on those first words—the ones about serving more than one master. When I let myself ponder those words I know that as foreign as they sound in my 21st century American ears—they are truth.

I knew a man once who worked in a business that was owned by a couple—and the poor guy could never figure out whose orders to follow. The husband would tell him one thing, he’d start to do it, and then the wife would criticize what he was doing and tell him to do the opposite. He found other work.

I think of the woman I knew who left her job to be with her partner who was dying.

I think of the man and wife I know whose marriage fell apart when each was more attuned to the master of their separate careers than to their relationship. Addictions become our masters.

The image of a slave with two masters is so vivid. It seems so foreign to us. But in truth its something we deal with everyday. What are our priorities? To whom do we listen? Who gets our attention? Whose songs do we hum? Whose images pop into our brains? Whose words do I quote? What is most important? Really?

I think of the way that my own money and possessions burden me—weigh me down—occupy my thinking. Some years back I sold my two-bedroom house and downscaled. I moved into a small condo and at the time I got rid of lots of things—books, furniture, clothing, kitchen stuff I hadn’t used in years, having to care for the yard, maintain the roof, you know the endless stream of responsibilities. I remember one day when my garage door opener got stuck with the garage door in the up position. When I went to work that day, I worried that thieves might grab all the stuff I had lining the walls of the garage—or who knows, might even enter the house. When I moved, I had to make decisions about what was important to keep and what was I clutching for reasons I had long since forgotten—or for no reason at all except habit. I got rid of many things. And I discovered an incredible freedom. I hadn’t realized what a burden all that stuff was. I live a leaner life now—and it’s a lot freer. I can put my attention and energies elsewhere now.

Some of us don’t have a lot of stuff. Some of us with stuff or without stuff spend most of our time worrying about how we are going to pay our bills—meet the mortgage, pay for food, gas, prescriptions. Can I get a job that will give me medical insurance? How could I possibly live on social security? These are realities—even in the world’s richest country. Worry itself can become our master.

Jesus’ words are not really telling us we can just kick back and wait on God to pick up the tab at the pharmacy. Rather, they are an invitation to enter into a relationship that transforms our lives—that sets us free. These words about the two masters are true. Jesus’ relationship with God was the central commitment in his life. You know how our relationships form us. The voice Jesus heard, the images he saw, the words he spoke—were God’s. God the center – the one master to whom Jesus listened. And this relationship is what set him free to live in the real world with all its ups and downs, its scary moments, its hardest of times—times of abandonment, pain, suffering, loss, ridicule—you name it. That one relationship is what made it possible for Jesus to live the loving, caring, compassionate life he did.

The issue is trust really. Who are we going to trust? Ourselves to do it on our own? The government to take care of us? Business to take our interests to heart? Buying more things to fill the void in our souls?

Psalm 131 suggests that we trust the Lord. We wait upon the lord. Think of that. Waiting. Quieting our souls, listening for God, waiting on God, as we rest securely in the arms of our mother—The image of the infant at peace, richly fed, caressed, warm, serene on her mother’s breast—is so intimate—almost more than we can bear. But this is the invitation: I can stop trying to make it happen, I can stop trying to worry myself into security, we can stop trying to control the universe—do not occupy yourself with great matters!

We can’t do this all at once. My struggles to live free from the binds of consumerism—the burdens of stuff continue. Everyday I have new choices to make. But the promise is that as we turn to God—to that relationship—over time we will be transformed—made a new people—a people knowing who they are and whose they are. Not free from everyday challenges and problems—not free to forget that we are connected to others who have far less than we do—not free to forsake God’s creation as though it were not a part of us and we of it.

But here is the good news: You and I are tattooed on God’s hands; we are in God and God is within us. Our center is there. When we live from that center the fullness of life is ours.

SERMON, May 18, 2008 TRINITY SUNDAY

Sermon preached at the Spring Retreat for the Associates of the Sisters of the Transfiguration "Forgiveness: Seeing with the Eyes of God"

Today is Trinity Sunday—the only Sunday in the year devoted to a doctrine of the church (for which we can no doubt be grateful!). I know priests who do what they can to leave town on Trinity Sunday, but I have to confess that I was overjoyed to see the lectionary readings for today—the closing day of our retreat. Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier; Beloved, Lover, Love; God Beyond, Among and Within. The Trinity is a mystery to be entered, not a problem to be solved. The Trinity is not something we Christians just think, the Trinity is something we live into. And it is really the central reality that calls us into lives as forgiven and forgiving.

Whatever the Trinity is about—this triune God—it is about how three are one and one is three. This is a paradox—but one we know something of. The Trinity is about relationship—it is about a complex web of mutuality and activity. It is about participation in one another’s lives. It is about radical co-equality. It is creativity, on-going creativity.

We tend to get caught up in thinking about God in static terms. The Father (the first), the Child (the second), and the Spirit (the third). We put them in a hierarchical order that never changes. We forget perhaps the movement we know in our own lives between parent and child. We forget that you can’t be a parent without a child. The child gives way to the parent, the parent to the child. There is nothing static, nothing is fixed in concrete.

You can’t be the beloved without a lover or without love. And love isn’t love without a lover or a beloved. You can’t be a lover without love or a beloved. There is mutuality here, and interconnectedness. Particularity, yes, but the trinity and we are woven into a web of life.

What we say about God is that God is community. God is relationship. God is mutuality, energy, creativity, give and take, --movement, of relationship. The otherness of the three—their particularity Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier—is not cause for division or violence, but is cause for what we could call polyphony—that’s a musical term—and the musicians among us might correct me here—but I believe that polyphony is when simultaneously more than one note is sounded. That’s a good word for the trinity—polyphony. Difference that makes music—not war. (1)

This means something. This means something in our lives. In our daily living. God who is polyphonous community calls us to live in community—to recognize that who we are is not just isolated individuals—looking out for number one. I am a particular person, yes, but I am who I am most truly in my relationships—with you, with my family, with others, with this world—its features and creatures—and with God. You are you, there is no doubt about it—but you are who you are in relationship. Your difference from me is not a cause for me to judge you or reject you or even pick up a stone and fling it at you. Quite the opposite. The way of the Triune God calls me to recognize myself in others, and others in myself. We live our lives in a web of interconnection.

These lessons remind us that God’s threeness and oneness call us to remember that we are related—we participate in the life of this planet and in the divine life. In fact, in the gospel of John, you get such a picture of the intimacy of relationship among the Father, Jesus, the Spirit, and Jesus’ friends that we have a theology not of Trinity so much as perhaps quadralinity (if there is such a word).

I quoted Maggie Ross yesterday who claims that the texts and the context matter—and she is right. (2) Our consideration of forgiveness and its centrality to our faith has been filled with texts—from Scripture and from the lives of people of faith. Our context has been this deep silence in community, and our rituals have embodied something very important: how we know who we are in community. From birth this is so—even as infants we look for a loving face that tells us who we are. Always we are learning who we are and becoming more deeply who we are in the context of our relationships.

As you anointed one another last night, you affirmed the truth of who you are—deeply loved, the beloved children of God, forgiven, and connected to God and to each other. You put the shawl, the symbol of Christ, on one another and you blessed each other. You were made new in Christ.

We are on this journey together. At the contemplative Eucharist each of us came forward and broke our host into the paten. Offering ourselves, our souls and bodies, to God. This is who we are. Individuals yes, but in community. Forgiveness is all about relationship. Its ultimate goal is the restoration of relationship—the acknowledgement at a profound level of the oneness of God’s creation—the oneness we all share in God.

Our faith communities can be the most important context for us—helping us to live ever more deeply as forgiven and forgiving people. Helping us to open ourselves to receive the movement of divine grace that seeks to repair and unite. Within them we hear the texts—they become part of who we are. We share in the liturgy: Baptism and Eucharist help to re-member us and form us into God’s people. Confession offers a path into living more deeply into truth and into God’s forgiveness. Prayer and people of faith who model lives of forgiveness – these support and encourage us. The spiritual practices of our tradition have gifts to give us.

I grieve that so often in our Sunday church we fail to experience these riches of our faith. The church I believe has suffered along with our culture in a cheapening of words. There is a tendency to avoid speaking of hard truth. Yet people wander into church often because they are dealing with very hard truths. Our churches have often become more concerned with a kind of consumer-driven faith than one grounded in the great gift of the gospel. We structure our worship so that people will enjoy it and come back—not drift off to see what the church around the corner or near the freeway has to offer.

At our best though the church can be the community where we are graced to live as forgiven and forgiving people. Where we remember our calling and the forgiven-ness in which it originates. The Trinitarian life is our destiny really. Pray that by God’s grace we be taken up evermore deeply into that divine life of mutuality in intimate relationship.

I close with a story told by L. Gregory Jones in his book Embodying Forgiveness. It is the story of the Palestinian priest Elias Chacour and his congregation in Ibillin, Israel in 1966. He and his people suffer greatly in the midst of the conflict there, and he soon discovers that the congregation itself is bitterly divided. He goes about the village preaching ecumenism but gets no response, except one note that asks him to “Begin first to reconcile brothers, sisters, families together.”

As he celebrated the Eucharist on Palm Sunday he could see that there were so many people in the full church who were at odds with each other. He felt enormous grief about their divisions and inability to truly live into Christ’s peace.

At the end of the liturgy, he walked down the center aisle, closed the doors and locked them, keeping the key. He walked back up the aisle and told the people that he loved them and he was saddened to find them so filled with hatred and bitterness. In the midst of a stunned silence he told them that in the liturgy he had found someone who was able to help them: Jesus Christ. Here’s what he said: “We are gathered in his name. . .”

So on Christ’s behalf, I say this to you: The doors of the church are locked. Either you kill each other right here in your hatred and then I will celebrate your funerals gratis, or you use this opportunity to be reconciled together before I open the doors of the church. If that reconciliation happens, Christ will truly become your Lord, and I will know I am becoming your pastor and your priest. That decision is now yours. (3)

He sat down. There was a long period of silence. No one said anything. The people sat there together in the silence. Finally one man stood up and asked forgiveness of everybody present and offered his own. Then he asked for God’s forgiveness. The church was filled with embraces, forgiveness, and tears. There was a sharing of Christ’s peace. After a time Chacour declared that it was no longer Palm Sunday, but Easter. There had been resurrection; he unlocked the doors and the congregation went about the village from home to home singing the resurrection hymn.

Now of course this isn’t the end of the story. The people of that community had to live into the day to dayness of their forgiveness. But it’s a story that speaks deeply of the truth of our identity and calling. Perhaps it would be a wonderful gift to our church if when the Bishops gather at Lambeth in a few months—they would be locked in a room with Jesus to sit in the silence. AMEN

(1) This musical metaphor for the Trinity I first read about in David S. Cunningham’s These Three are One; The Practice of Trinitarian Theology, Blackwell: Malden, MA, 1998.

(2) Maggie Ross, unpublished paper, posted in online course The Uses of Silence, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, 2008.

(3) L. Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgivness: A Theological Analysis, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995, p. 181 Note: The image is one of the trinitarian images from the Rothschild Canticles; a medieval devotional manuscript from around 1300 located at the Beinecke Library Yale University.

SERMON, PENTECOST May 11, 2008

Acts 2:1-21; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23

Years ago I knew a man—a Christian—who was an attorney. He had been a young man during the Civil Rights movement in the 60s—in his twenties. And in those years he worked for the church. He preached once about one of the moments in his life that he treasured as God-filled—one of those moments that comes to us by surprise in which we become more than who we are and find ourselves deeply connected to God and God’s creation. Here’s how I remember what he told me. He’d been sent into a jail in the deep South somewhere to bail out some black people who had been arrested for participating in a sit in. He was nervous—young and nervous—not that long out of law school, white and from the East. He stepped into the jail, and all along one wall he could see the cells filled with black people, some young some old. He wasn’t sure quite how he would be received by anyone—black or white, but he’d been sent there to try and secure the freedom of those in jail. As he stood there, he was amazed to hear an elderly woman from a cell in the corner, shout out, “Here comes the church! Praise God! Here comes the church! The church has come to us to set us free!” By the time I knew him some 40 years had passed, but he never forgot that moment—when he’d been recognized as an apostle—one sent out into the world. An apostle.

Today we celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit to the church. We read these two very different accounts of how the Spirit came to Jesus’ friends—his disciples, his followers. There is the Acts account so vivid with its images of fire and rushing wind—the disciples pouring out into the streets speaking the languages of the people there—witnessing to God’s actions in Jesus in words that everyone could understand. So ecstatic was their behavior that some people thought they were drunk. Peter tries to explain that no, they are not drunk. These are the last days he says, and he quotes the prophet Joel to say that what has happened is the first sign of God’s promise to pour out the divine spirit on all flesh. He tells the people gathered there that what this is all about is that everyone who comes to know Christ and call on his name will be saved. The disciples, the followers of Jesus leave the confines of the house where they’ve gathered to go out into the world to share the good news.

In John’s gospel we hear a different account of the coming of the Spirit. This is a much more intimate event. The disciples are in a house, the doors are locked and in the midst of their fear, Jesus comes to them, shows them his hands and feet—the wounds—and as they rejoice in seeing him—he breathes on them. Like God breathing into human beings in the creation story—breathing into the dust of the earth to make the first human; echoing the Spirit that moved over the deep and brought all things into being. This creative, energizing breath of God. And, it echoes a defining moment in Jesus own life—you’ll remember when he read the text from Isaiah in the synagogue in his hometown, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me….” The people there reacted by trying to push him off the cliff when he told them that he had been sent not just to them but to others—others whom they rejected. He reminded them that the prophet Elijah had been sent to the widow of Zarephath, also an outsider. The freedom of the Spirit to go where it will was more than his people could take. God’s vision was too radical for them.

In John’s gospel Jesus comes to his friends and says, “Peace be with you.” He says it twice. This to his friends who had betrayed him. “Peace be with you.” And then, “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And, with that, he breathes on them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Two very different accounts of the Pentecost experience. Both corporate—in community—both life-changing. One spectacular in its immediate results: sending the disciples out to become apostles almost before they can take a breath. The other intimate, grounded in personal relationship with Jesus, equipping the disciples to go out—sending them out as Jesus himself was sent by the Father. It could be that these stories were written down so we would know about these ways the Spirit can manifest itself. One fiery, the other in peace.

Both result in the same sending out. Some people refer to Pentecost as the Birthday of the Church—and there is a sense in which this is so. But more deeply I think Pentecost is about the friends of Jesus, his followers, being transfigured into apostles—those sent out into the world. The Good News is for the world. Not just for the church. Not just for the believers. It is for the world: all flesh.

It’s worth thinking about. Our own sending out. Our own being sent as Jesus was sent. What is the difference from being a disciple—a follower—of Christ or being an apostle—one sent out by Christ?

When I think about being a disciple I think about trying to live my life following Jesus’ teaching, looking to his ministry—his healing, his feeding, his comforting and discomforting of others, his praying, his forgiving, his modeling of intimacy with God. I’m his follower when I let his life form my life. The other day I watched as a small boy followed his dad down the sidewalk. He was a couple of steps behind him and he was imitating his father’s stride and swagger. He even moved his arms as his dad did. He was a keen observer of his dad, and a follower. A disciple you might say.

And of course we are called to be followers of Christ. “I am the way said Jesus.” Follow me to God. Find in me that truth that God is within you, “The kingdom is within you.” Follow me into freedom.

But at Pentecost we learn once again that we are called to be more than followers. We are called to be apostles—oh, not “THE APOSTLES,” we all know that—but those sent out into the world nonetheless. And the measure in which we go out is I think the measure in which we are secure in the Peace of Christ. The measure in which we know ourselves to be loved and totally secure—no matter what the world may have said to us yesterday, or this morning, or what it will say tomorrow—we are God’s beloved and we rest in that reality. The intimacy of that breath of God breathed into the disciples is ours today. Each breath we take can be a reminder to us of that. Breathe.

I think of that young man who dared to go into the jail so long ago, not knowing really how he would be received or how he could use his newly minted attorney skills—knowing only really the breath of God within him—sending him out—the peace of God within him that passes all understanding that grounded him for the journey. He was an apostle. In his young self he enfleshed the love of God come to those in prison—those in need—those bound up. The woman celebrated who he was when she shouted out, “Here comes the church!”

You and I are not just followers of Jesus. We have been sent out to witness in our day to the love of God that sets us free. The breath of God that is Spirit. The peace of God that grounds us. Think about your days—and the places and people to whom God is calling you. A friend told me recently about how one of her dearest friends is dying and living now with great pain. He is far away but everyday his wife writes a line or two in their blog and friends can write back. The thing that has most impressed her she says is that in his time of greatest pain friends have surrounded him and his wife. These are friends that have been called out—sent—into just that kind of place many of us fear to go—a place of pain and dying. And perhaps they were fearful too—like the disciples in the room when Jesus came to them and breathed on them.

Signs of the Spirit’s presence are unity, forgiveness, communication, the capacity to stand with each other—a witnessing most often without words to the truth of God’s love come among us. During the Eucharistic prayer I will ask the Holy Spirit to come upon the gifts of bread and wine and to come upon us. The bread that we eat and the wine that we drink have divine breath on them. So do we. This is the gift of Pentecost. God’s Spirit is for all flesh—for the world.

SERMON, May 4, 2008 7 Easter

Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11

I was talking with a friend not too long ago. She works at a university (not anywhere near here). She was telling me how stuck some of the faculty are there. Stuck in the past and unwilling to move into the present (much less into the future). One department’s entire faculty signed a declaration that they would never offer a single online course. Never. . . . I thought about that department when I read our lesson from Acts. And, to be honest, I thought of myself and how often I get stuck in my comfortable patterns with my images of how things are supposed to be.

Jesus in this passage is the resurrected Jesus who has been with his friends for sometime now. They’re gathered outside of Jerusalem and they ask him the same old question. Is this time when the kingdom will be restored to Israel? When you will take care of the Romans? …They keep trying to comprehend the new thing by putting it into old boxes. “It is not for you to know,” Jesus tells them. “Not for you to know”… and then he is taken up into the heavens—he ascends out of sight—leaving his friends with the promise of the Spirit and the charge to become his witnesses. Who has words to explain this mysterious return of Jesus to the Father described here as his being taken up into heaven?

What on earth might his friends have thought when he told them that they would be his witnesses to the ends of the earth? They just stand like this, there looking up to where they last saw him—the sky. By their question you get the impression they are looking backwards—to their old dreams and hopes. By their actions they are staring up into the empty sky.

Emptiness and absence. Know this and “not for you to know.” Paradox and mystery at the heart of our faith.

Jesus who was once with them. And then was crucified, dead and buried—gone--absent. Then he rose from the dead and appeared to them, journeyed with them. Now he is gone again. They are alone. In Luke’s accounting this is kind of a time of stillness between the ascension and the coming of the Spirit. A time of emptiness—waiting and aloneness. A time of living into the promise given, but not comprehended, a time for giving oneself over to unknowing. Living into the unknown that is God. This is the kind of time that makes Americans very uncomfortable. Our ethos is so much about knowing and controlling.

Have you ever stepped out into the unknown? Felt you were being led in a certain direction, but really having little idea of where it would lead you? Perhaps you have made a journey or two like that in your life into the unknown. Actually if you’ve ever loved, you’ve made that journey. I think about that when I meet with young couples coming to me for premarital counseling. They love each other and want to build a life together—but really they have no idea where that life will take them—where their love will lead them. Any of you who are married or living in a long-term intimate relationship know this. These young people haven’t a clue. Love is like that. It takes you into the unknown. You have to entrust yourself to it. Give your heart to the beloved.

Jesus’ friends—once they stop staring up into the heavens wishing Jesus was still there—wishing he was with them as he had been—wishing, wishing no doubt that things had maybe turned out differently—scared maybe of what he said to them about their being witnesses to the ends of the earth… wondering about the things that would remain unknown, Jesus’ friends devote themselves to prayer. Constantly. That’s what they do. They don’t pack their bags; they don’t google “the ends of the earth,” and plot their path; they don’t run away and get busy hoping they won’t feel or notice the absence. They pray. Mary and his brothers are there and so are certain other women.

Let’s pay attention here. Because prayer is about relationship; it’s about an encounter with the beloved. It’s about creating a spaciousness within to meet the divine. The divine that dwells somehow mysteriously in each one of us, and is here too among us. We have come here to this place to pray. To turn ourselves toward God—the great unknown and unknowable—to spend sometime offering ourselves to this relationship that gives all other relationships meaning. Sometimes in the busyness of church life, and even the noisiness of the community as it gathers for worship—we forget our primary goal: to be with God. To be in touch with the divine.

In John’s gospel Jesus is finishing up his last conversation with his friends before his death. It’s a time perhaps like those times when the family and loved ones gather around the bedside of the one who is dying, hoping from a word from the one they love. Perhaps they are already filled with grief, anticipating their loss. Jesus has promised them the gift of the spirit, told them he would not abandon them (they must have wondered what that could possibly mean)—that somehow in his absence he would be present—and he’s washed their feet. Now he prays for them. What a sweet way to end this last time together. Jesus prays to God on behalf of his friends.

Imagine yourself on your deathbed. What would be your prayer for your loved ones? Long life? Prosperity? No suffering? Reconciliation? Health? Faith? What would you ask of God on behalf of those you love?

Jesus prays for God’s glory to be manifest. Glory is a word we say rather often in church, we sing or say the Gloria, we use this word—often perhaps without thinking much about its meaning. In scripture most often glory is God’s presence. Beholding God’s presence. Beholding is not just a question of seeing as in through binoculars from a safe distance; beholding is both to see and to know—know in a sense beyond the ordinary. Know deep down inside yourself, know without even consciously thinking about it maybe—a knowing that just that seeps out your pores. Jesus has manifested God to us and now he prays that the divinity within each of us might become visible. The glory of God manifest in you and in me.

The heart of our faith is all about intimacy of relationship with God. “This is eternal life,” Jesus prays, “that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” I am struck by the rhythm between silence and word in this story. Jesus the Word, his words of prayer just before the silence of his departure. His death—the time of great silence—and then resurrection flowing from that silence. Now we hear his words of prayer that flow into the silence of his absence.

To go back for a moment to Acts, we don’t have any description of the disciples’ prayer after they finally stopped gazing into the heavens and returned to Jerusalem. But I can only imagine it was mostly in silence. What was there to say in the face of the unknowing, the mystery, the paradox?

Our own worlds are so bereft of silence. The other day I went to fill up my gas tank and discovered that the filling station now has little tv-like objects on top of each pump—these are filled with images and noise, words flooding the area inviting me to make other purchases and to think consumerized thoughts. What a deal! I can’t just be in relative silence now when I pump gas? Can’t I have even a moment’s peace?

The noisiness and the busyness of images splayed across every surface—with new surfaces being created all the time—these are damaging to our souls—to our relationship with God and with the God who is to be found deep within us. They keep our minds occupied—usually in a hyper-active state—and so often put images in our heads that never get erased: images of violence, enmity, and hopelessness. You know about all this. This is the world in which we live. We are kept from entering the deep silence within. We begin to believe that we are what we think. That our myriad thoughts, judgments, interpretations are LIFE.

Jesus prays for us that while we are in the world we will be protected—and that we will know the love God has for us—that we will live ever more deeply into who we are and who we were created to be. That we will be one—with each other and with God. We have come here to this place to offer ourselves to this relationship—to give thanks for it—for the God who gave of Godself that we might know the boundaryless love in our own lives—our own bodies. That we might dare to risk the unknown: risk opening ourselves to the mystery that is God. We come here to fill our minds and hearts with images that differ from those on the screen at the gas station. We give ourselves to God in music and song, in the passing of the peace that acts us concretely into oneness with each other and with God, in the offering and in the sacrament. But in our world of so much noise it is good to sit here together in silence to offer God some spaciousness within.

Jesus is gone. He has one-ed himself with God in the ascension. We cannot begin to fathom this mystery. There is much that is not for us to know perhaps. Much will remain unknown. But this much we know, we are God’s. We are meant to be with God and to honor the God within us. Within all of us. We are invited into the Word and into the silence from which it comes. We are invited to enter the deep silence of ourselves where we may learn to trust the One who is there and who can lead us into the unknown that is love.

I invite you now to sit together in silence. If your mind gets busy, simply notice that and turn your attention to your breath or to a word, perhaps today we could use the word love. Let us sit in silence.