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Not Needy, More Mature, Solitude Seeking

Lent 2 : 16 March 2014  : Matthew 17: 1-9

The evening Services I introduced at St Peter’s, Willis St, Wellington always included a 20-minute period of silent waiting on God. This was the climax of the Service, and many appreciated it as a gentle, calm way to round off Sunday, or as an opportunity for some concentrated prayer.

But not everyone found it a positive experience. I recall one man who became visibly restless as the silence began, and as it progressed began to twitch his limbs to the point where it seemed as though he was suffering from St Vitus day dance. I am convinced that he was not suffering from a medical condition or a disability, but rather found the silence and the stillness distressing, and hard to cope with.

In a way it is easy to understand his reaction. Wherever we go we are surrounded by stimulation, noise, and background music. Banks, shops, restaurants, cafes and bars routinely have muzak going in the background, and much of it is not soothing, but is rather designed to rev us up. I am constantly staggered to see Students with headphones on in libraries because apparently they can’t study unless they are listening to loud music. Yours truly couldn’t get a thing done if that was the case. And not a few people cant stop talking, even in the quiet areas of libraries, and in picture theatres. Mind you, there is a remedy for that, as I found out when I went to the pictures once with a film editor, who bawled out SHUT UP as the film began. Although I felt like crawling under the seat and pretending that I wasn’t with her, I have to admit that it worked.

"Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain where they could be alone by themselves." The Transfiguration is inserted into the Lenten readings at this point in the season to point to the fact that Jesus and his inner group were being strengthened by this experience of supernatural glory so that they could cope with the suffering and tragedy about to befall them in Jerusalem. Today all over the Christian world preachers will be reminding their hearers that a right acceptance of suffering, though a deeply disagreeable part of the Christian message, is nevertheless an inevitable fact of life, and they will be right to do so. But this morning I want to focus on another growing up aspect of this high point of gospel living.

I have called this sermon, "Not needy, more mature, solitude seeking." One aspect of cross bearing is the extent to which our Christian faith has equipped us and sorted us out in the bits of our lives that don’t work so well. I remember a colleague once saying to me about ordination, "This is a vocation Hugh that finds out all your immaturity, and obliges you to do something about it." The same runs true in my opinion for being a Christian full stop.

The issue runs deeper than asking ourselves whether we are one of those people who can’t shut up, or who have to surround themselves with noise at all times, and who have to be entertained, stimulated, or damped down with analgesics in order to get through each day. A drug culture, a booze culture, a motor mouth modus operandi, feed off the inability to live with ourselves, to like ourselves, to entertain ourselves in life giving ways, and to cope with loneliness and apparent relational starvation.

No, I am not encouraging us all to rush off to counsellors, and to become clients of the psycho- therapy industry. Rather, we might take a deep breath, and use this Lenten season to identify the needy, immature, hurting bits of ourselves, and in that insightful awareness just abide with them in patience, and also bring them before the Lord in quiet prayer, and ask him to surround those not so wonderful parts of our lives with his compassionate and healing love.

In doing this we won’t be looking for instant results, or a magic, total transformation. The truth is that we will go to our graves with significant areas of our lives still needing work, still, as it says on golf courses, ground under repair. But we might hope to take some ground, make some progress, and become a little less of a trial to those around us, become a little more self-disciplined, while also being a perhaps a little more kind to ourselves. There is nothing like a rueful, ironic, self-deprecating sense of humour to help us come to terms with, and live with, our failings and our shortcomings and our blind spots. And in a way, when we abandon the hunger for solutions, and become patient with all that is in our hearts, then a certain kind of peace follows.

This is called self-acceptance, and the American poet Theodore Roethke has said it better than I can:

Near this rose, in this grove of sun-parched, wind-warped madronas,

Among the half-dead trees, I came upon the true ease of myself,

As if another man appeared out of the depths of my being,

And I stood outside myself,

Beyond becoming and perishing,

A something wholly other,

As if I swayed out on the wildest wave alive,

And yet was still.

And I rejoiced in being what I was:

In our times of prayer this week let us re-read the Transfiguration scene in Matthew, and imagine that we have gone up the mountain with Jesus. We can repeat those words of Peter, "Lord, it is wonderful for us to be here," as a way of bringing our wandering attention back to being in the presence of God. And we can consider what resources of healing and encouragement are available to us in the contemplation of this gospel scene.

It says that Moses and Elijah were talking with Jesus. One commentator has described this scene as a summit conference on the theme of discouragement. Those two heroes of Israel’s past would have been comparing notes with Jesus on incidents in their own lives and ministries when they would have encountered such misunderstanding and rejection that they were tempted to give the whole game away. "Take heart Jesus - fare forward – be of good courage – don’t give up – continue to expect surprising outcomes from the darkest situations," would have been their message to him, and they offer it to us too, if we are prepared to receive it.

Then, there is that wonderful affirming declaration from the Father, "This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him." This I guess is what every son hopes to hear from their Father. It is both a reminder to us to be attentive to the words of Jesus, but it is also addressed to us as sons and daughters of God, as junior sisters and brothers of Jesus, that we are deeply approved of, and loved by our loving heavenly Father, and therefore need not despair of ourselves. We should continue to regard ourselves as a work n progress, to feel that there is hope for our reform and renewal.

"Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain where they could be alone by themselves." In our times of aloneness in the coming week, our times of patient abiding with the not so wonderful parts of our personalities and identities, we could consider this advice from the poet Rilke:

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.