Another year - redux

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The first weekend retreat for the 2006-2007 year of SOLLI was held the weekend of September 22 - 24. The seven returning participants were joined by eleven new participants.

Let there be God

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Last weekend I gave the sermon at All Saints' Church. The occasion was that this weekend, beginning on September 22, we have a retreat that, for several of us, starts our last year with SOLLI. My priest asked me to give the sermon to bring the parish up to speed with what has happened in SOLLI so far and where it may be going this year.

I am taking the liberty of posting it here in hopes that it will help to set the tone for the rest of the year.

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Text: Mark 9:14-29

Gracious and loving God, you told us in Psalm 51 that the sacrifice acceptable to you is a broken and contrite heart. Please create such hearts in us that we may dedicate our lives to your service through our various callings. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

At this time last year, I was getting ready to set off on my two-year journey with SOLLI, the Southern Ohio Lay Leadership Initiative. Father Don asked me then to tell you about it. I guess that was so you could decide if I was just playing hooky from church on those weekends, or if I was actually seeking God. Well, the first year has come and gone, and next weekend I'll be off to Procter again to begin my last year in SOLLI. Father Jeff has asked me to tell you what has happened so far and what I see happening for the rest of this year. But just like last year, I would feel guilty talking to you about nothing but SOLLI when we have a perfectly good Gospel message to talk about too. So let's see if we can combine the two.

As I mentioned last year, the purpose of SOLLI is to train lay leaders for effective service in congregations, in the Diocese, and in ecumenical agencies. So first a news item: as part of that service, I have been appointed by Bishop Price to the board of the Procter Camp and Conference Center. That was just fine with me because God hangs out there. When I'm there, I am often seized with an almost uncontrollable urge to take off my shoes, because that place is holy ground.

The SOLLI program is built around seven goals, kind of like a menorah or the seven pillars of wisdom. Those goals are:

1. knowledge of the people and programs of the diocese,
2. knowledge of Anglicanism,
3. prayer and bible study,
4. discussion of inter-faith and ecumenical relationships,
5. commitment to peace and justice,
6. training in group dynamics and processes, and
7. training in leadership of congregations.

Exactly how many of these seven goals are reached each year depends, I think, on the people who make up each class. That's because the agenda isn't chiseled in stone, but shapes itself around the gifts and passions of the participants. Within the program's parameters, we move wherever the Spirit leads us. Last year we had a group of people who were passionate about group dynamics, inter-faith and ecumenical relationships, and spiritual development, so we spent most of our time there. We have made it a priority to concentrate more this year on the areas we neglected but without ignoring our passions.

One of our most interesting projects was in the area of ecumenical relationships. We decided to visit at least one Episcopal parish that was faced with and responding to challenges, particularly membership challenges, and then to visit a so-called mega-church, followed by a comparison of their methods and results. The Episcopal parish we visited was St. James in Clintonville and the mega-church was World Harvest Church between Columbus and Lancaster. Our observations were fascinating, to put it mildly. They don't lend themselves to a Sunday morning sermon, but I'll be happy to talk about them in another setting to anyone who is interested. Just to give you a teaser, we discovered that there is a big difference between the come-and-see kind of evangelism that St. James practices, and what I call the Teddy Roosevelt school of evangelism: speak softly (well, maybe not so softly) but carry a big Bible.

Another thing we devoted ourselves to at SOLLI was spiritual development through prayer and bible study. During the first session, each person was asked which one or more of the goals lit their fire. My top choice was prayer and bible study. And just as it happens in the real world, if you mention that you are interested in something, you are put on the committee. And so I was. I became very involved in the group's devotional life. For the second SOLLI retreat last year, I gave the group a presentation on prayer, and in the last session, we put it to practice with some things brought to us by Jim Miner.

So listen again to the ending of the Gospel message that Dick just proclaimed to us. At the end of the passage, after the disciples were unable to cast out the spirit that possessed the boy and Jesus had to do it, the Gospel says,

[...] his disciples asked him privately, "Why could we not cast it out?" He said to them, "This kind can come out only through prayer,"

or as the RSV translates it,

This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.

This leads to an interesting speculation. If the spirit possessing the boy could only be driven out by prayer, and the disciples could not drive it out, the logical conclusion is that the disciples did not pray. On the other hand, throughout the Gospels, Jesus is always going off by himself to pray.

So what does it mean to pray? I know I'm getting ready to jump into quicksand here, but let me share a couple of observations about prayer that have been formative to my own spiritual practice. In his book, The Word is Very Near You, Martin Smith says, "The whole of existence [...] is a conversation which God begins. In prayer, as in life, we are the ones who answer. God touches us, God speaks to us, God moves us, God reveals truth to us, and life and prayer is our response." In his book, Listening for the Heartbeat of God, J. Phillip Newell says, "Times in prayer [...] when we experience dryness, rather than being wasted times, are often important ways in which the Spirit takes us into the poverty Christ congratulated in the Beatitudes. These times make us more radically aware of our need and dependence on grace. [...] prayer involves not merely the conscious mind but the depths of the human heart."

My own prayer life can be a good deal less pure. One of the prayers I remember from my college days went something like this,

Now I lay me down to study,
I pray the Lord I won't go nutty.
If I should fail to learn this junk
I pray the Lord I shall not flunk.
But if I do, don't mourn me at all,
Just lay my bones in the study hall,
Tell my prof I did my best,
Then pile my books upon my chest.
Now I lay me down to rest,
I pray I'll pass tomorrow's test
But should I die before I wake,
That's one less test I'll have to take.
Amen.

How often do we pray in that way? That is, how often does our prayer consist of asking God to change our circumstances? C. S. Lewis said famously, "Prayer doesn't change God. Prayer changes us." So does that mean we shouldn't ask God to change our circumstances? Let me answer that question this way: I passed that test, but I don't think it's because God said OK, you can pass. By praying that prayer, I realized how silly it sounded and so I studied harder. The prayer changed me.

Think about a few famous prayers in the Bible. God comes to young Solomon after he has been made King of Israel and says to him, "Ask what I should give you." Solomon doesn't ask for more wealth or power or military success. Solomon asks for an understanding mind to govern his people, and to be able to discern between good and evil. On the night he was arrested, Jesus prays at the Mount of Olives, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul prays, "I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better." And don't ignore the beautiful prayer in today's Gospel, "I believe; help my unbelief!"

Do you remember the first Sunday when Father Jeff returned to us from his recent illness that came close to claiming his arm, to say nothing of his life? In his sermon that day, he said to us that there is a definite presence of evil in this world. Most recently it had come into his life as the unclean spirit that made him so deathly ill. Prayer was the only thing, he said, not that healed him, but that allowed him to be aware, even through all the fever and pain, of the presence of God's spirit in his life.

In his book, Disciplines of the Spirit, Howard Thurman wrote,

The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines [including prayer] is to clear away whatever may block our awareness of that which is God in us. [...] As a child, I was accustomed to spend many hours alone in my rowboat, fishing along the river [in silent prayer], when there was no sound save the lapping of the waves against the boat. There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse. It was a time of watching and waiting for what I did not know - yet I always knew. There would come a moment when beyond the single pulse beat, there was a sense of Presence which seemed always to speak to me. My response to this sense of Presence always had the quality of personal communion. There was no voice. There was no image. There was no vision. There was God.

Beginning next weekend, I will start my last year as a participant in SOLLI. My prayer for us as members of the Body of Christ, especially for this parish known as All Saints' Portsmouth, will be like the prayer of Paul. I will give thanks for you, my friends, and I will keep asking that God may give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know him better, and that in our life together, we will have that same sense of God's presence that Thurman had. There may be no voice, there may be no image, there may be no vision, but there will be God.

Amen.

Another year

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Dear SOLLI friends,

I'm experimenting with using a blog like this as a means of staying in touch. To start with, here's the e-mail Madeleine recently sent to all of us.

Let me know what you think.

Bill

Greetings, friends.

I hope you are getting some rest and relaxation this summer, along with the busyness of everybody's life.

I am writing to remind you that we will have our first SOLLI weekend of this 2006-07 year on September 22-24 at Procter. We look forward to seeing you again. We have a great group of new people to welcome.

Each of you was appointed to a Diocesan Committee or Commission during the last year. We would like to have you give a brief report (2 minutes, tops) on Saturday morning, September 23. If your assigned committee/commission has been inactive, please get in touch with the chair to find out whether there are any plans for this year and how you might be able to help get them going.

Also, I seem to remember that people were interested in seeing bulletins from our various summer visits to other churches. Please bring any that you have saved to the September meeting.

See you soon.

Peace,
Madeleine