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Foundry United Rev. |
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How to Love God:
Our Call Sunday, November 9,
2008 |
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Mark 12: 28-31 Rev. |
The
clerk in the movie is very earnest (almost painfully earnest), very sincere,
and perhaps a little naïve. Bill Maher talks to him about religion and then
brings up Santa Claus. The
clerk says very earnestly. “I don’t believe in Santa Claus.” Bill
Maher says, “Of course, the idea of one man dropping presents down chimneys all
over the world in one day is ridiculous.” The clerk nods his head in
agreement. Then
Maher adds sarcastically: “Now one man listening to people all over the earth
murmuring at the same time, that I get.” The
clerk opens his mouth as if to speak, closes it again, and just stands there.
Well,
it is the way we tend to think of prayer. We think of prayer as talking to
God. And
prayer can be talking to God, but of course it can also be more. I want to
suggest this morning that fundamentally prayer is an attitude. It is a
quality of living. It is a way of being. Jim
Castelli has put together a wonderful little book called How I Pray: People of Different Religions Share with Us that Most
Sacred and Intimate Act of Faith.[i]
There are Christian and Jews and Mormons, Hindu and Moslem and Baha’i and
Buddhist and some people who might not considered themselves theists who
write about how they pray. In the introduction to the book, Castelli says that
no matter the length, language, complexity or faith of our prayers, there is
a common purpose to the prayers in all of those who contributed to his book. There
is a common spirit and a common affirmation that you can see emerging in the
writings, no matter how different the religion. It is
this attitude and affirmation which is behind prayer that I want to explore
with you this morning…not so much praying as living a life in the attitude of
prayer. We are
focusing on four words between now and Thanksgiving. The four words come from
Foundry’s key scripture, which is Mark 12: 28-31 – the first and greatest
commandment. Our vision and call planning team selected this passage of
scripture to ground our new statement of call – what we believe God is calling
Foundry church to be and do. We are
going to have a church-wide Bible study the last weekend of February – mark
it in your Outlook now – on this passage and the other passages about the
great commandment in Matthew and Luke. One of the finest Bible teachers I
know of, Rev. Donald Morris, will spend the weekend with us February 20-22
and will teach us about every word in these passages. But for
now we are concentrating on four words. The words are commonly translated
heart, soul, mind and strength. When Jesus was asked what the first
commandment was, he answered that the first and greatest commandment, the
most important thing we can learn from our religion, is that we should love
God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and the second is that we
should love our neighbor as ourselves. But
when our planning team selected this passage as our key scripture, they
selected it in a translation written by Eugene Peterson, called The Message. In Peterson’s
translation, he translates the Greek words commonly translated as heart,
soul, mind and strength this way. He translates it: You shall love God with
all your passion, prayer, intelligence and energy. So the
four words we are focusing on are passion, prayer, intelligence and energy. You
shall love Gods with all your soul – with all your prayer, Jesus says. The
Greek word is yuchv [psoo-khay']. It comes from the verb to breathe. It
means the life force inside us. It means that which makes us fully human. The
disadvantage of translating it soul is that most of us misunderstand
the word soul and think of it as some shallow or phantom self that
lives on after our bodies die, but yuchv is us at our most real, our
most substantial, our most fully human. When I read Peterson’s translation I understood
immediately why he translated yuchv as prayer,
although I am not sure I am going to be able to adequately explain it. Yuchv
is us as creatures who have the
capacity for great nobility and for great sin. It is us as beings who live
not only as animals who eat, and drink, and sleep but as beings who
participate in eternity. Yuchv is
the image of God, not just in us, but the image of God that we are…that you
are. You are the image of God. All this is what I think Peterson is trying to
communicate when he translates yuchv as prayer.
That we are beings who at our fullest live in relationship with God. We
participate in eternity. And Jesus says that part of the greatest
commandment is to love God with all our capacity for nobility and goodness and
sacrifice and all of our capacity for sin, and betrayal, and
disappointment…with our full humanity…with everything that makes us fully
human. I want to say a word about the election. I
mentioned before that my father was a Republican. He had little formal
education. He was born in 1904, the second oldest of 13 children, and it was
the custom where and when he grew up that the older children dropped out of
school and helped farm so that the younger ones could complete school. So my
father dropped out of school after 4th grade. He took three things in life very seriously – church,
baseball, and politics. He read two newspapers every day – the Morning Call
and the Evening Call. He read every word of both newspapers – first thing in
the morning and first thing after dinner. There was someone my father always felt should
have been president. It was a Republican senator from My father used to say that I think we made some progress on that this past
week. To exclude anybody from consideration for office because of their
identity rather than their gifts and abilities is to say something about
where we think the image of God resides. It is a statement about what it
means to be fully human and suggests some of us are more fully human than
others. Right? And this is what I really want to say about this
– to present yourself for public office whether you are running for president
of the To offer yourself for public office is one
example of what I think it means to love God with all your prayer because it
affirms the image of God you are, your participation in eternity, your full
humanity. I want also to say a word about Proposition 8 and
the similar propositions in I am so proud of Tim and Ed and their family and
friends. I think what they did yesterday in this sanctuary is an example of
loving God with all your prayer. It is to affirm and be affirmed as the image
of God, as fully human, as participants in eternity. What does it mean to love God with all your soul…all
your prayer? Our Foundry statement of call outlines six ways
of loving God with all our prayer: transcendent worship that moves us out of
our daily concerns into the presence of God, challenging study that keeps us
growing and vital, inclusive community that moves us outside our tribes and
clans into reconciling community, caring community that keeps our hearts
tender, active service, and prophetic leadership that brings change in our
world. This is loving God as fully human people – with
all our soul, with all our prayer. This week I was talking to a Methodist minister
who worships at Foundry when he can. He said Foundry has an energy about it.
The music is great, he said, but it is more than the music. The preaching is okay, he said, a little too
heady maybe but pretty good. But – he said – it is more than the preaching.
There is an energy about Foundry, he said, that he thinks comes from the people’s
engagement in the world, engagement in mission, engagement in change. Maybe this is the best way to say what loving God
with all of our prayer means – it means to be engaged in life, engaged in the
world, engaged in change, engaged in what God is doing in the world. Engaged
in the most noble and compelling movements of our time. Engaged even in the
risky things – even risking sin. Sin boldly, Martin Luther used to say. It is
better to risk sin, better to risk being on the wrong side, than to not be
engaged. So what
is the equivalent in your life of being an African-American and risking
running for president of the What is
the equivalent of being a gay man and standing with your partner at this
altar to pronounce your love and commitment to your partner, something no gay
person has ever done before? What is the equivalent in your life for you? How do
you love God with all you are and all you have? With all your potential? With
all your courage? The
Sunday before Thanksgiving is Stewardship Sunday when we will make our
financial commitments to God and to Foundry’s mission and ministry. I’d like
to challenge all of us to think about what other commitments we might want to
make to God this Stewardship Sunday, because stewardship is really about what
we do with our humanity, isn’t it? What we
do about the image of God we are; what we do about eternity; what we do about
the potential we are; what we do with all of our soul and all of our prayer. What is
the commitment we want to make to God? What is all our prayer? Others might
not see it as very dramatic but we’ll know it is. It might be doing our job
with a greater commitment than we need to do to get by. It might be asking
somebody out on a date. It might be joining a study group or giving a morning
to be with the day-laborers up the street, or deciding to do a VIM trip or
who knows. Prayer O God, our
creator. You have made us to reflect your glory, but we let the world
convince us we are less than you have made us to be. Help us all to claim
your image and to live with passion, prayer, intelligence and energy.
Amen. www.foundryumc.org |
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