Sermon, June 23, 2002
5 Pentecost -- Proper 7, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Gospel – Matthew 10:24-33

I remember several years ago I was teaching a class about something, I forget what, but I said this: "You are not your thoughts." And a woman named Margaret said back to me, "Well, I just don’t believe that. I am my thoughts. And I include my feelings in that; I think feelings are thoughts, too. If I’m not what I think, my goodness, who am I?"

Margaret was a librarian, and a wonderful woman. She came from an intellectual home, and from childhood she had treasured the life of the intellect. So much so, that she literally identified herself with her thoughts.

Descartes would agree. He founded the modern Western civilization on the foundation "Cogito, ergo sum." "I think, therefore, I am." And the Gospel became filtered through the European love of the mind. That’s the Gospel we have received, where faith means right belief. Anglican theologian John MacQuarrie in trying to present the Gospel to 20^th century existentialists begins defining prayer as "thinking in the presence of God." (from Paths in Spirituality, p. 25)

Other cultures are not that way. I have a friend who has been adopted into the Ponca tribe of Native Americans. He took me to their sacred gathering. When the Poncas want to pray, they don’t think or speak, they dance. Tibetans chant.

It may be that we Westerners are addicted to our mind and to our feelings. Many of us think we are our thoughts. And trying to live up to who you think you are can drive you crazy. How many of us are trying to live up to what we think we ought to be? Trying to fix yourself; but who is the self that is trying to fix your-self?

There is a spiritual tradition that invites us below thought and feeling; back before your judgements about good and bad, where, as St. Paul’s says, "you are hidden with Christ in God." In the contemplative tradition we are invited to detach from thoughts, feelings, and self-image, to let go of the mind until we move deeper into reality where there is nothing to lose and nothing to prove. When you get yourself out of the way, God is. You are. "Sum."

Richard Rohr is a Roman Catholic Franciscan who is a popular speaker. He tells of going on a thirty day hermitage to the cabin in the woods where Thomas Merton lived as a hermit for many years. At first it was boring, lonely, lonesome. Thoughts bombarded him and he felt like he had to do something. One morning he woke up, went to the monastery for Morning Prayer and Eucharist, had breakfast and returned to his cabin. It was 7:30 a.m. He got hit with something like despair. "What am I going to do until bedtime tonight?"

But slowly, his experience got sweeter. He began to take the lid off the distracting thousand thoughts that imprison us. Images began to surface. He found the scriptures came alive. He says you can’t come directly from TV to the scriptures. But when you come from the great silence, the scriptures come alive.

It became his habit to sit on his stool each morning and watch the sun come up. Just looking; not thinking. And then each evening he would return to watch the sun go down. Sometime toward the beginning of the third week, while he was watching the sun set, he touched his cheek. He was crying. Now he’s a man. He’s been taught, "big boys don’t cry." He doesn’t cry easily. It seems that the silence stopped the thinking thoughts enough so that his body got a chance "to be." And a deep Reality came through his eyes that couldn’t come out through his mouth.

When he discovered the wetness pouring down his face, Richard moved into his head and asked, "Why? What am I crying about?" And he had two realizations.

First, he was crying about the sadness of things. "Why don’t people know this? It’s so wonderful." When we return to complete simplicity, everything belongs and all coheres. And he was filled with sadness. Sadness about his own phoniness, the people he’d hurt, what we’re doing to the planet. He said it was "the Great Sadness." When you enter mystery, darkness, paradox, brokenness – that’s how you learn. And you don’t hate it. You weep over it.

But the second realization was his feeling of an ecstatic happiness. It was so sweet, good, right. It’s okay. All is okay. There is enough joy for all of life. The universe is benevolent and all coheres.

To this day he can’t say which dominated, joy or sadness. The joy of God or the wounds of Christ. But he wasn’t afraid of either.

I found what he described familiar. I’ve known that poignant sense of joy and sadness. I’ve experienced it sometimes in music and also in nature. I’ve visited an infinitely spacious place in contemplative prayer. That’s one reason why I’ve dedicated much of my ministry to teaching people how to pray contemplatively. How gently to let go of thoughts and feelings and self-image until you enter the great silence where God is all and all is God. Where there is no ego to protect, and you don’t have to succeed. Where whatever happens is fine and everything belongs. Where "nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known." Where you don’t need to believe in God, but rather you know God, you experience God.

I’ve become convinced that humanity is hungry for the contemplative experience of God. Four hundred years of living in the mind has brought us great progress, but it has not brought us peace or wisdom, and we have become a civilization of hungry souls.

Summer is a time when we can find opportunities to disconnect from some of the frantic patterns of our life. It can be a time to find hermitage when we can just look, not think. It can be a time for retreat. It can be a time to practice quiet, to let go of thoughts and feelings, and just be. Our lives could use some extended periods of understimulation. When we can collapse into the absolute with utter confidence and begin to get out of the way of God. If we can relax into the reality of God, we will discover, it is a benevolent universe. We can see the pain and the joy of all things. His eye is on the sparrow, even if it fall.

Let yourself be liberated from the tyranny of thoughts and feelings and self-image. You are not your thoughts. You are not your feelings. You are not your self-image. You are a mystery, part of the infinite mystery that is God. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. Go to the darkness where Christ whispers. Then return to the light where you can proclaim from the housetops, the joy of God and the wounds of Christ which bring peace that passes all understanding. The peace that the world cannot give.

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