Guided Meditations: "You Are Distracted by Many Things" and "In Christ All Things Hold Together"

(I'm back to blogging my sermons after a two-Sunday absence for vacation.  Today's sermon was actually a pair of guided meditations on the day's Epistle and Gospel lections.  I'm also including a description of the prayer stations we used during our contemplative service.)

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Encountering Jesus

 GOSPEL READING                           Luke 10:38-42                                          

³⁸Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ³⁹She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. ⁴⁰But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” ⁴¹But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴²there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

NAMING WHAT DISTRACTS US
SUNG RESPONSE              “O Brother Jesus”            p. 67 in songbook

GUIDED MEDITATION       “You Are Distracted by Many Things”                    

A few Sundays ago we read the story of Jesus casting out the demons from a mentally disturbed man who named himself Legion.  The former outcast then sat at Jesus’ feet in the posture of a disciple.

Today we read the story of Jesus teaching another marginalized person.  A woman now sits at his feet in the posture of a disciple in a culture where only men were allowed to disciple themselves to learned rabbis.  Again Jesus violates society’s conventions, this time to permit a woman to adopt the disciple’s role.  

But what was Jesus’ lesson for Mary? What did he actually say to Mary in today’s story?

We don’t know.  The Gospel writers usually set up a lesson from Jesus by first establishing a dramatic situation in which Jesus instructs one of the twelve or a questioner in the crowd or the scribes and Pharisees. We as readers then can listen in.  But today’s story provides the setting without ever telling us Jesus’s words to Mary—though his lesson to her lasted long enough for her sister Martha to grow so impatient that she expressed her irritation that Mary was not helping with hosting duties. We as readers of this story might even feel a bit resentful that this important lesson is never shared with us.  Like Martha, we never hear what Jesus said to Mary. 

But there is still a lesson for us.  And for Martha, too.  Perhaps Jesus’s brief aside to Martha is the real lesson in the story.  I’ll repeat Jesus’ words to Martha in just a moment.  But if you can in some way identify with Martha—hardworking and earnest Martha—that lesson might also having meaning for you.  Anybody here who is hard working? Who welcomes others? Who takes care of others? Who wants things done right? Good for you!  But for every one of Martha’s fine traits, there is a potential shadow side.  As much as we can admire Martha’s caregiving and zeal and helpfulness, we are aware those qualities can lead to problems.  Taken too far, used too proudly or unreflectively, Martha’s helpfulness can turn . . . 

·         demanding and impatient and critical

·         agitated

·         controlling and selfish

·         insensitive and intractable

Perhaps you recognize some of these tendencies in yourself.  We all need more patience, more peace, more generosity of spirit, more openness to new understandings.  Let’s reflect now on those qualities:   patience, peace, generosity of spirit, openness to new teachings.  In doing so, we prepare our hearts to hear the lesson Jesus spoke to Martha.

I’ll repeat Jesus’ words now to the Martha within us.  To hear him, you need to put a lid on that pot you’ve been stirring, set down the broom you’ve been wielding, turn off the “to do” list in the back of your brain. Sit still with an inner stillness. When Jesus says, “Martha, Martha,” try to hear him speaking to you instead.

Are you ready to hear Jesus’s words to you?

 “You are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴²there is need of only one thing.”

What are the things that worry you?  What are the things that distract you from the truly important things in your life?  What is the ONE THING you need?  What is the one thing we ALL need?

SILENCE

Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t tell Martha what that one needed thing is. He leaves it up to her to figure that out. But he implies that Mary knows what that one thing is. 

We have others with us on the journey and sometimes they teach us, by their actions, what is truly important for spiritual maturity. Thanks be to God.

SUNG RESPONSE            “Be Still and Know”              p. 17 in songbook

Encountering Christ

SILENCE                                                                     

*EPISTLE READING                          Colossians1:15-20                                      

Chanting an ancient Christ hymn antiphonally

A ¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;

B ¹⁶for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created,

A  things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers

B—all things have been created through him and for him.

A ¹⁷He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

B ¹⁸He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning,

A the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

B ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

A ²⁰and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,

B whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

GUIDED MEDITATION        “In Christ All Things Hold Together”                           

We chanted, rather than read, today’s Epistle lection, which likely was an early hymn already in use among the first Christians and was embedded in a letter to the church in the town of Colossae.  Unlike the simple story about Jesus we read earlier, this is a complex and richly eloquent poem, an early attempt to understand the meaning of Jesus’s life and death and ongoing power at work in his followers’ lives.  By reading the New Testament epistles, we glimpse ways that the Jesus of human history was becoming the Christ of Christian faith.  Christ—which is the Greek word for the Hebrew term “Messiah,” which simply means “anointed one”--soon took on broader, indeed more cosmic, meaning.  Jesus the Christ was understood to be the clearest image of God in any human life and, by the 4^th century, was believed to be at one with God in a unique way.  

My love for Jesus makes me feel that anyone would at least admire him, were they to study his life and teachings. The Gospel reading today illustrated Jesus’ radical inclusion, his tenderness, his wisdom, his life-changing encounters with people. I like the definition of Christian as a follower of Jesus—partly because I find his life and words to be so compelling and accessible--and partly to emphasize Christianity as an orientation toward hope, a commitment to healing and peace, a practice of compassion—instead of a set of doctrines to profess.

But my simple definition of Christianity could be misunderstood to mean that the Christian faith is merely the specialized study of a historical figure whose life we then try to emulate. It is more. While following Jesus is a worthy aim, it’s not completely doable. I’m not talking about our inability to be good enough to live as Jesus lived.  I mean that many important facts about the historical Jesus are in dispute or simply cannot be fully known, despite excellent scholarly methods. So we can’t follow him too precisely. And besides, Christianity, like all religions, goes deeper than learning the steps to achieve some new spiritual status.  And if Christianity is simply about becoming like this one man, Jesus, then it lacks a universality that can include everyone.  Although I do often define Christianity as following Jesus, I must clarify that Jesus was pointing not to himself but to something greater. I don’t think Jesus hoped to turn us into little Jesuses any more than a loving mother wants her children to be clones of herself. 

We focused earlier in this service on the Jesus whom Martha and Mary knew. We move now to the ancient hymn in which the Christ is described as the unifying principle in whom “all things hold together.” 

Let’s pause to consider the Divine One as “The unifying principle in whom all things hold together.”  Is that a helpful way for you to think of God? 

SILENCE

In our earlier Gospel lection we sat with Mary at the feet of the very human Jesus of Nazareth.  But we invoke now the mystery of the cosmic Christ.  Is thinking about a God beyond time and space an appealing concept to you?

SILENCE

Christianity gives me a spirituality that prizes both the rational and the mystical, both the ordinary and the extraordinary.  I encounter God in the particularity of human life and in the vastness beyond all thoughts I can think and the deeds I can do.  Jesus Christ is the emblem of our spiritual paradox.

Listen as I speak more literally about Jesus and more metaphorically about the Christ:

The Jesus of history taught people like Mary and Martha about God. 

The Christ of faith is the image of the invisible God.

The earthy Jesus was a flesh and blood 1^st century Jew who experienced human sufferings and joys.

The mystical Christ is a way of appreciating the godness in that unique life and in all of life.

Jesus discipled women and men.

The Christ birthed all creation and is our ultimate destination.

Jesus of Nazareth hung out with the lowly and disreputable and eventually hung from the shameful cross.

Jesus the Christ is the image of the human-divine that is creation’s goal.

The flesh and blood Jesus who transformed Mary and Martha’s life is different from but connected to the way the Christ of modern spirituality transforms lives today.  Meditating on the name or teachings of Jesus is a wonderful way to pray.  But for now, I invite you to open yourself to an understanding that you, too, are destined for a union with God that is just as expansive.  In Christ, God was pleased to dwell.  We are “in Christ.”  God is in all.   A danger in being so Jesus-focused is that we think we can corner the religious market by owning Jesus.  But God is in all and all is in God.  When we move toward connection and communion of the Christ, we are moving toward the divine.

These are heady ideas.  This is not the time to analyze.  I invite you now simply to sit with the appreciation and hope that you are not alone.  You are not living an isolated life.

SUNG RESPONSE               “Jesus Christ”                 p. 39 in songbook

PRAYER STATIONS                

1. Praying with the Celtic Cross. Pick up the Celtic cross.  Notice the characteristic pattern of interlacing knots, a pattern without beginning or end.  Trace with your finger the path of the interwoven lines as you consider the ways your life is interconnected with others and consider that the life of Christ is a web of interconnections.  As you trace the pattern, you might say silently to yourself “In Christ, all things are knitted together.”   

2. Praying through Communion. Meditate on the following prayer by Teilhard de Chardin.  Then move toward the altar, remembering you are moving toward a divine goal of communion/union.

   “Grant, O God, that when I draw near to the altar, I may discern the infinite perspectives hidden beneath the smallness and nearness of the Host (communion bread) in which you are concealed . . . a devouring power that, far from being consumed by me, consumes me.  Give me the strength to rise above the remaining illusions which make me think of your touch as circumscribed and momentary.  It is primarily through matter that you touch me.  Your tastes and your temperament converge upon my being to form it, nourish it, and bear it along towards the center of your fire.  In the Host it is my life that you are offering me, O Jesus. May I lose myself in the unfathomable, plunge into the inexhaustible, find peace in the incorruptible, annihilate myself in proportion as I become more deliberately conscious of myself.” Amen 

 3. Praying through Writing.  Compose your own hymn to the Cosmic Christ with the paper and pens provided. Reread the “Prayer for Silent Reflection on the first page of this worship bulletin and the Epistle Reading, examples of two hymns to the Christ, poetic expressions of the human heart. You might start your hymn with “Christ is __” and create metaphors to capture the idea of the Christ in your life. Feel free to take paper and pen to your seat and then, if you are willing to share your hymn, place it in the basket at this prayer station.  The pastor will chant your hymn at the close of prayer time.  You may sign your name to your hymn or remain anonymous. Your hymn need not rhyme or follow a metrical pattern or be a particular length. 

4. Praying through your Offerings. The Hebrew Bible lection for today says: “⁴Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, ⁵saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale?’ ⁷The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. ⁸Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it?” (Amos 8: 4-8). Setting aside time for Sabbath helps us remember the needy with our offerings and relativize our other enterprises against God’s compassionate work in the world. Let’s not be too eager to get back to “selling grain.” With this offering of money we also offer up time to care for our own tired spirits and others’ hurting hearts.  

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