| Sermon for Sunday, March 13, 2005 WHAT HELPS YOU FEEL CLOSE TO GOD?Tenth in a series on The Heart of Christianity; What is the Christian Life All About? by Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz Scripture: Psalm 122:1 I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” James 4:8a Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you. I have been collecting some religious bumper stickers that I particularly like. You may have some that you like also and, if you do, you could mail e-mail them to me. For every one I use in a sermon I will give out a free New Testament. One that I like is obviously written by someone who has experienced what Marcus Borg says are folks who have been born again in a most unattractive way or church members who have become rigid and judgmental and anti-intellectual. The bumper sticker says “Lord Jesus, save me from your followers.” One of the other bumper stickers I like plays off of one that you have seen that is a misunderstanding of the book of Revelation, that frequently quoted and often-distorted book in our Bible. The sticker you have probably seen that refers to the end of time says, “In case of rapture, this car will be abandoned.” It is the same distorted theology that the left behind books are based on. The new sticker that plays off of the one you have seen says, “In the rapture when your car is abandoned, can I have your car?” The last one I will mention in my collection so far is one that I really like very much. It says simply, “If you feel distant from God, guess who moved.” It reminds me of the truth in the verse we heard from that wonderful little book of James. This book is one of the shortest in the Bible and one of the most power packed. It has become one of my favorite books in the Bible and if you want to discover it for yourself in just the short time it will take you to read it, find thirty minutes in your week this week and sit down with a modern translation like the little pocket New Testament and read through James. Keep a pen or pencil with you to underline because I promise you that you will find verses you want to underline and even commit to memory. This morning’s verse is a memory verse for me. “Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.” Take time for God and you will feel how close God is already to you even though you did not realize it. There is in your bulletin a short dialogue by Anthony de Mello about how blind we are to what is holy all around us every moment. Just open your eyes and you will see God, the writer says, but usually you are unaware of God because your mind is somewhere else. You are not really present to what is all around you. Elizabeth Barrett Browning talked about that in her poem:
Draw near to God and God will draw near to you. Or, better, take time for God and you will find how close God has always been, waiting for you to open your eyes and to see. And if you feel distant from God, guess who moved—not God but you. We are finishing today a ten sermon series based on some themes in the book The Heart of Christianity. We have distributed over 800 copies of this book over the last 2 years and we have had 450 people meeting in small groups and discussing it chapter by chapter. We have been giving the book to all of our new members who have joined us in the past two years and we have just decided this week that we will be offering new small group studies of this book every three months or so to our recent members and to anyone else who has not had a chance to be in a group discussing the book. This new group will be on Sunday nights beginning in April and you can call Diane Smith in the church office after next week for details. Next weekend, of course, Dr. Borg will be with us for lectures on Friday and Saturday and then he will be the preacher for the sanctuary services next Sunday. So if you were not able to obtain tickets before we sold out, you will be able to hear him Sunday morning and you can get tapes of his lectures as well. What we are doing in this last sermon and the last session of the classes is combining the themes from the two final chapters in his book. The first theme has to do with how we pay attention or do not pay attention to God. If we want to be faithful to God, we need to pay attention to God, draw near to God, begin to be concerned with what God is concerned about. There are some practices, some habits, some spiritual disciplines, that for centuries have helped people feel close to God. And when we fail to do these things, we feel distant from God. They are some practices that you know all about: the practice of prayer, worship with others, study with others, service to others, generosity, and meditation or contemplation. This is old hat, but it is important. We need to pray to feel close to God. We need to be in worship with others as well. It is difficult to be a Christian without being with other Christians and setting time apart to hear scripture and to learn from others. That is what our other Bible passage is about today from Psalm 122: “I was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the Lord.” I don’t know what you are feeling about our new building after just six weeks here. It is becoming a very important place for me and just like when we have moved from one home to another we miss our old space for a while and then the new space begins to feel like home. I hope that is happening for those of us who moved from the former location to this one. And I hope it is happening for the 150 new persons and families who have been giving us a try since January 30. I know this space is feeling like holy ground for one of our construction team members who worked on our building over the last year because he recently told me that when he is in this building now over the past few weeks since we have been open, he just feels a sense of peace and comfort as soon as he walks in the front door. And I told him that is how it is supposed to work here and that is part of what church is all about. Borg says that too and he says if your church is not doing that for you and is instead giving you a headache, you might need to find a different church! And Dr. Borg says if we do not take time for worship and personal prayer and service to others and acts of compassion and generosity, we will not feel close to God. I know that from my own life. Borg says he knows that in his own life. He says he can tell when he has not taken time to pay attention to God, when he has let his personal devotion time slip and become too wrapped up in the cares and worries of the world. He says he can tell that when he is standing in the supermarket line and everybody in line looks ugly! When do you know you are not paying attention to God? What are the signs for you that you need more time in prayer and in developing your relationship with God? Many of us would say that we don’t really know how to pray and I have placed in the bulletin an insert that is one of the best introductory prayers I know of, written by Father Thomas Merton who was a spiritual giant of the twentieth century. I think that part of the power of our small group studies the past few weeks has been people meeting and reading and discussing and taking time for God and for the development of their spiritual lives. My own Tuesday morning 7 AM class is willing to keep meeting after next week and I am going to propose another book on the Bible for us to use for anyone who wants to keep meeting and who wants to join us in April. We take time for God to feel close to God and in order to form Christian character in ourselves. If we do not do these things, we will not be able to walk in the way of Christ because following Christ is not a matter of believing some doctrines, it is about following on a path. The theme of the last chapter has to do with whether being a Christian is the only way to know God. What does the Bible say about this? You may be surprised. St. Paul says that every person has had a chance to know God whether they have heard of Jesus or not. This is in the first chapter of Romans. What he is saying is that God is bigger than Jesus, or as Dr. William Sloane Coffin puts it, God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus. The book chapter takes it even further. Borg says that every religion is an attempt to experience what is holy and sacred in life and that God can be known through other religions besides Christianity. Then he makes a statement that I do not agree with. He says that God does not care what religion we are. I think that all religions can offer some windows into God but some do that better than others. Or the God of some religions is not the God that I see in the Bible and there are some images of God that are troubling to me. I believe God does care if someone is a fundamentalist Muslim who wants to demean women and who wants to demonize anyone else not like them or call them infidels. Those practices are not just confined to fundamentalist Islam but are also true of some Christian fundamentalists as well. I am really passionate about people meeting and knowing Jesus of Nazareth and as we have said other times in this series, most people are surprised when they look at the Bible and see what is really true about Jesus—when they see his humanity, his courage, his faithfulness, his impatience with his followers who misunderstand him, his charisma, his commitment to welcoming and accepting people whom the religious leaders wanted to exclude. I want people to be introduced to this Jesus because I think when they meet him, they will find him as immensely appealing and engaging as I do. And they will want to imitate his relationship with God and live by his teachings of justice and compassion and treating others the way we want to be treated. That is why beginning in April we will begin a sermon series based on the gospel of Mark, the earliest Gospel, and just read through it together to meet Jesus and to get to know him and to follow him around through that very important book because most of us do not know the radical prophet and teacher and messiah that we say that we follow. I want more people to know that Jesus and be changed by him. Judy and I were away last weekend in southern California. She was there because she is the president of the National Down Syndrome Congress that serves several thousand families in America who have a family member with Down Syndrome and her board was meeting there for the weekend. I went along for the trip and took some material to do some sermon planning for the next few months, but I also got some time to play. I took two hours one morning to go to one of the malls where there was a Nordstrom because I had been looking for a new belt. When I got on the shuttle bus from the hotel the only seat left was beside a young woman in her mid twenties who was going to the mall also. We began to talk and I learned she was a sales person with Coca Cola and she was in town from northern California for a training event. She asked what I do and when I told her we began to talk about church. She had grown up in a church but it had become too irrelevant for her, just going through the motions, so she had stopped attending as a teenager. She wanted to know about Methodism and I told her we are not a pay, pray and obey kind of church and that we try to engage people minds and hearts and be open to all people, and that we encourage people to form their own faith. I also encouraged her to find a church that she felt good about and told her what I have just said to you—that I am really enthusiastic about people meeting and knowing Jesus of Nazareth. I didn’t get to tell her all of this, but here is the whole story: I think when people meet and know Jesus, they are better people, new people, and that the way of life Jesus offers is the fullest way possible. This is why I disagree with the point in the last chapter of our textbook: I think we can know God in many ways; I think the best and most complete way, and to me, the most appealing way is in Jesus of Nazareth. Let’s go back to that first discussion about finding time for God and putting ourselves into the experiences and the practices and the habits where we will find spiritual nourishment and where Christian character will be formed. That is why we gather every Sunday for worship and study and fellowship and service to others. That is why we gathered for a very inspiring prayer service last week on a weeknight. How often do you want to find time for that nourishment and that character formation? We are all so busy and there are so many demands on our lives and pressures and pulls from every side. But when I don’t take the time for prayer or reading or listening to God, my life just does not go as well. Is that your experience also? Can we learn from that? How important is it to you to feed and care for your spirit? How high a priority is the nourishment of your soul? Do you want to make it a higher priority today and from now on? God promises us that when we take time for God, we will find the nourishment and the spiritual compass that we need for every day. Draw near to God and God will draw near to you. It’s a promise. |
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