Scripture Lesson:
Psalm 27: 1-14
Sermon:
Ordinary Time, the Sword and the Fire
To
explain why this matters, I’m going to begin with a little history, a very
little philosophy, and a little theology, and a guy almost no one has heard of.
Plotinus
was a philosopher living in Egypt under Roman rule sometime during the 200’s,
just when the Christian faith was gathering steam and spreading into both and
east and west through the efforts of men like Diocletian and Constantine. In
other words, Plotinus lived just when the church was being born and, in his
time, learned men were hearing about it so that as a philosopher, Plotinus
spent a lot of time thinking about this new faith and he came to believe that
in order to understand the world, he had to understand the God who made it. Unlike
many of his contemporaries, he decided that reason, or logical thinking, was
not enough to find God. More is needed. He wanted to do what a lot of us want
to do. He wanted to pierce the veil that separates God from humankind, and he
thought he knew how to do it.
To
that end, he detailed two principal ways to get close to God. First, he said,
we should dwell, or hang out, where God is. If we see God through His creation,
well then, that’s the place to be. If we find God in His children or in church,
or in music, or on a mountaintop, or in fresh baked cookies or somewhere else,
then hang out there. Just stay in God’s field of vision. He can be found
anywhere, but there’s usually a place where we especially feel His presence. That’s
the place He’s easiest to find, but even though He’s not only there, that can
be our starting place. Be near where you feel Him to be and look for Him there
all the time you’re near.
It
turns out that finding God in everyday life is important. There have been
entire theologies that revolve around this idea. One of my favorite belongs to
a 16th century French Carmelite monk named Brother Lawrence. He
never wrote anything or actually preached anywhere. Instead, he worked in the
kitchen of his monastery and that was where he encountered and visited with
God. In his case, it wasn’t because he liked being there. Quite the contrary. In
fact, the kitchen was one of his least favorite places to be. But doing the
dishes was the job that was given him, so he figured that God had something for
him there. And God did. Brother Lawrence went every day without complaint to
the place God had put him, expecting to find him there. Not in the pots or in
the dirty spoons or the cranky monks that worked with him, but between them, in
the silence, in the still places, in obedience and love.
What
Brother Lawrence learned in that kitchen is that it’s not the place itself that
would ever make him happy, but the God he found in it would. And when he found
God in the place, the place brought him closer to God. The same is true of
everywhere we find ourselves or with any people. Our circumstances are not
accidents. God puts us in a specific place and a specific time for one reason
only and He tells us what it is – to find Him.
Acts
17: 26-27: From one man God made every nation of men, that they should inhabit
the whole earth and He determined the times set for them and the exact places
where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps
reach out for Him, though He is not far from any one of us.
We
are where we belong because God is there waiting for us, and His arms are open.
That doesn’t mean anything noteworthy is going on when we do this. Don’t look
for an angel or a burning bush. In the Bible, it’s called abiding, and it’s
just kind of being there. Sometimes it means stopping what you’re doing and
just thinking. Sometimes, it’s filling the car with gas or changing a diaper.
Sometimes it’s looking out the window at a rainstorm or snowfall. Sometimes,
it’s driving your truck or playing the piano, or feeding a chipmunk, or
calculating a payroll. Sometimes, it’s washing dishes. Whatever it is for you,
abiding is one of the ways we develop intimate relationship with God and almost
all of the time, it’s ordinary. That’s the first way to get close to God.
So:
step one to connecting with God—Find God in a place, whether you choose it or
are assigned it, and hang out there with Him.
The
second thing Plotinus said to do was to pray. He didn’t mean the Lord’s Prayer
or any other memorized prayers that we grew up with and love. He meant something
quite different. He meant the unrehearsed actions and thoughts that well up in us
while we’re doing our dwelling – while we’re hanging out with God. His kind of
praying is everything that happens, inside and outside, when we feel God is
near. It’s not asking Him for things. It is not reciting something someone else
made up. Prayer, to him, is “speaking of God, invoking God by extending our
soul to meet His so that we can confront Him alone.” It is doing what many
think shouldn’t be possible. It is experiencing a common reality together with
the divine. This is not to gain insight or understanding or favor. It is just
meeting God in one place alone together and sharing our thoughts with Him.
Think of it as sharing a quiet car ride with someone or watching a sunset
together with someone you love. Not too many words. No unnecessary explanation.
Just being in the same place at the same time and sharing a moment. Something
pretty, well, pretty ordinary. Ordinary prayer. Daily, constant prayer. Just
being together, each one seeing and remembering the presence of the other.
Plotinus says he would, “Call on God and invite Him to enter and may He bring
with Him His own universe…” God wants us to join Him where He is. Not just in
heaven after we die, but right now.
Why
is this important? It matters because this is why Jesus came. Remember how the
curtain in the temple tore in two when Jesus died, exposing the Holy of Holies
to public view for the first time? It was an invitation to find Him, all of
Him. It was permission to approach Him with boldness and confidence. He and the
Father made us to be like them. In Their image. And He came to restore access
to that image, to allow us to take our intended places among His creation so
that we, by grace, can be what He is by nature.
Peter
said it in 2Pet 1: 3-4:
“His
divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness…so
that we might partake of the divine nature.”
Jesus
Himself said it when He quoted Psalm 82: “All of you are gods.” All of you are
gods.
We
are not God. We are not divine. We are not all powerful or all knowing. Still,
we are gods –with a small g- to the extent we take part in what God offers us.
The divine image is in us. There is nothing we can do about that. It’s what
makes us humans instead of animals. As we draw ever closer to God the Father,
and God the Son, we put on more and more of what we were made to be. In the
ancient world, this was taught as the sword and fire principle. Think about a
blacksmith working as his forge. When a sword is thrust into a fire, it takes
on the fire’s energy. It becomes just as hot. It takes on the same color,
looking more like a star than steel. But it never becomes fire. It only becomes
like it as much as it is able.
This
is what Jesus means when He says, “The kingdom of God is within you.” When
1
Thess 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing, it doesn’t mean we go around with
heads bowed and eyes closed all day long. It’s an attitude, not a posture. It’s
not even words. It’s living every waking moment in an awareness that God is
with us, that He walks every step with us and we love Him back for being there.
The raw materials are all there already. This concept, often foreign to us
today, was very familiar to early believers. It made perfect sense to them and
if we do not try to understand it as well, we are missing a big part of why
Jesus died. He wants us to die, too – to die to the wretchedness of sin, to put
it away for good, and take hold of a risen life just as He did. He wants us to
enjoy a union with Him, a constant communion. Not just to spend all our life
hoping for something we don’t have, for a faraway heaven we can’t touch today. We’re
supposed to have it all the time, not just when we go to church or when we eat
the bread and wine, but all the time, every day. Starting right now. And prayer
is the union, the union with God in ordinary, everyday time. That’s why the
ordinary is never ordinary. It is always full of God.
Martin
Heidegger, a German 20th century philosopher, believed that the
modern era has cut us off from our proper place in the world and has separated
us from what we were meant to be. And it does feel like that. We often hear
that this earth is a place of misery and tears and that our only hope for
happiness is in heaven, that we have to die to finally find God. But that’s not
what the Bible tells us. Psalm 27 says this:
I
remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land
of the living.
The
land of the living.
Heaven
is not in some faraway place where God is waiting for us. Jesus opened the way
to heaven on the cross and doesn’t expect us to wait to enjoy it with Him. Remember
the paralyzed man sitting at the pool of Bethesda? He sat there, stuck, for 38
years. Jesus healed him but He didn’t tell Him, okay, you’re healed, but don’t
walk anywhere just yet. Just stay put until you die. You can walk when you get
to heaven. He didn’t say that. He told him to pick up his mat and walk. Right
then. No waiting required. Jesus accomplished our salvation on Calvary and all
we have to do to enjoy it now is to pick up our own mats and walk. We didn’t
earn this, but we are intended by God to acknowledge it and enjoy it right now.
Jesus’ death created the conditions through which we receive forgiveness, die,
and rise in new life like He did, a new life that can start right now if we
just reach out to find Him.
So:
step two to connecting with God—Pray. Talk and listen to God. In your words
about what’s going on in your life. Be honest. Be real. Use words that come
naturally to you, or no words at all.
That’s
why ordinary time isn’t ordinary. God is in the places that are only a short
reach away, in the uninteresting, in the plain, in the everyday. When we reach
out to find God in these places – because He’s there – we make a way for God to
reach back and discover possibilities for communion we were never able to
imagine on our own because they aren’t human. They are divine. We are God’s
children. We carry the kingdom within us. Abiding and prayer is the way we find
it so that every waking moment becomes an act of union with God. When we do our
part, then He will do His and when He does, life will never be ordinary again.
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