Suspicion: Mid-Week Reflection

EMILY RUTLEDGE, YOUTH MINISTER

One of my absolute most cherished moments in ministry happened last year. I have spoken about it a million times and I will a million more. One night we were talking about prayer and why it can be so difficult. Finding the right words, the lack of audible response from God, the way prayer is not always answered in the fashion we would like. Then, one brave hand was raised and a voice spoke up,

“What is most difficult for me is… what if I have been doing all this praying and there is nothing. What if I’m just talking to myself?“

Silence.

Then forty adolescent (and adult) heads began to nod and there was an audible ‘yes’ that echoed across the room.

Rachel Held Evans writes, “I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.”

I believe the same can be said for anyone who can easily accept the radical notion of God. When we think of the complexity of our lives, our bodies, our planet, the universe, and digest the concept of a creating God there are parts of my brain that physically hurt and can’t believe this whole God-thing and that this God also loves me. Then I remember the moment I gave birth to both my children. I kneel beside people I love, don’t know, and need to forgive while receiving Eucharist. I witness the Holy Spirit move through a community of teenagers as they empower each other to be true to their hearts in a harsh world. I experience Christ within me and through me and at me and I am willing to risk it all. It’s the one thing I am willing to be completely wrong about because there is something inside of me that can’t let go of the fact that I know I’m not just talking to myself.

That moment, when that brave teenager admitted that we could all be dead wrong… that was it for me, that was when I knew we were on the right track here, we had become a place to work out our questions about God. There were disciples who followed Jesus his entire ministry and were still not sure if they believed he was the Son of God. Faith is hard. It is even harder when we question alone. When one brave soul can speak up and say, “What if I’m talking to myself?” another can remind us of the moments they have witnessed grace and redemption in our lives. Moments they have seen God in and through and at us. The questioning makes us stronger. You are not alone (even when you feel like you are just talking to yourself).

The Living God: Mid-Week Reflection

REV. DAVID STODDART

A senior parishioner shared something quite poignant at a recent contemplative prayer gathering. She noticed that she and others her age often have a sense that something is missing, a hole that is not being filled. They try to fill that hole in many ways, she observed, but sitting with God in contemplative prayer is filling it for her—and filling it abundantly. Her observation echoes comments I have heard before from others, and it speaks to a crucial truth for all of us.

At some point, “extrinsic” religion, a religion focused on outward forms, just won’t be enough. Subscribing to a set of doctrines and going through the prescribed rituals will not satisfy our deepest needs and desires. People can go to church for decades, for their whole life, and then wake up and realize that saying certain words just because they have always said them or their parents always said them just won’t suffice. Just showing up on Sunday morning out of habit or cultural conditioning will not fill the hole. When that moment comes (and the sooner the better), we are primed to move from believing things about God to experiencing the reality of God.

And we can experience that reality because God lives in us and is calling us to wake up. This is the great good news of our faith: we are one with God in Christ, our human nature joined with nothing less than the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. And we don’t make that happen: it has been done for us and given to us. Each and every moment of our lives we are glowing containers of divine life. At church or at the grocery store, in the office or in bed, we are filled with God’s Spirit, loved and cherished beyond measure.

Christian religion has one purpose: to awaken us to that truth so that we can live joyfully and generously. That’s why we come to church: to remember who we really are and embrace our God-given identity. Worship and prayer, ritual and sacrament, are wonderful gifs: they all point us to this end, but they are just that—a means to an end. To borrow an expression from the Buddhists, they are like a finger pointing at the moon. We want to see the moon in all its splendor—not get distracted by the finger pointing us to it. Frederick Denison Maurice, a 19th century Anglican priest and writer, looking around at the church of his day, once said “We have been dosing people with religion when what they want is not that but the living God.” I want people to come to church, but I really want them to come for the right reason: not to practice rote religion, but to discover the living God at work in the world and alive within them.