Prayer of the Heart

Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Lent (RCL – Year B)
Offered by Nathan Ferrell at HS, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville

Texts: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3,17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
The Illumined Heart: Chapters 7, 8, and 9

Where is my home?
Is it the house where I live,
The garden where I sit in
summer,
The country where I roam,
Or the church where I
worship?

The place I call home
Is where my heart is at
rest.
And my heart is most at rest
When it turns to God in prayer.
So
wherever I pray is home.
(From Celtic Parables by Robert Van De Weyer,
Northstone Publishing, 1998, p.100)

My friends, we are on a journey to find our true home, because we are on a journey to learn how to live and how to pray. For wherever we pray, there is our home.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

God’s forgiving love for the world and for you is never-ending, and never to be questioned. Chesed is the word that the Hebrews used to describe this eternal quality of God. Chesed is used very often in the Psalms and it is right here in our Psalm for today.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; and his mercy (his chesed) endures for ever” (Psalm 107:1 – BCP).

But we need the Son of God to guide us into a life centered on that love, the kind of life that is eternal. For when our lives are rooted and grounded in the love of God, then they are destined to last forever. We perish when we stray from God and live life guided by other forces and other mentors.

In our Lenten study book, we have been reading about disciplines for the body and for soul – physical and spiritual disciplines. These are training exercises that are essential if we are ever to move beyond the surface level of things, to move beyond the elemental steps of our relationship with God. These disciplines boil down to two basic practices: fasting and prayer. Every Christian needs to have some regular practices of fasting and prayer in order to grow spiritually. There is no alternative. We cannot grow in Christ if we allow ourselves to be governed by every desire of the body and every thought of the mind. Learning self-control is the path that leads to peace and joy.

Now, I am no expert in fasting or in prayer. I am trying to learn, and I have been saying the Jesus Prayer on and off now for about 12 years, since I learned about prayer in seminary. I say it in this form: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I try to coordinate it with my breathing, so that while I take a deep breath in, I pray in my heart, “Lord, Jesus Christ.” To me, this symbolizes that just as I take in oxygen deeply into my lungs, so I am taking the glorious name of our Lord deep into my heart.

As I breathe out and give my air back to the world, so I declare “Son of God”, giving forth my confession that Jesus is the eternal Son of God. In this way I recognize the truth that God is made manifest in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

As I breathe in again, I pray in my heart, “have mercy on me.” I am seeking to fill myself with the deep mercy of God available at all times and in all places. I need this mercy to live.

And as I breathe out again, I now declare the truth about myself: “a sinner.” As we have discovered while probing the idea of repentance over the last few weeks, this is not an exercise in self-mutilation. I am not trying to beat myself up by repeating over and over again that I am a sinner. Rather, I seek the truth. I seek to be completely open and honest and vulnerable. It is a statement without judgment: “have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Sometimes I have tried to pray with the use of a prayer rope (which I have brought this morning if anyone wishes to see it), though more often than not my hands are already full with something else. This pattern of prayer will not work for many of you, but for me, I have found that this practice of praying in my heart while intentionally trying to breathe deeply has been a great help to me. Ever though I am a beginner, there are many times even now when the prayer flows with my breathing without much thought or effort on my part.

Sadly, these moments are far too rare, and it is much more common for me to be blown about by the tempests of my wildly fluctuating thoughts. Frederica Mathewes-Green has a good handle on what happens in most of our minds for most of the time:

“Our conflicting thoughts alternately buoy us up or cast us down, and if they
are not controlled we snap around behind them like a kite in the wind. The
opposite of this is tranquility. If we could catch the false meddling thoughts
when they first sneak in the window and toss them right back out, our lives
would be a lot more coherent. We would be markedly more peaceful” (The Illumined Heart, p. 67).

Can you imagine what it would be like to live in this way, with a way to consistently direct and govern our thoughts so that we were not subjected to every random thought that arrived in our minds? So that when the thought arose to reply to Erin, my wife, with some nasty, sarcastic comment, instead my heart – lead by the Holy Spirit – could reject that thought and guide me to speak to her with love and respect. So that when the thought arose in your mind to speed up in your car and cut off some guy who was tailgating you and trying to pass you and you were angry and wanted to teach him a lesson, that instead your heart could catch that sneaky thought and guide you rather to be patient, to show mercy, and to let him pass you since you don’t know what kind of rush he might be in.

Can you imagine how much more peaceful and joyful and loving and enjoyable our lives would be if we all lived with our minds centered in our hearts, in continual prayer, governed by the Holy Spirit?

We all think we know more than we really do. A friend of mine who was a pastor in Virginia told of a time when he was driving out to the local hospital to visit a parishioner. In that town, the road to the hospital began as a two-lane road and then widened to 4 lanes about a mile before the hospital. And as this pastor was driving, a young man in a big, jacked up pick-up truck was right behind him, tailgating, like a foot off of his bumper. The young man had a girl in the truck with him, and the pastor immediately thought the young man was trying to show off. So he slowed way down to teach this guy a lesson. Once they got to 4-lane section of road, the young guy in the truck raced off around him and sped away. The pastor grumbled and probably said something a bit nasty under his breath. He had enough self-control not to give the guy any particular hand gestures, but he was annoyed and a bit angry. However, as the pastor pulled into the hospital parking lot, he saw this young driver at the hospital as well. There he was, walking slowly while bracing the young girl. She was pregnant, obviously full-term and obviously in labor pains. The pastor could see that they were young and scared. What a fool and a jerk he felt like at that moment, and he knew that he needed to ask for God’s forgiveness.

You see, we really don’t know other people’s situations. We think we know more than we really do. How much better all of our lives would be if, instead of responding with anger, we could respond with patient understanding, mercy and a willingness to help each other.

That is what a life of prayer promises to bring you. Please, please don’t think of the continual prayer of the heart as some mystical, otherworldy experience. It is eminently practical. It is the path to a healthy and real life – an eternal kind of life.
“For we are what [God] has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Ephesians 2:10). Let us walk in this way of life, my brothers and sisters, learning to pray without ceasing in our hearts as we grow in the amazing love and mercy of God. Amen.

The Frosting I Deserve

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Lent - Year B (RCL)
Offered by Nathan Ferrell at HS, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville
Texts: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corin. 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

Where can I get the frosting I deserve?

I love this little question from our Lenten study book which, to me, summarizes the spirit of our age. Where can I get the frosting I deserve? How can I get more stuff to fill the boredom or loneliness or uneasiness of my life? Frosting, of course, represents that which makes us feel better for a bit, before we inevitably become bewildered or frustrated again and need to dip back in and get some more of our frosting fix.

It’s getting a bit harder for many in our land to fill themselves with a constant stream of new stuff or new experiences to numb the uneasiness of life, and – God willing – our financial crisis will hopefully cause many to re-think their lives. For as you and I here in this place both know with certainty, this is what our nation needs most: not a constantly growing GDP and stock market, not more military success around the world, but a chance to stop, to re-think how we are living, and to change our moral and spiritual direction in the light of Christ.

It’s not just about money or material things. We need to re-think how we treat other people. A few weeks ago, when I was getting my hair cut, the young hair-dressers in the shop were having a conversation about one of their co-workers who was just fired. The newly unemployed girl was a negative presence in the group who complained regularly, and when she left the shop for good, she had choice words for the manager, who she called a B-I-T-C-H. My young hairdresser turned back to me and said, “Mmm, man, if that girl said that to me, she would have some big trouble!” “Why? What would you do?” I asked her. Without any hesitation at all, she declared, “I would follow her outside and make sure we were a little bit away from the shop, but trust me – she wouldn’t have any teeth left, that’s for sure!”

Amazing! To lose her honor and her dignity and, ultimately, her freedom, because of a flippant, angry comment from another. My young hairdresser has no rock to stand on, no foundation in her soul to offer her self-control and a bigger perspective on life than reacting to what is immediately before her face. And, of course, in this situation, both of these girls would see themselves as the victim.

We fool ourselves by repeating in our minds 3 myths which we like to believe about ourselves. Our author, Frederica (Matthewes-Green), explains these well, and she is right that these need to be dismantled if we are to grow closer to God. These myths are: 1. We are victims. 2. We’re nice. 3. And we’re better than a lot of other people.
Think about it, and you can see how virtually all of us think this way about ourselves. And this is where much of our spiritual trouble lies. We need to change our way of thinking.

Metanoite is the greek word used by our Lord when he preached to the people: “Repent and believe the good news.” The word means to change your thinking, to re-evaluate your situation, to alter your perspective. If we think it through, we can see how this is the fundamental task that the Gospel demands of us. Just look at our readings for today: in each situation, the recipients of the text are challenged to change their way of thinking.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall make for yourself an idol” (Exodus 20:1-2). This commandment demanded a complete change in thinking for the Israelites! All of the people around them had golden or carved idols that were used in worship. This, and all of the commandments as well, demanded that the people change their way of thinking.

St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians has the same dynamic. To those accustomed to trusting in their own thinking and in the power of their own logic to solve all mysteries, the message of the cross arrives as a foolish story. To enter into the saving power of our Lord’s passion, the wise must change their way of thinking, embrace a new vision for the world, and find life according to an entirely different path.

Today’s Gospel reading does not use the Greek word metanoite (repentance) per se, but the prophetic call to change is written large all over this story. “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” Stop with your incessant selling and buying. Stop and worship. The temple is a house of prayer. Change your focus from looking at what you can get from others, to giving thanks for what God has given you.

Church is not a place for nice people. If there is any place at all where we can all let down our guard, throw away the masks that we create for ourselves, and take down any pretence about who we are, then Church is that place. Here, more so than anyplace else, is where we come face-to-face with the truth about ourselves and about our world.

I would rather be part of a church community full of broken people seeking healing and redemption, than a group of folks who have it all together and are polished and nice. Again, I suggest to you that the 12-step groups are a good model for us. Folks gather at these meetings because they know that they need something from outside of themselves to find the strength and healing that they need. No more playing games. Church is about getting down to business and being real.

What is more: the truth is that we are not better than other people. It’s sad how easily we miss this point, because of our faulty frame of reference. Remember this, please: the dividing line between good and evil runs through every human heart. Each one of us is a corpus permixtum, as Saint Augustine said. A mixed body all jumbled up inside with good and evil. And in a mixture like this, how can I possible separate out the evil and measure its worth? How much mold in a pot of leftover soup is enough to warrant its being thrown away? How much rot in a piece of wood renders it un-usable? How much sin in a human heart before we can call the heart sinful?

Repentance is going to the Physician for a thorough exam. It is not negative or macabre. It is seeking the truth – the truth about ourselves. But of course, the Physician’s diagnosis is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of our healing.

Way back in the deserts of Egypt, one of the desert fathers was asked by a certain soldier whether God forgives a sinner. The wise elder said to him: “Tell me, beloved, if your cloak is torn, will you throw it away?” The soldier answered: “No, I will mend it, and put it back on.” And the elder said: “If you take such good care of your cloak, will not God be merciful to you who are made in His own image?”

God longs for us to live a full and abundant life being shaped and guided by a different perspective. If we truly trust this Doctor, this Physician, then we can open ourselves completely to his loving, healing touch.

St. Augustine had this to say about our healing by the loving hand of God:

“God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple: all you who believe in Christ
and whose belief makes you love him. Real belief in Christ means love of Christ:
it is not the belief of the demons who believed without loving and therefore
despite their belief said: What do you want with us, Son of God? No; let our
belief be full of love for him we believe in, so that instead of saying: What do
you want with us, we may rather say: We belong to you, you have redeemed us.All
who believe in this way are like the living stones which go to build God’s
temple, and like the rot-proof timber used in the framework of the ark which the
flood waters could not submerge. It is in this temple, that is, in ourselves,
that prayer is addressed to God and heard by [God].” –St. Augustine,
Expositions on the Psalms

Our path of repentance during this season of Lent is taking us to the foot of the cross, to a life built upon solid rock, to a house built of rot-proof timber, to a healing that lasts forever. Let us continue to walk this path with honesty and with joy. Amen.

Divine Things

A Sermon offered for the 2nd Sunday of Lent 2009

There’s an old story about a man who was a spiritual seeker. He visited many great teachers and spiritual communities looking for a way to connect with God. He visited a great Sufi master who lived in Persia hundreds of years ago, and after a few more visits in the Sufi community, he was greatly impressed with the sincerity of their life and he wished to join them. But he had one question to ask first. He said, “Before I join your community, I need to know: does your God perform miracles?”

The Sufi master reflected for a moment and then said, “Yes, God does perform miracles. But some think it is a miracle when God does the will of man. We think it is a miracle when man does the will of God.”

I know from personal experience how difficult it is to see life from any other perspective except for my own. We all do tend to be quite self-centered, which is to be expected to some extent. However, when it extends to our relationship with God, that is a major problem. It is al too easy for us to think of God as the solution to our problems, the one who can fix our dilemmas. I hope that the story of Anna and Theodore in our Lenten study book is reminding all of us again that our relationship with God is really all about God! We are on a journey of theosis: allowing Christ to live in us, joining our life in the life of God.

One encouraging fact is that we all need this kind of reminder, and even the apostles lost sight on occasion of the reality right before them. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” So our Lord rebuked Peter.
Here in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus begins to prepare his friends for his impending death. This, of course, is not at all what they had in mind. They wanted to follow a winner, be part of a victorious movement that would restore the honor and dignity of their people.

Death at the hands of the chief priests in Jerusalem did not seem to fit this plan. O, he spoke also of rising again in three days, but of course they had no idea what this meant. But this death was no tragic ending to his life. In fact, it was the master stroke, the coup d’état that changed the entire landscape of life on this earth. Our Lord chose the cross of his own free will. He chose to do the will of his Father.

Here we are given the contrast in perfect clarity: Peter, focused upon human things, things of this world, hoping that God will fulfill the long-suffering dreams of his people; and our Lord, focused upon God’s will, freely choosing to lay down his life to fulfill his Father’s dream for the world.

It is a miracle when we do the will of God. The Holy Spirit changed Peter, of course, and he and countless others over the years have in fact done the will of God and have left us a legacy unlike anything else on earth. Sadly, Frederica Matthewes-Green is right about the spiritual amnesia which afflicts most of us western Christians. And it is indeed an affliction, a malady of the soul. We forget who we really are. When I went to college, I became a Baptist through the influence of a pastor there who became a great friend and mentor to me. His church sent me off to the Baptist seminary in Richmond, Virginia, which was a wonderful learning community. But I could not remain a Baptist for this primary reason: they suffer from appalling amnesia. For most Baptist churches, there was John the Baptist and the Apostles, and then came along Billy Graham! With nothing noteworthy in between! How sad! This is an extreme case, of course, but it highlights what is common to most of our churches in this part of the world. We have forgotten who we really are and instead we chase new trends and fads and fashions.

When we get down to it, our faith starts with Abraham, one who walked before God with trust and confidence. Do any of you know that funny old camp song about the descendents of Abraham?

Father Abraham had many sons (children).
Many sons (children) had Father Abraham.
I am one of them, and so are you.
So let’s just praise the Lord!

Perhaps many of us will think of this old-fashioned summer camp song when we hear these lessons about the promise made to Abraham in his old age: “you shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” The amazing truth is that today we are members of the great progeny of Abraham. Through the waters of baptism, God has adopted us into the covenant as children of Abraham. And this amazing family of God stretches thousands of years from Abraham through the time of the apostles into the age of the Church, and it includes countless thousands who have denied themselves in order to do the will of God.

For us, our journey into life in Christ, our path of theosis, begins with a simple act of free will. God has made a choice to bring us into the family of Abraham, the family of the Church. The introduction to the liturgy of Holy Baptism in The Prayer Book states this fact with outstanding clarity: “Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body the Church. The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble” (The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p.298). This staggering truth itself is enough to cause us to fall face down in awe and worship before One who chooses to invest so heavily in us.

Of course, God is the same God who made the original choice thousands of years ago to enter into covenant with this wandering Aramean. Abraham could have refused this gracious offer. But Abraham consented to this covenant offer, and for good reason! It would be hard to walk away from such an opportunity. But this covenant also demanded daily choices from Abraham. “Walk before me, and be blameless.” These kinds of right came to Abraham with great responsibility. It is no different with us.

In our life here on earth, we can never separate our faith from our actions, for how we see the world around us has a direct effect upon how we act. Abraham’s trust in God allowed him to act in faithfulness, to walk before God and to be blameless.

It is the same with us, particularly during this our Lenten journey. Our actions and our beliefs are closely intertwined. It may be that, the next time we stand in church to confess the Nicene Creed, we need to seriously ask ourselves the question: do I honestly believe this? Or perhaps our sense of faith is strong, and the problem is that our actions are incongruous with our faith. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves: why do I act the way I do? If I honestly trust in the living God who “calls into existence the things that do not exist”, why then do I fret with worry and anxiety? If I believe that God has chosen me and will never leave me nor forsake me, why then am I jealous at the success of another?

Whatever the “one thing” is that we lack, we can be sure of “the unchangeable truth of [God’s] Word, Jesus Christ”, as our Collect for today describes. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. In Christ, our covenant responsibility before God is accompanied by an even greater promise than that received by Abraham: the promise of the Holy Spirit! Thanks be to God that with our responsibility to walk in holiness comes a never-ending supply of divine grace to transform our lives.

So let us not grow weak in faith when we consider our own frailty and our difficulty in our process of theosis, of living in union with God. During this Lenten season, we must confess our failings, for this covenant relationship with the living God requires complete honesty and transparency. But with the eyes of faith, we know that the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit is ready to fill us, if we choose to walk this path of transformation.

God has made a choice, one which is unchangeable. For that we give thanks. Today, and everyday, it is our turn to choose to do the will of God. Amen.

The Illumined Heart Chapters

Friends - If you would like to know the plan ahead of time, here is a chart showing how this book will be incorporated into each Sunday's message:


The Illumined Heart chapters by week

Sunday - Date - Chapters to have read
1 Lent, March 1 * 1 &2
2 Lent, March 8 * 3 & 4
3 Lent, March 15 * 5 & 6
4 Lent, March 22 * 7 – 9
5 Lent, March 29 * 10 & 11
Palm Sunday, April 5 * 12

Time's Up!

A Sermon offered for the 1st Sunday of Lent, at Church of the Holy Spirit in Bellmawr, and St. Luke's Church in Westville, NJ

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” This is the essential message that our Lord came to bring to humanity. This is the Gospel message! Unfortunately, sadly, this message, even to this day, is often misunderstood. But rest assured, my friends, it is my calling to make sure that all of us here in this parish eventually understand its true meaning and impact.

In 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was created to bring electricity to rural America. This energy promised to provide a vastly improved quality of life for farmers. When the lines were installed into new areas and electric power was made available, the people had to make a decision. Very few of them had any personal experience with this electricity. They had heard of it, to be sure, and they heard of all the ways their life would be different because of it. But in order to receive these benefits, they had to believe the message, they had to understand how this worked, and they had to take the necessary steps to become connected to this source of energy. These farmers had to turn away from the life that they had known for so long: a life with kerosene lamps and iceboxes and washboards and pedal-powered sewing machines. A totally new life was right there waiting for them, but they had to connect to it and begin to rely upon it for their everyday existence. It’s hard to imagine now, but some couldn’t make the change, and chose to stay outside of the world of electricity.

In essence, the message delivered by the government to these farmers was this: “The time has come, and the kingdom of electricity is at hand; repent, change your ways and accept this new improved life.”

In our day and time, I like to think about the kingdom of God in the same way as the world of the wireless internet. All around us, at every moment, is a source of information and communication that would have been impossible for our ancestors to have imagined. We can’t see it, but it’s there - all around us. We can choose not to connect, to stay with our old familiar ways. Or we can receive this new power and begin to have our lives transformed.

The analogies may be rough, but they speak truth, I believe, about our Lord’s message to us. “It’s time,” he declared to the people and he says to us today. “It’s time! God’s kingdom is here. Change directions, and trust in this message.”

It’s so easy for us to get mixed up about this, because our western churches have focused so heavily upon the question of eternal judgment and the forgiveness of sins. But this is clearly not the focus of the Gospel!

At the 225th Convention of the Diocese of NJ this past Friday and Saturday, we sang a number of old revival hymns. I learned these while I was in Virginia and my wife Erin knows them all from her Southern Baptist upbringing. One thing they all have in common is this singular focus upon our status after death:

“When the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.” They’re fun to sing. But I’m sorry to say that they generally miss the point entirely about the Gospel!

The Holy One of Israel is a God of forgiving love and mercy. All of the Hebrew prophets knew that! Just look at the Psalms which were written hundreds of years before Christ. Today’s Psalm speaks of the “steadfast love and faithfulness” of God. “His mercy endures forever” is the refrain of many of the psalms.

David, and Solomon and Isaiah and the others knew that God is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”. (It would be foolish to think that Jesus came to teach us about the love of God.) The problem was that, although the people of Israel knew and heard about the love of God, it made no practical change in their homes and in their communities. Anger, greed, violence, and injustice were just as common in Bethlehem as they were in Rome.

And the sad truth is that they continue to be very common in our world today and even among Christians.

As we read along in The Illumined Heart, we will hear more about the spiritual disciplines of the early Christians. For me, I find the image of the athlete in training as very helpful here. The committed athlete works with the trainer to develop a specific plan to strengthen weak areas in his performance. If the shoulders need to be strengthened for better performance, then military presses and other exercises are planned out and the results are tallied and charted.

If we are committed to growing closer to God and living a fuller, healthier, abundant life, then we follow the same kind of pattern. With assistance from someone who is experienced, we identify our weak areas and then plan out exercises to strengthen that part of our life. If my weakness is that I tend to speak before I think, and often cut people down with negative and hurtful comments, then I take on an intentional practice of saying a brief prayer before speaking, and saying one positive thing before I ever say something negative!

If I really do covet what my neighbor has and greed is a problem in my soul, then I develop a specific plan to change this, perhaps by volunteering once a week to help those less fortunate than me, and perhaps concretely giving something tangible away on a regular basis.

Do you get the idea of how this works? You see, it’s so tempting for us to externalize the Gospel. “The kingdom of God is here, so we need to change that bad government! We need to change those bad laws! We need to build more schools to teach the children!”

But, tell me, what good is it to build schools to teach children if we still go home at night and abuse our children in private?! What good is it to pass civil rights laws if we are still going to cultivate hatred in our households for those who are different?

No, no, no. The struggle is not our there. It’s right here. The dividing line between good and evil runs through every human heart. This (pointing to my heart) is where the true fight for the kingdom of God is taking place, every single day!

Leave behind your old self with its bad habits, and connect now to a source of energy and wisdom that is endless. Learn to live a new life now intimately connected to God.
That’s the message that our Lord brings. And though the task may seem overwhelming, unending grace – divine energy – is made available to us in the Holy Spirit.

It seems that Thomas Cranmer and the English reformers understood this. One of the last requests that we made in the Great Litany this morning is right on target here and we would do well to chew on these words:

“That it may please thee to give us true repentance; to forgive us all our sins, negligences, and ignorances; and to endue us with the grace of thy Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to thy holy Word.” We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. So may it be. Amen.