|
||||
St. Luke’s United Methodist Church"Searching for Spirituality: Renewing the Covenant"Deuteronomy 31:9-13; John 15: 1-12
January 29, 2006
|
|
This is the season of Epiphany, the celebration of God in the world.
Epiphany is God’s coming out party, the announcement of God’s engagement with the world. Epiphany means manifestation, but that’s too simple.
In the Methodist tradition, Epiphany is the season of covenant renewal. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, encourages covenant renewal every January. In his Journal, he writes, “I do not know that ever we had a greater blessing. Afterwards many desired to return thanks, either for a sense of pardon, for full salvation, or for a fresh manifestation of His graces, healing all their back--slidings.” The heart of the Covenant service is a prayer in which persons commit themselves to God without reservation. Moses prescribes a time of covenant renewal every seven years for the people of Israel. Every household is called to participate. All the people are to be caught up in God’s commandments. We, too, participate in many covenants. We celebrate the marriage covenant on the anniversary day of our wedding…if we remember. It feels like we renew the covenant that is our citizenship in the United States when we pledge allegiance to the flag at the Rotary Club or sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at Coors Field. I’m taking a class at Drew University in which I sign a covenant with the professor. I listen to the lectures, attend class, and write two papers. In return, my professor gives me an A. If you play a team sport, you covenant with your team-mates. You agree to watch each other’s backs. The Scout Oath is a covenant. “I promise to do my duty to God and my country…” As Christians, I think that covenanting is about belonging to a place and to a people. Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, “You who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.” Today, new members of St. Luke’s will enter into the covenant to belong to God and to each other. In the covenant of this family, we agree to watch each other’s backs. In the Bible, covenant is entering willingly into an agreement with God. This is based on God’s great love toward us. The partnership is binding. It cannot be undone. Covenant can only be broken. In the New Testament, these commandments become the new covenant of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, in whose service is perfect freedom. At the confirmation retreat at Templed Hills yesterday, we discuss the question: “If you truly believe that you are in a covenant with Jesus, how will it change the way you live?” The scripture makes clear, of course, that the people of Israel break their partnership with God, just as the followers of Jesus, time and again, break the new covenant. It is a constant source of wonder that God is always faithful even when people are fickle. Yet such has been the pattern of Jewish and Christian history. “Come here, come here come here. No, go away, go away, go away.” Disciple Bible Study students watch the cycle again and again: covenant, apostasy (worshipping other gods!), repentance, renewal. This is why the best gift of friendship with Jesus is to be invited into the covenant, again and again, into this special relationship with the God of all creation. It is the only way we can even begin to live the sort of life that God intends for us. My strongest spiritual leaning is HEAD spirituality. But before we explore the nature of Head Spirituality, I want to do what someone who is strong in Spiritual Type #1 always wants to do. (Listen for the references to “thinking”.) I want to EXPLAIN the THEORY behind the Spirituality Wheel so that you will UNDERSTAND it. Spirituality is the capacity for a spiritual life. Psychiatrist and writer, Scott Peck claims that “Everyone has a spiritual life, whether they acknowledge it or not.” Each of us has a capacity for “something more”, and we sometimes come to points in our lives when we particularly yearn for that something. Centuries ago, Augustine confesses to God, “You have made us for yourself, and the heart is restless until it rests in you.” The restlessness itself tells us that we are spiritual beings. The vertical axis of the circle is labeled thinking-feeling (or intellectual-affective) with “thinking” being at the top of the circle. These two poles pose the question of how one goes about knowing – through the activity of the rational mind, “Head”, or by accessing feelings, “Heart”. People are inclined to gain their information about God through (1) emphasizing logic and accumulated facts or (2) emphasizing instinct and intuitive feeling. Both modes of learning and knowing are needed by the worshipping community. However, within any given group, there will usually be a preference for one mode over the other. The horizontal axis raises the question of how one conceptualizes God. The left pole presents an emptying way of praying. It refers to the tendency of a person to think of God in non-concrete ways ; that is, to think of God as mystery. I like the word, transcendent, beyond what we can know. The opposite end of this scale is refers to imaging God as revealed and knowable, immanent. The Christian hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, is a natural expression of the tendency to think of God in human images, in concrete terms, experiencing God both as friend and as incarnate in the person of Jesus. Type #1, Head Spirituality, is an intellectual “thinking” spirituality that favors what it can see, touch, and imagine. Such concrete-ness is often expressed in theological concepts like God as Creator, Jesus the Christ, atonement, grace, covenant. Their choices will be based mostly on activity and on corporate
gathering: When I am appointed to serve as senior pastor at St. Luke’s eighteen months ago, I get clues that HEAD spirituality is a strength in this congregation. In my initial consultation, the Staff-Parish Relations Committee wants to know what I think about certain theological concepts: Who is God to you? What do you believe about the virgin birth of Jesus? How do you explain the resurrection? Rev. Fred Venable offers a class on The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg. Ninety persons sign up to participate. In the book, the writer challenges traditional thinking. Some people love the study because it gives them permission to think about Christianity in new ways. They love to argue, challenge, stretch. Others leave because they don’t like such diversity of theological thought. The #2’s look shell-shocked! One women says to me, “I don’t like the way Marcus Borg makes me feel about my faith.” People with strength in HEAD spirituality will support whatever helps them fulfill their vocation in life. We have a couple in our congregation whose spirituality types compliment each other. The spiritual strength of the husband is #1. The spiritual strength of the wife is #4. They both yearn to be absolutely congruent: what I think reflects who I am and, therefore, dictates how I act. I watch them get ready for World AIDS day this year. He reads the books and teaches the church about the pandemic of global aids. She organizes the marchers and speaks on the steps of the state capital. Contributions of Type 1 spirituality to the whole church are invaluable. This style produces theological reflection and crafts position papers on ethics. It supports seminary education and publication and causes us to examine the texts of our hymns to see if we are singing what we actually believe. Content is primary with this group, as is congruence of thought and belief. While Type 2 or 3 “experience the Holy”, it is Type 1 that tries to make sense of that experience, to explain it. These persons preserve the faith story from generation to generation. We can be grateful for the coherence exerted on all of us by the
gifts of Type 1. (Who are the #1’s among us today?) Type 1 seekers are more prone to seek guidance chiefly from scripture and sermon, that is from words. Prayer is almost always word based, whether aloud or silent. This Spirituality Wheel encourages growth in two ways. First, go more deeply into the patterns of your style. In other words, feed your strength. Second, participate in the spirituality of the quadrant opposition your strength. That is the area in which you are most vulnerable, most open to experiencing God in a new way. Growth for #1’s lives in their gradually sensing an interior connection with God in mystic experiences. The goal, however, is to stretch the experience of God, not to change styles. Holmes contends that any one of the quadrants can become so exclusively focused on its particular style that excess can occur, what may be described as “falling outside the circle”. For Type 1, this excess is RATIONALISM, an over-intellectualization of the spiritual life, leading to a loss of feeling. Over the next three Sundays, we will explore learning, worship and prayer in the style of spirituality #2, #3, and #4. So I invite you to use the Spirituality Wheel to assess your tendency. Invite the members of your family to participate. My hope in this worship series is INDIVIDUATION and INTEGRATION. I pray that each of us will come to understand our own journey, diving more deeply in the wells of living water. I pray that we, together, will use all of our differences to grow toward full humanity, expressing love, acceptance, justice, and hope. Jesus says, I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. May it be so. Amen. COVENANT PRAYER Let us join together in a covenant prayer in the tradition of John Wesley. Your response at the end of each couplet is, “We praise your name, O God.” O God, our Covenant Friend, We praise your name, O God. You have given us life and reason, and set us in a world filled with
your glory. We praise your name, O God. You have filled our hearts with a hunger after you. We praise your name, O God. You have been our light in darkness and a rock of strength in
adversity and temptation. We praise your name, O God. You remembered us when we forgot you. We praise your name, O God. Let us join together in the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer. And now, beloved, let us bind ourselves with willing hands to our covenant with God, and take the yoke of Christ upon us. I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me
with whom thou wilt; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be
employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought
low for thee; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things,
let me have nothing; I freely and heartily yield all things to thy
pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the
covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen. |