Compassion Hears by Rev. Kathryn
Ransdell
St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church,
Vancouver, BC
March 4, 2012
Week
2 of "On How to Doodle your way through Lent." Anyone in here want to confess to being more
aware of their doodles this past week? I
found myself observing when I physically or verbally doodled in straight lines
or circles and found that fascinating.
Let's
go back to our 5-pointed star, which is our guide as we enter into being lost
and dislocated this Lent, hopefully to emerge found and located on Easter
Sunday.
One
of my mentors who has gone on--blessed be his soul--once said about preaching:
"If you can't say it in 10 minutes, then you can't say it. And if you can't say what you were going to
say in 10 minutes in one sentence, then you really can't say it."
I
have something better (I think) than one sentence for today's sermon: Four words--Hearing. Mindfulness.
Communion. Compassion.
We
enter in the story today via the Gospel of Mark, which is an enigma to the
scholarly world. Authorship is a
mystery. The way the gospel is told
infers there is an unfamiliarity by the readers as to Jewish customs, Aramaic
terms and Palestinian geography (sounds like us). Infers an origin beyond Palestine. There is a use of Latin customs and
vocabulary which points to its community being in Syria, Italy or elsewhere in
the Roman empire.
We
know it to be the earliest of gospels.
Once thought in the 50s, but perhaps as late as the burning of Rome in
64, with composition as late as 70.
Not
knowing its original readership or its author, it's difficult to understand the
author's angle. Strong sense of
immediacy in this gospel. Shortest. Original ending includes the disciples
locking themselves in a room once they encounter the resurrection, and ending
with "they were afraid." Imagine
how Easter Sunday service would be
embodied if all we had was the gospel of Mark.
[Everybody in. Check. Lock the doors. Check.
Okay, be afraid.]
In
Epiphany, I gave you an example of how the narrator juxtaposes the reality of
empire with the meaning of the good news...
1.
"After John was arrested (commentary on the empire and danger),
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God (commentary on the
kingdom of God)."
2.
As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew casting
a net--for they were fishermen (commentary on empire and economic injustice), and
Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people
(commentary on the kingdom of God)."
Another way to look at this, might
be...
the Noise of the empire
and
underneath that noise
the
Way of Jesus
Today's
Gospel reading follows this pattern:
1.
"Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great
suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed, and after three days rise again." He said all of this quite openly. (commentary
on the empire and ideological battle)
2.
"He called the crowd with the disciples and said to them, "If
any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their
cross and follow me. For those who want
to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and
for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their
life? Indeed, what can they give in
return for their life? Those who are
ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them
the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father
with the holy angels." (commentary on the kingdom of God, and for
all you feeling a bit guilty because we happen to find ourselves in a city
where you try your best not to tell people you go to church, go ahead and
squirm a bit in your seat. It's good for
the soul.)
the Noise of the empire
and
underneath that noise
the
Way of Jesus arises
Can we hear the Way arising?
Today,
we get to insert Peter into the story.
We take someone like Peter who is the archetype for the person whose
heart is in the right place and wants to follow the leader but God love 'em, he
never quite gets it.
Peter
encounters the Noise of the empire. What
does he do? Verse 32b. While Jesus is saying all of this quite
openly, Peter takes him aside and begins to rebuke him."
And
what does Jesus do? Jesus takes the
conversation from the side, turns back to the disciples, and rebukes Peter in front
of them.
"Get
behind me Satan! For you are setting
your mind not on divine things but on human things."
Poor
Peter. In his eagerness to defend and
follow Jesus, he seems to put his foot in his mouth, say the wrong thing, deny
that he knows Jesus not once, not twice, but three times.
Jesus
tells them what shall be. We might think
it from a chronological perspective, as if he is telling the future. But from a [what is the word that starts with
an a....] it is the reality of this world in this moment...
And
in that moment, Peter hears with physical ears and abandons mindfulness.
Well,
how can you blame Peter? On the
Myers-Briggs he was probably an ESFP.
Spontaneous. Action-oriented to
what happens next. Responds in the
moment. Leads with the heart, with
little to no thinking. And if that's not
enough, he was never a Buddhist so how can we even expect him to practice
mindfulness?
Ah...there
it is. The belief that Buddhists have a
corner on mindfulness. This concept is
foreign to those of us raised in the Christian story of "Jesus dying for
our sins so that we may go to heaven."
Jon
Kabat-Zinn defines Mindfullness:
"Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way on purpose,
in the present moment, and non judgemental.
This kind of attention nurtures greater clarity, awareness and
acceptance of the present moment reality.
It wakes us up to the fact that our lives unfold only in
moments." (Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. Hyperion, 1994.)
Here
the good news: There's more to our
Christian story. Let me introduce you to
the Desert Mothers and Fathers who want you to hear the spiritual inheritance
they have given you. (Proceeding
description from Mundy, Linus. A
Retreat with Desert Mystics: Thirsting for the Reign of God. St. Anthony
Messenger Press, 1989)
A. The Desert Mothers and Fathers were curious
about God. They went into trances,
levitated and sat on top of poles. They
lived in the 4th and 5th centuries and were scattered in the deserts of Egypt,
Syria and Palestine. (Illustrate geo-doodle) Some
lived the life of a hermit, others lived in a loose community. They participated in fasting, deprivation of
sleep and body mortification.
1. Best known is Antony, who died in 356.
2. Abba Moses: "Go sit in your cell, and
your cell will teach you everything."
3. Macarius the Egyptian, 300-390 in Scete
4. Arsenius, who was of the Senatorial Rank and
was the tutor to princes, left it all in Rose and became known for his silence
and austerity.
5. Evagrius, who lived in community of monks
scattered among the hills in Egpyt in individual huts outside Alexandria, who
described the life of the Desert Monk as a life of the solitary,
"separated from all, and united with all."
B.
Why?
They wanted to escape NOISE so that they could enter into pure,
undisturbed prayer and in so doing, be with God.
C. What they found was that even in the desert,
you still have noise. They called them δαιμόνιον (demon), whose single objective was to keep
the monk from praying and being with God.
Two words became synonymous in
their writings: logismoß (thought) and δαιμόνιον (demon). What they
found in escaping the NOISE is that their thoughts became their demons. These thoughts that were their demons are
what we call DISTRACTIONS.
I'm thinking you can empathize...you finally find
some time in your day to be still and pray, or meditate, and at that moment,
you suddenly remember what you need at the grocery store, who you need to
phone, what color curtain really would look best against that window, how that
person at the office really did undermine you, wonder what's on tv tonight, how
Gary is doing in Israel, when the rain will end, what I want to do now to be
beach ready by summer,
Thoughts become your demons. In battling these demons, which means in
practicing mindfulness, they became spiritual masters, teachers and sages,
composers of practical wisdom based on their experiences of facing down the
demons of the mind and distraction.
I want to be mindful of the one who in describing
the life of the Desert Monk, said it was the life of the solitary,
"separated from all, and united with all."
"Separated with all, and united with
all."
Today is Communion Sunday. Another chance to come and be present to the
mystery of grace.
What I know to be true is that as we enter this
Sacrament, there will be:
the Noise of the mind,
the Noise of
moving 300 people around a room in 15 minutes
and underneath that
noise, and above that noise, and in that noise,
hear the compassion of a God who invites us to a table
and says, "This is
my body, broken, so that you may no longer be broken."
May
we enter into the mystery of Communion, awaiting how God just might surprise us
today by grace. May we enter into the
mystery of Communion with mindfulness,
"paying attention in a
particular way
on purpose
in the present moment
and non-judgemental."
May
the grace of God "(wake us up) to the fact that our lives unfold only in
moments."
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