February 9, 2003

Fifth Sunday of Epiphany

Mark 1:29-39

“Lonely Places, Sacred Spaces”

      Over the past couple weeks we’ve had over a thousand dollars of furnace repairs done at our house in Pawcatuck.  I keep getting these calls from our tenant (Christina), “Dad, don’t pay the last repair bill because it isn’t working again!”  We’ve also had sewage backing up in the basement of the parsonage.  A plumber cleared the line on Friday, which in all this cold weather had almost frozen solid.  But wait, there’s more.  It seems he used water from the furnace to help flush the line and depleted the water in the tank so that when I took my shower this morning it got colder and colder, making for one very quick shower and a trip to the basement to refill the tank.  Oh, and did I forget to mention that my computer wouldn’t start this morning?  Every Sunday morning I sit down at my computer about 5:00 AM to do the final editing on the sermon, email a copy to Nathan for the church website and run off a paper copy to bring to church to print out for people to take home.  Needless to say, I scrambled in here early with my notes and retyped it from scratch on the church computer.  (sigh)

     There are certain things like functioning furnaces, working sewer lines and computers that start that are rather important to me.  If one of these things isn’t working, if it’s not there for me, my little life gets a little stressed out!

     Eugene Peterson wrote a book titled, “Working the Angles” where he said there are certain essential, equally important parts to a healthy faith life.  They are like the equal angles of an isosceles triangle, all interrelated, interdependent and essential.  There are the three angles of scripture reading, praying and seeking spiritual direction.  He says these three have been the cornerstones of faith development for centuries, the glue that has held the church together.  He also says that in the last century we have been abandoning these things.  He says pastors are as guilty as anybody of this and perhaps even more so.  He says pastors have become administrators, program directors and cheerleaders.  He says we have abandoned our posts in the name of busyness, for the sake of trying to run well-oiled corporate machines with slick programs and balanced budgets.  I hate to admit I sometimes resemble this remark.

     In the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus lays out his ministry, sets the pattern for everything that is to follow.  Here, we see his ministry will be one of teaching and healing, but we also see that every step of the way, he takes time for the essentials of scripture, prayer and spiritual direction.  Verse 35 goes like this: “In the morning while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to deserted place, and there he prayed.”  Some translations say, “a lonely place”, but the idea is the same: it is sacred space.  And it was his regular pattern.  In Matthew 14:23 we read that he went up on a mountain to pray after feeding the five thousand.  In Luke 5:16,15 we read, “Many crowds went to gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases.  But (then) he would withdraw to deserted places to pray.”  There is also the story covered by several of the Gospels of the time he went up a mountain with Peter and Andrew, James and John to pray and was transfigured before them.  And then there was the Garden of Gethsemane where he went to pray after the Last Supper with his disciples.  All along the way, every step of the way, sacred spaces, times when Jesus stopped to ask, “What would God have me do?”

     What would God have US do?  We gather today for a congregational meeting and find that question coming to mind.  What would God have us do?  We ponder a budget and think about last year and the year to come.  What would God have us do?  We wonder about our church’s roll in our lives, this community and the world in these incredibly challenging times.  What would God have us do?

     I’ve just asked that question four times but maybe it doesn’t get asked enough.  Jesus seems to have asked it every step of the way – shouldn’t we?  Or would we rather jump to conclusions, skip the spiritual process and look for the quick fix?

     Today is an important day for us because we will make decisions that will affect the life of the church, our lives, for the next twelve months and beyond.  What would God have us do?  How can we hope to know the answer to this question if we don’t read the scriptures, pray and seek spiritual direction every step of the way?

     So instead of laying out before you my big master plan for the church today, that dazzling ABC easy-conversion program, I’m just going to encourage you to return again to the essentials.  Seek to discover what God would have you do.  Pick up a copy of the Upper Room or the Weekday Meditation and start up a daily devotional life.  Come to worship every Sunday.  Come to Sunday morning Christian Ed or the Tuesday evening Bible study.  Participate in one of our retreats.  Or seek your own path, your own quiet place, that sacred space of scripture reading, praying and seeking spiritual direction.

     I am certain that this is the best thing we could do for our church, for ourselves, for our troubled world.  Of course it isn’t easy, convinced as we are that there are so many more important things to do with our time.  But just how important are they?  Have some things of lesser importance displaced something essential along the way?

     The encouraging news is that Christ offers us forgiveness.  More than that, he continues to pray for us even now.  Romans 8 says, “We don’t know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”  Imagine that.  Jesus might not be with us in bodily form, but he still holds us in prayer through the Holy Spirit.

     Therein lies our salvation, our hope, our strength.  Christ’s Holy Spirit prays for us, prays with us.  The Spirit is there for us in the lonely place, the sacred space.

     A lot of really great things have happened around our church in the last year and I wouldn’t be surprise if a lot of great things happen in the year to come.  But before we get into all that, there is that question: “What would God have us do?”