Scripture: Matthew 5:1-9 (Click here)
Heavenly Creator, open our hearts to your presence. Guide us into that glorious silence where your love is revealed to all who come seeking to know you as Jesus knew you. Bless us here today and every time we enter into a place where we recognize and celebrate your presence. Amen.
Jesus loved quiet. Quiet places appear all over the gospels. And even though, the throngs often disturb Jesus in his solitude, he continues to seek it on a regular basis.
It is interesting, however, that those who live a contemplative life both present and past often get a bad rap as if by allowing oneself the time and space to seek inwardly makes one ‘out of touch’ if not downright lazy. We are a ‘doing’ people. We go, go, go, usually until we collapse. Is it any wonder that few of us spend any real time in meditation, or contemplation about the love and nature of God? And, even more surprisingly, we wonder why we feel so empty—why we run out of fuel, both physically and spiritually.
John Main was a Benedictine Monk who began a series of meditation groups which eventually became the World Community for Christian Meditation. Although now deceased, his works are still being published by his followers. In his most recently published work, Monastery without Walls, he writes, “In the Christian vision we are led to the source of our being by a guide. Our guide is Jesus, the fully realized one wholly open to God. … as we approach the center of our being, we find that we are greeted by our guide, the one who has always led us. We are welcomed by a person who calls us into a personal fullness of being. The fruits of meditation are fullness of life, the energy of harmony and oneness. It is divine energy that we find in our own heart as the energy that is love.” And so St. Patrick prayed even in the 5th century:
Christ be within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
This is not a sermon on how to meditate. There are thousands of books and hundreds of websites that can do that. We may decide at a later date to have a meditation group—that would be a grand journey, but, for now, I just want us to spend a very few minutes looking at the call of God to come into this place of quiet even as Jesus did when he walked among us. We cannot help but note that the scriptures do not record what Jesus did when he meditated and communed with God and that’s one of many reasons why it is difficult to prescribe a particular way to meditate. What matters is that he did. And so, this is the third spiritual discipline with which we will spend some time this Lenten season.
Let me begin by telling you what I think meditation is not: Meditation is not our prayers of supplication, though our walk with God requires us to pray and praise. Meditation is not journaling or reflection upon spiritual truths, though our walk through life is greatly enhanced by our giving ourselves over to authentic self-examination. Meditation, then is that quiet that Jesus sought on a regular basis. The call to silence brings with it the understanding that if we are quiet, God will speak. The psalmist tells us in Psalm 46:10: Be still . . . and know that I am God. It is as if God is holding us, like we would hold a crying child, whispering while we rock, “Shhhh!, you’re ok”. And eventually, the crying subsides, the child relaxes into the warmth and strength of our arms, and they are indeed ok. When life overwhelms us and we become, at least internally if not externally, like that small child seeking comfort, God is there, rocking us and saying, “Be still, let it come to you that I am God, and I will care for you.” And when we are not overwhelmed by life, God is there still waiting for us to come into that place of quiet where all we need to know is that God is. The Christian Meditation Ireland group says: “Meditation is a way of pure prayer marked by silence, stillness and simplicity.” Why is it so hard for us to be silent? If I were to call us to a period of silence right now, few of us would be able to make it more than a few minutes without becoming quite uncomfortable. And yet, in the midst of that quiet, were we able to tolerate it long enough, we might very well experience the inbreaking of God’s spirit in this place. And yet, we struggle.
Returning to John Main’s thoughts: “The way of meditation is very simple. All each of us has to do is to be as still as possible in body and in spirit. . . .Learning to meditate is learning to let go of your thoughts, ideas and imagination and to rest in the depths of your own being….Why is this so powerful?” He responds, “Basically, because it gives us the space that our spirit needs to breathe. It gives each of us the space to be ourselves. When you are meditating you don’t need to apologize for yourself and you don’t need to justify yourself. All you need to do is to be yourself, to accept from the hands of God the gift of your own being. And in that acceptance of yourself and your creation, you come into harmony with the Creator...”
You may wonder how all of this fits with today’s scripture...the Beatitudes…when looking for the passage that I wanted us to hear to prepare our hearts for this sermon, the “blessed be’s…” immediately came to mind. And a new translation invites us to listen with new ears. So, “blessed are the…” becomes “you are blessed when…” The beatitudes pretty much covers all of the conditions of life, both spiritual and physical. "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope…You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you...You're blessed when you're content with just who you are…you're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God…you're blessed when you care…you're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right…you're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight.” Perhaps a place to start in meditation might be right here—I am blessed; let me say it again, I am blessed…
There may be those of you here today for whom some of this is difficult to hear, or it may just not resonate with what you believe. I thank you for your patience and tolerance. However you experience that power that is beyond you, whether you call it divine, God, nature or “I don’t know what”, I encourage you to give yourself the space to commune alone in quiet. For God speaks to each of us as God speaks. I thank you all for allowing me to explore the spiritual discipline of meditation with you this day. I think speaking and hearing of meditation is a little like learning to play golf or pickleball. It’s all theory until the club or paddle is in your hands, then it becomes real. I invite you to take this silence into your hands and see if it is real for you. Remember this, few of us hit a hole in one the first time we swing a golf club. Some of us may never hit a hole in one. But with practice, we begin to reach the green in fewer and fewer shots.
There is a prayer written by Laurence Freeman OSB who now leads The World Community for Christian Meditation that they use at their gatherings and I believe fits for us here. We may even want to consider adapting it as part of our mission statement. Please allow me to pray part of this prayer for all of us and we will sit for just a moment to let it be absorbed into our hearts. "May this community be a true spiritual home for the seeker, a friend for the lonely, a guide for the confused… In the silence of this Community may all the suffering, violence, and confusion of the world encounter the Power that will console, renew and uplift the human spirit. May this silence be a power to open the hearts of men and women to the vision of God, …May the beauty of the divine life, fill this community and the hearts of all who pray here, with joyful hope. May all who come here weighed down by the problems of humanity leave giving thanks for the wonder of human life. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord. AMEN."
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