Choice: Talking about or Talking with

A Sermon for Sunday after Ascension All Saints’ Episcopal, Southern Shores, N.C June 1, 2014 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 1:6-14 Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11 John 17:1-11

At the Council of Nicea in 325 AD Arius - a bright young priest,  was defending what came to be called a Heresy of  Christ a a kind of 3rd thing- when St. Nicholas - Bishop of Myra (Yes- the prototype for Santa Claus) slapped him. This is a icon of that event

In the 4^th century of the early church, they had this fight between theologians over things like the Gospel lesson for today. There was this bright young priest who notices that Jesus is praying to God. His logic was that if Jesus is praying to God, then he is not God; and since Jesus died, then he is not God; and since he rose from the dead, he is not human. Therefore, the logic went, Jesus is neither human nor God, and he must be a kind of third thing. They had a big fight over that issue and, out of this squabbling, comes the Nicene Creed. The fight continued over the next several centuries as lots of ink and blood was spilled over who was right.

I am just a parish pastor, so I don’t spend too much time arguing theology; I spent a lot of time doing that in seminary and it was fun, but I am too busy talking with God to talk about God. Indeed, I hold with the notion that it is disrespectful to refer to someone in the same room with you as if he or she were not there, so I agree with the old saying that the greatest heresy is to refer to God in the 3^rd person.

For my dream leader training and in preparation for the start of this week’s dream group, I wrote a reflection on a book called Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert A Johnson, a Jungian Psychotherapist, author, spiritual guide and one of the best writers about dream work. I think in today’s lesson Jesus is having a conversation with his deepest self and doing Inner Work with the heart and mind of God. In fact I think that all prayer, all worthwhile prayer and not just braying out loud at religious gatherings, begins with an encounter and internal dialogue, Inner Work, with the one God, the ground of our being, who is the very fabric of our DNA and our soul.

The way it works is that our imagination and dreams, which come from the unconscious part of us, contain messages from the God who lives in all places and speaks in symbols and metaphors because mere language is so limited. The task is to pay attention because God is speaking all the time and we get so busy with our own agendas that we try to drown out God by our inattention, a sort of “I can’t hear you! Can’t you see I am doing something else?” kind of response.

In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus is facing, literally, the crossroads in his life as he will have to leave his friends behind who are going to have to go on without him. He calls on the God inside him, that Spirit dwelling as part of his very being, to hallow the space between him and them and be there wherever they will go in their new journeys.

I think about the day I dropped my daughter off at college. I was going to physically leave her at that place three hours away from our home, but she would always be connected to my heart, and I wanted to be closer to her than a phone call so she could know that she was surrounded by my love and the presence of God’s Spirit. The internal dialogue I had with God that day was to allow myself to let her go and to entrust her to the power greater than myself. That internal dialogue has been going on for more than a quarter century and will probably continue long after I die.

In the lesson from Acts for today, Jesus again says farewell to his disciples in the Ascension and they go back to Jerusalem, each of them continuing the Inner Work, the Inner Dialogue with the Spirit of Jesus, the God who dwells within them, and they gather together in a prayer community.

Prayer is the Inner Work before we say the outer words. The prayers that they said together out loud in language were but pale reflections of the prayers they listened to in their hearts. That is what we do on Sundays - we all bring our internal dialogues with us, and there is this spiritual connection in Holy Space if we have done the inner work necessary to prepare for the gathering. Our liturgy, as beautiful and as meaningful as it is, is just too unsubstantial to connect us to our deepest spirit.

The writer of 1^st Peter in the Epistle selection for today, writing probably 80 some years after the Ascension, urges his flock to go deeper into themselves and find the strength that is there in the Inner Dialogue with God’s spirit, the Risen Christ living in them: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert.”

There is an old song that didn’t make it in the Episcopal Hymnal because it is sloppy sentimental, but later on it came into the Hymnal Supplement, Lift Every Voice and Sing. Early in my ministry when I was so worried about being taken seriously, I would cringe at it and make fun of it because I was projecting my inner fear of being a religious fool onto it. But now in the second half of my life, I am beyond embarrassment and, through Inner Work with Dreams, I am trying to claim those personalities and shadows within myself that I had tried so hard to suppress so that my public persona would shine, and now I find myself singing it to myself as I do some of my Inner Work. It an old Baptist hymn written by an Irishman, Joseph Scriven, who left heartbroken from Ireland when his fiancé died the day before the wedding. He settled in Canada as a teacher and fell in love again - and she also died and, at the same time, his mother was ill back in Ireland. He wrote a poem to his mother to follow his example to go into her very self in prayer and meet the God who transcends distance and death. Years later it was made into a Hymn and you may have heard it before:

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge, take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do your friends despise, forsake you? Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He'll take and shield you; you will find a solace there.

Today I ask you to do your Inner Work and have an encounter with your dreams and imagination for the place where our Risen Lord, the ground of our being, dwells within us. If you feel so inclined, come join us to do dream work, Inner Work, on Thursday evening. It will last six sessions and then in the fall we will start another group for another six to eight sessions. Bring a dream and we will see what God might be saying to us. 

Willie Nelson singing "What a Friend we have in Jesus