Be Not Afraid of the Dark--A Sermon

Be Not Afraid of the Dark

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

October 28, 2012

All Saints

Have you entered into the springs of the sea,

   or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Have the gates of death been revealed to you,

   or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

Job 38:16-17

Are You Afraid of the Dark? was a television show in the 90s that my kids watched.    It was a kids’ show on the Nickelodeon channel. The set up for the show was a group of teenagers, “the midnight society” telling scary stories around a fire at night.    Each of the characters told different stories and the stories reflected their personalities.    The message in that is that each of us has our unique dark side.     We are all struggle with and in the dark in our own way.   I think another message of the show was that you gain courage to face the dark when you share your stories with others.

The dark is a fearsome place.   You don’t know what might jump out at you in the dark.    As a child I remember that scary moment between turning off the light in the bedroom and running for the bed to get undercover as soon as possible.   Apparently, I was safe in the bed from whatever dark creatures lurked about in my room.    As long as you get undercover, you are OK.

Last week we explored the metaphor of silence.  This week darkness.   Both silence and darkness point toward the spiritual path of via negativa.    We tend to think darkness is a bad thing.    Even the Gospel of John that we read at Christmas sees darkness as something that wants to get you and take you over.  The promise is this:   

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

True enough.  But darkness is also a path.   For those acquainted with the night, they know, like Robert Frost, that this acquaintance is "neither wrong nor right."    There is something to be learned in the dark.   Poets, the strong ones, the ones we read, have dabbled in the dark.    I think it takes courage to be acquainted with the night and to spend time in darkness. 

In the darkness we keep the things that we don’t want everyone to know.    That is anyone to know, including ourselves.  The darkness hides our vulnerability.    Jung called this aspect of ourselves the shadow side or the dark side.    We prefer to keep that side hidden.  We create elaborate masks to wear in order to show the world that we are people of the light, happy and together and above average.   

The via negativa invites us to explore the dark places.   The truth is that if you don’t find what is in the dark, what is in the dark will eventually find you.    One of my favorite sayings of Jesus is from the Gospel of Thomas, which is itself a gospel that had been hidden in the darkness, literally in clay pots for 1700 years.   In this hidden, secret gospel we find this from Jesus:

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not bring it forth, what you do not have within you will kill you."

Every hero must go into the dark.  The great myths of the hero’s quest to slay dragons, find the holy grail, battle Voldemort, rescue the ring, face crucifixion and so on are about entering the dark and discovering the courage to take on what you find.    

The via negativa is not about defeating what is in the dark.  It could be that, but it is also about embracing what is in the dark.    In the dark is a treasure.    That treasure is an aspect of our own self.    The path invites us to find that and bring it into the light where it can be embraced and admired by all.

This is the sense of the passage in the Gospel of John.   The light shines in the darkness not to obliterate the darkness but so it can bring to light what has been hidden there.     When it is hidden we are overwhelmed, saddened, and dis-eased.     When brought to the light it is becomes a source of strength, joy, and healing.    That is the point of the path.  

So God asks Job:

Have you entered into the springs of the sea,

   or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Have the gates of death been revealed to you,

   or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

The story of Job is the textbook for the via negativa.    

There is a lot to say about Job, that I am not going to say today.   It is enough to know that the character “God” does not come off well.   He and his drinking buddy, Satan, have a spitting contest about who is tougher and Job ends up being the object of this wager.   God lets Satan torture Job to prove that Job will be loyal to God no matter how he suffers.   

Job is not in on this little game.  Neither of course are Job’s friends.    But we are.  Job rejects all of his friends’ theories as to why this might be happening to him.   Job is right even though he doesn’t know why he is right.    The reason Job suffers is because “God” behaves pathologically.   

We are not supposed to say that because we are pious.    We have been taught that the Bible is God’s Word and that God is good.  When we read the Bible we are told that no matter how barbaric God appears God must be right.    The price we pay for piety is that we put halos around bad texts and endorse harmful ethics.   

Once you get over that notion that the character “God’ in the Bible is always good, in fact, far from it, then you can appreciate the story of Job.  

God never comes clean to Job.     He never tells him the truth.  He never says,

“Hey Job, buddy.  The reason you were suffering is because, well Satan and I had a little bet about you.  I hope you aren’t sore.  And hey, you helped me win.  You were loyal to the end!  What do you say, still friends?”   

God says none of that.  Nor does God apologize for his ruthless behavior.  Instead God conjures up an impressive hurricane and speaks to Job from a position of power.  He goes on for several chapters about how tough he is.   He can drag around Leviathan with a fishhook.  He made the heavens and the mountains.   He tells Job in effect:

What have you done, little man?   How dare you question me!  

That’s God’s answer.  Might makes right.    In that speech from the whirlwind, God says to Job:

Have you entered into the springs of the sea,

   or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Have the gates of death been revealed to you,

   or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

Those are rhetorical questions to which Job must only answer, No.  No he has not physically entered the place below the flat earth where the water comes up.  Nor has he entered physically the gates to the underworld.   

But, of course,  we know that Job truly has seen the gates of death, the gates of deep darkness.  He has walked the recesses of the deep.   He has done so in the most real way possible.  He has suffered.  He lost everything and he has not given up in his quest to find meaning.   He has not given in to simplistic answers that are not true even as they might comfort.  

These primitive notions of God that are still prevalent today were inadequate to help the author of Job make sense of life.  Job is the story of what happens when one’s religion is too small for life.     Job represents the true hero.    In addition to refusing the easy answers of orthodoxy that his friends thrust on him, he faces the foundation of meaning itself.   He faces God, or the best understanding of God that he can imagine.     He finds God wanting.   

I am not sure if the author of the story of Job knew what he was doing.   His story of Job seems to me to be a deconstruction of monotheism.    God may be all good or all powerful but he can’t be both.    In Job’s story, he comes across as only powerful and not good.   

This is the translation of that pivotal passage in chapter 42 in which Job supposedly repents.    According to the excellent book, God: A Biography by Jack Miles, that is a mistranslation.   It is garbled Hebrew that translators misused to make Job the bad guy.   According to piety, God can’t be wrong, so Job must repent.  This is the NRSV translation:

Then Job answered the Lord:

‘I know that you can do all things,

   and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

“Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?”

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

   things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

“Hear, and I will speak;

   I will question you, and you declare to me.”

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

   but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself,

   and repent in dust and ashes.’

That is the pious interpretation.    But that is inconsistent.  We all know that Job has nothing for which to repent.   God is the one who needs to repent.    This translation from Jack Miles is, I think, more accurate.  These are Job’s final words to God after God delivers his blustery speech:

Then Job answered the Lord:
You know you can do anything.

Nothing can stop you.

You ask, “Who is this ignorant muddler?”

Well, I said more than I knew, wonders quite beyond me.

“You listen, and I’ll talk, “ you say,

“I’ll question you, and you tell me.”

Word of you had reached my ears,

But now that my eyes have seen you,

I shudder with sorrow for mortal clay.

The story of Job is the textbook for the via negativa.

The author of Job is showing that the God they had inherited is all power and no love.  All power and no goodness.   It took a courageous author to create a courageous character to expose this idea of God as inadequate for meaning.   That opened the way for a fuller sense of God to develop. 

Job is a model of a spiritual hero.   His is a model for today, for the searcher, who is not satisfied with the pious explanations that hold no water, and who will search out in the dark places for a more fulfilling answer.

Job is a hero who is not afraid of the dark.

Amen. 

The Sound of Silence--A Sermon

The Sound of Silence

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

October 21, 2012

For God alone my soul waits in silence,

for my hope is from him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my deliverance and my honour;

my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

Trust in him at all times, O people;

pour out your heart before him;

God is a refuge for us.

Psalm 62:5-8

We returned last night from our vacation. Bev, Katy, and I went on a cruise. A Carnival Cruise on the cruise ship, Imagination. It left Miami stopped at Key West and then at the island of Cozumel where we took a ferry boat and bus to visit the Mayan ruins at Tulum on the Yucatan Penisula. I hadn’t been on a cruise before and it was as they bill it, “fun”!

Fun means they fill your senses with music, food, drink, dance, and entertainment, non-stop. This is about fun and getting out and being out in the sunshine. There are precious few moments for silence. You can hide in your cabin, I suppose, but that defeats the point.

This cruise is the exact opposite of a retreat to a monastery. Not that one is better or more holy or sacred or whatever. A Carnival Cruise and a Benedictine Monastery would represent two different paths. One would be the via positiva with the explosion of images and sounds, the other the via negativa with a silencing of all images.

The cruise ship was fun and good for us. I would do it again. You need a little positiva now and then.

This Fall we are exploring the via negativa as a spiritual path. This is the path of letting go and letting be. This is the path in which a metaphor is silence. The via negativa is not to be equated with suffering or bad things. It isn’t about being “negative.” On the other hand, loss and suffering can be invitations to find spiritual meaning on this path.


If the via positiva is about filling up with images, the via negativa is about emptying out.

For example, in speaking about God, if the via positiva says
everything is God,
the rainbow is God,
the sunshine, the clouds, the trees, you, me.
God is out there.
God is in here.
The stars are the face of God; beauty is God.
Or God is found through this creed or this system of doctrine.
This set of beliefs point to God.
Or I see God everywhere.
I hear God everywhere.
I feel God everywhere.
That is the via positiva.
That is a good thing.
God is a Carnival Cruise ship.
It is constructive theology.

The via positiva is about saying what God is.

The via negativa acknowledges the God constructed by the via positiva and says in addition to all of that Yes, God is also No.
God is not a rainbow, sunshine, clouds, trees, you, and me.
God is not out there.
God is not in here.
The stars are not the face of God.
God is not exclusive to this creed or that system of doctrine or those beliefs.
The sights are I see are not God.
The sounds I hear are not God. My feelings are not of God.
I feel no thing, not even God.
That is the via negativa.

This is the path of letting go even of God in order for God to be.

We might call it deconstructive theology.

An image for this is from 1 Kings 19. Elijah is in a cave. He is frightened. He is alone. People are trying to kill him. He hears the word of the Lord, who tells Elijah:

‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

Then the Lord comes to speak to Elijah.

The storyteller has captured the via negativa.

The sound of sheer silence.

Have you ever heard the sound of sheer silence?

That is the sound you hear when the foundations that have held you have been shaken. When the beliefs you inherited are like a bowl that is filled with holes and it holds no water. It is the sound of your experience of life being too real for your religion. When your religion becomes too small to hold your life, your spiritual path is the via negativa.

It doesn’t matter what religion or philosophy, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist even. You notice it when you begin to struggle with the tradition and with others and finally with yourself. It is an exciting if unnerving, perhaps even frightening, and possibly lonely path. It is a path that many resist because it requires that “you walk the lonesome valley by yourself.” It is a path that calls you to say ‘No’ to the tribe. When the tribe or its spokesperson says this is what we believe and you say well…maybe not me, you are on the via negativa.

You may not know what it is you can affirm. You have to stay with that. The via negativa invites you to stay with that not knowing, with that uncertainty, with that letting go and not knowing if there is anything, but trusting that that is the path to take. It is the way of silence.

From Matthew Fox, Original Blessing:

The need for silence that Zen speaks of, that wisdom literature celebrates, that Eckhart praises, and that Merton calls for is not just about oral silence. Silence means the letting go of all images—whether oral ones or auditory ones or visual ones or inner ones or cognitive ones or imaginative ones. Whether of time or of space, of inner or of outer. It is a radical letting go of language. A letting language go. A concentration on what is non-language, non-music, non-self, non-God. It is being. A being still. Eckhart puts it this way:

One should love God mindlessly, without mind or mental activities or images or representations. Bare your soul of all mind and stay there without mind. Pp. 136-137

How do you do that? How do you let go?

At times our life situations are invitations to this path. We may be on it whether we want to be or not. The challenge then is not to try to fill it with noise too soon. Suffering and loss alone is not the path. They can be invitations to the path. We have to be with the loss. Honor it. Honor the silence that comes with it.

Every week in worship we do something counter-cultural. We have an extended moment of silence during our time of meditation. It can be discomfiting. We are not used to periods of silence, especially in a group setting. Someone needs to entertain us, do something, say something, show us something. Meditation invites us to sink into the very moment we are actually in. As opposed to thoughts ahead or thoughts behind, we are invited to be with ourselves. Silence is that vehicle.

The via negativa or the way of silence is also an opportunity to be honest with ourselves about our doubts, our own alienation, our vulnerability and our struggle.

I want to read to you a section from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is an introduction to the Twelve Steps. You may say, "I don’t need that. I am not an alcoholic."  That’s fine.  I don't insist.  But you may find it resonates.

I think it captures the essence of the via negativa, the spiritual path of letting go and letting be…

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.

Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it – then you are ready to take certain steps.

At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.

Remember that we deal with alcohol – cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power – that one is God. May you find Him now!

Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.

Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery….

The book goes on to list the twelve steps. This Twelve Step program, developed in the 1930s has been adopted by and adapted to fit other programs of recovery. In many respects, it is a good spiritual path for anyone. It is a path of rigorous honesty. That is the heart of the via negativa.

After the 12 steps, the Big Book continues:

Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can't go through with it." Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.

The via negativa is a spiritual path. It is a path in which the emphasis is on progress not perfection.

It is a path that begins with the sound of sheer silence.

It is a path of
willingness to wait,
to be,
to enter the silence,
to be honest with who you are and where you have been,
and to let that self be embraced,
and loved.

Amen.

Becoming Wholehearted--A Sermon

We celebrated communion as part of World Communion Sunday. We had special guest musicians, kRi and Hettie. They sang three songs that fit right in with the service, including You Matter to Me that I found on youtube. 

Becoming Wholehearted

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

October 7, 2012

World Communion Sunday

Mark 12:28-34

And one of the scholars approached when he heard them arguing, and because he saw how skillfully Jesus answered them, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

Jesus answered,

“The first is, ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.’

The second is this:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

There is no other commandment greater than these.”

I order worship along the four paths of Creation Spirituality. A path for each season of the year. These paths have been described by theologian Matthew Fox in his book, Original Blessing. Fox was formerly a Roman Catholic priest, but because of his views he was silenced by the Vatican. He is now an Episcopal priest. Fox challenged some traditional doctrines such as original sin. He suggested that we might instead embrace original blessing.

He also wrote about the spiritual journey in a different way. Rather than Fall, Repentance, Reunion, which is the common three-fold path of traditional Christianity, he saw the experience of life as more nuanced and complex. He articulated a stream that was present but underground throughout the Christian tradition. Known as Creation Spirituality, this way of seeing the universe, God and ourselves affirms creation not as fallen but as wonderful and awe-filled.

The spiritual path of embracing creation in its wild beauty is the via positiva, or way of awe and wonder. Fox is a Roman Catholic so he knows his Latin. Via means path. The way of "wowing" at this amazing and expanding universe is a path to the Sacred.

Three other paths are the via creativa, the way of creativity. We are creative beings, making all kinds of things, wonderful things, and destructive things. We are generative and creative. All of us. That is a path to the Sacred.

Another path is the via transformativa, or the way compassion and justice-making. This is the way of channeling our creativity toward the good, toward wholeness, toward peace and well-being for all creation. This is the path of the activist and the prophet within us. This also is a path to the Sacred.

The path that we are exploring during the season of Autumn as the leaves change color and fall, is the via negativa, the way of letting go and letting be.

These four paths are ways of dancing with the Sacred. We move in and out of them. Not a ladder climbed, but a spiral danced, says Matthew Fox.

This via negativa is trickier than the others in some respects. It is sometimes equated with sin and suffering. But that isn’t quite correct.

The via negativa or the spiritual path of letting go and letting be is a spiritual path.

I emphasize path.

It is a way to the Sacred.

The via negativa isn’t to be equated with suffering, tragedy, or moral evil.

It is possible, however, that those experiences can present a path through which we receive grace, touch the holy, discover the sacred, and find our heart.

It is a path in which the traveler refuses to be defined by experiences or events but finds the heart to face, reflect and walk through these experiences to an unknown future.

The word heart comes from the Latin cor from which we get the word courage. If we are lucky in life we will meet courageous, big-hearted, whole-hearted people. If we are blessed in life we will be inspired by them to find our own heart.

If you want to know where to find these people,
I would say look to your left and right.
Look in front of you and look behind you.
Go ahead.
Take a moment right now and look around
and see big-hearted people in your midst.

From my vantage point I see the faces of wholehearted people who have found the heart to move through a difficult experience and grow from it.

That courageous big-hearted, wholehearted person is your neighbor.

That courageous big-hearted, wholehearted person is you.

Somewhere along life’s path,
you found the courage whether or not you called it that
and you found the heart,
to move through a challenging experience.
It may have been with fits and starts.
It may have been with pain and bleeding.
You may have the scars to show for it.
On that path,
you found within yourself a previously untapped skill,
gift, virtue, or strength of character.

Somewhere along life’s path, you had to let go of some image of yourself. A piece of armor or protection was removed and you saw yourself vulnerable and exposed. While painful and frightening that you is of great worth and deserves great love.

That is the sacred.
That is the holy.
That is the pearl as in Jesus’ parable:

The kingdom of heaven is like some merchant looking for beautiful pearls. When he finds one priceless pearl, he sells everything he owns and buys it. Matthew 13:45-46

“Selling everything he owns” is a metaphor for letting go.

The pearl is you.
It is your sacred self.

The via negativa is letting go of what we are supposed to be so we can embrace who we are.

"Let Go of Who You Think You are Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are" is the subtitle of a book by Dr. Brene Brown. The title is The Gifts of Imperfection. She writes about wholehearted living:

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It is going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging. P. 1

The ancient wisdom for that is found in the words of Jesus when he was asked,

“What is the greatest commandment?”

What is all about, Jesus?
What is the main thing we should know to make it through this life?
What is the answer?

Jesus says:

“The first is, ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.’

The second is this:
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

Now we can fight with each other over the meaning of “God” and who worships the right “God” or which religion worships “God” right. I don’t think Jesus was worried about that. You can define God how you need to do it.

I say with serious jest that we are a BYOG church.  Bring Your Own God.

According to the via negativa you will be wrong. As are we all.
The via negativa in regards to God is the path of saying everything we can about God and then saying,

"God is not that."

A healthy via negativa in regards to God

• allows you distance when others try to force their idea of God onto you and 
• it keeps you from clinging to your favorite image of God as if that image is the real thing. 

The via negativa keeps us humble, vulnerable, and open to new possibility. 

So we love this God whom we cannot name
with our whole heart, says Jesus,
and with our soul,
and our mind
and our strength.

Love life, love the universe, love all.
Then Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
It is all together.
Neighbor, self, God.

Do you want to know how to love God?
Love your neighbor.
How do you do that?
Love yourself.

Who is yourself?
That is where the via negativa comes in.
All those images we think we are.
Those images we have inherited from culture, parents, religion.
All of those ideals.
All of those expectations.
All of those “shoulds” and “supposed tos.”

Not that.

Something deeper.
Something more beautiful.
Something more tender.
Something more holy.
A pearl.
A treasure.
That is you.

That is also your neighbor.
When we can discover the fleeting grace to connect at that level,
we experience what Jesus called the kingdom of God.

Communion is a symbol for that.

On World Communion Sunday,
we dare to hope,
we dare to live the reality that such a kingdom is possible.

Amen.

Grief Is Love that has Lost Its Object--A Sermon

Grief is Love that has Lost Its Object

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, TN

September 23, 2012

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Matthew 5:1-4

The four vias or paths of Creation Spirituality are just that—vias or paths. They are ways. They are not ends in themselves. Movement is the guiding metaphor. The movement is not just upward. They are not ladders to climb as much as spirals to dance.

Yesterday the calendar commanded that summer give way to fall. Even if the calendar refused and decided to deny the end of summer, it wouldn’t matter. The leaves on the trees surrounding Watauga Lake would begin to let go of their green anyway. Temperatures would begin to cool. Earth moves around the sun such that in our part of the planet it appears to go to sleep a little earlier each evening.  This happens whether or not we with our calendars, language, and reasoning manage to make sense of it or not. Life happens if we are ready for it or not. So does death.

It doesn’t matter if we like summer or don’t like summer. It passes. I suppose one could move around the globe so you never have to leave summer. It is always summer somewhere. You could follow it so that you never have to see the trees let go of their green or feel the temperatures cool or bid the sun goodnight until late at night every night.

That would be a path or via too. The via positiva all the time. Endless summer. As we disc jockeys used to breathlessly announce: “Nonstop music. One hit after another.”

Most of us are not quite so nomadic, following endless summer with our surfboards. We know the other seasons as well. We know Fall, Winter, and Spring. If we have been around long enough and been fortunate to have lived through a number of these seasons, we may have found in them some sense of significance. While summer might be free and easy, bright and cheerful, there is something to these other seasons too. While we may have a favorite, if we are intentional about it, we can find something to stir our soul in the others.

But we really don’t have a choice. The seasons change whether we are intentional about finding meaning and significance in them or not.

The spiritual path of the via positiva the way of awe and wonder may be the path of choice. It is the happy path. It is the celebration of life. It is noticing the blue heron as she flies just a few inches above the water. It is allowing her flight to inspire wonder and reverence for these magnificent creatures and for all of life.

She is going to do her blue heron thing whether or not I take notice of her and admire her or not. The via positiva only becomes a spiritual path for me when I allow it to be. The via positiva is not about what is. It is about the awe and wonder for what is.

We know that we can go through our day and not notice the miracle of our existence. That is why all spiritual figures, deep thinkers, interesting people, and wise sages have told us since stories began to stop and take notice. Our man, Jesus, said: “Consider the lilies.”

“Consider…” I think that wonderfully understated translation of that verb is the essence of the via positiva-- “Consider…” Don’t just ignore or take for granted or use, “Consider…”

Consider creation, say the sages. If you have a spiritual bone in your body, marvel at it. Question it. Puzzle over it. Try to calculate it with numbers and equations. Write poems about it. Sing to it. Paint it. Allow yourself to be taken by it, to fall for it, to love it, to fall in love with it.

That is what education used to be, you know. It wasn’t something you purchased so that you could learn the technical skills and receive the required paperwork to be a drone in some cubicle doing something of no interest to you so you could get a paycheck to buy stuff made by other drones.

Education used to be about the via positiva. Consider and marvel at creation so that you might get a glimpse of what it means to be a human being before your life is over. Human beings have a job. That job is to tell our story. We are here to tell the truth of what we see, hear, feel, consider….

The via positiva is the path of noticing this world. Mary Oliver is one of our teachers. This is her poem, Invitation:

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude--
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

That is the via positiva. We notice. We fall in love.
Maybe in so doing we change our life.

Then we get the call in the middle of the night.
The one we love, the one we give our heart to,
The one we live our life for,
Is gone.

She is the mother who held us,
who sang to us,
who was our strength,
and now she sits in her wheelchair and cannot remember our name.

He is the husband who loved us with passion,
who laughed freely without reservation,
whose illness took him long before we were ready.

He is the son, tender, sensitive, smiling,
But whose pain was too great for him to bear.

She is the forest destroyed, the stream polluted, the wildlife vanished.

It is nearly impossible to go through this life without being cheated.
That which we love leaves.
That will happen whether we want it or not.
That love doesn’t end.
The love remains.
The object of our love--
the forest, the husband, the mother, the son--
leaves.
But it isn’t as though we can just turn off the love.
We can try, I suppose.
We can try to numb it, bury it, deny it.
It is still there.
Love when it loses its object does not cease.
It changes to grief.
It demands attention.
It invites the heart to be present.
It invites us on another spiritual path.
Not the one that considers the lilies or the blue heron,
No this path requires courage as well as consideration.
When love turns to grief it hurts.
It hurts badly.
It hurts for a long time.
The spiritual path, the via negativa, is to be attentive to the grief.
And not to turn away.

I turn to Mary Oliver again. From her poem, Love Sorrow:

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.

Amen.

Glory to God--A Sermon (sort of)

In addition to musical offerings by our choir and by small groups of musicians, Music Sunday 2012 features selections from the soon to be published hymnal, Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal.  Last weekend Beverly Shuck, Don Steele, Gil and Carolyn Bailey and myself attended an event at First Presbyterian Church in Bristol. During this event we were introduced to the new hymnal. As we put Music Sunday together, we decided to recreate a little of that experience for you.

The congregation is singing today a dozen or so songs from the upcoming hymnal that are not in the current hymnal. We have grouped some of the hymns in three mini-hymn sings. I will offer a brief reflection before each section. This reflection will be the longest.

The session will be deciding over the next few months whether or not to invite the congregation to purchase this new hymnal. We will set up a workshop soon for the congregation to learn more about the hymnal and to sing more songs from it. Should the session decide to purchase the hymnal, the congregation will be invited to purchase them individually in memory or in honor of a loved one.

The hymnal has a central part in our worship experience. Each week I choose hymns that enhance the theme of the worship service. While at times I choose hymns from other sources, usually they come from the hymnal.

I am going to share a little bit about the history of hymn singing in the Presbyterian Church and the layout of this new hymnal. In so doing I will also share my understanding of what it means to be Presbyterian.

This past week, on September 13th, I acknowledged the 20th anniversary of my ordination to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I am proud of that. I don’t consider my work a job or even a career. I consider it a calling. I am honored that Presbyterians saw gifts in me for ministry and claimed me as one of their own.

I wasn’t born a Presbyterian. I married into it. I remember when I realized it was home. The minister of the church my wife and I attended, Rev. Francis Horner, at White River Presbyterian Church in Auburn, Washington, took me under his wing. One of the first sermons I remember him preaching was about evolution. He didn’t call it Evil-lution. He preached about other things as well. He was from South Africa. This was in the 1980s and the church was in the midst of the struggle against Apartheid. He talked about AIDS (again this was in the 1980s) and the importance of the church responding with compassion and justice to those living with AIDS.

When I approached him about the possibility of going into the ministry he tried to talk me out of it by showing me his Greek and Hebrew Bible and telling me it would take a lot of school. I was hooked. My introduction to Presbyterianism opened my mind and heart. It was Christianity that I hadn’t seen before. It was engaged in social justice, in conversation with science, and it invited me to participate in God’s kingdom on this side of the grave.

This congregation, First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, is probably the most progressive congregation in this region. We might share that designation with the Unitarian church. If the markers of progressive are socially engaged in terms of awareness and advocacy for our environment, civil rights such as full inclusion in church and society of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons, a celebration of different religious traditions, an embrace of science and psychology, and critical engagement with the Bible and the Christian tradition, then we are on the leading edge.

I suggest that we are that not in spite of but because of our Presbyterian heritage. That does not mean that other denominations do not have progressive congregations or that all Presbyterian congregations are progressive, by any means. I am just not surprised that the most progressive Christian congregation in our area is Presbyterian. Our stand for education, critical thinking, social justice, political engagement, and compassionate service is an outgrowth of the historic principles of the Presbyterian Church and Reformed Theology.

I think it is in the interests of our congregation to be intentional about our roots and our identity. It isn’t all who we are. Our mission statement says that we

Honor our Christian heritage while we explore the knowledge and wisdom of multiple religions, science, philosophy, humanities and psychology to deepen and enrich our spiritual journeys.

Yet we can be nurtured by our Presbyterian identity and we can contribute to our ongoing story. This congregation’s advocacy for social justice, freedom of conscience, critical thinking, theological exploration, and its work for peace is an important witness to the larger church.  We are not alone in that.

What does this have to do with the hymnal? The hymnal is Reformed theology set to music. It is part but not all of who we are. Here we find our rooted-ness and our connectedness to the larger church, its history, and its various trajectories.

There have been seven hymnals in our stream of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The first was in 1831. This was the church’s first move away from singing only psalms in worship.

The next hymnal came in 1874 when the new school and the old school reunited.

The next was a hymnal published during the heat of the fundamentalist controversy in 1911.

The next was the green hymnal published in 1933.

In 1955 the red hymnal was published.

In 1972, this congregation started singing from the blueish gray Worshipbook. That was at the time John and Carolyn Martin arrived.

The Martins were here when the current hymnal was published in 1990. That is the hymnbook in the pews.

Since 1933, it has been about every 20 years or so, a generation, that the church feels the call to revise our "photo album." At the hymnal event last Saturday the speaker used the image of a photo album to describe the hymnal. There is only so much room. You need to add new pictures. What to do with the old ones? Some are keepers that you never want to lose. Some were interesting for a time but they can be replaced. When our Presbyterian family needs to update its “photo album” of hymns it wrestles with what hymns are our “heart songs,” that have been with us, what hymns are we as a new generation singing, and how do we put it together.

The formation of the committee for this new hymnal began in 2004. The new hymnal will be published in September 2013. None of the members of this committee, not one, is completely happy with it. What that means is that no individual person agreed with all of the decisions of what hymns to include and what to leave behind. Each of us would do better for our own selves in choosing our own favorite hymns! This congregation could not create a hymnal for itself that everyone would like. But, it isn’t about that. It is about the breadth of songs that speak to our hearts. It isn’t so important that I always sing my favorite heart song. It is of more importance that I am in community with the person next to me who sings a different heart song. If we each learn each other’s songs our hearts might be touched even more.

This new hymnal will have about 800 hymns. Half of them will be new, that is, that have not been in previous Presbyterian hymnals. About 60% of the 600 hymns in the current hymnal will be in the new one.

The order of the hymnal is such that the saga of the Christian story is seen in its fullness, so as we sing the hymns we sing the theology of the church.

Some of these hymns will be old hymns that this committee found and included. Three of those are in this first mini hymn sing. Growing up Baptist, we sang these first three. You may have known them as well.

Some songs will be new. People write hymns every day. We need to hear and sing new songs. Some will be from the global church. These are hymns from different cultures. These will have different rhythms. They will help us recognize that we all are neighbors.

Let us sing!

Here are the songs we sang from the upcoming hymnal.  Some are from the sampler and some were from sources presented at the hymnal event.  Here are the contents of the hymnal.   Here are the hymns we sang on Sunday:

God Welcomes All
Come and Fill Our Hearts
I Love to Tell the Story
What a Fellowship, What a Joy Divine
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud
Glory to God
Give Us Light
He Came Down
As the Wind SOng
Heleluyan We Are Singing
We Will Walk With God