Faith is Key

Faith, 3 Key Verses: (1) Ephesians 3:16 (ESV): “…may…you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith….” (2) Romans 14:23 (ESV): “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” (3) 1 Cor. 2 (ESV): “…my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom…so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

These scriptures tells us that faith is key, that faith is primary, central, of first importance. Faith is the means to everything else in the spiritual life. As Ephesians 3 says above, Christ dwells in our hearts through faith. So then it is essential that we understand and practice our faith. It’s vital that we remember that faith is first a relationship with God, and that relationship is primarily one of trust, surrender, intimacy, and open-ness to him. To grow in faith requires practice. We must exercise our faith; we must practice yielding to God in the moment-by-moment unfolding of our lives. Though it may sound hard, really it only requires that we trust him, yield to him. This is his promise: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:29, ESV).

--Rickey

Centered in God, Not in Ourselves

To grow in the freedom to fully love God and others requires growing in the capacity to “de-center” from our selves and “re-center” in God. It is a death and re-birth experience. The successful practice of this approach frees us from the domination of our individual ego and enables us to awaken to a sense of the self rooted in God through Jesus Christ. This new sense of self does not result from the abolishment of our former humanity but rather its transformation and fulfillment. The goal is what the Apostle Paul meant when he declared, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Thus while life in the Spirit is deeply personal, it is not individualistic. Spiritual practices like deep prayer and sacrificial service enable us to de-center, to yield to and persevere in God in the face of pain, disappointment, confusion, and disorientation. They provide structure and support for being radically open to the Spirit and the Spirit’s formative work in us in an ongoing and consistent way, one that must be rooted primarily in faith. Without faith, we are trapped in our separate, limited selves—centered in our own limited, self-referential understanding. But by laying that aside and trusting God by faith, we are open and present to God and the divine action in and through us.

"Father, Forgive Them...": A Meditation on Forgiveness

This past Good Friday, I was privileged to give one of the meditations on the seven last words of Christ. Anna has encouraged me to post my meditation here, and so I have. Rich Easter blessings to all! Rickey 

Father, Forgive…: First of the 7 Last Words of Christ

             Luke 23:34 (ESV): ³⁴ Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

On the one hand it’s no surprise that Jesus’s first words on the cross were of forgiveness. Forgiveness is why he came; he was fulfilling his mission. But it’s also important that we don’t take these words of his for granted. Instead, it is vital that we are mindful of them and that we meditate on them in an ongoing way—that we engage again and again how remarkable it is that he could be treated so unjustly, so brutally, and yet his first words on the cross were to ask his Father to forgive.

In meditating on these words of his and their significance, our first response should be for us to receive and appropriate for ourselves the forgiveness that Jesus prayed for and that he accomplished for us on the cross. From the perspective of eternity, our sins helped put him on that cross. He was dying for the sins of all. The forgiveness he longed for is a complete healing of the human condition in its alienation and separation from God. It is the bridging of the abyss between us and God caused by sin. The forgiveness achieved by Jesus on the cross makes it possible for us now to be united with God, to participate in God’s nature, as it says in I Peter. To have, as John 17 says, the Son and the Father live in us and us in them. It’s incredible, a glorious heritage, and his words inaugurate it. The resurrection fulfills it. And it is imperative that we make it our primary goal to seek to actualize God’s forgiveness, his love, his embrace in our lives.

We must recognize again and again that it is not our sin but God’s love that is paramount. Forgiveness is primarily about relationship. It is not primarily about having one’s account wiped clean or moving from the debit side of the ledger to the credit side. Instead forgiveness involves the removal of obstacles that lie in the way of intimate union with God and others. It is the invitation and the enablement to live in a new relationship with the one who forgives. So to be forgiven means that we can no longer live in the same way.

We have a second responsibility in response to these words of the Lord: we are to forgive others as he forgives. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught us to forgive like he would on the cross. The line we say is, forgive us as we also forgive others. So much in human life depends on forgiveness, and so much could be healed in our world if the forgiveness made possible by Jesus were more and more practiced in our lives. Forgiveness makes possible healing, reconciliation, and renewal, whether in friendships, families, churches, or nations.

Like Jesus on the cross then, we must pray for our enemies. He is our model and our example. If he could do it on the cross, surely we can do it in our circumstances. Our forgiveness of others is key to our spiritual growth. Some spiritual writers consider praying for our enemies as the main marker of deep and mature Christian spirituality.

It’s not easy, as we all know well. We are all wounded people, whether we appear so to others or not. Who wounds us? So often it’s those we love and those who love us. And we wound them. This is why long-term in-depth relationships cannot be sustained without forgiveness. To truly forgive others, to forgive from the heart is very difficult—it is precisely our hearts that have been wounded. In fact, it is impossible for us, but nothing impossible for God, and he is seeking to work in us and through us.

To pray is to be intimate before God and with God. To bring those who have frustrated us, hurt, or even betrayed us into our prayer time then is to be vulnerable yet again to these frustrations, hurts, and betrayals. But it is also to be cleansed, comforted, strengthened, and even healed in regard them. And more important, much more important, it is to become more and more like Jesus, to become more and more closely united with him. And for his life to be more and more fully expressed through us. We unite with him in accepting and seeking healing of the sinfulness of the world.

Paul says in Colossians 1 that our sufferings help fulfill the ministry of Jesus. In praying for our enemies, our hearts join with his in the work of redemption. To hear them again, his words were, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In honoring these words of Jesus for forgiveness, in receiving them for ourselves, in practicing them toward others, we become a true community of the Spirit, and a true community of the Spirit is always a community of forgiveness. 

Anna's Poem for Clara's Eulogy

As Rickey wrote in his post last week, the funeral for one of the members of our centering prayer group was on Saturday, January 17. Clara Chapman, who died of lung cancer, had asked me to write and then read a poem as my part of her eulogy. She had a special walk with the Lord, and I hope my poem, which is below, portrays some of that, Anna

Clara

small and a lover of small people,
but I don't mean short.
I mean small people like
the women who never had much,
not of money or education
and certainly not of love
or the men who matched those
women in lacking the same things.

Clara

small, but with a huge heart
that worked at filling in the gaps
for folks who carried hurt
like they carried their belongings
all lumped together in bags and backpacks
bulging at the seams.

Clara

small, but with her own hands
feeding the homeless and readily
donating the proverbial widows mite,
which I imagine Jesus multiplied
because whatever amount it was
amounted to more

in his sight.

Clara

small, and making small things,
food for friends and strangers
and dresses for Dawn her daughter,
the mystery of caring hiding in
in cake batter and hems.

 

Clara

 

small, and like Mary,

drawn to silence,

pondering these things in her heart.

 

Clara

small, easily overlooked in the day to day
life of this world
but today we are all paying attention
today we see that in God’s eyes
small matters.

Grace in Dying and Friendship with God

The funeral for one of the members of our centering prayer group was yesterday. Anna and I were privileged to deliver parts of her eulogy. I'm pasting in my part of the eulogy below; four of us spoke. Clara, who died of lung cancer, had asked that Anna write and then read a poem as her part of the eulogy. Anna will post her poem in a few days--Rickey

Clara Chapman: My Part of Her Eulogy

For me, Clara was a spiritual teacher, one of the most important in my life. The reason is because she modelled for me “grace in dying.” This phrase “grace in dying” is circulating now in some of the spiritual circles I move in. Because of Clara, I know what it actually looks like. It’s not just words for me.

Clara and I became spiritual friends after she got the news that her lung cancer was terminal, that she had just a year or so to live. Being the woman of God she was, she prayed hard about how to respond to her diagnosis and how to live the last days remaining to her. For many, many years, everything in her life had been dedicated to God, and this last year would be no different. In fact, it would be more so.

I am blessed that one of things God led Clara to do in her last year was to join the All Saints’ contemplative prayer group, which I facilitate. That’s how I came to know her.

Although contemplative prayer was new to her, she took to it, as the cliché says, like a duck to water.

One of the statements in her obituary that means a lot to me is that among her many activities of service and worship, she “especially looked forward to the Centering Prayer group on Monday evenings.”

A time of silent prayer is one of the major components of those evenings. As most of you know, Clara was always thinking of others, and she almost quit coming to Centering Prayer in her last few months because she didn’t want to be a distraction to us, she said. Those last few months she couldn’t go out without her portable oxygen machine, which was a bit noisy. She needed it to breathe, and she was afraid its noise would take away from our silent prayer time.

But it was just the opposite. Having Clara in our midst, with her courage and her wholesale commitment to God, took us along with her deeper into the presence of the Lord. It was clear to us that she was growing closer and closer to him, surrendering more and more completely to him, and her presence with us on Monday evenings and the noise of that portable oxygen machine had a sacramental effect on us. It brought us along with her into a closer and deeper relationship with God.

As a woman of God, Clara had many dimensions: faithful worship, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, volunteering at the thrift store, Sidewalk Sunday School, and many others. But for me, none was more important than her example of friendship with God. Clara was a woman who truly knew the Lord.

Sermon on Psalm 103

I preached a few weeks ago on a section of Psalm 103. It is a beautiful Psalm. The sermon is long for a blog post, so I've linked to it here, in case you all are interested in reading it. 

From Psalm 103

¹³ As a father has compassion for his children,
   so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
¹⁴ For he knows how we were made;
   he remembers that we are dust.
¹⁵ As for mortals, their days are like grass;
   they flourish like a flower of the field;
¹⁶ for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
   and its place knows it no more.
¹⁷ But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
   on those who fear him,
   and his righteousness to children’s children,