“Centering”
The Sixteenth Sunday
after Pentecost – Proper 18
8 September 2013
Saint Anne’s
Episcopal Church
Fremont, California
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
Philemon 1-21
St. Luke 14:25-33
INI
Introduction of the
Theme – Centering
I would like to focus our thoughts on the readings for this
morning by introducing a central thought and suggesting a practice that you
might use in your own life. In order to
introduce the central thought or theme, I need to relate an experience I had in
seminary. Actually it wasn’t at the
seminary, but while I was at seminary.
I’ve always been interested in the arts, and so I thought taking a
course in ceramics might be interesting.
I enrolled in a course with Steven Zawoiski, a local artist and
potter. We learned various techniques;
roll construction, slab construction, and throwing pots on a wheel. And here we come to our central point. In order to throw a pot on a wheel the potter
needs to take sufficient clay, place it on the wheel, and then, with the wheel
running, center the clay so that its center of gravity is in the exact center
of the wheel. If the clay is not
centered, the pot will torque out, and pulling a pot out of the whirling clay
will become impossible. Jeremiah
understands: “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s
hand.” This centering of the clay is
physically demanding, requiring strong hand and arm muscles and deep intent on
discovering the center. This is the
central idea for us this morning – centering the clay, our lives, our family, and
our thoughts. Centering.
The second part of this introduction is a practice that we
can employ when working at the discipline of centering our lives in
Christ. It is called centering prayer,
and it can be quite useful in doing the business of centering life in
Christ. I will describe the steps to
you, and will give you a copy of these steps at the end of the service. It is a simple and elegant way to center
prayer and thinking:
1.
Sit comfortably with your eyes closed,
relax, and quiet yourself. Be in love and faith to G-d.
2.
Choose a sacred word that best supports your
sincere intention to be in the Lord's presence and open to His divine action
within you (i.e. "Jesus", "Lord," "G-d," "Savior,"
"Abba," "Divine," "Shalom," "Spirit,"
"Love," etc.).
3.
Let that word be gently present as your
symbol of your sincere intention to be in the Lord's presence and open to His
divine action within you.
4.
Whenever you become aware of anything
(thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, associations, etc.), simply return to
your sacred word, your anchor.
So now that we have the central thought and practice –
centering, let me suggest to you from today’s readings, words that might serve
as anchor words for your prayer.
Centering on Repentance
(Jeremiah)
Jeremiah introduces a clear-cut visual when he talks about
the pot, which has been spoiled in the potter’s hand. “And he reworked it into another vessel, as
seemed good to him.” The word for repentance,
metanoia in Greek, means to literally
“turn around”. As the potter recenters
the clay, so Jeremiah bids Israel to turn around, to turn their faces back to
the G-d who is the potter. Jeremiah was
preaching to a people who thought that political solutions would take them out
of the crisis in which they found themselves.
The dilemma was similar to the one we find ourselves in – how do we deal
with Syria? Where is G-d in the
situation? What might our thoughts be if
we were looking at G-d for an answer? So if we were to use “repentance” as a
centering word, we might begin to wonder what it is that we need to move away
from, to look away from. We might wonder
how we can turn and face G-d again.
First centering word: “repentance”.
Centering on the
Journey with G-d (Psalm)
The psalmist in Psalm 139 seems to understand G-d as potter
as Jeremiah understands G-d. “You press
upon me behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” Or as Robert Alter translate it: “From behind
and in front you shaped me, and you set your palm upon me.” G-d knows us because G-d has shaped us. The experience with G-d does not stop there,
however – it continues. “You trace my
journeys and my resting-places, and are acquainted with all my ways.” The centering word that comes to us from this
Psalm is “Journey”. Where are you
going? What is your destination? With whom are you traveling? The psalmist understands that the G-d who
made us does not just place us on a shelf of pots (if you will) but rather
continues in life with us. The journey with God begins from our very
beginning, “For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in
my mother’s womb.” What would it be like
for you to pray having the full knowledge that your journey in life is not done
in solitude – but rather that G-d accompanies you in all things. The second centering word: “journey”.
Centering on our Family
(Philemon)
Jeremiah knew troubling political situations, the psalmist
had a rich interior life, and now Paul involves himself in a situation that
most of us would not have touched with a ten-foot pole. He doesn’t address the evil of slavery, but
he does address this issue of “family.”
His friend, Philemon, perhaps a fellow Christian leader, has lost a
slave, Onesimus, who has run away to Paul.
Paul makes a Christian of him, and finds him “useful” in his work in the
church. Paul encourages Philemon to
receive Onesimus back into his household, and then to release him to work with
Paul. It is an interesting commentary on
family. When we run into the word
“household”, the Greek oikos, we need
to be aware that it is inclusive of much more than immediate family. It included everyone, family, slave, some
clients, children – all who worked and labored in the house. After the Second World War, when huge numbers
of people left the towns and cities in which they were born and raised and
moved to larger cities at some distance from their homeland, people began to
realize that “family” was more than aunts, uncles, and cousins. There was a growing “fictive family”, as my
husband would call it – a family brought together by mutual love and respect. This is what Paul is advocating – a family
centered in service to Christ? Who is
your family? Who is included, who is
not? How do you pray for your family
both real and virtual? The third
centering word: “family.”
Centering on
Discipleship
It is this image of family that Jesus uses as a deciding
point about discipleship. On various
occasions Jesus uses the family as a point of discussion about what the Kingdom
of Heaven is all about. The central idea
that emerges is that of “cost”. When
told that his family was waiting to see him, Jesus shoots back “who is my family?”
His answer is broader than we might expect.
“Who ever does G-d’s will – these are my family.” Another way of putting it would be that
whoever paid the cost of discipleship is family in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lutheran pastor and martyr Dietrich
Bonhoeffer put it this way in his book The Cost of Discipleship, “when
Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
Talk about cost! This is,
however, how Jesus talks about what it means to follow him. “Take up your cross”, Jesus says.
This is where prayer comes into the picture, and the prayer
that Jesus mentions in the Gospel is very practical. What do people who are building a house do –
they count the cost. A king who is going
to wage war? Count the cost. Do you see the prayer in counting the
cost? Centering our prayer on
discipleship would need to take in account all that G-d has done for us (G-d’s
cost) and all the ways we are known by G-d and are known by us. The psalmist can help,
“LORD, You searched me and you know,
It is you who know when I sit and I rise,
You fathom my thoughts from afar.
My path and my lair you winnow,
and with all my ways are familiar.
For there is no word on my tongue
but that You, O LORD, wholly know it." - Alter
In short G-d knows the sum of what we are and that is what
we need to add into the calculation of the cost of our discipleship. What does it cost you to love your
family? What does it cost you to follow
Jesus? What is the cost of your
discipleship? If your answer is
“nothing”, then I need to send you to your prayer desk to calculate the
cost. I doubt, however, that any of you
would answer such. You do know the cost
of love (family), and the cost of following Jesus (worship and service). Now to press on in our journey together and
individually, we all should center our prayer on discipleship. So the fourth centering word:
discipleship. Things that we should do
today to make us ready for our prayer during the week: have assurance in the words of forgiveness in
the Absolution, be nourished by the
Eucharist, and touch the water of your Baptism.
Then, center your week in Christ, neighbor, and self.
SDG
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