Union Church

May 4, 2008
1 Peter 3:13-17, 5:6,7.

The latest rage in spiritual seeking involves a partnership of Oprah and Eckhart Tolle. Oprah and Eckhart have joined forces to create a 10 week, hour and a half, global, on-line simal-cast. The Monday night discussion group focusses on one chapter a week of Tolle’s best selling book “A New Earth.” Over a million people are watching it every Monday at 9 p.m. Eastern daylight time and millions more are down-loading the session through Oprah’s website or iTunes. Tomorrow is the 10th and final session and it will be two hours in length.

Have you heard of this new high-tech cyberspace undertaking?

Have you read the book?

Have you gone on line?

John and I have read the book and are following on line.
I believe this phenomenon is very important.
It is important because it makes available a simplified synthesis of the best of eastern and western spiritual traditions.
It is important because it makes it available to millions of people who are no longer church goers.

Much of the focus of the book and the sessions is around the problem of suffering. And suffering is a central issue in our I Peter reading today.

We in our modern western Christian tradition have a problem with suffering. We don’t want to suffer because we think all suffering is bad.

We also think that if we suffer it is a sign of failure or punishment. So then we blame suffering on God’s will or the Devil’s action.
It’s kind of strange when you think about it.

The simple fact of life is that there will always be times of suffering and times of joy.

Life together has its ups and downs.

Eastern thought has always accepted suffering as part of life and suggests that there is right suffering and wrong suffering. So if you are going to suffer, make certain it is for the right reasons and not the wrong reasons.

This is exactly what Peter is saying to the early Christian church.
The trick about right suffering is letting the awareness of God, letting the awareness of the Risen Christ, letting the awareness of the Holy Spirit arise within us, between action and our reaction.

Tolle calls this “creating a space of awareness around the present moment.”

Often when we are in a disagreement with someone, it gets personal, we let it get personal. Once we let it get personal there is no awareness, no space around the moment of interaction. Instead, we are thinking about our own hurts in the past
or our rebuttals in the future moment.
The present moment is gone, it is lost.
There is no awareness and there is no space.
There is no room to be aware of the Risen Christ’s wisdom.
There is no room to be aware of the Spirit’s guidance.
There is no room to be aware of God’s love.

The easiest example for this is the person who cuts us off on the highway. We think he or she did it on purpose and flip them the finger, emotionally, verbally and maybe even physically.

When we return slight for slight, tit for tat, anger for anger, accusation for accusation we keep the cycle of wrong suffering rolling along, alive and oh so very well.

The spiritual life, resurrection living breaks the cycle. We break the cycle when we become aware of God in the space between action and reaction. There is more to who we are than our unconscious reactions, our ego defences. When we are in Christ, we discover a whole new realm of our existence.

So, the next time we each find our self in a situation -
let’s stop.

Become aware of that unconscious response or thought we have or are ready to give.

Take a deep breath.

Allow God into the picture.

Create a space for spiritual awareness.

And surprisingly enough, we will experience peace beyond our fear, and hope beyond our sorrow.

Acts 1: 6-14.

The story of the Ascension has a lot of direction in it. Jesus takes the disciples out of Jerusalem and up a mountain, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. Then he is lifted up into heaven. His rising up, his ascension is obscured by a cloud.
Suddenly two angels appear, asking the disciples,
“Why are you looking up towards heaven?”

The implication is, “You need to be looking around to be witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea, and Samaria and to all the world.” They already have been directed to go back to Jerusalem, back to the upper room.
There they wait, devoting themselves to prayer.

There seems to be a lot of directions in this story.
And we know how much we hate to be given a lot of direction!

But, I think the key direction is the one that is implied. “Don’t look up towards heaven, look around to all the world.”

So one interpretation is “Don’t look up to heaven for all the answers but look around you for the encounters where God’s presence can be recognized.
Look around for the opportunities to witness to the hope that is within you.”
But before the disciples are to do this, they are directed back to Jerusalem, back to the upper room and prayer.

In their prayer, they are to look within.
They are to create a space of awareness for the Risen Christ to be known.
They are to make room for the love of God to be experienced.
They are to create a space of awareness for the Spirit to come.

Does this sound familiar?
Weren’t we just talking about this?

We too must go in.
We must be directed inward to create a space for God’s indwelling, for God’s presence.
We do this to be grounded enough to become witnesses to resurrection living in the world.

Now, the actual scripture passage says that the disciples, who are now called apostles, were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”
We need to remember that Luke’s memory of the early church is history the way they wished it to be. This phrase “constantly devoting themselves to prayer” implies that maybe they didn’t do it all the time but in hind sight wished they had.

The main point for us is that prayer is not a marathon race reserved for only the fittest spiritual athletes.

We do what we can.

We create a space in the moment.

We open up an awareness to our vaster,
higher self in the Risen Christ.

It is a momentary process.

Moment by moment we grow in the ability to chose wisely, chose Christ’s wisdom, chose the Spirit’s power in each situation.

Becoming aware is actually prayer.

Naming our joys is actually prayer.

Voicing our concerns is actually prayer.

And in the midst of all this a funny thing, a surprising thing happens.

In the naming, in the voicing, in the awareness,
we become witnesses to Resurrection living.

In the naming, in the voicing, in the awareness,
we are empowered in the Spirit,
we are grounded in God’s love,
we are guided by Jesus’ example to go out to all the world.

We fill our moments with God’s grace.

We fill our relationships with the compassion of Christ.

We fill our actions with love and joy.