May 13, 2012                                                          Sermon by Peter Terpenning

Community United Church of Christ

Boulder, Colorado

“Sabbath and the Present Moment”

Genesis 2:1-3, Mark 6:30-34, Rumi, “That Lives in Us”

In Mark 6 Jesus says, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile”. The story in Mark today is probably familiar to you. It comes in the Gospel of Mark immediately after the Disciples have been sent out on their own to teach and heal. They were directed; you may remember to take nothing for their journey except the clothes on their backs and a staff and to rely on generosity of strangers as they traveled. They returned reporting great success and many people miraculously healed. Jesus had just been rejected in his hometown of Nazareth, despite huge success everywhere else. Then Mark tells how John the Baptist was killed in prison. So we take up the story as Jesus is reunited with the Disciples and perceives that they are tired. He is probably tired and grieving himself, and he suggests that they get in the boat and go to a lonely place where they can rest and recover. They head off, and as they go, the crowds see where they are going, and they follow them around the shore, collecting more people from surrounding towns as they go. When Jesus and company arrive on the other side they discover a huge crowd waiting for them. Jesus, though tired, sees the people and it says that “he had compassion for them”, and he consents to teach them and heal their diseases.

I confess that the line, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile” sounds like my plan for Sabbatical. I am preparing for my Sabbath. I have been telling people that my main emotions are guilt, since most people don’t get the luxury of 3 months off for rest and the other emotion is great relief, for I do feel the need for a rest. David Stendahl-Rast, a Catholic monk says, “Life is like the breath, we must be able to live in an easy rhythm between give and take. If we cannot learn to lie and breathe in this rhythm, we place ourselves in grave danger.” I am not sure how good I am at the rhythm of give and take. My pattern is to get unbalanced, so hopefully, I can use this sabbatical to learn how to slow down.

Wayne Muller, author of Sabbath, Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest says that some of us fear the emptiness that looms outside our busy lives. We wonder if we are worth anything apart from our work. We are a little worried about what we will discover about ourselves if we stop. There is this lurking, empty void outside our busy lives and we feel the need to keep filling it. So we keep moving. I relate to this. When I was a little boy I worked hard at skipping stones and prided myself on my ability. If you get it just right, you can skip the stone so well it hardly gets wet and skips many times, sometimes all the way to the other side of the pond. But if you don’t throw it well, it sinks. We are afraid to sink, and our goal is to skip over life without getting wet. We don’t want to disappear, so we keep our calendars and blackberries full.

But I need to remember not to fear the void. It is out of emptiness that God created everything. In Chinese landscape paintings that I studied in college as a East Asian Studies major, I learned that empty space is just as important as the painted space. Every painting has emptiness as well as mountains, water and signs of human habitation. The Chinese Taoists considered full space and empty space to be equally important for it is out of emptiness that the ten thousand things are created. Both are necessary for wholeness. So it is with our lives – we need busy, productive time, but also empty, rest time: activity and inactivity, work and Sabbath, fullness and emptiness. So I go on sabbatical seeking emptiness.

I go holding a story in my mind which I want to share with you. It is from a short story by Leo Tolstoy, but Thich Nhat Hanh told it in his book, The Miracle of Mindfulness, which I recommend highly. It is about living in the now, the present moment, which is another way of bringing Sabbath rhythm into our lives. There is an Emperor who seeks the answers to three questions: 1) what is the best time to do each thing? 2) Who are the most important people to work with and 3) what is the most important thing to do at all times? Many experts were brought in but no one could answer it to his satisfaction. Finally, he decided to go ask a contemplative hermit who lived in the mountains. He dressed in humble clothing and left his bodyguards down the trail and went up to the hermit alone. The hermit was digging a garden and the Emperor approached him and asked his questions. (Repeat) The hermit just patted him on the back and kept digging. It was very hard for the hermit, for he was an elderly and he puffed with each breath. The Emperor, observing this, offered to help him and the hermit gratefully turned over the shovel and sat down. The Emperor dug for a long time, and the sun began to go down. He asked his questions again, but again received no answer. Instead the hermit looked up and asked: “Do you hear someone running?” Sure enough, a man ran into the clearing and ran straight toward them. He was bleeding from a wound in his chest. The Emperor helped the man, laid him down and stopped the bleeding with his shirt, wringing it out again and again as it soaked with blood. Finally the bleeding stopped and they moved the man into the hermit’s cottage. The Emperor fell asleep sitting in the doorway. In the morning the wounded man woke up and looked at the Emperor and said: “I very sorry, will you forgive me?” The Emperor was confused until the man explained that he was the Emperor’s mortal enemy whose brother been killed in the Emperor’s wars and left his family penniless. He had been determined to kill the Emperor but his guards had seen him following the Emperor and recognized him and wounded him. “I surely would have died of my wounds if you had not saved me, forgive me and I will serve you with all my heart for I see you are a compassionate man.” The Emperor was pleased and had his own doctor’s look as his wound and then he let him go. Before he left he asked the hermit one more time his questions. The hermit said, “Your questions have already been answered”. “How”, he asked. “Well, yesterday, if you hadn’t taken pity on me and helped me dig, you would have been attacked on your way back, so the most important time was when you were digging, the most important person was me, and the most important pursuit was to help me. Later, when the wounded man ran up here, the most important time was the time you were dressing his wound, for if you had not cared for him he would have died and you would have lost the chance to be reconciled with him. So, the most important person was the attacker, the most important job was taking care of his wound. Remember, the most important time is always now, the present moment. It is the only moment over which we have any power. The most important person is the person you are with and if alone, it is you. And the most important thing to do is taking care of that person, making them happy or serving them.

This is the truth I leave with you and take with me on Sabbatical; all we really have is the present moment and the people and animals that share that moment with us. In this moment we can find our rhythm of rest and work, and let go of fear, for that resides in the torturers rack of the past and the future. I will seek to rest in the now.

May 6, 2012                                                            Sermon by Peter Terpenning

Community United Church of Christ

Boulder, Colorado

“Abiding in God”

Cynthia Bourgeault, “The Divine Indwelling”,  John 15:1-11

Behind the housing development where I grew up near Chagrin Falls, Ohio, was an old farm. The farm had once owned the land where the suburban homes were, but now all that was left was a crumbling barn, some out buildings, an old orchard and plantings. This is where we played, building tree forts in the apple trees, having our annual “apple wars” with the kids in the next development, fishing in the creek, climbing in the rafters of the barn 9a very dangerous activity in retrospect) and picking black berries. Off in the field was a grape vine. Once I suppose there had been grape trellises, but what had grown up in neglect was a huge mass of grapes, grown wildly out of control like a big clump of vines. It was an enchanted place. We would burrow down deep underneath and look up at the ceiling of vines and leaves that was so thick it blocked out the sun. It was a fort or a house depending on the game. We would climb on top and use it as a trampoline, for the vines were wound so tightly it supported our weight. We harvested the grapes, eating most of them on site, risking death, we thought, to poisoning. Those I brought proudly home were viewed with suspicion by my mother, though as I think about it now, I think they were concord grapes.

But this vine will forever be my vision of the vine that Jesus talked about as connecting us to God and to each other. “No man is an island entire of itself”, wrote John Donne in the often quoted lines, “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less: as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manner of your friends or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls, if tolls for thee.”

In our reading from John, Jesus uses the vine as an image of our connection to God. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. Someone noted, perhaps Thomas Keating, from the perspective of the branches, “it’s all vine”. It’s all one plant. This metaphor points to the mystery that Cynthia Bourgeault addresses in our first reading today, the divine indwelling or as Meister Eckhart writes: “There is in the soul a something in which God dwells, and there is in the soul a something in which the soul dwells in God.” The word John uses to express the connection of the vine and branches is meno, which is commonly translated as abide. Abide means: “to rest, to dwell, to tarry or stay in the same state, to be firm or immoveable, to continue permanently, to live, lodge or endure”. Think of that as Jesus says “Abide in me…abide in my love”. To tarry in God, to be firm and immoveable, to continue permanently, to live, lodge and endure in God. We can abide in God, we are one with God in some deep, mysterious way. The Kingdom of God is within.

There was rancher who had to move a bull from one field to another and somehow things got out of control and the bull charged him. He was far from the fence and couldn’t get out of the way and he was gored. While lying on the ground the bull charged him again and gored him in the side again. He had to get away, but could hardly move. He began to crawl toward an old trailer that was across the field. Bleeding and desperate, he began to pray. A sense of peace came over him and he found the strength to crawl and made it to safety. The continued to charge and butt the trailer, but he was safe. Unfortunately, his pickup truck was across the field outside the fence and he had to get there if he was going to get help. He had no cell phone. After a time, the bull wandered away and he began to crawl again. Praying every inch of way, he found strength and it seemed to him that a protective bubble was around him that kept the bull from noticing him. In any case, painstakingly, he made it to the truck. Now he had to hoist himself into the driver seat. Praying continually, he made it and began to drive home. His injuries included a wounded leg and he was having trouble concentrating, but he drove home. But there was no one there and couldn’t think what to do. He didn’t think he could get out of the truck, so he prayed. Immediately the answer came, “Drive to the hospital”. So once again he summoned his energy and drove slowly and painfully the 20 miles to the hospital. He felt God was with him every mile and he rested in God’s presence. He arrived alive and laid on the horn to attract the attention of the emergency room staff. He slumped gratefully onto the stretcher that carried him to safety.

He felt he has been sustained by God and he had lived. But over the next few days he began to feel lost and alone, depressed. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. He was alive and healing and should feel great. All he knew was that his unease had something to do with the pickup truck. One day it hit him. He had left God in the truck. All through the crisis he had had an amazing sense of connection to God but when he go to the hospital he relaxed and began to rely on the doctors and on his own sense of accomplishment of what he had done to save himself. But he had lost the connection to God that has sustained him and it left a huge hole in his psyche. He resolved to try and live his life continually seeking the connection he had had with God during his crisis. He decided to abide in God.

I like this story because I also struggle to keep my connection to God. Most of you know I have had to deal with anxiety and panic. It first hit me related to drug use when I was young. But it returned when my father was dying.  As I have entered the contemplative life with meditation and centering prayer, it went deeper and I have had a profound confrontation with fear over the years. At times of crisis I have prayed, and at times I have been sustained by a deep connection to God. I am learning to welcome fear as one of the things that draws me back to my connection with God. I fall on my face again and again, and face anxiety at deeper and deeper levels, but God picks me up and like the rancher, I am learning to abide in God.

We can abide in God. In fact, I have come to believe that at our deepest point, we are one with God, and God is one with us. “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me” to quote Meister Eckhart again, “My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love”. Meditation and contemplative prayer are one way to gradually uncover our connection to God. But as usual, for me it comes down to trust. As I turn to God, trust in God and acknowledge my connection to God, I grow better and better at abiding in God. May God help us rest, dwell, tarry and stay in God; be firm and immoveable, continue permanently, live, lodge and endure in God. God is the vine and we are the branches, but from the branches perspective, it’s all vine.

April 29, 2012                                                          Sermon by Peter Terpenning

Community United Church of Christ

Boulder, Colorado

“Do Nothing and Everything Will be Accomplished”

Tao Te Ching, Chapter #47, Acts of the Apostles 4:5-12, 5:27-42

Let’s hear chapter 47 of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu one more time, “Without venturing out-of-doors, one may know the world, Without looking out one’s window, one may know the ways of Heaven. For the further one travels, the less one knows. Therefore the Sage arrives without going, sees all without looking, does nothing, yet achieves everything.” Doing nothing, yet achieving everything is called in the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, “Wu Wei”. It is the philosophy of softness, inaction, non-violence, no words. This ancient teaching (500 BCE) is hard to understand for westerners – yet when I first heard in a religion class in college there was something that resonated with me immediately. Chapter 43 of Tao Te Ching reads: “The softest thing in the world rides over the hardest things. What has no being enters what leaves no opening. This makes me realize the advantage of not doing. Teaching done by not talking, the advantage gained by no doing- few things in the world can match this”. Water, running over rocks wears down the rocks. The power in many martial arts is based on using the force of the opponent against them. There are many examples of Wu Wei. There is a story from Chuang Tzu, another Taoist teacher, of the Gorge of Lu, where a great waterfall plunges for thousands of feet, its spray visible for miles. In the churning waters no living creature can be seen. One day, Kung Fu Tse was standing at a distance from the pool’s edge when he saw an old man being tossed about in the turbulent water. He called to his disciples and together they ran to rescue the victim. But by the time they reached the water the old man had climbed out onto the bank and was walking along, singing to himself. Kung Fu Tse hurried up to him and said, “You would have to be a ghost to survive that, but you seem to be a man, what secret power do you have?” “Nothing special”, the old man replied. “I began to learn while very young, and grew up practicing it. Now I am certain of success. I go down with the water and come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself. I survive because I don’t struggle against the water’s superior power. That’s all.’

I thought of Wu Wei as I read again the story in Acts of Peter and John coming before the Sanhedrin, that is, the high religious court. In the court is the famous Pharisee, Gamaliel, teacher of Paul of Tarsus, and a leader among the Pharisees. The story unfolds as Peter and John have healed a lame man outside the temple in the name of Jesus. The word is spreading throughout Jerusalem and the religious officials decide they must do something. They arrest Peter, John and man who was healed, but grow afraid of the crowds and release them. Later, all eleven disciples are arrested, but are miraculously released by the action of the Holy Spirit that night. The disciples are in the temple preaching again the next day and the high priest has them brought before the Sanhedrin. Before the court Peter and John speak courageously, to the amazement of the court. Aren’t these uneducated fishermen, commoners, known as “idiota” by the educated elite? Yet they speak out articulately in the court, witnessing to Jesus. The Sanhedrin members become enraged at their presumption and want to have them killed, and this is when Gamaliel rises to speak. “Men of Israel” he begins, “take care what you do to these men. Theudas arose…but he was slain and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him Judas the Galilean arose…and he came to nothing…so in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God.” In other word, “Do nothing and everything will be accomplished”.

Wise word. Gamaliel was right. If God wasn’t with the Christians, don’t worry, they won’t succeed. But if this is God’s work, you don’t want to be against it. There are many things in our world that we should leave alone and let God’s will be done. There is a time to speak and time to remain silent. We often rush around, trying to cover God’s back. We worry, fuss, go to war, build up the police, all because we don’t really trust that there is a God who cares for the world. Trust the shepherd of the 23^rd Psalm to lead us in right paths. Doesn’t God take care of lilies of the field and birds of the air. We really do not trust God, but seek to care for ourselves and the world. Most of the time we act as if there is no God to trust.

But wait a minute, you might be thinking, isn’t there a time for action? We can’t just sit around and let God do everything. We are God’s hands and feet on earth, after all. Surely we are called to action for justice and peace. We are to feed the poor and help the homeless and all the work in taking care of people and society. One way to interpret the Tao Te Ching and Wu Wei is to see Wu Wei as a way of acting. Taoism does call people to action in other chapters of the Tao Te Ching, but Wu Wei, non-action, is a way of acting in the world. To act without violence or aggression, for example. That is, to take no action that violates another person, but to act with compassion, humility and moderation. Softness, non-resisting is the to be like water, which does not resist, yet wears down the rocks in the stream. Water that falls hundreds of feet and does not resist, flows to the lowest place, yet gathers strength as it flows. Water is actually one of the strongest forces in the world. So we are to find that which in human nature and behavior that is like water. Martial arts, redirecting the force of the opponent, non-violent resistance, seeking to change the behavior of the opponent through love, following the natural order of things and finding the soft way, the compassionate way, the loving way.  There is a story in Taoism of skilled butcher cutting up an ox. With years of practice he was able to cut it up very efficiently with just several smooth motions and almost no effort. He told Chuang Tzu that with practice he had discovered the soft places between bone and sinews and let his knife follow these. Learning to cut up the ox with the least number of cuts and energy.

But there is a deeper level of understanding of Wu Wei, non-action, as well. David Frenette, a contemplative Christian teacher, teaches a prayer to use when beginning your meditation that goes: “I let go of my efforts to change myself, and let God change my heart”. In other words, there is a dimension of faith that it is God who transforms us, not we who transform ourselves through great effort. If the Kingdom of God is within, and our basic identity is of God – if we are branches on the vine which is God, connected and one with God and other people, then our spiritual journey is the letting go of self and discovering our true identity as children of God. This is called Kenosis, or self-emptying, and is an aspect of all religions. We let go of self and discover our true nature. Wu Wei and Taoism teach that the Tao is the basic pattern of all creation, and the human quest is to uncover this pattern of how the Tao works in people and get our lives in harmony with with the Tao.  I believe this is true of Christianity as well, and all faiths, in fact. If we are made in the image of God and part of God’s vine, then we can discover or uncover how to live in harmony with God. We can let go of self and self-serving thoughts and actions and discover how to live with trust in God’s action in and through us.

The early Christian community seems to have been an example of people living out this self-emptying life of faith. From Jesus they learned a profound trust in God that freed them to fearless and transformed lives. They went singing to prison, refused to serve in the armed forces of Rome, healed and preached with no thought to personal safety, formed communities that shared possessions and had all things in common and saw their lives as serving God and neighbor. Something happened to those humble, powerless people that transformed them and eventually transformed their society. We are called to fearlessly let go of self and open ourselves to the transforming action of God.