“A
Labyrinthine Faith”
Psalm 25:1-10
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
June 1, 2008
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Casa del Sol is a retreat house
at the
The Companions have written a version of The Lord’s Prayer that they call “The Prayer of Jesus” that they sing at the rising and setting of the sun each day. As an act of charity, I’ll not attempt to sing it for you, but I will share the words. I did so at the Aging and Saging group the other day and many of those present wanted to adopt it as the version we pray in our worship. It goes like this:
Ground of all being,
Mother of life,
Father of the universe,
Your name is sacred, beyond speaking.
May we know your presence,
may your longings be our longings
in heart and action.
May there be food for the human family today
and for the whole earth community.
Forgive us the falseness of what we have done
as we forgive those who are untrue to us.
Do not forsake us in our time of conflict
but lead us into new beginnings.
For the light of life,
the vitality of life,
and the glory of life
are yours now and forever.
Amen.
The last part of that prayer –
for the light of life, the vitality of life, and the glory of life are yours,
O God, now and forever – reminds me of a little poem I read a few years
ago by a poet named John Squadra in his collection called This Ecstasy:
where we are going.
It is a place
where we are from.
We can go there
at any time.
It is our beliefs
that lock us in our hell.
It is the sacredness of this moment
(that is the key to consciousness)
that is the key to freedom.
Accessing
paradise, which is not so much the place to which we are going as the place from
which we have come, seems more and more important to me these days.
There is so much religious noise today.
So many arguments. So much
posturing. So many competing claims
and assertions. So many people eager
to speak for God. But what about
that quiet Center in which we can both know and be known?
The place where we are invited to be still and to know the presence of
God within us? The paradise from
which we have come?
In his book entitled A
Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer adeptly describes our tendency to live
divided lives. He says that we
develop onstage lives and backstage lives and often we assume roles that are at
odds with our souls. We project our
shadows onto other people, some people calling forth our light shadows and
others our dark shadows. We feel
fragmented and our lives get compartmentalized and eventually we just figure
that is how life is. So we become
the sum of our divided parts but lack the wholeness for which we are made, the
kind of wholeness that we see in Jesus that blesses our relationships and the
world around us.
That is why I am coming to value
spiritual practice as much as theological acuity.
There are few people who love theology more than I do.
Theology is important, saying what it is we believe about God and faith
and life. But it is possible to do
theology at arm’s length and to remain relatively unmoved and unchanged by it.
Spiritual practice has as its goal a growing wholeness that comes from
experiencing the paradise from which we come, the harmonizing divinity within
us. It does not happen all at once;
hence, spiritual practice employs the image of the “journey.”
We see this metaphorized in Abraham setting out by faith on a journey to
a land unknown to him but to which God would lead him.
We see the idea played out as the ancient Israelites journey from slavery
in
We earlier read the prayer of
the psalmist that underscores the nature of our lives as journey when he said, “Make
me to know your ways, O God; teach me your paths…”
The labyrinth is an ancient instrument of spiritual practice that ritualizes our journeys into the light of life, the vitality of life, the glory of life that, as the Casa del Sol prayer of Jesus says, is and emanates from God. The labyrinth ritualizes our journeys into God and thus also our deeper and truer humanity. It ritualizes our journeys toward an increasingly undivided life. It ritualizes our journeys into the paradise from which we come and for which we are made.
The labyrinth that is provided
in your bulletins today is called the “Chartres Labyrinth” because it can be
found in the Chartres Cathedral in
The labyrinth is not a maze that
is rigged with false starts, tricks, and dead ends.
The labyrinth is a pattern that leads to the center.
As long as you follow the path, you will not get lost.
All the paths of God are steadfast love and faithfulness, to those who
keep his covenant…” the psalmist affirms in our scripture today.
Many labyrinths are large and are able to be “walked”…the ritual
symbolization of our journeys. But
even so-called “finger labyrinths,” like the one in your bulletin, are
effective.
While there are countless ways
to talk about the labyrinthine journey, let me tell you just a little about it
today. I will begin by admitting
that when I first encountered a labyrinth and walked it, it did nothing for me,
at least consciously. It seemed like
I simply was walking in circles. But,
over time, as I began to walk it with intention, something changed for me and
there was a spiritual energy that came into play and walking the labyrinth
became for me deep prayer.
(Encourage the worshipers to look at their finger labyrinths.)
The first thing we do is to
stand at the entrance to the labyrinth, at the threshold, and set your
intention, to say something like, and mean it, “I want to embark on a
journey that will take me into the heart of God.”
Or, “I want to enter more deeply into the peace of God.”
Or, “I want to live a more undivided life.”
Or, “I have this question in my life for which I need some
guidance.” Sometimes we
do not develop a deeper spiritual life or a growing intimacy with God because we
never set our intention to do so. The
first step in our labyrinthine and spiritual journey is to make the decision to
cross the threshold and start.
The journey toward the center,
then, is marked by a series of twists and turns, surely something we all
experience in our lives. Here is
where we pay close attention to our lives, both to what we gladly would show the
world about ourselves and those things we would want nobody to see about us.
As we move toward the center of the labyrinth, as we move toward
centering our lives in God, we might think about the history of our lives,
significant and important events, as well as what is happening in our lives
right now. It can be a time for
confession and introspection. What
are my concerns right now? What
questions do I have about my life that I can bring to God?
What kind of gifts or discernment do I need?
When we arrive at the center, we
do not simply turn around and begin our journey out.
Here is where we linger for a while in openness and receptivity, resting
in the heart of God, bathing in the love and joy and peace of God.
Here is where we are re-membered, put together again, by the paradise
from which we have come. Here is
where we particularly listen for the voice of the Spirit, for what God is saying
to us, for inspiration and instruction for the next stretch of our journey,
perhaps for forgiveness and absolution, for strength to endure, persist, and
create.
Finally, when we are ready, we
leave the center and begin our journey back out into the world, back into the
daily-ness of our lives, reflecting on what we have seen and heard and given,
integrating what was revealed to us and discovered by us so as to live more
authentically, more undividedly, being led into “paths of righteousness”
as the psalmist said, right-relatedness, right living…an integral life, a life
of integrity, of greater wholeness, fuller humanity, clearer purpose.
How can I best respond to what I have been given?
Later in the summer, we have
arranged to have a large, canvas labyrinth that we shall place on the floor of
our Fellowship Hall and I hope that many of you will avail yourselves of it…as
a way of ritualizing your intention to find your way more deeply into the God in
whom we live and move and have our being, as a way of praying, as a way of
experiencing a more profound communion with God and a life more whole.
Until then, I do encourage you to take time to “walk” the finger
labyrinth with which we have provided you today in the bulletin.
Use your non-dominant hand, or a toothpick, or the tip of a pen to wend
your way through the labyrinth, being in no hurry to reach the center, but
paying attention to your life along the way, spending time in the center with
God…hearing, healing, learning…and then coming back out again in some way
changed.
I want us, in the heaven of this
glorious outdoor morning, to try “walking” the finger labyrinth now.
The conditions are not exactly optimal, of course, because each of us
need to decide on our own readiness, we need to journey at our own pace, and,
because these labyrinthine journeys can be intensely personal, we may need or
desire more personal space. Nevertheless,
those potential deficits notwithstanding, I want to encourage you now to state
your intention for your labyrinth journey, and embark.
If you would like to stay in your seats where you are to do this, fine.
If you would like to get up and mosey off to another place, you may do
that, too. If you do that, take your
bulletins with you, and after five or six or seven minutes…way less time than
is usually spent in such a journey but about all that we can communally give to
it today in worship…Cindy will call us back together with the music of the
sermon hymn. If you have wandered
off, come back to us then from the four corners of this place with music on your
lips.
We have a labyrinthine faith
that calls us always to be making a journey more deeply into the mystery and
presence of God and into the depths of our lives, paying attention along the way
to the twists and turns of our life’s paths, resting in the revealing and
renewing heart of God, and then living in the world a life that is always being
changed – reformed and reforming - in purpose and understanding by what we
have seen and heard. Amen.
(Here, the worshipers are invited to “walk” their finger labyrinths.)
©
Copyright 2008 First Presbyterian Church