Asking The Spirit

 I remember my first meeting with the Call Committee here at Abiding Savior, back in June of 2006.    At that point in my life, I was ready to leave the ministry – and the jury’s still out on this – I still remember what I prayed as I walked from my car to her front door;  “Lord, you know where I’m at on this.   Guide me in this.  Let the best thing happen.”

The Spirit     the gifts of the Spirit – this has been the topic for our previous few Sundays.   And we’ll continue to explore this for a time more. 

The Spirit… 

Maybe it’s the part of God the leads us, that guides us

Maybe it’s the part of God that opens us up to God in our lives

We talk about the Spirit as guiding us – impromptu, un-planned events.  We say things like, “It just happened”, or “Trust the Spirit”, or “Trust in God’s guidance”.

    “The Spirit moved me”.        

Or not.    I remember hearing a first-hand story of an interim pastor at an Episcopal Church.   One Sunday morning he made his way to the pulpit, paused, and said, “The Spirit did not move me this week… I have nothing to say.”    Then he turned, and sat back down again.   Wow – Can you do that?!    “The Spirit did not move me this week.”   They never told me this at Seminary!!

But the Spirit is there… I think these words we say about the Spirit often have to do with letting go, of letting God be in charge.  

I felt moved to speak on this last week for this past Sunday’s service.   

And yes, the irony did not escape me that I had to plan on what I would say related to “the Spirit”.

Here at Abiding Savior there are many gifts and strengths.   For one, the people – we have many talented people here, generous people, with a lot of energy.    Another gift here is the strong sense of mission.   The combination of these two things seems to have been here at ASLC since the very beginning.    

I remember being at a Staff Ministry conference back in 2000.   The leader of the conference asked us pastors to give an example of what churches, congregations fought about.    The guy next to me raised his hand and said, “moving the baptismal font.”     The leader said something like, “No really, give me something congregations usually fight about.”   “Really, that’s what congregations usually fight about!”  I don’t think the leader – an ELCA pastor himself – had spent a lot of time at a congregation! 

But here at ASLC, everything is on wheels!    The baptismal font, the pulpit, the altar… they’re all on wheels!    They’re all moved… often... even during the middle of our services at times.     And we don’t have pews here… we have chairs!   And they are moved too.   

If we “fight” about anything, it’s often about where our Mission Money will go to.  This generosity plays itself out here often through our sense of mission.    The people’s compassion expresses itself through what we do here to help our neighbors around the area, and around the world… not just in terms of money but in the offering of time, energy, sweat, and things as well.

So that’s what we have going for us.    But what might our challenges be?   This congregation is full of people who pray.  As individuals out there praying on our own, that we do for sure.   But I wonder if the area we might need some work on is the communal side of prayer, and more specifically discernment prayer. 

As I was thinking of this, I remember visiting a former Sisters of Loretto convent/chapel in Santa Fe New Mexico back in the mid 1990’s.   The story goes that they had built a chapel to have Mass in and pray, etc.   And the chapel had a choir loft for the Sisters to sing from.    I thought this chapel was built some time in the 1930’s but actually it as built in the late 1800’s.    Not long into the planning and construction of the building, evidently the architect died suddenly of a heart attack.   What he had failed to do was plan for enough room inside the chapel to build stairs for the sisters to go up and down from the choir loft.   At the time, another common way to get up to choir lofts was to climb ladders, but the sisters evidently had some issues with this idea, especially since they wore long habits that might make negotiating ladders a lot more dangerous.   

So there they were, stuck with a loft in a new chapel they couldn’t access.    The story goes that they gathered together and prayed.    They would come together, daily perhaps, for some time of communal prayer, asking God to guide them through this dilemma.  

I don’t know how long they engaged in this discernment prayer – whether days or months – but as the story goes, someone came along looking for work.  He was a carpenter, and he had his tools with him.  They showed him their project – knowing that it would be a difficult job and the chances of anyone being able to “solve” this problem would be very difficult.   He told them this would be a challenge, but that he could actually build them a stair case.   So they offered him a deal; they would feed and housed him if he would build them their needed staircase up to the choir loft.  

They ended up calling it the “miracle staircase”.  Here’s the story as related through the history of the Sisters of Loretto:

The resulting staircase is an impressive work of carpentry. It ascends twenty feet, making two complete revolutions up to the choir loft without the use of nails or apparent center support. It has been surmised that the central spiral of the staircase is narrow enough to serve as a central beam. Nonetheless there was no attachment unto any wall or pole in the original stairway, although in 1887 -- 10 years after it was built -- a railing was added and the outer spiral was fastened to an adjacent pillar.^[3] Instead of metal nails, the staircase was constructed using dowels or wooden pegs.

        

The sisters think it was built by St. Joseph himself.    Although the staircase is indeed a work of art, especially considering it was made by hand with hand-tools only, before the time of electricity.     As I said, I did see it and it’s for sure very impressive.   Many have said the answer lies not so much in miracles but in the skill of a master carpenter taking advantage of the laws of physics.   Either way you look at this, they entered a time of prayer over some period of days to ask for God’s guidance in this issue.   They prayed, and asked the Spirit to guide them.  

We do pray for sure.   But I wonder what would happen if we prayed     often    repeatedly    for guidance    not just by ourselves, but in community.

It’s certainly hard enough for us to pray on our own!   There are challenges to our time… all the time!    Middle class suburban life is characterized by, more than anything else I think, a busy life filled with activity that requires more time than we seem to have.    I do think “time” is our most precious resource.

A challenge to our sense of reliance on God is the multitude of professional services out there that we can take advantage of if things go bad.   If our car acts up or needs some work, we know to take it to a mechanic.   If our computers act up, we all know a person or company that we can take it to.   If we have a problem with our plumbing at home, we call a professional plumber.    If we have a medical issue, we know to go to a medical professional.   

Here in middle class suburbia, we don’t usually think to pray first.   I’m not saying we don’t pray… I’m saying more often than not, we probably don’t pray first, especially for what we might consider the more mundane issues – I have heard some say they don’t really want to bother God with the trivial stuff.    But for whatever reason, we don’t usually think to seek God’s guidance, or ask for help from God first.   

But I noticed in other places, in developing nations and some places in our country, where people either can’t easily afford western style medical care or it’s not easily accessible, they have nothing else BUT GOD.   A tooth infection here would not bother us at all.    But in some places around the world, including some places here in the US, where competent dental professionals are hard to find, an infected tooth could kill a person.   So many pray right away!  

And yet I say all this because I’m a busy person too.  I find myself running from thing to thing, and then there’s always things to do at home as well.   I remember hearing a story of Gandhi; a woman came to see him, and presenting her son, asked him to tell her son to stop eating sugar.   So he told her to bring her son back in a week.   The following week she returned with her son.   He bent down, looked at the boy and told him sternly to stop eating sugar.   His mother was a bit confused – she asked him why he couldn’t have told her son this the week prior?   Well, he said, last week I was eating sugar.   I have to practice discerning prayer as well.  I rely on the “professionals” as quickly as anyone else.   I have to engage in the discipline of thinking of God first.   

                         

We come to church on Sunday mornings – it’s still a challenge for us to be present with each other and with God.    But we keep coming.     And we keep practicing.

I said this on Sunday, and I felt I was going out on a limb by asking this, but I asked who would be willing to pray for discernment “together” on a daily basis?   I really was surprised at how many were interested.    I asked if we could all stop what we were doing at about noon, and pray for discernment for not only not future of our church community but also for our own issues we might need discernment.   There’s something powerful about “being together” in Spirit even if we’re not together in body.    The other powerful part of even this way of “being together” is that we’d be praying for each other as well.  

Islam is known for having established prayers five times per day.     I remember someone in the congregation I was in about 21 years ago, a woman was teaching children in our Sunday School program.  I saw her showing them a book where they were all looking at pictures of Muslims in a Mosque praying together; men in rows facing in the same direction.  As I walked by, I heard her say – “Look at that, look at these men.  Isn’t it silly to pray like that?”    Seriously?    

What she didn’t know is that there is a long tradition of Christians praying together at allotted times of the day.   The Monastic traditions, the Franciscan Friars, religious order of Women as well, even among lay people, this practice still exists.   There are certain hours of the day where th community is called to come together if they can and pray together – as a result, it’s often called “praying the hours”.      

All we can do is pray for discernment – together.    There’s a lot we could pray for; world politics and fighting in Ukraine / Gaza & other parts of the Middle East, Ebola outbreaks in West Africa, unemployment and under-employment around the world, economic instability, and more… but let’s focus our prayers on asking for God’s discernment for this community and the people in it who might be seeking some clarity and answers… issue which we might not know the answers to.    So let us together go to God and ask for clarity.    And let us be surprised at what the Spirit reveals to us.

Peace,

Pr. C-