Psalm 119: Active Meditation and Doing God's Will

What do you think of when you hear the word “meditate”?  I think of emptying one’s mind of busy everyday thoughts in order to allow it to fill up with the awareness of God.  I think of sitting still, of keeping quiet. I don’t think of singing, complaining, talking to myself, or turning something over and over in my mind.  These seem so active, and my impression of meditating is more passive.  Yet the word used in Psalm 119 that is translated (NKJV) as “meditate” is siyach, and it has in it these very active ideas. So when the Psalmist says, “I will meditate,” the meaning is more like, “I keep on turning this over in my mind; I sing it out; I talk about it; I talk to myself about it; I commune with it; I complain about it; I muse on it.”  In its heart, the word has the idea of germinating, putting forth shoots and buds, bringing forth, producing, daring, lifting up. I am so taken with the interactive nature of the word “meditate” with the end result of life, growth, productiveness, adventure. This is not what I expected.

Here are the verses from Psalm 119 (NKJV) that include this word.

119:15 I will meditate on your precepts and contemplate your ways.

119:23 Princes also sit and speak against me, but your servant meditates on your statutes.

119:27 Make me understand the way of your precepts; so shall I meditate on your wonderful works.

119:48 My hands also I will lift up to your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.

119:78 Let the proud be ashamed, for they treated me wrongfully with falsehood; but I will meditate on your precepts.

119:148 My eyes are awake through the night watches, that I may meditate on your word.

Since the Hebrew word is so interactive, I’ve rewritten the verses to incorporate that sense.

I watch all night, wide awake, complaining about what you have said; singing about what you have said; pondering what you have said; talking with myself about what you have said.  I muse on it until it germinates, brings forth new life in me, helps me to dare to be obedient. 

I keep on pondering, thinking about, talking through, musing on your assignments and charges, even complaining about them, and thus I keep my attention on your path, your way of living.

Leaders badmouthed me and threatened me, but I am your slave, and I keep on thinking about, singing about, complaining about, talking with myself about the limits and boundaries you have set.

Keep on disconcerting those who are puffed up, the presumptuous ones; they twisted me up for no reason; but I keep on focusing on what you’ve given me to do, thinking it through, talking with myself about it until it comes to life and I dare to stand up and obey. 

Help me discern the direction of what you have given me to do; so shall I keep on pondering, singing about, talking about your continual wonders, your strength, your mysteries, how you are different from everything and everyone else.

I keep on carrying your orders in my hands, orders I have loved to carry out, and I continue to think about and ponder and pray about what you tell me to do until it bursts into life in me, a life that stands up and dares to obey you.

These verses remind me so much of the life of Jesus. Jesus interacted with God’s words to him. His meditation is not passive, but passionate. He fought the devil in the desert in order to understand God’s word, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” He discerned the kernel of falseness in the devil’s suggestions of how to be the son of God. Jesus’s life illustrates the fact that obedience to God includes standing up to presumptuousness, to arrogance, to power, daring to speak the truth, respecting the boundaries set up by God.

Jesus knew his calling was to live in direct obedience to every word of God. Everything God told him to do, he did, and he did nothing that was not directed by God. “If you want to enter into life, keep (attend carefully to) the commandments (the orders).” Do what God tells you to do.  (Matthew 19:17). “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in (live in, dwell in) my love, just as I keep my Father’s commandments and abide in my Father’s love.” This shows an emphasis on paying attention and obeying similar to that of the psalmist of Psalm 119.   “If you continue in (abide in) my word (what I have said), you are my disciples indeed” (John 8:31). “As the Father loves me, so I love you; continue in my love” (John 15:9).

Jesus meditated on the command of God in the garden of Gethsemane; he talked to God about it; you could say that he complained a bit when he asked whether things had to be done this way; and he expressed his willingness to do what God wanted, but he wanted to be sure. “Is this really what you mean for me to do?” he asked his Father. “Is there any other way?” Then he dared to rise up and do what his Father told him to do.

In the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood, the cross itself speaks about Jesus: “Then he stripped, he who was God almighty, the young hero, strong and resolute.  He ascended the high gallows, brave in the sight of many, when he desired to redeem humankind.” Jesus’s lifetime of paying attention to the will, the word, the command of his Father ended with the most heroic act in the history of the universe, his death that brought us all freedom and his resurrection which gives us all life.

Pay Me What You Owe Me

Ezekiel the prophet lived during the time of Israel’s exile to Babylon, an exile God brought about to purify and restore Israel to a faithful relationship.  Chapter 20 tells us that the history of Isarel is the story of Israel’s unfaithfulness, idolatry, and disobedience.  It is also the story of God’s faithfulness, outrage, and patience.  God says to Israel through Ezekiel: I will not allow you to ask me anything.  You have made up your minds to be like the heathens around you who worship nature.  But I will not allow it.  Angry as I am, I will rule you with a strong hand.  I will gather you and speak your doom to your face.  I will make you obey my covenant and I will send away those who continue to rebel and sin.  I will act with honor despite your wicked, evil actions, so I will not deal with you as you deserve. 

There is a true mystery in the relationship of our free will and God’s free will.  How is it that God makes space for us to choose against God’s will?  Just from looking around us we see that God does make this space, and the consequences ensue.  At the same time, the freedom to choose against is the freedom to choose for, and I want to encourage each of us today to choose for God and do what we know is right to do that lies immediately before us today and each day.  When you choose to ask God into your life, God takes you very seriously and will do all God can to make you resemble your elder Brother Jesus.  But, of course, you are still choosing whether or not to cooperate with God. 

In this post, I am going to focus on what the Bible tells us is the will of God for each of us with regard to our opponents, our enemies, our adversaries.  

Matthew 5

I haven’t come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them.  Anyone who breaks the least of the commands and teaches others to do so will be least in the kingdom of heaven, but anyone who practices and teaches these commands will be great in the kingdom of heaven.  You have to be more righteous than the professionally righteous people around in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Not only can you not murder someone, you also must not hold another person in contempt because of being angry with that person.  You can’t offer a gift acceptable to God with contempt for another person in your heart.  God will be sure your heart is right, so cooperate as quickly as you can.

Not only must you limit revenge to the harm done you, but you must be generous with those who harm you or want something from you.

Not only must you love your neighbor, but you must love your enemy and pray for those who make your life unpleasant.

Try being more like God, your Father, who sends sunshine and rain to both evil and good people.  Extend your love to all.

Matthew 5:25 (Luke 12:59)

Be well disposed, of a peaceable spirit, wish well toward your opponent, your enemy, your adversary without delay while you are still traveling together on the same road so that your opponent will at no time deliver you into the hands of the judge and the judge turn you over to his officer who will throw you into prison, into confinement, where your every move is watched. Amen.  This is the truth. I tell you, you will never by any means go freely from that jail until you have restored what you owe that opponent to the very last penny. 

I owe a lot of how I understand this passage to George MacDonald, a 19^th century preacher who often focused on holiness.

First:  do today what you know you will have to someday.

George MacDonald, “The Last Farthing,” Unspoken Sermons.  “I think I do know what is meant by 'agree on the way,' and 'the uttermost farthing.' The parable is an appeal to the common sense of those that hear it, in regard to every affair of righteousness. Arrange what claim lies against you; compulsion waits behind it. Do at once what you must do one day. As there is no escape from payment, escape at least the prison that will enforce it. Do not drive Justice to extremities. Duty is imperative; it must be done. It is useless to think to escape the eternal law of things; yield of yourself, nor compel God to compel you.

Second: this parable does not threaten punishment so much as it explains the natural consequences of God’s nature and of human nature.  Our response to it reveals our own hearts.

“To the honest [person] the word is… sweet as most loving promise. He who is of God's mind in things, rejoices to hear the word of the changeless Truth; the voice of the Right fills the heavens and the earth, and makes his soul glad; it is his salvation.

Third: God will judge between us if we will not come to agreement by our own choice.  This satisfies our love of justice even though we ourselves will be judged as we judge others.

"If God were not inexorably just, there would be no stay for the soul of the feeblest lover of right: 'thou art true, O Lord: one day I also shall be true!' 'Thou shalt render the right, cost you what it may,' is a dread sound in the ears of those whose life is a falsehood: what but the last farthing would those who love righteousness more than life pay? It is a joy profound as peace to know that God is determined upon such payment, is determined to have his children clean, clear, pure as very snow; is determined that not only shall they with his help make up for whatever wrong they have done, but at length be incapable, by eternal choice of good, under any temptation, of doing the thing that is not divine, the thing God would not do.”

…

Fourth: therefore, choose to do the right thing now.  And you know what it is.

“I read, then, in this parable, that a man had better make up his mind to be righteous, to be fair, to do what he can to pay what he owes, in any and all the relations of life--all the matters, in a word, wherein one man may demand of another, or complain that he has not received fair play. Arrange your matters with those who have anything against you, while you are yet together and things have not gone too far to be arranged; you will have to do it, and that under less easy circumstances than now. Putting off is of no use. You must. The thing has to be done; there are means of compelling you."

MacDonald includes the following dialogue.  I've put the words of God in bold italics to clarify the parts.

'In this affair, however, I am in the right.'

'If so, very well--for this affair. But I have reason to doubt whether you are capable of judging righteously in your own cause:--do you hate the man?'

'No, I don't hate him.'

'Do you dislike him?'

'I can't say I like him.'

'Do you love him as yourself?'

'Oh, come! come! no one does that!'

'Then no one is to be trusted when he thinks, however firmly, that he is all right, and his neighbour all wrong, in any matter between them.'

'But I don't say I am all right, and he is all wrong; there may be something to urge on his side: what I say is, that I am more in the right than he.'

'This is not fundamentally a question of things: it is a question of condition, of spiritual relation and action, towards your neighbour. If in yourself you were all right towards him, you could do him no wrong. Let it be with the individual dispute as it may, you owe him something that you do not pay him, as certainly as you think he owes you something he will not pay you.'

'He would take immediate advantage of me if I owned that.'

'So much the worse for him. Until you are fair to him, it does not matter to you whether he is unfair to you or not.'

'I beg your pardon--it is just what does matter! I want nothing but my rights. What can matter to me more than my rights?'

'Your duties--your debts. You are all wrong about the thing. It is a very small matter to you whether the man give you your rights or not; it is life or death to you whether or not you give him his. Whether he pay you what you count his debt or no, you will be compelled to pay him all you owe him. If you owe him a pound and he you a million, you must pay him the pound whether he pay you the million or not; there is no business-parallel here. If, owing you love, he gives you hate, you, owing him love, have yet to pay it. A love unpaid you, a justice undone you, a praise withheld from you, a judgment passed on you without judgment, will not absolve you of the debt of a love unpaid, a justice not done, a praise withheld, a false judgment passed: these uttermost farthings--not to speak of such debts as the world itself counts grievous wrongs--you must pay him, whether he pay you or not. We have a good while given us to pay, but a crisis will come--come soon after all--comes always sooner than those expect it who are not ready for it--a crisis when the demand unyielded will be followed by prison.'

Fifth: God can use the consequences of our bad choices to move us toward redemption.

“The same holds with every demand of God: by refusing to pay, the man makes an adversary who will compel him--and that for the man's own sake. If you or your life say, 'I will not,' then [God] will see to it. …

“If the man acknowledge, and would pay if he could but cannot, the universe will be taxed to help him rather than he should continue unable. If the man accepts the will of God, he is the child of the Father, the whole power and wealth of the Father is for him, and the uttermost farthing will easily be paid. If the man denies the debt, or acknowledging does nothing towards paying it, then--at last--the prison! God in the dark can make a man thirst for the light, who never in the light sought but the dark.”

My Experience

I share this with you because my own experience makes clear to me how true this is.  When I identify someone as my enemy, essentially I am saying, “You are not giving me what you owe me.” Often this is true. However, if I do not choose every day to align my will with God’s will as much as I can that day, I am choosing to be imprisoned by my own sense of having been wronged.  I can’t ever get out of that prison by focusing on how right I am.  A friend of mine described this as putting a barrier across the neck of an hourglass.  My state of mind freezes time at the point where my sense of being treated unfairly or unjustly occurs.  Every day my mind rehearses how badly my enemy has treated me.  It comes into all my significant conversations and colors all my relationships with others.  I had a high school friend who cut herself to remind herself of how other people had betrayed her.  She did it on purpose to prevent herself from accidentally forgetting the wrong.  This is a picture of how we treat our souls when we refuse to obey God's will to reconcile with our opponent.

I usually have to start by asking God for justice.  Essentially, I am turning my opponent over to God to judge.  I also, against my own inclination but with my will, start praying for God to bless my enemy.  I hate this part but I do it.  I try and fail to let the person off the hook.  But I’m trying.  I am by sheer act of will removing the barrier in the hourglass so that time can move on from the moment of injury.  So that the cut can heal from the inside out and then scab over.  God honors my efforts, feeble and incomplete though they are.  God loves me in them and lets me know it.  Often I end up blaming God for how things have gone so wrong: "You could have stopped this, you could have done something, I hope you know what you’re doing."

My experience, and I am not lying to you, is that God shows up when I express honest anger toward him.  It is a lot like the book of Job—Job insists that he did not deserve the suffering he received, he blames God for it, and God shows up and is friendly.  I will tell you two stories.  I was complaining out loud to God and added, “And on top of that, you have let me have a hemorrhoid. Don’t you think that’s piling on.” And God said, almost aloud, “Piling on—that’s funny.”  You see, the plural of hemorrhoid is piles. I laughed out loud for about 10 minutes, and something deep inside me eased up the pressure.  Because God showed up when I got really honest about what I was feeling.

The second story came after a huge disappointment, when it looked like I wasn’t ever going to achieve what I dreamed of.  I was in church, with my head bent down on the pew in front of me, crying with rage, really, and asking God why God favored my enemy over me.  God said to me, very clearly, “Look up at me.” I kept my head down.  And I felt as if God placed a finger under my chin, lifted my head, and made me look into God’s eyes.  “What do you see?” God asked.  “Love, nothing but love,” I replied. I cannot get over that experience.  I hope everyone reading this knows what is in God’s eyes for you. 

Finally, as things turn out, God helps me get to a place where my heart is no longer at war with my enemy.  God pinned me down in the car once to tell me that simply saying “You can let that so and so into heaven if you have to, but I don’t want to sit close to him,” was no longer the best I could do, and God, unsurprisingly, was right. I said, “OK, God, please let that so and so into heaven,”

That’s a good place to end.  Dear God, please let our enemies into heaven.  If you can’t get there yet, start here: Dear God, please decide justice between me and my enemy.

Soil Preparation

Preached at Marion Friends Church, June 10, 2012

The story of the sower collected from Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8

Here is a picture of the secret of the way God governs:

Listen up! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” ... The sower sows the word.

What is “the word”? It can legitimately be a number of things: a story, an event, a doctrine, an instruction, an explanation; for a follower of Jesus, it is speaking what God tells that follower to speak.

Some don’t understand what they hear, so they instantly forget it; some receive it with joy but don’t let it go deep in their lives, so they lose interest when times are hard; some allow the cares of the world, the lure of money, the desire for other things, the desire to be important, the need for affirmation to choke out any growing they might do, so that they don’t see any results from their belief; some are open and ready and honest; these take it seriously and act on it, and they see lots of growth and results. 

Jesus says to his disciples then, and to us now, pay attention to what you hear.  The more you listen to what God says and act on what you hear, the more you will hear; if you don’t act on what God tells you, you’ll lose the little ability to hear that you have.  God doesn’t whisper things to you so that you’ll keep them secret, but so you can disclose them to others. 

And be encouraged: the kingdom of heaven grows quietly under the surface—your obedience will have results in due time.  Trust God to tend the seeds you’ve sown. And the little seed you have sown will grow into a tree.  Trust God to make this happen.

And if you see that some weeds grow up in the field, don’t worry about it.  Let God separate the weeds from the grain.  If you try to pull them up, you’ll pull up the good plants also.  God can handle this in God’s own time.

The most obvious teaching here has to do with sharing the good news that Jesus has brought the Kingdom of God, the area where God rules, right down among us and within us. We can publish the truth of what God has done for us, and then trust God with the results.  God has set us free, has given us permission, to tell what we know of God’s love and mercy and to bring healing and freedom and forgiveness to others, just as Jesus did.  God is closer to us than the air, eager to help us live life well and joyfully, and present to carry with us the things that weigh us down.  We can tell people about this by how we live and also by what we say, both of which we are doing in obedience to the government of God.

But there is more here in this story.  I know because of how I used to read it and how I read it now.  I used to read it as four different kinds of people. But I came to realize that I have all four of these soils in myself.  I have the part that doesn’t understand what God is saying to me, so it slips out of my mind.  I have the part that doesn’t get into my deep soul, so it dies under pressure.  I have the part that doesn’t affect how I live because I am worrying about money or job or who did me wrong.  Thank God I also have the part that eagerly, honestly, openly welcomes God’s word and lets it affect how I think and behave by obeying it. 

So is there anything I can do about worrying, shallowness, or simple hardness of heart? (For the following, I use Richard Foster’s The Celebration of Discipline as a general framework.)

The stories I’m going to tell you are simply all illustrations of the fact that God honors us when we take our small, ineffective efforts to inch nearer by blessing us and others through them. I want to encourage those of you with hearts that long to be more and more open to the spirit of God to hear what follows and take the parts that speak to you. These are my stories, and they are not all for everyone here.  But I hope at least one will be for each of you.

Praying

The writer Flannery O’Connor ("The Enduring Chill") has a priest say to an agnostic young man who doesn’t pray, “Well, you will never learn to be good unless you pray.  You cannot love Jesus unless you speak to him.” A number of times in my life, I have kept a prayer journal.  At times I’ve written out my prayers, at other times, I have just kept a list of the requests I’m praying for and written down when there was closure on them.  The latter was more helpful to me in learning to trust God as I saw God answering so many prayers.  Praying about little things and seeing that God cares and answers gives me faith to pray about big things like war, famine, dying children, injustice, politics. 

Frank Laubach, a missionary in the 20^th century and the founder of an effective literacy program, said that perhaps we were put on earth to pray for our neighbors.  I have yet to have someone say, “No, don’t pray for me,” even if they themselves are not able to have faith.

The 50 days of prayer in preparation for YM came out of a concern from a whole bunch of people.  I hope you are participating in this because as a denomination we want to hear from God and do what God says, we want to learn to be good and to love Jesus.

Studying or Paying Attention

Several years ago, I read the book of Mark all at one sitting for several weekends in a row to see how the readings might change. It blew my heart open to Jesus.  You try it.  Jesus leaps off the page when the whole story (all 20 pages) zips by. You can see why people dropped everything to follow him and hear him speak.  You can also see why people got mad at him, and you see why St Paul says that if Jesus is not resurrected, humans are completely miserable.  The universe without that person in it—not much of a place, really, particularly once you’ve seen him in action.

Listening and Obeying

In Quaker worship, there is often a spell where people sit silently and wait for God to speak.  I started feeling moved by God to speak in high school, and I was so honored, and still am so honored, that I want to be obedient.  Often, one or two people will tell me that what I said spoke to them, and that is confirmation to me that I was supposed to share. 

When I was in college, Bill Vaswig came to speak in our church.  Bill was a Lutheran minister who was preaching about obeying the Holy Spirit.  He said, why not trust in those impulses to do good.  Call that person on your heart; do that next good thing you’ve been thinking of.  See what happens.  So one thing to do is to listen and do what you hear.  George MacDonald wrote that God always makes clear the very next good thing we are to do, even if what we are to do after that is still unclear.

Dallas Willard taught me in The Divine Conspiracy that God is closer to me than the air I breathe.  Paul teaches that we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit as if we were a house.  I cannot be separated from God.  Thinking about that fact, living in that truth, what an awe-inspiring honor to carry God from place to place.  My car is often a place where God corners me and nudges me to grow up.  One of my most amazing experiences of forgiving another person took place in a car, with the radio on even, because God was right there also, pushing me to move a little closer to true forgiveness.

Confessing

I really hungered for someone to confess to at one confused and desperate point in my life.  I confessed everything to God, but I really wanted to tell another person.  I did have a spiritual director/counselor at that time to whom I was mostly transparent, and that was helpful.  However, I hungered to hear someone tell me that my sins were forgiven. 

Almost accidentally, I was able to tell someone this truth—someone said to me, why do I feel so miserable about the past? And I said to her, you know, your sins are forgiven.  She witnessed to me a week later that those words lifted a burden from her heart she had been carrying for years. 

Giving

For me, this started with giving my tithe to the church back when I started working for money in high school.  Then as time passed, I read C.S. Lewis’s suggestion that giving ought to cramp your style a little.  When I got a dog, I felt convicted that if I could afford dog food and vet bills, I could afford to give money to the hungry.  Mark and I give money to people working for parachurch organizations because I’m a missionary kid, and to social causes or organizations I believe in because I’m a US and world citizen.  It does cramp my style a bit—but it helps weed my heart of love of riches and possessions.  I want to be thankful without being grabby.

I have also repeatedly given myself as completely as I know how to God, and I have discovered that God believes I mean it.

I find the next two attitudes enormously difficult and linked by the necessity of trusting God to give me what I really need.

Fasting

I don’t think I’ve voluntarily gone without food for decades and maybe never.  I have friends who witness to me that this is one of the ways God works with them.  I get migraines when I skip meals, I get faint and cranky and I can’t think straight.  So I don’t go without food.

However, C.S. Lewis wrote that sometimes we think we really need something (like food, but maybe something else) and we don’t have it, and this is a fast God has sent us.  Like if I miss a meal, I can embrace that as a fast God has sent me, and offer it to God as a gift.  Or if I think I need praise or affirmation and none is forthcoming, I can embrace that absence as the fast God has sent me.

Submitting

This is the hardest for me—I don’t trust easily, not even God, and to take the events of my life as expressions of God’s will for me requires very hard work on my part.  I try to start small by saying when I am impatiently waiting at a RR crossing, this is God’s will for me.  I am practicing for when life goes nothing like what I expected in big ways—it is an act of faith for me to take this as being from God and trust in God’s love despite disappointment.  And the part about letting anger go, letting my rights go, not insisting on being vindicated—that’s very hard.  Jesus said we need to take up our crosses daily.  This is what that word means to me.

One final way to get to know God better is by Celebrating.

The kingdom of God is compared to a party at least as often as it is to a garden or field.  When I hear God, I can risk being obedient; being obedient produces joy.  When we celebrate, we can get over ourselves—we can be holy fools—we can play games—we can sing out loud—we can do cartwheels or pump our fists in the air because God’s team just won the championship—we can shoot off fireworks to celebrate our freedom to love God; and we can invite others to join us.

So if, like me, you recognize that you have all four soils in you, and you want to see more results from believing Jesus’s message of good news, try praying, try listening, try obeying, try confessing, try studying, try accepting, try celebrating what God gives.  We don’t make God love us more by doing these things; we just make it easier for ourselves to know God’s love.

Isaiah 55:10-11, 1-2

As the water falls from the sky and does not return to the sky until the earth is wet so that seeds grow, buds form, and plants flourish and yield seed for the gardener and food for the eater, so my word (says God) goes out from my mouth and does what I want it to do.  My word does not return to me empty.

All who thirst, come drink the water; you with no money, come buy and eat; buy wine and milk without money and at no cost. Why do you spend money on what doesn’t feed you? Why do you work for what doesn’t satisfy you?  Listen to me (says God), listen to me and eat what is good for you and your soul will be filled with delight.

---

Houses of Prayer

Pray and Stay Awake
Preached 11/2/2008

Framing Scripture
Psalm 84:1-7, 10-12 (NKJV, my paraphrase)
How lovely is Your home, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longs desperately to be where God lives; my heart and my body cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow and the swallow have found homes, nests, where they may lay their eggs and raise their nestlings in Your holy place, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell where You dwell; they continually praise You. Blessed are those whose strength is in You, who are journeying continually toward You; they will find water in the wilderness and will go from strength to strength until they appear before You.

. . .

For a day where You live is better than a thousand anywhere else. I would rather stand by the door in God’s house than sit comfortably in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will God withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, Blessed is the one who trusts in You.

The Temple of the Holy Ghost
The church on earth is made up of human beings who are God’s dwelling place, each a little temple of the Holy Ghost, as St. Paul teaches us. The church represents Jesus on earth—we are his arms and feet and hands, doing the will of our Father in heaven, the way Jesus did. We know God’s will is that no one should perish, that we should model God’s love by loving each other, and that we need to pass God’s love on to those who don’t already know that God loves them. We also know that our local church needs everyone who is a part to bring what we have to Jesus to use in building God’s kingdom and feeding those who are spiritually and physically hungry. So today, we’ll look at two essential characteristics of the church. One is prayer and the other is being awake.

God’s Houses Are for Prayer
The actions Jesus took while on earth often are parables for us, and this is true of the cleansing of the temple. Those who were buying and selling animals for sacrifices and changing money for people from out of town so they could buy sacrifices, and making a tidy profit in the exchanges—Jesus drove them out and turned over the tables and benches, and then he taught them: “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:15-18). Sometimes we emphasize the opportunistic profit being made at the expense of sincere worshipers when we think about what appalled Jesus here. That’s half of the story; the other half is that prayer is the purpose of God’s house, of God’s houses, of you and me.

This event takes place in the context of the fig tree without fruit that Jesus cursed. As they went into Jerusalem, Jesus said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” The next morning, the tree was dead. This is one of the puzzling actions Jesus took, and again serves as a parable.

Jesus says: “Have confidence (faith) in God.” What does this mean? Faith is expressed partly in the Psalm we read: “my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God; blessed are those whose strength is in You, God, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage, they go from strength to strength until each appears before God in Zion; no good thing does God withhold from those whose walk is blameless; oh Lord God almighty, blessed is the person who trusts in You.”

Love God with your whole heart, mind, strength, soul—love is active, not passive, not emotional. What does it mean to love God? It means to do what God says. If Scott Peck, the psychologist who wrote The Road Less Traveled, is right, “the essence of nonlove is laziness”; the converse means that the essence of love is action.

George MacDonald wrote this: “Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have, this day, done one thing because He said, Do it! Or once abstained because He said, Do not do it! It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything he tells you.”

So when Jesus says to have faith in God, he means—be doing the will of the Father in heaven just as Jesus also did the Father’s will. Faith isn’t a state of mind, it’s a decision to act. This decision to obey underlies why we pray, and helps us know how to pray. We pray in order to listen to God and our faith shows up when we do what God has said. So, if in prayer, we hear God tell us to move a mountain, we will be able to do it.

When we read this verse about moving mountains, we always focus on getting what we want from God. However, in the context of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple, it looks more like prayer works to help God get what God wants from us. For instance, Jesus wanted to illustrate the fact that the Jewish religion of his day did not bear the fruit God was looking for; He uses the fig tree elsewhere in a parable as a symbol for the Jews. They were praying daily for Messiah to come. God sent the Messiah, and they didn’t like God’s version because they were looking for someone to make them free of Rome, more powerful and self-determining, not someone to make them a people after God’s heart. Then Jesus goes into the temple and cleans it out. They were praying for the Messiah to come, remember, and he comes to clean out the materialism and self-serving merchandising and power-mongering of religion and they don’t like it.

Here’s a general example from my own life. I prayed daily for years that God would make real in me the verse, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Here’s how the Messiah came to my temple; first, Jesus took me into a time of emotional disarray and depression; then through a lengthy and difficult process of self-understanding; then through healing; then through disappointment in my job, more depression and more self-understanding and more healing. Along the way, I have grown in my confidence in God even when I don’t know where God is taking me, in my sense of absolute need to know what God wants me to do next on this day, and in my commitment to do it. I don’t know whether I’ve become more creative, but I’m determined to belong as completely to God as I am able. That’s what prayer did and does for me.

And we can’t forget what God clearly says to do in Mark 11:24—if when you are praying you remember that you are holding something against another, forgive that person. Well, if anyone is puzzled about what God wants him or her to do, here’s a good place to start.

Prayer isn’t complicated; it’s just conversing with God, and one aspect of conversation is listening—active, engaged listening. Try it—when you pray, say what you need to say and then sit and listen; use the technique taught us by counselors—ok, God, what I hear you saying is this, is this right? Then, when we hear what God has to say, if it involves doing something, go do it. That is faith in God.

It’s clear that we live in a world where evil stomps around and eats people alive—the devil is like a roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour. We wrestle not against humans, but spiritual powers. How do we do this wrestling? We pray. Ephesians 6 details the armor of God, and it ends with this: “And pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” Remember the story of the demon-possessed boy whom the disciples could not help, and how Jesus cast out the demon and said to them, “This kind comes out only by prayer.” Prayer means we talk with God who loves us entirely, we listen to God, and we do what God says to do. Jesus tells his disciples, Watch—be alert—and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. Remember the prayer: Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Stay awake: when Jesus was wrestling with evil in the garden before his death, he prayed a prayer we do well to listen to: Daddy, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.

How do we get to a place where we can pray this Lord’s prayer?

One of my favorite authors is Flannery O’Connor; in one of her short stories, a young man who thinks he is dying calls in a Jesuit priest. He does this partly to shock his mother, who is Methodist. The priest has only one eye, but he fixes it on Asbury and says to him, “Son, do you pray?” Asbury tries to evade the question. The priest says, “How do you expect to get to know Jesus if you don’t pray?”

Exactly the question we need to ask: how can we expect to get to know Jesus if we don’t pray? And when we pray, the Messiah, Jesus, comes, and cleans out our temple and makes it a house of prayer.