All that said… I have been studying and praying this morning, and wrote one more piece this morning. Do not miss the practical information I published earlier, but here is another entry, with several quotes by Rowan Williams from his 2017 book, Holy Living: The Christian tradition for today (Bloomsbury).
The quotes at the end are much better than anything I have to say about them, but I did try to suggest how certain lines are "speaking" to me, and may be God's voice if I can recognize it.
Peace of Christ and Pray for the General Conference.
+ + +
Betty, one of the wonderful senior members at the church I
serve, always asks me the same question—whether in a Wednesday morning Bible
study where is faithful to attend, or in the hallway before worship when she offers
me a suggestion for an upcoming sermon, and sometimes at the Wednesday night
dinner table, children running all-around in what we call “holy pandemonium.”
Betty says, “Tom, how do we know
when God is speaking to us?”
“Tom, I
wish you would preach a sermon on how we can know when God is speaking to us.”
“I would
like to know how to recognize when God is speaking to us.”
Occasionally
I feel nonplussed. I mean, I think I have answered that question, multiple
times, or tried to answer that question, in lessons and sermons and
conversations. But if she is still asking chances are I have not answered her well
enough to settle the matter. Then again, is that matter ever settled? For any
of us?
How do we hear the voice of God, or
recognize the voice of God, or trust that what we are hearing is the voice of God and not another, smaller, lesser
voice. The voice of my own prejudice, for example, or the voice of my parents
or teachers.
I find myself asking Betty’s
question today, in view of the weekend, for myself and for the delegates—how will
we know when God is speaking? If God
is speaking? Perhaps you remember that terrifying warning from the prophet Amos
8: “’Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘when I will send a
famine on the land—not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of
hearing the words of the LORD. People will
stagger from sea
to
sea
and roam
from north
to
east,
seeking
the word
of the LORD,
but they will not find it.’”
Maybe there is no voice, no word to
hear. Some have suggested as much, that God may be done with us already.
I disagree. I believe that God is
present and will speak a recreating word; I believe that Jesus is present, too,
in all the ways he promised, and not least when there is conflict among
brothers and sisters (the context of Matthew 18:15-20, which is often quoted, has
to do with disagreements!); I believe the Spirit is brooding over this chaos to
bring about order and arrangement and fruitfulness…
Still, how do WE know when God is
speaking? Amidst all the noise that will crowd our ears these next days, will
we be able to hear a small, still voice? Or is still and small the way God’s
voice always comes?
I can
only answer for myself, and even then in with caution, self-doubt, a certain
humble wariness. I think I recognize
God speaking to me when I “hear” two or more different or separate “witnesses”
or voices at the same time.
Most
recently, last night before retiring, I was reading Rowan William’s new book, Holy Living: The Christian Tradition for
Today. I have already mentioned that
this book has a (for me) helpful chapter on issues of human sexuality and
marriage and the ways the New Testament might not be answering the questions we
want to ask of it…
Anyway,
last night I was reading further along in a chapter devoted to St. Teresa, a
sixteenth century nun and spiritual genius. A couple of lines from the chapter
just jumped-out at me. Williams writes:
“Jesus’
accessibility to all is a constant theme, as is the wonder with which we should
think about our inclusion in the family of Christ’s brothers and sisters.” –p.
126
(Perhaps I
am hearing that If I spend more time considering, with wonder, that I am by grace a member of Christ’s
family, I will have less time to consider, with disdain, who I think is not.)
“What
Teresa envisages for her communities, male and female (she helped reform the
Carmelite order—TRS), is a genuinely
apostolic plainness. And she sees this as the most effective response we can
make to a situation of deep crisis in the Christian world.” –126-127
(Perhaps
I am hearing, in this time of deep crisis in the Christian world—Roman Catholic
scandals and enclaves; Southern Baptist #metoo revelations; special called
General Conferences in the UMC—that the most effective response I can make is
to maintain apostolic plainness: prayer, worship, study and holy fellowship. See
Acts 2:42)
“And if
we are troubled by the conflicts and failures of the Church in our world, what
we need to do is not to panic, or freeze in defensive and angry posturing, but
to get on with the real work of opening a way for God’s transforming presence.”
–p. 127, emphasis mine.
(Perhaps
what I heard was a reminder that what we are doing at Hawthorne Lane, as we can
by God’s grace, is “opening a way for God’s transforming presence” in our own
lives and the lives of others who come to us by God’s invitation. And yes, I
was convicted by that text… though I don’t think I have been frozen or in a
panic, or angry, I do think that I find myself not-quite-despairing about the
witness of the Church in the world.)
“…the
calling to be with Jesus as selflessly as possible—in the knowledge that the degree
to which we stay in his company is the degree to which we make the right kind
of difference in the world.” --p. 129
(I know I
heard this: that as I have been talking about Christians and Hawthorne Laners
being “uniquely loved and gathered, uniquely gifted and sent, to make a godly
difference in the ungodly world,” Williams reminds me that the way to make that
godly difference is to stay close to Jesus as selflessly as possible. But what a challenge, in that most of us
want Jesus selfishly.)
There was
a time in Jesus’ ministry when a man stood up and said, “Tell my brother to
divide the inheritance with me!” (Luke 12:13ff). If one way to read General
Conference is like that, another way
to read it is as an unnamed quest for apostolic plainness—to get away from
nonessentials and back to the basics that help us open a way for God’s
transformation, in us and through us.
February 22, 2019
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