MEETING CHRIST IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

                                                   Secrets

                                       Matthew 6:1-6 and 16-18

 

Pastor Robyn Hogue                          March 17, 2013                        Skyline Presbyterian Church

 

If we aim at being contemporary followers of Jesus, it is important to admit that He knows what He is talking about when it comes to transformation. To look at ourselves through His eyes is to meet the truth; we do this by paying careful attention to what He says. Jesus is the expert; if it disagrees with Him, it’s simply wrong, and if it coheres with what He says, then it contains a measure of truth no matter where it comes from. As Christians we learn to get clear on the center and open around the edges. Christ is the living center around which life is organized. Make no mistake, what we are aiming at is not improvement but transformation—becoming  a new kind of people whose life together makes the message of Jesus believable to others.

Each of us has a private life and an inner world. Only we know it in depth, and only God who sees the heart knows it fully. We know in part, but we are already fully known to the eye of the heavenly One with whom there are no secrets and therefore no privacy: what we think and feel, that for which we hope, our besetting sins, the passions that drive us, our fears, and what we dream about at night. Each of us is an irreducible mystery of layer upon layer, which is at least part of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of a God whose image can never be exhausted. You are not a problem to be solved; you are a mystery to be explored in concert with the One who made you and offers to remake you in Jesus Christ.

There are ways to heighten our awareness of the inner world. If we take up the spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude, which is a form of fasting from distractions, including people, the inner world bubbles to the surface. If we take up the practice of journaling, which is the discipline of setting up a correspondence with the soul, it comes out on paper. If we open our heart to a friend or pastor, which is the discipline of spiritual direction, they will see what we do not and offer insight and encouragement.

Our visible life is the small part, our inner world by far the larger. Like an iceberg or deep river, most of it is hidden. The discipline of voluntary fasting reveals all the things we are attached to in order to feel good; secret giving reveals our attitude toward money, security and recognition. Prayer is being vulnerable with God and risks God speaking back, which can be startling when it happens. Your thoughts are interrupted, and you know you have been addressed. It is distinctive, and often funny; I often laugh out loud. At other times, when I have ignored the call and seen the consequences, I feel pierced as with an invisible saber. I grieve what I missed and whom I disappointed. If you are not aware of this dynamic, spend some time with John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me....”

During the worship service at the last Presbytery meeting we took up an offering to help with the new church plant in Tacoma, the Cambodian Fellowship. My heart had been warmed by the stories their pastor, Sahara Chea, shared with me over dinner. I heard the voice nudge me, “Empty your wallet out of gratitude.”

I looked, and there was a single twenty. I quickly argued myself out of generosity, and just then, at the very moment I was moving to put my wallet back into my bag, the man behind me reached over the pew and dropped in a twenty without as much as a second thought. A saber went through my insides. I winced; my disobedience had been exposed by divine timing and a superior example. I gave it later, but all the joy was gone. It was now an act of repentance. I tell you: If you pray, God will speak; if you fast you will develop new hungers, and if you seek the virtue of generosity, God will completely expose the cheapskate hidden in your soul!

Whatever the external effects of these classic spiritual disciplines, the primary effect is the formative influence they have on us. They take us from shallow to deep. They empty us out for new capacities. And when we take them up in response to the call of God, they in a sense take us up as students to work from the inside out. To get a tan, you lay in the sun. To grow more fit, you exercise. To learn to think, you read and listen; to develop style you read good writers. To grow in grace and the spiritual wisdom of the Christian life, you pay attention to which disciplines the Lord is calling you to take up at this point in your life.

A spiritual discipline is a practice taken up in response to the grace of God. Some are for all and at all times: public worship, immersion in Scripture, seeking justice, tithing, fasting, Sabbath keeping, acts of service to the poor, honoring the body with self-care, prayer, witnessing, truth telling, confession and repentance, chastity and fidelity, and taking the Lord’s Supper- the standard package.

Each Sunday’s worship is a smorgasbord of spiritual disciplines on display. Others are taken up from time to time as needed: pilgrimages, journaling, retreats, extraordinary giving, extended silences, particular vows, voluntary suffering, acts of personal obedience, vigils, formal counseling if needed, other forms of abstinence and self-denial. Just as a physician has many therapies and a coach many exercises, so the church has a treasury of spiritual disciples through which grace is available.

To work in a garden or on a house, multiple tools are needed; each one does a different job, and with all of them together gardens are grown and homes are built. Similarly, as we follow Jesus and partner with our immediate supervisor, the Holy Spirit, certain tools, which we have come to call means of grace are offered. And if there is a lack in our church today, it is that people are neither practicing much nor teaching others the set of proven practices that offers the most promise of conforming us to Christ. Are we pointing people to an empty plot of land, telling them to plant a garden or build a house, and then not giving them the required tools? Any wonder the Christian life does not seem to work for so many of our people who have grown passive and discouraged? Duty gives way to drudgery, and the delight vanishes. Tedium is great, testimonies few. Dry spells are to be expected, but when they go on and on and on, help is needed. Every Christian needs to understand the basic beliefs and practice of the spiritual disciplines. There are just some things you have to know, and I can’t know them for you. They can’t be delegated, but they can be learned from books and living examples.

So, God asks me to dance and learn some new steps; I say Yes, but where we are headed is not clear. I cannot change me at any real depth; that is the lie of self-help. My unaided will is not strong enough to wrench my life into a new path for very long. The ruts of sin are deep and my habits too comfortable. Depth change comes through cooperation with the God of grace who has many avenues of approach, and the name for that cooperation is one or more of the spiritual disciplines which are grounded in Scripture and church tradition across the ages. Spiritual disciples are places I am saying a deliberate Yes to God. Of themselves they do not make anything happen; in fact, each contains its own temptation to pride and self-deception. They only work when God works through them.

Two stories come to mind, the first from the Jewish tradition. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once said to a student, “Full experiences of God can never be planned or achieved. They are spontaneous moments of grace, almost accidental.”

The disciple responded, “Esteemed Rabbi, if God-realization is just accidental, why do we work so hard doing all these spiritual practices?”

The rabbi answered, “To be as accident-prone as possible.”

The second is from the East. A disciple asked, “What can I do to attain God?” 
The master answered, “What can you do to make the sun rise?”
The follower was angered, “Then why are you giving us all these methods of prayer?”
And the master replied, “To make sure you’re awake when the sun rises.”

These are not two stories, but one told in two ways; each leaves us with the insight that the benefit of spiritual disciplines is always indirect. They hold us open to the surprising work of God who works in secret. And the result from God’s side is always out of proportion to the effort from ours. It takes energy to respond to God’s grace, yet even the desire to take up the effort is itself a gift which can be refused. John Ortberg gives us a visual image to understand the interplay of what only God can do and what we must do with God’s aid. He writes:

“Significant human transformation always involves training, not just trying. Spiritual transformation is a long-term endeavor. It involves both God and us. I liken it to crossing an ocean. Some people try, day after day, to be good, to become spiritually mature. That’s like taking a rowboat across the ocean. It’s exhausting and usually unsuccessful.

Others have given up trying and throw themselves entirely on relying on God’s grace. They're like drifters on a raft. They do nothing but hang on and hope God gets them there. Yet, neither trying nor drifting are effective in bringing about spiritual transformation. A better image is the sailboat, which if it moves at all, is a gift of the wind. We can’t control the wind, but a good sailor discerns where the wind is blowing and adjusts the sails accordingly.”