insight

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Worldwide Communion Sunday

Text: John 9:1-11

Eric Massanari

“insight”

If I were asked to compose a title

for this story in the gospel of John,

I think it would be something like:

      Those who can't see, do.

      Those who can see, don't.

Or, perhaps I would borrow

a choice phrase from the

poet, e.e. cummings, and call it:

      When the eyes of our eyes are opened.

This is a story about sight.

It is only partly about

seeing with the eyes in our heads.

That vision is a supreme gift,

one that is easy to take for granted

as long as we are able to see,

and do not have our vision inhibited

by injury or illness or age.

The blind man in this story is utterly blind,

and we are told he has been so from birth.

So, when Jesus makes the mud,

and spreads it on his eyes,

and then he goes to wash

in the pool at Siloam,

and then he sees,

it is a wondrous thing.

But as this story unfolds you begin

to get the sense that it isn't

just about that kind of seeing,

and that there may be other

varieties of blindness.

We see another sort of blindness
right at the beginning of the story
when the disciples ask Jesus:

Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents,

that this he was born blind?

Who sinned?

Who is to blame?

They're looking at the man and their world

with a fault-finding vision.

If there is hurt, or suffering or brokenness,

there must be someone to blame, right?

It is a particular kind of blindness

that needs to ascribe blame

to someone or something out there

for the pain or disquiet we feel in here.

We meet more blind people in this story

when the healed man returns from

the Pool of Siloam and rejoins his neighbors.

Who is this man? They ask.

Surely this isn't the blind guy

that we've walked past all these years.

No, it's probably just a man who looks like him.

They have been able to see this man

only through the obscured vision

of judgment and shame.

Perhaps they've seen him as

too crippled and weak to be worthy

of their attention. Or, perhaps they

have felt ashamed by his presence

and their own unwillingness to

acknowledge him fully as a neighbor.

And this shame and guilt has turned their

gaze away from who he truly is.

Whatever it may be, they too are blind.

The healing of this man

reveals the blindness

in the world all around him.

He is surrounded by people who see with their eyes,

but have no insight.

Insight has been described as

“seeing with the eyes of the heart.”

It is vision that remains open,

curious, and teachable.

It means seeing with a desire

for understanding that which

may dwell below first appearances

and the surface of things.

Our patterns of blaming,

shaming, fearing, and judging,

diminish our capacity to

see one another and our world

in any sort of open, loving way.

One of the greatest gifts you can give the world,

is learning how to identify these patterns in yourself.

To notice them in a way

that doesn't turn the

blame, shame and judgment

back in on your own being

but simply sees that yes, indeed,

you, too, have these patterns

and can choose not to act them out.

We can each choose to nurture insight,

to practice seeing ourselves and

the people and the world around us

in a way that seeks deeper understanding,

that remains curious and open.

This is what allows love to flow.

This is what Jesus repeatedly asked people to do,

to recognize their own blindness.

He didn't shame them into it.

He didn't damn them for it.

He did challenge them to become honest enough,

and uncomfortable and disturbed enough to let it go.

The meal we are about to eat together,

the Lord's Supper,

is a nourishing meal.

It is not meant to nourish so much

our physical bodies—certainly not in

the way the delicious potluck food

will in just a little while!

This is nourishment for

the body that we are

when our lives are joined by love.

This is nourishment for

that deeper sight--for insight.

Jesus offers a loaf of bread,

and a cup of wine,

to help people see differently.

To see the world differently,

and to see one another differently.

To come to this table with

our sisters and brothers,

and on this special day

with people all around the world,

is to be invited to let the

scales fall from our eyes—

scales of blame, shame, fear, guilt, judgment.

If you desire to see deeper,

to live with greater love,

then come to this table

with others who seek the same.

We are not the perfect.

We are the wounded,

the broken,

the gifted,

and the beautiful.

May the eyes of our eyes be opened at this table of our Lord. Amen

the riches of an autumn morning

Gold:
first light
on cottonwood leaves,
wet with dew.

Rubies:
topmost branches
of maple tree,
bleeding summer.

Silver:
whispered globes
of dandelion seeds,
waiting for wind.

Ivory:
gentle face
of silent friend,
turned toward sunrise.

All riches needed,
here,
now.

All riches desired,
for now,
forgotten.

a joyful limp

Tattered butterfly:
monarch of the holey wings.
We limp joyfully!

 

faith by subtraction

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, July 12, 2012

Texts: John 6 and 1 Kings 19

Eric Massanari

“faith by subtraction”

...and after the great wind...

after the earthquake...

after the fire...

came the sound of sheer silence. (from 1 Kings 19)

There is a sound to “sheer silence”—

a sometimes deafening sound.

It is the sound of a whirlwind of thoughts

blowing through our busy minds.

It is the sound of a roaring storm of emotions

gripping our hearts.

It is the rattling sound of fears

quaking in the hollows of our guts.

It is the crackling sound

of our carefully-assembled answers

burning up in the face of wonder and mystery.

We are often quite deaf to this sound—

the sound of sheer silence—

and to the Voice that is able to speak there.

We live with the volume turned up—

way, way up—elsewhere in this life.

So it is difficult to hear the silence,

to venture into the place where we are led to face

into the truth of our lives.

All this is understandable, since

hearing the sound of sheer silence

can be disturbing, unsettling,

and transforming.

It can feel easier, more secure, to stand in the

noisy and careless places of our certainty,

and our personal agendas for contentment,

than to venture out to the mouth of the cave with Elijah

where our answers are flipped into questions,

our fullness to emptiness,

our knowing to not-knowing.

Who wants to go there?

Elijah did not want to go there.

He went into the arid silence of the desert

only because he was fleeing for his life.

He was despairing.

He was hiding out.

He was ready for life to end

because life as he knew it and come to an end.

In the cave,

after the wind-storm,

after an earthquake,

after a fiery conflagration,

only then,

in the stillness that followed,

the sheer silence finds Elijah.

And he steps out into a place

no security,

no assurance,

no power,

no hope,

no faith.

Nothing.

Nada.

Nothing,

and at once,

everything.

Emptiness,

and at once,

fullness.

I hear the sound of sheer silence in the gospel story, too,

though it may not appear quite as obvious.

You can see people in this story avoiding it,

avoiding the place of mystery and uncertainty,

and preferring to remain in the place

of their own comfortable answers and agendas.

The Jewish leaders have pegged Jesus

as the son of Mary and Joseph of Nazareth.

How dare he speak of being

nourishing “bread from God.”

Preposterous!

Jesus own disciples struggle with this teaching.

It is a hard, confusing teaching.

Much different than any of them would

expect from the Messiah.

For some it is too much;

they take their leave.

Others, however, are willing to continue

onto this uncertain ground where

this strange teacher keeps asking

them to let go of yet one more

explanation, one more answer

that they thought was iron-clad.

Much like Elijah,

they step to the edge,

and wait, and listen.

Accepting that for the time being

there is no certainty,

no security,

no assurance,

no power,

no hope,

no faith.

Nothing.

Nada.

At least not in the sense that they once knew.

The people in these stories

are being challenged to let go

in order to find that which

they are most deeply searching for.

To find faith by subtraction.

In realm of religion,

particularly Christian religion,

and particularly in flavors

of Christianity that have emerged

in the West over the centuries,

we tend to think more about

faith as something that comes by addition:

faith is learned,

it is inspired,

it is taught,

it is brought by people of faith

to those who do not have it.

And when doubts are experienced,

we reach for the right input to assuage them.

We encounter someone facing deep doubts

so we offer a book, an article,

a new practice,

in the hopes it will add something that

wasn't there before and take care of the doubt.

We in the West place a high value

on information and knowledge

and being able to articulate and

convey faith through words.

There is a gift in this.

There is also liability.

Our words, our answers,

our explanations that we assemble in faith

can give us the misperception

that we actually possess the answers!

Our explanations about God

become barriers to true experience.

Our conceptions start getting

in the way of meaningful enounter.

We forget sometimes that

at the heart of things

we, like everyone else,

must humbly admit to what we do not know.

We, too, must honor the sound of sheer silence.

St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the most revered

(and wordy) theologians in Christian history,

wrote these words in the introduction

to his master work, Summa Theologica:

Since we cannot know what God is, but only what God is not,

we cannot consider how God is but only how He is not.

Elsewhere, Thomas adds:

This is what is ultimate in the human knowledge of God—

to know that we do not know God.

Thomas' method was referred to as the via negativa, “negative way.”

Another name it has been given in Christian theology

is apophatic theology, from the Greek word apophasis, “to deny.”

The apophatic tradition in Christianity

has never been the dominant one in the West.

But it has always existed as a corrective

alongside the dominant current of theology

that is quick to assert who and what God is.

God is Love.

God is Father.

God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God is healer, justice-maker, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.

Yes.

And no, would say the apophatic way.

Such statements remain our own names and therefore

they, at best, speak only in part about that which

remains beyond our grasp or understanding.

Our names become boxes and blocks.

We see a sparrow and we say, “look another sparrow”

and we do not see that this sparrow is unlike any other.

We live with our conception rather than the reality.

We say “God is Father” or “God is Creator”

and we start to get stuck in the name or conception

rather than what is.

The via negativa or apophatic way

would say that the path towards God

is also one on which such names and conceptions

must be released—we may need to be emptied

of such things to come to deeper understanding and experience.

We must be willing to accept the sound of sheer silence

of our own limited perception and understanding.

God is not attained by a process of addition

to anything in the soul,

but by a process of subtraction.

Meister Eckhart

As soon as I understood

(even to a limited degree)

that this is G-d's world

I began to lose weight immediately...

Leonard Cohen

Even the name we so often use, “God,” remains a conept.

The Jewish tradition has long honored this

by maintaining that the truest name

is, in the end, unspeakable

by human tongue or mind.

It is possible to practice

this unweighting,

this path of subtraction.

It can take the form of contemplative prayer

and meditation which invites one to repeatedly

step out to the mouth of the cave with Elijah

to dwell in the sheer silence.

However, quite often we do not learn this by choice;

we are led onto the via negativa

by the circumstances of life:

encounters with numinosity and wonder,

or by challenges we face into,

or by great losses, suffering and grief.

Sometimes life itself awakens us

to the reality of ultimate mystery

and all we do not know.

C.S. Lewis, another theologian of the West

who had many words to say about God

as an apologist for the Christian faith,

said that he had never had any doubts about

the after-life, people living beyond death.

That was, until his wife died.

When she died he had to admit

he was no longer certain.

He likened the certainty of faith he had held to a rope.

It's like a rope. Someone says to you,

'Would your rope bear the weight of one hundred and twenty pounds?'

'Yes.'

'Okay, well we're going to let down your best friend on this rope.'

Suddenly, now you're not so sure about that rope.

During this time of deep grief,

Lewis wrote in his diary that

we cannot know anything about God,

and even our questions about God

are on some basic level absurd.

We've been programed to think of this as a horrible place to be—

this place of nada, nothing.

Someone get that fellow some choice passages of scripture,

a good theologian or pastor, someone to shore up his flagging faith!

I've been that one called in on the emergency,

to give some word, some prayer,

some explanation for the unexplainable.

And sometimes I've made the mistake

of offering a very feeble and frayed rope for rescue.

When, in the end, what is most needed

is standing together in the disturbing, transforming silence,

listening with hearts that have been broken open.

I've come to believe that this may be the place

where we move closest to that which we call God,

and when faith emerges through subtraction.

At the mouth of the cave

on the side of the mountain where

there is no certainty,

no security,

no assurance,

no power,

no hope,

no faith.

Nothing.

Nada.

Here is where we hear the sound

of sheer silence,

and then,

perhaps,

a voice,

a still, small voice.

this way

There is a Way
     over untraveled ground.

     To go this Way
          is to come home.

          To find this Way
               is to get lost.

               To begin this Way
                    is to come to the end.

                    To survive this Way
                         it's best to take nothing.

               Presumptive guides
                    will try to sell you maps.

          They will say ridiculous things
               like, "Safe travels!"

     And direct you to neon avenues
          with a grin and a wave.

True guides will wait
     to celebrate your foolish steps!

crazy, jumping spider

I open my eyes from meditation and my gaze is immediately drawn to movement on the windowsill in front of me. Wild, spinning movement. An insect? Some spastic fly?

It pauses long enough for me to discover that it's a spider. Then it breaks into its wild dance again: hopping inches into the air, spinning, hitting the window, running along the sill, leaping back into the air. Was that a somersault? I'm starting to laugh at the hip-hop arachnid, assuming this to be some joyful celebration of the sunrise, when it leaps one final time, lands on its back and is still.

It's legs slowly curl into its body, never to move again.

Was this a dance of ecstasy? Of agony?

an offering

This cottonwood tree
offers herself to the wind.
Her whisper, Your word.

travels through stone walls

I will travel to You, Lord, through a thousand blind alleys.
You want to bring me to You through stone walls.
                                                  - Thomas Merton

The blind alleys...

The blind alleys are all of my "personal programs for happiness" as Thomas Keating is fond of putting it. They are all of the methods and manners I use to try and set things right and make things work out, mostly for myself. And, inevitably, they are all to be found lacking. This is because they are typically based on those cords of connection I have chosen to create between myself and all of those things I've decided to identify with: vocation, titles, roles, opinions, judgments, ideologies, political positions, theological assumptions....and on and on.

My blind alleys may appear quite exemplary and magnanimous on their exterior -- service to others, well spoken words, lofty ideals, to name a few. They may even seem terribly holy, at least to me. However, if I pursue these paths in some effort to earn favor or love, to be deemed acceptable, or to earn some divine right, then I have missed the mark.  To "miss the mark" is the most literal meaning of sin. It is to live without authenticity or truth. It is to live unaware and asleep.

If we wish to awaken and to deepen our life in love, then it is to the stone walls that God asks us to turn.

The stone walls...

The stone walls are not too difficult to find. They are the people I am most resistant to welcoming into my heart. They are the moments I am most eager to avoid. These are the people I am called to meet and the places I am invited go in love. Not love as some kind of warm feeling of affection or attraction. Who can be expected to feel that for the person who has just pushed our buttons?! Such feelings are too fleeting.

No, this is True Love: the force that is unleashed when I remember that my life is an extension of the One Life. Love is a power that emerges when we awaken to the truth that we do not live for ourselves alone. None of us are "self made."  In fact, such a reality is utterly impossible because of the simple fact our life is woven into the fabric of all Life, all Being, all Love.

Therefore, the person we may most wish to banish from our life today may be our greatest teacher. The moment we may most want to avoid tomorrow may be a doorway to our deepening.

May God bring us through our stone walls, whatever they may be.

not saying great things

You do not need to say

      the next great thing.

It is not necessary for your word

      to be the last

      or even the first.

Release your desire to declare

      an answer that approaches

      completion or finality.

For the word that is yours to speak

      is ours to speak together.

And even then, only in stammerings:

      mere hints of the truest story,

      and inklings of our deepest names.

So first, beloved,

      before any utterance of our own,

         

first let us listen.

strange royalty

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Palm/Passion Sunday

Texts: Mark 11 & Mark 15

Eric Massanari

“strange royalty”

We don't have to look far

in this world to see what happens

when the power of kings is threatened—

or the power of rulers of any kind,

kings or queens, presidents or prime ministers,

CEOs, five-star generals or archbishops.

The “kings” of this world

often wield their power

from well-defined, and well-defended distances.

The king is the elevated other,

enthroned above the ordinary.

The king is beneficent to those who are loyal

and unyielding to those who are defiant.

If Jesus of Nazareth is a king,

then he is a very strange one.

The kings of this world

ascend to their thrones.

Jesus descends to his death.

The kings of this world

are well satisfied and wealthy.

Jesus journeys a way of emptiness.

The kings of this world

fight to maintain their control.

Jesus yields and surrenders.

The kings of this world

stand apart from their subjects.

Jesus willingly companions all.

As far as we know,

“king” is a title that Jesus never

claimed directly for himself.

However, as he enters Jerusalem,

we cannot miss the fact

that he is very much playing

with the images of royalty:

entering the royal city of David

riding on the back of a donkey,

as people line the roadways

and shout their accolades.

Perhaps it is a bit of theatrical protest

on Jesus' part; a moment of ironic playfulness.

However, for the crowds

who lay down cloaks on the road

and shout, “Hosanna!”

there is no irony in the moment.

For them, for this moment,

this is the hoped for heir of David,

their messiah,

their lord,

their deliverer.

Much will happen in the coming days

and turn the tide of their favor.

No doubt many of them will join

the crowds that eventually

shout out for Jesus' crucifixion,

once it becomes clear that this is

not the sort of king they wanted.

The irony of Jesus as king

is heard in the mocking words

of the soldiers at the crucifixion:

“Hail, King of the Jews!”

It becomes the inscription

beneath his feet:

INRI.

In Latin:

Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum.

“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”

What is this strange royalty?

Even here, in this final moment

there is no word of vengeance,

no threat or judgment,

no resentment or reproach.

There is, instead, a moment

of supreme abandonment

and anguish.

Jesus enters it in the way

he has all other moments:

with complete openness

of heart and being.

In this way,

a great emptying happens in this moment,

the cross is emptied

of any power it may have had

to threaten, intimidate

or humiliate.

Here the worldly power of kings and rulers

is disarmed and rendered impotent.

For what has the power

to control or intimidate

a person (or a people)

willing to fully accept anything that comes,

with utter openness and love?

Bodies can be tortured and killed,

but never souls.

Egos can be battered and bruised,

but not the image of God we carry.

And it is the majesty

of this image of God

that Jesus reveals on the cross.

Kings of the world do not behave like this.

What is this strange royalty?

Ronald Rohlheiser, a contemporary

writer on Christian spirituality reflects on the crucifixion:

In the crucifixion, Jesus was humiliated, shamed, brutalized. That pain stretched his heart to a great depth. But that new space did not fill in with bitterness and anger. It filled in instead with a depth of empathy and forgiveness that we have yet to fully understand.

It seems our understanding comes

through making such journeys ourselves.

What experiences of life have deepened you?

The experiences that deepen us most

and make our living more soul-full

are typically not the ones that

affirm us and leave us feeling great.

The experiences that deepen us most

are often the ones that lay us bare,

leave us vulnerable,

like moments of loss or wounding.*

They may be the moments when

we know humiliation or shame,

perhaps for the way they reveal

some weakness or inadequacy we may have

that we don't want others to see.

If you've ever lived as part

of a family then you have probably

known many such experiences!

To live a part of a church

or some other human community

for any length of time means

you will likely know such experiences!

These experiences inevitably change us,

and we have choice as to what sort

of change that will be.

We can choose to grow bitter, angry and resentful.

We can choose to take out our pain

on ourselves or on others.

Or, we might choose, with God's help,

to experience such moments

with a great openness of being.

And in doing so we learn we can survive them

and be deepened by them.

By engaging these experiences in the

way that Jesus himself did,

with openness and love,

there can come a deepening of our being;

we grow more alive

than we were before...

eventually...eventually.

It is a way that more often than not

requires great patience.

Jesus once said:

“I came that they may have life,

and have it abundantly” (John 10:10)

If Jesus can be called a king,

then the royal way of abundant life

that he calls his followers to

is something very different

than the life of kings in this world.

The true royalty,

the true majesty

that dwells in Jesus

dwells in us.

It is the richness and power

of God's own presence and love.

But it must be chosen.

We must choose it

in whatever circumstances

we might find ourselves in.

We must make the choice

to live from that deep place of love

even when we have to travel

pathways that are shadowed

by great difficulty and death.

This is the way of abundant life.

May you allow yourself

to be deepened by life,

to be loved by God,

and to share with others

the majesty of the love

God has given you to share with the world. Amen.

* I am grateful to Ronald Rolheiser for this question, "What makes you deeper?" and this observation that often it is the challenging, troubling, even humiliating experiences of life that may deepen us most for they way they unseat the control of our egoic self.