Pentecost 7 year B Sermon 09
Last week we started a series thinking of our church family as a school of practice…learning to live and work…in the light of God’s love. In his book… Finding our way again…Brian McLaren suggests… if we’re not a school of practice… we’re in danger of being just another consumer group…or Sunday morning escape from reality.
So last week we considered how different it is to be part of a passionate dynamic learning congregation…how sometimes when our faith goes a bit stale…we can lose our way…and to find our way forward…we may have to look back through centuries of Christian practice…to see where we got off track in the first place…
We learned when we look back like this…we find a common ancient treasure… a portrayal of the Christian life as a journey… in stages…as life on the way. And in this…we re-discover the stages or seasons of spiritual growth… that derive from what the ancient church called
‘the threefold way’. three dimensions of the Christian life… as we seek to live in the light of God’s love. We discovered each dimension inherited two names… a Latin name… from the Western Church… and a Greek one… from the Eastern church.
So last week we began by exploring the first dimension…the Via Purgativa…[in Latin] or the practice of Katharsis [in Greek]
Practicing that dimension we learn to clean house so to speak… we take the boards off the windows of our lives… sweep out the rubbish that piles up so it blocks the light… we get rid of our idols and our preoccupation with power and pleasure and accumulating things… we remove the dark clouds… that keep God’s love and guidance from shining in…
And we imagined what the Via Purgativa would look like in our church…were we to help each other honestly examine how the pursuit of money, pleasure and power has a hold on our lives. How these forces affect our marriages, our parenting… our work… our friendships. We imagined how we could hold each other accountable…as we strive to practice for the opposite of those things…where we practice humility, self control and simplicity. [pause]
When we’ve cleaned house and the light can finally shine in … then we’re ready for a fresh vision of God…a new way of seeing one another and the rest of creation… and suddenly we’re ready to explore the second dimension of the threefold way
The Via Illuminativa …or Fotosis…This dimension is all about seeing everything in the light of God
When I was ordained… my friend singer Lorina Harding performed a song about it here in this church…[sing]
And to understand the Via Illuminativa… Brian McLaren suggests we imagine its mid-summer [don't we wish]…and we’re walking in a veggie garden…
We see ‘sunflowers facing east for the morning sun, runner beans climbing …pumpkin leaves… as big as two hands spread out together…with little baby pumpkins forming underneath…still dark green
And as we walk we’re reminded how living things draw their life from the sun. How if you take a plant inside the house…it will stretch toward a window… how if you hid it in the hot water cupboard it will wither and die without light.
McLaren says he sometimes thinks of this when he looks at people’s faces…some have seen too little light to thrive …too little of God’s light. Some seem to have been hidden in the shadows… maybe trapped… afraid to come out into the beautiful light of God’s love.
And we’ve all watched how the faces of flowers… follow the sun… as it moves across the northern sky…well I think practicing the Via Illuminativa…is something like that.
In his first letter, the apostle John makes a remarkable statement about God doesn’t he. John tells us … he’s about to summarise the message… he and his fellow disciples received from Jesus…the message they’re called to proclaim everywhere. ‘Here it is’ John says… and wraps it up in one simple metaphor… ‘God is light …and in God there is no darkness at all’.
…before we travel on the…the via purgativa… we’re still in denial about our pride our lust and our greed…we aren’t interested in God’s light. But now with some awareness… how destructive these forces are in our lives…
we can start to practice the second dimension… we begin to let the light of God into our insides… we want God’s light to enter every part of our being to drive the darkness away. So on the Via Illuminativa we begin to practice those things that let the light of God shine… into our minds and hearts.
One of these practices is study… not only the Bible… but other writing about God. Through reading …we welcome the light of God into our thinking and imagining. At church we’re eager to discover God’s light in the lyrics of hymns and song…and the sermons we hear. We look for it in the faces of other worshippers …. we smell it in the fresh baking and coffee after church… and we long to taste it in the sharing of Communion.
When we’re driving in the car… we welcome God’s light as we listen to the radio… or at home on telly or U tube …
we’re look for it in novels or poetry and art. When we go to the movies… we aren’t just looking for entertainment … we’re training in the Via Illuminativa……
has tamed our insatiable desire for pleasure… and now something’s growing in its place … something new and beautiful… as we practice the second dimension of the threefold way…a hunger and thirst for truth and justice and goodness and beauty… what Brian McLaren calls… every pure and holy reality…
Yet everyone knows that an unavoidable part of understanding daylight… is the experience of night.
Those who practice the Via Illuminativa…know our enjoyment of God’s light can be interrupted… by long nights and spiritual storms…by low pressure systems…and atmospheric depressions…inversion layers where thick gray clouds
hang right down…for days or months…
We learn about the light… not just by its presence…but by its absence…Remember how we felt last Thursday…when the sun came out… in that vast cloudless sky…how we all wanted to get outside… to feel the warmth of the sun on our faces.
And you know what…it’s only those who’ve come to love the light…who’re devastated when it seems to be gone…in what St John O the Cross calls ‘the dark night of the soul’…
No one would choose to go there…but those who have been there…know there are gifts to be found there too…and wounds that won’t heal until the light returns.
And what’s more… as CS Lewis said… when we’re experiencing God’s light… we’re not content just to see it… ‘we want to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves…to bathe in it…become part of it.’
And…there are other ways to practice the Via Illuminativa…There’s contemplation…as we learn to be still…and receptive to God’s love in silence…we can practice lectio livina …allowing God to speak fresh understanding to us through the words of Scripture. There’s what’s calledpracticing the presence of God wherever we are…and there’s fellowship… where we seek to discern the light of God in one another.
And of course there’s worship….when we sing…and in singing…we bask in the light of God’s love like tuataras on a rock in the sun. In worship… we pray and read and reflect together… on the light of God’s love… keeping our communal spirit …open to God’s light and grace.
When we practice the second dimension of the threefold way… we gradually synchronize our lives to an ancient rhythm…praying… listening… reading… worshipping. …not as a grim duty…but as an expression of our growing desire to know God.
into everything else we do…drinking coffee at Muzza’s, chatting on Facebook, riding up the chair lift listening to the news on TV…or voting
What will it mean to practice the Via Illuminativa… next time you get your power bill… or argue with the one you love…or playing with your children. How could you stay open to God’s light on the golf course… or at the kids’ soccer match? Or when you’re so stressed out…you want to scream. [pause]
And right into the middle of our overly busy lives...the ancient threefold way… offers us an array of fascinating experiences…into which the light of God can shine.
And all along…the first and second dimensions are preparing us for the third …the Via Unitiva…or Theosis…but of course that’s next week.
In the mean time…as we sing our next song…I invite you…to be that sunflower seeking out the sun… your leaves just aching to stretch toward the light…[and if you can’t quite bring yourself just yet…to raise your hands…at least now you can understand why other people do…
And without much of a fuss maybe you can just cup them slightly…toward the light of God’s love.
At the very least…I invite you…to let your heart open wide as you sing… and in our worship together…and in our impact on the world… may we practice living in the light of God.
