Advent 4 year C Sermon 09
Mary’s consent to God’s action in her life…
runs contrary to all the things that promise us… fulfilment in this world.
Worldly wisdom…material abundance…the perfect image for ourselves and our families…absolute security…are just some of the things the world wants us to crave.
Yet Mary surrenders her will and her life…
her future fulfilment and happiness… to the will of God.
When she’s invited to give up her dreams and plans…
to the future God will reveal…Mary consents
The lead up to Christmas is a time when the world intensifies its promises to deliver happiness. Toys aren’t just toys…their marketing promises to bring us together
…as happy families…sharing golden moments of joy.
Products…promise to make us secure and safe and beautiful. Underarm deodorants promise to make us confident. Toothpaste promises to make us sexy.
‘Tis the season to buy fulfilment.’
The world keeps promising and we keep consuming.
The serpent in the garden promises wisdom…
and Adam and Eve turn toward its voice…
leaving their trusting relationship with God behind.
But the message of the Gospel… is clear isn’t it
fulfilment will never come…from what we think we desire in the world. And if we’re unaware of this…the world of marketing and image management …will keep us too busy to even look for deeper satisfaction.
We discovered last week… just how much emotional investment we make in these cultural and market driven programmes for happiness. It’s just as Jesus said, ‘where our treasure is… our hearts will be also...
and we can see the evidence of this…
in our emotional reactions to not getting what we want...
and we feel anxious or angry when our desires are frustrated
And we heard how Jesus calls us… to turn away from futilely seeking happiness in all the wrong places…how he calls us to repent…and turn our attention in God’s direction… toward God’s way of mercy compassion and peace with justice.
And we discovered…that deciding to turn our lives around this way… is only the beginning…because even our best efforts to do the will of God…can be undermined by emotional programming that we’re simply unaware of.
So the real work of repentance...is letting God renew our hearts and minds… by bringing all that is hidden into the light… so it can be named and let go. Allowing God to transform us from the inside out. In other words…
what follows logically from Jesus’ call to repent…
is the call to consent…to God’s action in us.
But how?
Well, Mary giving permission to God is our clue. ‘Let it be to me as you have said.’
Mary’s consent to God’s action in her life… is unconditional.
She doesn't say… well OK… I’ll have this baby…but only if there’s no social fall out… only with a guarantee I’ll never suffer. No, Mary’s consent is one hundred percent…not ninety eight point nine percent.
So you might say that in giving her consent…Mary embodies the great commandment…to love God… with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength.
If you can’t see yourself doing this...then think of our spiritual life as a dance with God. Because in a sense Mary has accepted God’s invitation to dance…
and she’s decided to let God lead.
Just for fun let’s do an experiment which demonstrates what I’m talking about. I’ve asked Janice and Carrick to come up for a little dance demonstration.
[Both try to lead then Janice lets Carrick lead]
Now it’s easy to see how awkward and graceless it is when both partners try to lead. But when the one who’s following can relax… and let the other do the steering… then the dance flows easily across the floor.
On the dance floor of life…most of us have difficulty letting go control… and allowing God to take the lead. We do try to turn our will and our lives over to God… but it’s scary not being in control. So time and time again… we take the lead back.
And at the root of this difficulty are questions of faith…
Just how much do we trust God?
Do we really believe God can and will change us from the inside out if we allow it…and do we really believe God’s way…offers us the deepest fulfilment.
And if our faith is weak… is there any way we can become like Mary and let God lead?
Is there some method we can learn…to make surrender possible…when we live in a world that’s competing day and night for our hearts and minds.
Well just like dancing cheek to cheek…learning to surrender our will and our lives to the care of God… takes time and discipline and practise…
just as on Dancing with the Stars.
For the past two thousand years… Christians have been letting go and letting God…in a form of prayer…It’s an ancient Christian spiritual discipline… called the prayer of consent…or the prayer of quiet…today it’s sometimes called Centering Prayer. It’s a discipline I’ve had for years… and the subject of my recent study leave.
We call the prayer of consent a spiritual discipline… because we’re disciplined about doing it. Here are Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 6 in The Message translation:
"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”
So in obedience to Jesus the first thing we do is make time. Time to open ourselves to God’s transforming action in us. In our busy lives it helps to have a set time every day…maybe just five minutes to start with…
but twenty is ideal.
But the hardest thing about of the prayer of consent…
is just learning to be still… the most difficult part for us to grasp…is that God does all the work…we don’t have to do anything…and we’re not very good at that…so we have to practise doing nothing…in the presence of God.
It’s hard to let go and let God…because our hearts and our minds…are on other things…even in prayer… thoughts and images are constantly swirling around in our heads…distracting us and taking our attention away from God…yet this is a time when God must increase…and we must decrease.
And in the prayer of consent…we don't get up-tight about distracting thoughts… we just practise gently letting them go… and turning our attention back to God… in an attitude of openness and surrender.
Some people find it helpful to have a sacred word…
like the name of Jesus, or Abba…or Father…a word that symbolises their willingness to consent. And when they notice they’re caught up in their thoughts again…
they just gently bring to mind the sacred word…
to turn their attention back to God.
Now if you’re tempted to sigh and say ‘look…Diane…
its alright for you…but where on earth am I going to find time… just to sit in silence with God…I’ve got so many demands on my time already…people expect things of me…I’m so busy pursuing my other programmes for happiness …
Well… if you’re resistant to the idea of making time… to practice the prayer of consent… then the next time your tummy’s in a knot or you're your let down by a friend or frustration gets the best of you…I invite you to ask yourself… if a little resting in silence with God…
could be just what the divine doctor ordered.
When you lose your cool next time…
why not consider the possibility that God could and would transform your life… with your consent…
why not give God time… to conform you more and more into the image of the Christ…
Perhaps that’s what it means… to love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength…so you can gain the inner peace necessary to love your neighbour as yourself.
Far from withdrawing from the world…the spiritual discipline of the prayer of consent… can help us live in the world the Jesus way…. And with time and practise we will find it easier to consent as Mary did… to the coming of the Christ into her life.
May our Lord Jesus now enter our Christmas…in this sacred meal.
