March 2006 Archives

In the Wilderness - Wait!
John 3:14-21
4th Sunday in Lent - Renewal in the Wilderness
March 26, 2006
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
I have a confession to make: I don't like to wait -for anything! When I'm ready to check out at Target or the grocery store I look for the shortest line and find myself more than just a little irritated if I pick one that ends up having to get a price check or some other event that slows it down. When I'm driving I would rather go miles out of my way than to sit in a traffic jam waiting for the cars to move. I hate arriving in the doctor's office and finding the waiting room full of people because I know that means I'll be doing just that -waiting.
But I don't think I'm alone, am I? I think we have a cultural bias against waiting. Instant potatoes, drive thru coffee shops, breakfast bars, fast food restaurants, fast-pass lines at amusement parks, cookbooks with titles such as The Five Ingredient Fifteen Minute Cookbook, 1 hour photo developing in the grocery store so you can shop and then pick up your pictures, -all so we don't have to wait. We want what we want and we want it NOW! This bias against waiting spills over into other areas of our lives as well. Losing weight, changing our behavior, finding a new job -we want it to happen NOW! And as for God -when we pray we want an answer NOW! We want healing - NOW! We want the answers - NOW! And when we don't receive what we ask for immediately, we wonder, "Is God really listening? Does God really answer prayers?"
But God's ways are not our ways. God's time is not our time. God seems to have a proclivity for waiting. Nine months is a long time to wait for the birth of a baby. We must wait for seeds to germinate and grow. We must wait for a tree to bear fruit or grief to subside. A caterpillar must wait in the cocoon until the time is right for the butterfly to emerge. Yes, God seems to have a proclivity for waiting.
Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD! (Psalms 27:14 NRSV)
...but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31 NRSV)
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:25 NRSV)
Like it or not, to find renewal and wholeness and true LIFE, we must learn the art of waiting. A few years ago a clergy colleague and friend told me about a book that was powerfully meaningful in her life. It was called When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions written by Sue Monk Kidd. Perhaps because of its title or perhaps because it was not the right time, I didn't rush right out and buy the book. Then a few months ago, while searching on-line for another book by Sue Monk Kidd, this one popped up. I ordered it. But I still didn't start reading it. Then a couple of weeks ago, when I was heading to the doctors office -where I have learned to always take a book along to read- this book caught my eye. In the amazing awesomeness of God's timing, last week I came to the section of the book
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titled The Prayer of Waiting. Likening the process of spiritual growth and renewal to the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly, she writes:
Making a cocoon and the transformation that goes on inside it involves weaving an environment of prayer, but not the sort of prayer we usually think of. No, this is something mysteriously different. This prayer isn't about talking and doing and thinking. It's about postures. Postures of the Spirit. It's turning oneself upside down so that everything is emptied out and God can flow in. ... [in waiting prayer] we place ourselves in postures of the heart, in the stillness that enables us to become aware of what God is doing so that we can gradually say yes to it with our whole being.
Throughout the next few pages she talks about three inward postures of the heart that comprise the prayer of waiting. The first posture she calls Sitting At Jesus Feet. And she recalls the story of Mary and Martha when Mary sat at Jesus' feet her eyes and mind and heart focused simply and quietly on every word Jesus spoke; but even more than that her whole being focused on the sheer joy of just being in his presence. This posture is characterized by what she calls attentiveness and devotion. Attentiveness is what we talked about two weeks ago. It is noticing, paying attention, watching for signs of God's ever-present, always-near love and grace. And devotion is the sense of awe, wonder and delight we feel when we catch a glimpse of the miracle of God's love and the marvel of God's creation. Now despite the title this posture does not necessarily involve sitting. It might be noticing the fresh greening of spring and feeling a sense of wonder and delight in the coming of new life and God's amazing power to refresh and renew our world and our lives. Stopping to contemplate the spider weaving a web or sitting and watching the sun rise and drinking in its beauty or the gratitude you feel for the love of a spouse, a child, a friend each in their own way moves you into this posture of attentiveness and devotion.
The second posture she calls Sitting While Jesus Prays and she remembers the scene in the garden of Gethsemane. "It was the eve of Jesus' death. ... The hour was late and the crisis surrounding the disciples had drained them inside and out. Jesus took them to a garden to wait through the long night. Did he ask them to pray? To plead his case? NO. 'Sit down and rest,' he said 'and I'll pray.'" It is the truth Paul had discovered and seeks to share when he says in Romans 8:
But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. [Romans 8:25-26 The Message]
It does not rest on our shoulders. We do not have to find the right words to say. Our wordless sighs and aching groans are enough. We just need to rest in God's presence, trusting that Christ is praying - for us! But we do have to take those mini-retreats and rest in the presence of God. We have to be still enough that we catch the echoes of God's amazing love -for us!
The third posture she calls Sitting by the Road and recalls the story of the blind beggar Bartimaeus who waited expectantly for Jesus to come and heal his blindness. This posture is characterized by hopeful expectancy and open-hearted trust. "A beggar must simply trust, moment by moment, that somehow she'll get fed. He lives off hope. She lives not with clenched fists but with palms open, ready to receive."
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But there are times when hope fades and trust wanes and it is then more than ever that we need each other. "We need to sit in each other's stillness and take up corporate postures of prayer." Perhaps waiting with you I can hope and trust enough to carry you through the times of your doubt and then sometime later you can do the same for me.
We can engage in the prayer of waiting and adopt these postures because the source of our hope, the bedrock of our trust, the most foundation for our devotion and the deepest assurance of the Spirit's prayers on our behalf; the truth that makes this waiting possible is this: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." God's love for each and every one of us is so great that God is always at work in our lives and when we believe it and trust it and live it, in God's perfect time, we find true LIFE! Amen.
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Renewal in the Wilderness - Notice!
Mark 8:27-29 & 34-37 (The Message)
March 12, 2006 - 2nd Sunday in Lent
FRB Kick-off
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
A number of years ago, I took a class where we were asked to keep a synchronicity journal. Synchronicities, according to Carl Jung are "meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect." We've all had them; things like thinking of someone for the first time in years, and then running into them a few hours later or having a book fall off the shelf at the bookstore and it's exactly what you need. Such synchronicities, someone said, "are God's way of letting us know we're not alone in the universe." But what surprised me about keeping a journal over the course of a twelve week semester was the amazing number of synchronicities that I noticed, just because I was paying attention.
As we pick up Mark's story, Jesus and the disciples are headed toward Caesarea Philippi when he asks them, "Who do the people say I am?" Then, after they told him what they had heard he asked the all important question, "And you--what are you saying about me? Who am I to you?" Jesus wanted to see what they had noticed. Had they begun to see life with new eyes? Were they paying attention to the still small voice that speaks in the depths of each heart? Had they truly discovered the One who would always be with them?
In our journey through the wilderness of Lent we are exploring the concept of Renewal. Last week we considered the words retreat and expect and I encouraged each of you to adopt the practice of taking daily mini-retreats to open your heart to the still-speaking God. If you weren't here you will find a copy of the process I am suggesting that we use on the back table. Today I want to focus on the word notice and see if we can see how noticing -paying attention, waking up- might bring renewal to our oftentimes weary lives.
When Pat and Darrell Herman attended the FRB Harvest Celebration at their home church in Mazon, Illinois, they noticed the voice of Spirit tugging at their hearts. "You and the congregation in Plainfield could do this. You could provide Food Security for hungry people a half a world away."
Now, I don't know how long they pondered this call before they approached what was then our Benevolence Board, but when they came that night they were full of excitement and enthusiasm. They told us what FRB was and how it worked. They showed a video and introduced us to some of the people from Mazon. During that meeting, the members of the Benevolence Board noticed the voice of the Spirit tugging at their hearts as well. "This would be wonderful," they said, "but our plates are already full. There is just no way the four of us can take on a project of this magnitude."
Sitting in the meeting I, too, noticed the Spirit tugging at my heart, "This is something this congregation needs to do," I felt more than heard the Spirit say. At that point in time I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to introduce the concept of Ministry Teams. So I said to the Board, "You like the idea, right?"
"Yes!"
"If you had the energy you'd do it, right?"
"Right!"
"Pat and Darrell, this is something you have a passion about, right?
"Of course."
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"Would you be willing to find a partner rural congregation and recruit people within our congregation to help with the various tasks? In other words, would you be willing to head an FRB Ministry Team?"
"Yes, we would."
"So, Benevolence Board, why not give Pat and Darrell the OK and we will have our first ministry team."
They did and the rest, as they say, is history --but not quite.
The Hermans began to search for a rural partner, but none of their leads panned out and they were getting very, very discouraged. In fact, they were just about ready to give up when Pat had what, for her, is a very rare experience; she woke up at 4am one night -unable to get back to sleep. "I never wake up in the middle of the night," she said as she related this story. But there she was wide awake at four in the morning when she noticed something tugging at her heart. "You can do it," was the overwhelming feeling that flooded her entire being. "It will happen! YOU CAN DO IT!" At that point she felt almost compelled to get up, grab a pad of paper and begin writing. As she did, page after page of notes and ideas and procedures came flooding into her mind and as long as the ideas came, she wrote.
When it was finally morning she shared her experience and her notes with Darrell. They were both rejuvenated and they began act on the notes Pat had taken and before long they found a partner congregation and we were on the way to our first FRB growing project.
But Pat and Darrell could not have done it all by themselves. Throughout the three years we have been engaged in FRB many, many people have noticed the Spirit tugging at their hearts, "sponsor this acre, work on this team, write this article for the newspaper, bake these treats for the bake sale, save your allowance, donate these acres, call this feed company to get a donation of their product; in all these ways and so many more, people in our community and in River Forest and Forrest have noticed the voice the Spirit tugging at their hearts. And because we have each noticed, listened, paid attention and responded we have raised $230,969.28 to provide food security to people in Tanzania and Zambia. But something none of us expected when we began this ministry team was how much we as individuals and as a congregation would be changed. Through that first FRB Growing Project we, as a congregation, were touched, empowered, and transformed as we experienced God's renewing presence.
When we notice, wake up, pay attention to the movement of the Spirit, we jump into the flow of God's grace and when we are moving in that flow, although we might get tired, we will never be worn out. When we notice, wake up, pay attention to the movement of the Spirit, we learn to dance with the rhythms of God's grace and in that dance we see with new eyes, love with renewed compassion, and live lives that are continually refreshed and renewed. When we notice, wake up, pay attention to the movement of the Spirit we begin to recognize the fingerprints of God in our lives and in the world and we are blessed, even as we become blessings for others. May you notice and find renewal today and every day. Amen.
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