Out of My Mind for Christ

Out of My Mind for Christ 

1 Samuel 17:4; 8 - 11; 40 - 47 

The text chosen for tonight is a radical departure from the traditional Ash Wednesday text. In fact, this season we are embarking on a journey to do Lent with a very different frame or perspective. You might be tempted to think that I am out of my mind for choosing an unconventional approach to the holy season of Lent.

In this season of my personal spiritual development, I find myself invited to see Jesus with new eyes, a perspective different from what has been treated as orthodox, or the right way, during my lifetime. 

In a sense, it seems what I know of as a traditional approach is thoroughly self-centered, and makes Jesus and his faith, a distant second to worrying about me and my stuff. 

So I am not going to call you to focus on your shortcomings. I will not encourage you to dwell on the sins of your past. I am not going to put words in your mouth that say, “Jesus died for my sins.” I intend to invite you to let this Lent not be all about you. 

In the story of David and Goliath, David is a young boy and Goliath is a seasoned soldier of super human proportions. It happens in our world. Once in a while, and human being grows to a size that defies our imagination. Here Goliath represents the enemy of the collection of tribes known as Israel and their Tribal Leader Saul. The giant heaps insults on Israel and their God, in the hearing of the foolish youth.  

David becomes inflamed by the rhetoric, and vows to step up and defend the honor of the God he believes in. For his part, the giant mocks and taunts David. He insults the very manhood of the men of Israel, and especially little David. 

Throughout the exchange, David never takes the insults personally. He hears and sees all of these challenges as if they were directed at God and the glory of God.   

When I first noticed that David did not allow his ego to get involved, I thought I was on to something. I wondered, how much better of a Christian I could be - if only - I were able to tell which of the stresses in my life were rightly a challenge to me as a person, and which of the challenges in my life were actually a challenge to my God and my faith. 

I carried the question with me for several weeks. I took it to work with me. I toyed with it as I negotiated with my teen-aged and young adult children. It was a part of my prayers and my self-talk in between everything else. The question would not let me go. 

Slowly I began to rephrase the question, in hopes of being able to make a distinction between my issues, and my faith issues. Which stresses do I face that do not involve my faith and love of God? 

In time, it became clear. But I assure you, I fought it off tooth and nail for quite a while. It became clear that all of the stress in my life could be seen as a challenge to my faith and my God. Could I see the love of God around me? Could I find the Spirit of God in the community I was among? Would I ever learn to trust that God would walk with me through whatever difficulty I faced? 

Now I assure you, there are some places where I am tempted to go, that has nothing to do with faith. My friend Ron Colby has often repeated that anytime he is walking into a new or unusual circumstance he breathes the prayer, “Jesus, take my hand and go with me.” If he is headed into a situation where he does not want Jesus to go with him, he really does not belong there. It is a very useful perspective. 

It is tricky, to try to function in everyday situations, looking inwardly for the love of God and God’s guidance. The best example I can think of is good, active listening. Listening is hard work. It is harder work than most of us acknowledge. 

To listen well we have to give our attention to the other. We need to quiet our own inner monologue and quit judging the other. Tell the little voice in our head - who keeps trying to make things lineup the way we like to see them - to just shut for a minute. We need to let go of our mind - and let their reality speak. We need to listen for the heart behind the words, we need to read the facial expressions and body language, we need to appreciate the frame of reference that they are using. It is hard work. We have to step out of our egocentric mind, and see the perspective of the other. This is called love of neighbor, when we see them as they are, and not how the measure up against our criteria. 

Often we want to cut the story short. We might want to tell them they have the wrong approach. But the best of advice becomes useless words littering the floor until the speaker believes they have been really heard. Until there is a sense that they are understood, it is hard to accept even good and useful advice. 

We cannot honestly make progress in hearing the guidance offered by the Still Speaking God, until we develop our skills for listening well in this world;  within our marriage, within our family, within our faith community. Start wherever you have a reliable friend or partner, and build those listening habits. Learn to tell the little voice in your head to shut up, and let you listen without judging, listen out of your mind. 

We know that David deeply loved God and God was active in his life. But the scriptures detail that David’s relationship with God was marked by dramatic ups and downs. David was not able to sustain the attention to God, and his faith suffered in the times he lost his focus. 

So this season I will invite you to do two things. We will proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth was fully human and fully divine. Our routine orthodoxy readily and consistently proclaims the divinity of Jesus. We routinely fail to acknowledge the humanity of Jesus. 

That is a shame, because it first insults God, who went to a great extremes to demonstrate a radical love for humanity, and God’s appreciation of the complexity of human life, and provide us with a genuine, human sized model of faithfulness of love in action. 

The second half of the invitation is for us to recognize that we are also creatures with a dual nature. Yes, we are flesh and blood humans. Our bodies share the same common building blocks as the stars and the rocks and even Brussel Sprouts. But, we are so much more than that. We are made in the image of our Creator, with a spiritual nature that has been assembled from the same building blocks as the heavenly bodies of angels and of God.  

Tonight, we repeat the rite of the ancient church, putting on ashes and recognizing an appropriate humility before God. We accept that we often fail to appreciate our own spiritual nature. Let us not dwell on our past failures, but take a step outside of our own mind. Be encouraged that the presence of God is immediately available, and appreciated best -  when we are willing to do the hard work - of getting out of our mind, and seeing the world with the mind of Christ.