Coming to Our Senses

Coming to Our Senses The Dover Church
March 10, 2013 - 4th Lent Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

I don't know if any of you have had a wake up moment, when you suddenly realize that things aren't how you thought they were, when you suddenly realized you weren't who you thought you were, when you suddenly saw things in a very different light and that light made more sense. For most of us who have had this experience, it isn't pleasant. It is disorienting. It is as if firm ground has turned into shifting sand. We grasp for something to hold on to, to regain our footing.
2000 years ago Jesus burst upon the scene with just such a wake up moment. He was an announcement, a really great announcement. The people who came after Jesus and wrote about it called it Good News or Gospel, and it was that because it was a clear view into a fuller reality. But it also wasn't that good if you didn't want to hear it, if you liked how you were. It was very disorienting to his audience then and it is to us today. What sounded fantastic was really a life altering challenge to everyone who ever listened to him.
We heard a digest version of this Good News this morning: everything is not chaos and chance, futility and hopelessness, that we are not alone, alone by ourselves or alone with only others like us to keep us company, that there is a living, intelligent energy at the center of the universe whom Jesus knew and related to the way any of us might know and relate to a father, except this father's ultimate and exclusive personality, characteristic, and activity is love, selfless love, no holds barred, no strings attached, abundant beyond our ability to fathom or appreciate because we have never known anything like it, love.
In his story we heard this morning, it sounds lovely and inviting. This love is like a parent just waiting for a runaway child, a disobedient, thankless child who has told his parent to drop dead to come home. This parent does not hold a grudge or keep score. This parent could care less about the past because he cares so much more about the future, so much so that he waits by the window to catch that first glance and then runs to greet the child rather than waiting for the child to come to him. This loving parent does not hold back, waiting to see if there has been any behavioral, dispositional or cognitive improvement. This loving parent is demonstrative  and unequivocal in showing his love to his child, cutting off the long prepared and rehearsed apology with hugs and kisses, new clothes and jewelry, and a feast, literally treating the child like a prince. This loving parent does not judge, applies no punishment or stipulations, does not harken back in bitter recriminations but looks forward in loving expectation, which he demonstrates by his eagerness to begin celebrating at once. This loving parent is not offended by his older child, who is angry, resentful, feels cheated, and refuse to share in his parent's joy.
It's preposterous, isn't it? We can't really believe such good news, any more than most of the people in Jesus' original audience could, that this is who God is and what God does? That is this who we are and who we might be? This is how things really are and what's really going on, both then and right now? That this loving, parental God is not distant, detached and disinterested, but personal and running to meet us right now, to embrace us right now, no questions asked, just wanting to throw a party in each of our and all of our honors?
It is hard to get our minds around it enough that we might actually dare to take a chance on living as if this were the case. To do so, to actually believe it enough to live it would entail a drastic change for most if not all of us. We would have to let go of so much that we now take for granted, so much which will get in the way of our living this good news. We have to let go of our lived experience of feeling like we have never actually known God, let alone experienced God's love. We have to let go of our sense that we were never home with God in the first place so how could we have ever left. We have to let go of our pride which tells us we're  successful, substantial, and socially acceptable, not runaway and lost. We have to let go of our belief that each of us is hosting whatever party might be going on in our lives. Some of us have to let go of a faith that is really religion which is really about being a member of a civic institution called a church and we're here to help make it function. Some of us have to let go of our bad religion that is either fear, shame and guilt based, unexplained but to be accepted, or just plain illogical, anti-intellectual, or even nonsensical, as in any questioning teenager, not to mention thinking adult, would stumble repeatedly over the inconsistencies and dead ends. We have to let go of everything that closes us off from God rather than draws us in, everything that asks us to close our minds rather than invites us to stretch them, everything that separates us rather than connects us.
  And if that is not enough, and I know this is going to sound utterly fantastic to you, but we have to let go of our minds. Not our intellects or our emotions, but the auto pilot monologue we have constantly going through our minds, a monologue that sounds like the two brothers from our lesson this morning, the younger one telling us to blow this off, that connecting with God is a waste of time and we have much better things to do with our time, that this or that daydream or planning session is more pleasurable or important, or that we are worthless, a loser, that God could never be interested in us, or the older brother, who will remind us of all the times we have felt ignored, cheated, put upon, not appreciated, taken for granted. We have to come to our senses, the very thing which turned things around for the younger son. We need to first recognize all the voices running through our minds telling us not to dare and the unconscious power they have over us, interrupt them and their power over us, and then let them go because they are not real.
That's asking a lot, isn't it? It's not called a leap of faith for nothing. The only thing I can think of besides utter necessity, of being at the end of our rope with no other available options would be, paradoxically, the opposite...love, a wild, unquenchable desire to just fall madly in love, to leap headlong into love. For most of us, because this is uncharted territory, we'll want to sample the wine before we buy a bottle, let alone a case.


If we want to come to our senses, we have to first wake up. We have to interrupt the auto pilot monologue, loosen its grip on our reality. The only way I have ever made any headway with this was practicing silence, of intentionally creating space so I can first notice how messy my monologue is and then let go of it. I've been doing this for decades and some days are good, others are bad, it's usually a mixed bag, but sometimes the grace just blows me away. Last week, I invited you to drink a glass of water mindfully as a way to recognize God's love in your life. This week I want to remove the glass and put you face to face with this loving parent. We are going to do some silent meditation called Centering Prayer. In this prayer you sit in silence and focus on your breath. When you notice your mind thinking, you just let go, don't get hooked or caught up in it. Return to your breath or choose a word to refocus, like love, or Abba, daddy in Aramaic, the word Jesus used.