Kendall's Notebook Page 6
Sermon: "Beneath It All"
By: Kendall Brown
Text: Mark 9: 2-9
March 2, 2003
(This morning is communion Sunday. As usual, the Elders have prepared the communion table with the church's elegant communion tableware. But this morning, the minister has followed the Elder's set-up with a little decoration of his own. The Communion ware has been completely covered over with a pile of many-colored tissue page, streamers and other colorful items.)
Before you this morning is living proof that ministers should never be made members of the decorating committee.
If you have been wondering what this pile is all about and have finally determined that it is a pile of junk, then you are right on target.
Yes, it is a pile of junk. I like the word, "clutter." The clutter is so high that what is important has disappeared. In fact, you might even be left to wonder if what is important is even there at all - under it all.
What this clutter represents this morning is the junk in our lives that also gets piled quite high – even to the point of burying us.
We write notes to ourselves and stick them all over the place - on our kitchen appliances, and bathroom mirrors. The edges of some of the shelves over my study desk are so cluttered with notes that you cannot see the shelves. Of course the notes all have important items in them that we can’t forget. And then we forget where the notes are in all the clutter.
I am convinced that women's handbags are getting bigger and bigger. Sometimes I discover new black and blues on my person and the only place I can think of as to where I received them is in a crowed elevator where I was again whacked by a suitcase slung over some lady's shoulder. The most demanding form of clutter in our outer lives is in the schedules we keep. We even think that our children can't be happy and successful unless they are as crazy as we are at having schedules around the clock seven days a week.
Then there is the clutter of our inner lives. We all carry inner baggage, which is more like freight. Some years ago, I took some time to learn about and practice meditation. I practiced one daily ten minute exercise quite faithfully for over a year. That exercise left me astounded by the amount of clutter I carried inside my head: The clutter of inner chatter constantly going on in a tiresome, blood-pressure-raising cacophony of wasting voices.
The exercise is quite simple. You might want to try it for Lent. All you need is an alarm clock or an old-fashioned egg timer. You find a quiet space. I found being on the floor with a pillow under my head the best spot. You set the timer for ten-minutes. To start, you might want to try fewer minutes and then work up. Getting comfortable, you close your eyes – that is why you need the timer so you won't be distracted by trying to figure out what time it is. Then you simply keep track of every thought that goes through you head. As soon as you notice a thought, you attach it to an imaginary balloon and watch drift the thought off into the clear blue sky above you.
What you are doing is becoming aware of your stream of consciousness – the same stream that goes on all the time, awake or asleep - and at night is hard at work producing dreams.
When I started this exercise, I had so many thoughts flying through my head that I could hardly keep up with attaching them to balloons and the sky above was filled with them. But after several months of this discipline, I actually slowed down the stream of consciousness. Fewer and fewer thoughts would come into my mind, and believe it or not, the 10 minutes would go by quicker and quicker. This inner spiritual exercise had physical ramifications.
My doctor noted that my heart rate was lower and that my blood pressure was lower. And I just plain felt better and more energetic. There is a connection between the spiritual and the physical.
We are not the only ones on earth who have ever lived cluttered and jam packed lives. In today's lesson, we find Jesus and some of his closest disciples again heading for the hills. It is little wonder that he sought this retreat. In the days just before this, as Mark tells the story, Jesus had fed thousands on the hillside, had healed countless people who were always chasing after him, had been engaged in a life or death debate with the religious leaders, had received the news that John the Baptist had lost his head in the king's court and in the middle of it all had found time to learn how to walk on water. He needed a mountaintop moment to see through all the clutter.
Reading the transfiguration story reminds me of being in Berkeley, CA visiting my daughter. I will arise in the morning there in the gray of a deep, wet fog. I have gone outside and walked up the street. And when I say up I mean up. In a few minutes, I am on a high hill above the fog. From that spot, the tips of buildings across the bay in downtown San Francisco can be seen. Across the rolling banks of fog which completely cover the bay and all the city around, one can see the tops of the golden gate bridge glistening in a bright sunlight. Just north of the bridge, one can see here and there a mountain or two sticking their proud heads above the clouds with their feet blanketed under the fog and the redwoods of the coastal hills tickling their toes.
I think Jesus could see with an inner eye from today's mountaintop across all the clutter to another hilltop in Jerusalem upon which there was the cross. His experience on that mountain helped him to gain something that he needed in order to face the cross on that distant hill. He was affirmed, not only in who he was, but also in whose he was. He belonged to God, and God would keep him and be with him on the next horrible mountain and in all the clutter in between.
Lent is a time for us to remove the clutter of our lives to find not just who we are, but whose we are. (Start removing the junk from the table and let the communion set emerge.) That is what the old practice of giving up something for Lent is all about. We give up something that distracts us from God and from the spiritual treasures of life. We give up things to have a little more time to find the quiet center. We give up things to focus on the stream of holiness in life. We give up things to make a little more room for that which is holy and good. We give up some of the clutter to find the treasure underneath.
It is here at this table where you belong. Lent is a time to diminish how much we belong to the clutter and junk in our lives and to live to the glory and grace of belonging to God.