Worship & Meditation - What Is The Secret Of Your Life?

Welcome to First United Methodist Church of Dallas.

We're so glad that you're worshipping with us in this way today.

Over the last 18 months,

We have tried a variety of ways of connecting better with you,

Near and far.

We've heard feedback from folks all over the country,

Even all over the world,

About how these services have helped them to navigate the pandemic,

Navigate necessary social change,

And even navigate what's going on within them.

And so,

As we begin a new season,

Sadly during this pandemic,

We're starting something a little different as well.

A way for us to connect with you in a more holistic way.

A way that sits us down together,

Almost having a conversation about what scripture is unveiling for us,

And praying together,

And discovering what God may have for you and for me on the journey ahead.

In this virtual worship experience,

It's so difficult to create community.

And I trust that the Holy Spirit is in it anyway.

That the Holy Spirit is going to bless our time together,

Is going to connect us,

Whether we're here in the city or far apart.

That the Holy Spirit is going to unite us,

Head,

Hearts,

And lives,

So that in what we do,

What we say,

And how we live out the gospel of Jesus Christ,

May be made manifest in not only who you are,

But also in what the church can become.

I'm so grateful that you're here.

Welcome to worship.

As we enter into this time of worship,

I'll be guiding us in an arriving meditation.

As you're comfortable,

I invite you to close your eyes.

Or if you're not comfortable with closing your eyes,

You may rest your gaze on an inanimate object near you,

Somewhere away from the screen.

And we begin by being right here,

Showing up.

I invite you to sense what it means to you to arrive into presence.

You may take a few long,

Deep breaths.

Just feel the movement of breath collecting your attention,

And letting the breath resume in a natural rhythm.

Let your senses be awake so you're listening to the sounds around you.

Inwardly listening so that you're listening to and feeling your body.

And in that fullness,

Sensing now the quality of presence that is right here,

Right in this moment.

Maybe now noticing the difference between right now and perhaps when you first arrived.

Find your breath again.

Now with deep gratitude,

Find the quality of this present moment.

As a way of awakening your heart to what is right here and right now.

And we move now into a moment of prayer to complete our contemplation.

So let us pray together.

Oh Holy One,

You are with us day in and day out,

Loving,

Supporting and encouraging us.

You know us.

You see what we do and what we don't do.

You hear what we say and what we refrain from saying.

You love us as we are.

You know what we need and what we can do.

You encourage us.

You see the pain of the world and you respond with love.

You hear the aching of our hearts and you seek to heal.

You see the injustices and you seek justice.

Remind us to trust you not only to guide us,

But also to help us along the way.

Remind us that we do not have to be all things,

Nor do all things,

But simply respond to your love in kind.

And now with the confidence of the children of God,

We pray the prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

Our Father,

Who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.

I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks ago and he had a young child come up to him when they were returning to church.

And the young child was asking a bunch of questions about,

You know,

Some things had been moved around the church house.

And my friend had actually grown a beard.

And so the child had a lot of questions about church things and the beard.

And then as the conversation unfolded,

The child asked,

Okay,

So what's your job?

And my friend was kind of stumped because he had just explained the beard.

He was kind of stumped and then he said,

My job is for you and everybody in my church to see me enjoy scripture because I want you to enjoy the Bible.

And I never really heard that before from someone who is a pastor that our job is to show other people how to enjoy scripture.

So my job today in kind of a difficult text is for us to engage together an enjoyment of how the Bible,

The scripture can come to life.

And so let me add a little bit of context here for us before we read the gospel lesson itself.

I'm reading from the Gospel of Mark and we think that the Gospel of Mark is probably the earliest known written down gospel.

Matthew takes some pieces of Mark.

Luke takes some pieces of Mark.

And they each kind of have their connection in the Gospel of Mark.

Our scripture text today is right in the center of the 16 existent chapters of the Gospel of Mark.

It is at the end of chapter eight,

Right before the scripture passage.

Jesus is healing someone who is blind,

Who has lost sight.

And Jesus engages this one by healing this one sight.

Immediately after this passage is the transfiguration,

Where Jesus goes up to a small hill and he becomes dazzling,

Bright as the sun.

And then there's this revelation that,

Aha,

That is Jesus the Christ.

So this scripture passage happens right in between a healing and what's called the transfiguration.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read the scripture text out loud.

And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to take one phrase from the scripture text and we're going to enter into what I'm calling a passage meditation.

We're just honing in on this one phrase so that we can meditate on it.

So what I want you to do now is listen to the scripture text and then you'll be able to see this one phrase and hear it again for yourself.

So let me begin enjoying scripture.

Mark chapter eight,

Starting at verse 27.

Jesus went on with his disciples to the village of Caesarea Philippi.

And on the way he asked his disciples,

Who do people say that I am?

And they answered him,

John the Baptist.

Others said,

Elijah,

And still others,

One of the prophets.

He asked them,

But who do you say that I am?

Peter answered him,

You are the Messiah.

And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Then Jesus began to teach them about the Son of Man and what the Son of Man may undergo and be rejected by the elders,

The chief priests,

The scribes,

And be killed.

And after three days rise again.

He said all this quite openly.

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

But turning and looking at his disciples,

Jesus rebuked Peter and said,

Get behind me,

Satan.

For you are setting your mind not on divine things,

But on human things.

He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them,

If any want to become my followers,

Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For those who want to save their life will lose it.

And those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it.

For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?

Indeed,

What can they give in return for their life?

Those who are ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation,

Of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

And now let us begin our passage meditation.

I invite you to see it for yourself on the screen or listen to my voice as I read it aloud.

Let us begin.

For you are setting your mind not on divine things,

But on human things.

For you are setting your mind not on divine things,

But on human things.

For you are setting your mind not on divine things,

But on human things.

I got to thinking this week,

What if Christianity wasn't a religion?

What if it wasn't a religion?

What if it was a spiritual practice that was engaging us for and with the world?

Religion gets caught up in doctrine,

In this do I believe or not believe.

Religion gets caught up in the dualisms of life.

There's a rightness and there's a wrongness.

There is something that is transcendent or something that is absolutely human based,

Right?

But what if Christianity was a spiritual practice and that the gospel,

When we read the gospel,

It's actually teaching us about ourselves.

Not necessarily teaching us about the form of Jesus and what theological arguments we can create about Jesus.

But what if the gospels are really written for us to consider who we are?

How our lives ought to be lived.

It's easy to see in our scripture passage today that Peter,

Peter is set up throughout this entire passage.

It's this wonderful,

Beautiful aspects of Peter's ministry throughout,

Especially the gospel of Mark.

That he's engaging Jesus every step of the way,

Asking difficult questions of Jesus and trying to figure out what it might look like for us to see Jesus's teaching in a different way.

Literary scholars of the Bible oftentimes talk about Peter's,

Peter is our stand in.

He is a fill in for our shame,

Our fear,

Our anger.

And that Peter's imperfections,

Peter's complications of his character shine more brightly oftentimes as a kind of invitation to imagine the human condition in very negative terms.

It's getting back to that religion stuff again that I frankly am finding less and less meaningful for how we're living in,

Especially these days and times.

And yet Peter is given this very prominent position in the religion itself.

Peter is given the keys to the kingdom.

He's engaging in this organization of the church and we can see it throughout the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles that this is what Peter is up to.

So I got to thinking this week if the gospels are an invitation for me to consider who I am and the gospels are teaching me about me,

Then what if Peter isn't a stand in for me?

What if Peter is a neutral party,

A neutral party in the gospels to receive the fullness of Jesus's teaching as if Peter is standing right next to me and I'm listening to Jesus.

It's not uncommon that we would think about this,

I think.

I mean given what's going on when the Bible is finally written,

There's this use of the Socratic method,

This question and answer,

This navigation between the teacher and the student.

And between the teacher and the student there's this unfolding of the teaching.

And so Peter in a way is not a stand in but a mirror.

A mirror for Jesus for me to see Jesus through a human's eyes and also a mirror for me that this invitation of a spiritual reading is actually to see the reflection of God in and around us.

A spiritual practice is really trying to figure out the mirror itself.

Really trying to figure out how we make sense of the world around us.

Jesus asked the question to his disciples as they're walking along,

So who do people say that I am?

Right?

You have the all stars of the Bible,

Right?

It's the starting lineup of everything you ever wanted to know in the Bible,

Right?

It's Elijah,

It's John the Baptist,

And oh let's start naming the prophets,

Right?

It's all the folks.

And then Jesus then asked the question again as if to point in on that's all fine and good religiously,

But I want to know who you think I am.

Who do you think I am?

How am I drawing out of you the best of who you are?

Can you see what I'm offering and lend an ear to a message that God has so firmly planted within you?

A message of love,

Of grace,

Of peace,

Of hope.

Can you begin to integrate that?

Peter's totally caught off guard in our scripture text.

Totally caught off guard and starts to thumb around just a little bit to figure out,

Okay,

There's got to be a good Sunday school answer here.

So he's,

You're the Messiah,

You're the Messiah,

You're the one we've been waiting for,

Right?

And it's almost like Jesus then is caught off guard.

Jesus then rebukes Peter,

Get thee behind me Satan,

Like the worst thing you could possibly say to anybody.

Get thee behind me Satan.

Listen very carefully.

Listen very carefully to what this might mean.

Peter has to let go of that which is not divinely inspired.

Peter has to let go of all of the chatter,

All the ways that religion has been built up around him.

And he's got to focus clearly on Jesus.

Maybe looking in the mirror himself,

As you and I have to look in the mirror ourselves about living lives of faith.

This is what Jesus is up to.

Jesus then reverses the mirror and says,

Peter,

Look at your own life.

And what does Jesus do?

He moves from Peter to all the disciples and in essence,

All of us.

And what Jesus does is he takes this line from Peter and he begins to expand it.

He asks people not how they're living their lives outside of themselves.

Jesus is asking all of the disciples,

Including Peter,

Including you and me,

Look within.

Discover the secret that is within you.

Jesus speaks of self-denial,

Take up your cross,

Saving and losing,

Gaining and forfeit,

Shame and glory.

All of this is part of the ego self,

Part of what we're all longing for,

Part of what we cling to when we think about religion and not spirituality.

Spirituality is engaging in the dualisms and saying,

What if there isn't an either or,

But what if there is something in this murky middle?

What if there's something in between all of this?

Life is not lived on a moment to moment basis in the extremes.

Gain and forfeit.

Right?

Shame and glory.

These are just moments in time.

Much of life is lived in this in between.

A spiritual reading of this text may be inviting us to think about how we can ground ourselves in the present moment and discover ourselves what the secret of our life really is.

The secret of our life is,

Can we accept life as it is?

Can we be okay with this murky middle?

Can we be okay with murkiness?

I sometimes am not.

Can we be okay being in the middle?

Can we be okay living in this space while at the same time being aware and alert to what Christ has in store for us in the present moment?

Not somehow fixing the past or living in the past or somehow projecting the future and trying to clear the road for us to travel by.

But instead,

Stay right here and now.

Finding faith in the here and now.

Maybe not in some institutional religious way of being.

Or some projection of what the church or a religious community ought to live up to.

But what is it that Christ is calling for us to be right here and now?

What is the secret of your life?

I'm convinced to be on a shadow of a doubt that Jesus may be offering us here that a kind of permission to live out our faith.

To live out our faith fully so that we might see the gospel being manifested in our lives as it unfolds.

To not have to just cling to the gain or the loss.

Or maybe even see the foil of Peter.

This one who has so often been our foil for the gospels.

Rather,

Christ is inviting us to consider how Christ is living within us.

Who do you say that I am?

And the corollary question for Jesus in this is,

Who in the world do we focus on?

Do we focus on human things or divine things?

For Jesus,

Jesus wants us to focus on what is divine.

What is sacred?

What is holy?

What is good?

To make sacrifices.

That is,

To make holy of every moment.

That as we face the world's pain,

As we engage in the world's hurts,

That instead of turning away or turning our back and running away from it,

We stay present and engaged.

Being with it.

Maybe there's nothing we can do in this present moment,

But can we be with it?

Maybe there's a celebration in life and we're trying to grasp it,

Hold on to it,

Cling to that celebration,

That joy in our lives.

As we know,

Joy is sometimes fleeting.

And the harder we cling to it,

The more we cling to it,

The more we lose.

Can we be with joy?

Can we enjoy the moment?

Can we be in this moment so that we can somehow live holistically?

So that we can somehow live in every present moment,

Discovering for ourselves the secret that is already within us.

The secret that is already within us is that the living Christ has sent you a message that you have faith,

Hope and love within you.

So this is the question that is part of my reflection for the upcoming week,

And I want to lend it to you.

The question is this,

What is the secret of your life?

What's the secret of your life?

And here's a practice that maybe you can find yourself doing this week as you consider what the secret of your life is.

For me,

I can only imagine it's going to take a little bit of work.

So here's the practice I'm going to engage in this week.

I want you to make a contact this week.

That's right.

Maybe a phone call to one who has been specifically helpful to you in you discovering your gift and offering for the world.

Reach out to that person and share with them gratitude on how what they showed you is now being manifested in your life on a day to day basis,

Month to month basis,

Year to year basis.

And if the person that has shown you your gift or offering for the world,

If they're deceased,

I invite you to write them a letter.

Maybe even in handwritten form.

Right.

Dear so-and-so and reflecting deeply on how they made an impact on your life to show you your gift and offering for the world.

What is the secret of your life?

I think I have a clue about what yours is,

And I hope this practice this week helps me to find mine.

In light of this practice,

In light of our engagement in the world,

In light of this experience of sharing this time together,

Of enjoying God's word,

Of enlivening our hearts to discover the secret deep within,

I invite you to go from this place.

Go from this place and find yourself grounded,

Grounded in every single moment and with deep gratitude and thanksgiving,

Offering the fullness of yourself to those who have gathered around you so that they may see maybe just maybe a glimpse of the living Christ that is already within you.

Go in peace,

And may the peace of Christ be with you all.