St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, February 1, 2009

Discernment: Finding our Way Forward With God

Rev. David Mundy

I Thessalonians 5:12-24 Matthew 26:36-46

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I happened to be in the United States on Martin Luther King day this year and it was interesting to hear the thoughts and analysis about Dr. King both through casual conversation and in interviews on National Public Radio. Because President Obama’s inauguration was the next day, it was pointed out that the only other time when as many people had gathered on the Mall for a public address was when Dr. King gave his iconic I Have a Dream speech in 1963. It was suggested that the election to the presidency of a person of colour was a significant part of the realization of that dream.

I thought of a story about Martin Luther King which didn’t involve a formal speech or hundreds of thousands of listeners in a crowd. In fact it happened one winter night in 1956 when King was rising to prominence as a speaker and organizer for the Montgomery, Alabama bus strike. A tired woman by the name of Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat on a city bus for a white person and her quiet act of defiance led to a well organized and effective protest movement which shook race relations to their core. But Dr. King and other leaders paid a huge price for their involvement. They were jailed temporarily, with vagrants and criminals.

At the height of the bus strike King was receiving 30 to 40 hate letters a day, threatening him and his wife and young child. One night he came home late from a rally and the phone rang and the voice at the other end of the line said “Nigger if you aren’t out of town in three days we gonna blow your brains out and blow up your house.” Click.

King wrote later about how dispiriting this call was. He put on a pot coffee and sat alone at the kitchen table. With his head in his hands he decided that he had to quit the cause for the well-being of his family.

Oh Lord, I’m down here trying to do what is right. But Lord I must confess that I am weak now. I’m afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I can’t face it alone. I have nothing left.

King felt that he received an answer to this crie de coeur, in the form of a powerful sense of Christ’s presence. He was sure that Jesus was telling him to fight on and that night he felt the reality of his faith in a way that was different from anything he had experienced before.

This story reminds me that even religious leaders of great courage and presence have their vulnerable moments when they humbly seek God’s guidance in their decision-making.

Decisions, decisions – life is full of decisions. This Sunday is week four of our six week series on the Spiritual Practices, the “holy habits” of the Christian life. Among the dozens of practices we have chosen

Testimony

Singing our Faith

Honouring the Body

Discernment

Healing

Dying Well

You may be looking at that word “discernment” and thinking “I don’t have a clue what that word means!” Fair enough. It is not one we use often, and it isn’t even a word we find many times in the bible. Discernment is that process of decision-making and searching for guidance which takes place in the active presence of the God revealed in Christ who intimately cares about our life situations.

In the gospel today Jesus tries to discern God’s will in the lonely hours he spends in the Garden of Gethsemane while his supposedly loyal disciples snooze all around him. As Jesus prays he asks God to take away his cup of suffering if it is possible, although he is ready to accept God’s will. One of my university professors shared with us that this was one of the most meaningful passages in the gospels for him, because it demonstrated that Jesus had to wrestle with hard decisions and unpleasant realities the way we do.

The other reading today was from one of the apostle Paul’s letters to the congregation of believers he helped establish in the town called Thessalonica. Every once in a while I remind you that while the gospels are at the beginning of our New Testament, they weren’t written first – a number of these epistles or letters preceded them. The first, as far as we know, is First Thessalonians, the letter we heard from a few moments ago. Paul encourages this Christian community to “pray without ceasing” which doesn’t mean sitting around all day with heads bowed, but to live with an awareness of God which is part of everyday decision making. He also says:

Do not quench the Spirit.

Do not despise the words of the prophets,

but test everything;

hold fast to what is good;

abstain from every form of evil.

The challenge of making good choices begins very early in life, as you will know if you have ever stood at the checkout in the grocery store and said to a five-year-old “you can have any chocolate bar you want.” Minutes later, as the cashier waits impatiently, that five-year-old is often still there scanning the choices.

While we develop the ability to make choices if doesn’t seem to get easier as we move through life. Because we live at such a fast pace, it almost seems as though the decisions are made before we have time to think them through. And there are times when we are not just choosing between good and evil. We are trying to understand what represents the greatest good amongst a number of options.

Pastors spend a fair amount of time with people who are trying to make decisions. They aren’t necessarily heroic or world-changing choices, but they are life-changing. Should I take the “leap of faith” and change jobs? Should I stay or go from a relationship? Do I want to undergo that operation or medical treatment? Where should I go to school? On a number of occasions I have spent difficult hours with individuals who wonder whether they should take their own lives to end their physical and psychological pain.

Sometimes I get the sense that the person with whom I am sitting wants me to tell them what path to take, which is almost never helpful, or ethical for that matter. And there are occasions when it sounds as though the person wants God to give them a free pass around the tough stuff of life. Invariably I listen as best I can, as what I hope is a “non-anxious presence,” and I pray with the individual and encourage them to pray that they make a God-informed decision.

Needless to say, ministers too must make choices and want them to be informed by faith. I always want to have a sense of call to serve a congregation because being the pastor of a church community is so much more than a job. But making the faithful choice is not always straightforward and unfortunately there isn’t always a clear sense of Christ’s leading and guidance.

A few years ago I flew to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and had lengthy job interviews with two congregations on the same weekend. Both congregations offered worthwhile challenges in ministry. I returned home and waited for the completion of the interview process, then received a call from one of the churches saying that they felt I was the person to provide leadership into their future. And a call came from the other congregation saying virtually the same thing. It would have been so much easier if one had been enthusiastic and the other thought I was the devil incarnate! Tough calls such as this one bring to mind that old Loving Spoonful song, Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?

For me, the clouds did not open to reveal an answer, nor did I feel a sense of immediate direction and certainty. Yet I prayerfully sought God’s guidance and hoped that I had listened well.

How do we discern what is best for our lives, for our families, for our church community?

How do we invite Christ into that decision-making process so that we aren’t simply acting on our own?

We begin by acknowledging that God is not some distant entity or concept and asking for the guidance which will help us find our way forward. This means pushing back the clutter and slowing down the pace of our days enough to be aware of the God who desires our highest good. Every one of us can take the time in prayer to do our “holy listening” and receive Christ’s guidance.

There is a Practicing Our Faith website which offers some helpful questions we can all ask as we discern our way forward.

✙Is my decision faithful to scripture and to the Christian faith tradition?

✙Does it manifest the fruit of the Spirit in me and my community?

✙Do I feel a genuine sense of inner authority and peace?

✙Does my decision create reconciliation rather than divisiveness?

✙Does it enhance rather than diminish life?

✙Has the discernment process been engaged with integrity?

Sometimes the answers to these questions may lead us to into the white water of life, rather than beside the still waters we read about in Psalm 23. Yet even when we make the challenging choices we can experience a sense of rightness and contentment.

It is also important to find the trustworthy companions along the way, those friends and confidantes who are open enough and hopefully wise enough to help us listen attentively.

I was away two weeks ago on continuing education for the purpose of renewing and refreshing my interest in what is called spiritual direction or spiritual companionship. Nearly twenty years ago I spent 14 months in a program to train me as a spiritual companion or soul friend. It is essentially that process of walking with another on the spiritual journey and noticing Christ’s presence along the way. In the twelfth century Aelred of Rievaulx offered a little prayer which stands the test of time: “Here we are, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst.”

The encouragement to all of us today is that God does love us and never abandons us and will show us the way forward. This is the way of discernment, and for this we can thank God.