“Joy Together: Discernment” Gal 5: 16-26

There are some words that we use a lot in the Church, but from time to time I have to wonder if we have actually considered what they mean. One such word for me is discernment. Discernment is actually linked to the verb, the action, of discerning, to distinguish or perceive. Whenever I think of discerning, I think of making God’s choice. Seeking God’s will. Following the path that God would want me to go.

Because the truth is that god gave us individually and collectively, free will. God gave us the ability to make choices. And lets be honest, there are a lot of things that we have to choose every day. What time am I going to get up? Am I going to hit the snooze button? Where will I go throughout the day? What am I going to eat? What am I going to wear? The list goes on and on. And most of those are rather simple choices. But we also know that there are a lot bigger choices that we have to make as well. What am I being called to as a job? Where am I going to live? And for us as a Church, who is God calling us to be and how is God calling us to reach out?

Individually, there are some people that are just super good at discerning. Folks who seem to have their heart directly connected to God’s heart, and who seem to be right in line with God’s will. Other people, and I would venture most of us, need people in our life who can help us discern God’s will at certain points in our lives. But what this looks like in every day living may be different for each of us. 

Some examples from my own life: Once a month for the past 4 years I have met with Renee, my spiritual director. Renee and I sit in silence, praying that God speaks to us. I share with her about the past month, knowing that without fail she is going to ask me where I experienced the movement of God. Renee holds me accountable while challenging me to listen to the Holy Spirit. Because of her powerful example, I also serve as a spiritual director for folks, asking them that same powerful question about where they saw the movement of God.

Once a month I also used to receive a phone call from Jenn, my ministry coach. Jenn and I talked about ups and downs in the life of ministry and prayerfully work through a difficult situation for a positive and God-honoring resolution. While she did not ask me the same question as Renee, she did ask me if the Holy Spirit to guide us in the Truth that God holds. Some of Jenn’s favorite questions to help me discern include “What is God’s Truth in that?” and “where is God leading you next?”

  Another place of accountability that leads me to discernment in my life are deep friendships. Some of these friends I am blessed to see once or twice a month, sitting in each others presence and asking how it is with our souls. Others live too far away to sit across from each other so we connect via video-chatting on the internet and emails asking for prayer requests. There are three such friends who I know are praying for me daily, and I pray for them, asking that God helps them continue to grow in their faith and ministries.

  Those are just examples from my own life, but I think what we are being prompted to ask with this particular spiritual discipline is do we seek out people who can help us listen for the power of the Spirit to guide us at all times or do we only surround ourselves with people who will tell us what we want to hear?

We need people in our life who can guide us, help us discern. But what exactly is discernment? Discernment is about being open to the leading of God, both in ordinary moments and during times of big decisions. Discernment is critical both for us as individuals in our walk with Christ and for the leadership of this Church. Discernment helps us see God more clearly. We are on a journey from seeing God no where, to seeing God only where we expect to see God, to seeing God at work everywhere. Discernment involves peeling back that which clouds our perception of God so we can experience God more clearly. 

  Guidance and discernment are one in the same. They involve asking questions such as: What am I called to do? How is God working in this situation and how can I get on board with it?

Discernment starts when we acknowledge that we lack wisdom and need divine intervention. But its hard for this type of guidance to take place if we aren’t taking care of ourselves spiritually - we cannot just “turn” discernment on when we are in need and forget God the rest of the time. And we need other people to hold us accountable in our discernment.

But here’s the thing - like the other spiritual disciplines we’ve looked at in this series, discernment is hard work, because we really have to trust God. We have to really want to be guided by the Spirit. And that isn’t what a lot of folks, even people who deeply love Christ, automatically choose. Instead, we are tuned into what Paul is warning the Galatians against - we want what we want and we want it now. Our selfish desires flare up and it can distract us from discerning God’s will. 

Instead, we are to seek being led by the Spirit. What does that look like for us as a congregation? Well it may mean that we do the work of praying and reflecting on scripture and asking God what God is exactly calling us to do? To ask God what our unique contribution to our community is?

At almost every church I’ve served I’ve asked a really hard question at least once - now is your turn. If we ceased to be a church tomorrow, why would it matter? What would be lost in our community if we were not this church in this place? Sometimes people have really quick elegant answers to that question. Other times they have to think about it. Either way, when we ask hard questions like this, that make us examine our life together and our ministry in this community, that’s an act of discernment. 

Discernment is also realizing the difference between a good idea and the right idea. We may have lots of ministry ideas. But if we don’t expect God to show up and act like God is present in everything we do, then its just that, a nifty idea. Discernment takes that idea and presents it to God in prayer and says - God is this where you want us to go? We acknowledge that our lives and our ministry belongs to you God - so we want to follow your will and your way - is this it? 

One of the ways folks hold me accountable in my discernment is to join me in praying a prayer I learned from our former Bishop, Jane Allan Middleton: God if this is of you, increase my desire, and if it is not of you, decrease my desire. To be surrounded by folks who are praying this prayer on my behalf, and who will ask me what I have discerned, keeps me from being spiritually lazy or substituting what I want for what God is calling me to do.

Paul writes that if we live by the Spirit, we follow the Spirit. Discernment is seeking to follow the Spirit, and being receptive to wherever the Spirit may lead. Friends, are we a discerning congregation? Are we a place that seeks to honor God or just to survive? Are we a place that hands our lives and our ministries over to God or do we get in the way of what the Spirit of God wants to do? May we be a place and a people that lives by the Spirit and follows the Spirit. Amen. 

“Joy Together: Sabbath” Exodus 31:13 Ex 20: 8-11

For the past several years I have been collecting books to read about Sabbath. I was so captivated by the idea of Sabbath because I knew I was failing at it. So I spent hours reading, thinking, praying about what God was doing with the creation of the Sabbath. I finally settled into the comfort that the Sabbath was made for worship and rest. But one day during devotions, I was listening to and reflecting on a sermon, and I remember realizing that when I'm really tired, bone tired, I often push God away. All I want to do is drop into a deep sleep, not rest in the presence of God. Sabbath rest is about renewal - growing closer to God. Worship, eating long meals with friends, reading good books, snuggling with cups of tea. I try to have Sabbath moments throughout each day, but I also know that I, and others, need one full day where the totality of our attention in intentionally pointed at God to remember who we are.

However, Sabbath is a concept that if we are honest, we struggle with quite a bit in our society, even in churches. We have a hard time seeing it as a good gift from God. I still remember at one church I served that I did the same thing I do here - list my Sabbath in the bulletin. However, a church member asked me why I called it a Sabbath, when really its just a day off. But is it really? Is there more to Sabbath then simply having a day off to run errands and do the things that we find hard to fit into our schedules the rest of the week? What is the true purpose of Sabbath?

God spoke about Sabbath, this day of rest, several times to the Israelites as they were venturing towards the promised land. For this particular people, the concept would have been so foreign. They were used to working day after day, without any rest, in order to fulfill the demands of the Egyptian government. They had such a hard time imaging a new possibility, let alone living into it, that God had to keep telling them that the Sabbath was important. 

The Sabbath was to be a day of rest. A day to worship God. Yet, when we hear the word Sabbath is this what comes to mind for us today? A day of rest? I think a lot of people have one of two images or ideas that come to mind when they are thinking of Sabbath. The first may be similar to the scene set forth in the Little House on the Prairie Books, where Laura recollects that she couldn’t do anything fun on Sundays. She could just sit. No work. No laughter. No running around. No playing. Just sitting and reading the Bible. For her Sabbath was a day of rules, not a day of rest. 

The second idea is that Sabbath is simply the worship service on Sunday mornings. Once you go to Church and come home, the rest of the day is yours to do with what you please - one giant checkmark for worshipping God and now you can move on to the next thing. 

But was this really what God had in mind when it comes to Sabbath? In Exodus 31 we find God once again telling the people to keep the Sabbath, but has a beautiful line of explanation that follows: because the Sabbath is a sign between me and you in every generation so you will know that I am the Lord who makes you holy. 

Sabbath really exists to remind us that God is God and that we are not. It is to be our day to yes, worship God and draw our attention to God, but also a day to reorient our lives back to the God who both created us and provides for us. In ceasing to work, even just for one day, we surrender our lives to God and say with our lives, God I cannot live without you.

And perhaps that’s part of what makes Sabbath one of the hardest spiritual practices of our time - it is so radically different from what the world is telling us. The world says that we need to be working all the time or people won’t know our importance. We need to be busy all the time or people will judge us as lazy. That we need a calendar that is absolutely bursting at the seems or we aren’t doing enough. We live in a world that links our value with our production and Sabbath stands in the face of all of that and says that we are to stop. And that when we stop, even for one full day, that we are reminded that our value lies in God alone, not in what the world has to say about us. 

But we fear stopping. We seem to fear a whole lot more what other people will say about us then God’s deep desires for us, and as a result, Sabbath quickly becomes one of the two commandments that we willingly and sometimes proudly break, along with the command not to covent. And they are linked, are they not? We need to work harder and longer to keep up with what other people have around us, those things that we so desperately want for ourselves and our family. So we keep going, thinking that if we work more and have more then we can eventually rest some day down the road. All the while God, is inviting us to stop and rest now. 

We need to take time to examine Sabbath in our own lives, because the truth is what Sabbath means to us and how we practice it can change over time. How we practice Sabbath when we have young children in the house may be very different, by necessity, then Sabbath before or after kids. But the underlying premise remains the same - that we have a day of rest in order to be reminded of the good gift that God has give us and draw our attention back to our loving God who knows exactly what we need, even if we buck against it time and time again. 

We need Sabbath in the life of our families as well. I was recently listening to a podcast where an author of books about family life was sharing what the word Sabbath meant to him and his family. They had one hour each evening, where they spent time with one another, just sharing stories and reconnecting. They had one day each week, where they put nothing on their schedules  and turned away from the screen in order to appreciate God’s gifts in their lives. And they took one week together each year, where they went away to reconnect with each other and with God. Maybe that doesn’t sound like Sabbath to you, but the question is what Sabbath practices would work for you in your life right now? 

However, when I was studying abroad in Australia, I was also volunteering at a church, who took the practice of Sabbath to a different place then I had ever considered before. They had a congregational Sabbath, a weekend where everyone gathered, as the body of Christ, for rest and relaxation away from the city. We traveled to beach together, where we spent three days, laughing, eating, worshipping, and telling stories. This setting was where the young people were baptized and confirmed, and together we affirmed God’s good gift of rest. 

We all need rest. We need rest as individuals and rest as the body of Christ. We need margins in our lives where we continually draw our attention back to God. We never are too young or too old to not need Sabbath. May we find the joy of the day of rest, anew, together, today. Amen. 

“Joy Together: Fasting” Joel 2: 12-13

One of my absolute favorite classes I ever took as a religion major in college was for three weeks in the month of May and focused on spiritual disciplines. Each day we would be encouraged to try a different spiritual practice - some of which were familiar to us, many of which were not, and then come back together to discuss the practice itself. Many times in that particular class, I felt like I was flying blind, trying practices that were outside of my comfort zone of prayer and scripture reading, but often also feeling deeply connected to God. 

We are now in the second week of our sermon series about different spiritual disciplines - some of which may connect with us, and some of which may not. What makes this particular sermon series a bit different however, is that we are being encouraged to both try out these practices as individuals and as the body of Christ, the Church, together. 

A disciple that we find referred to in scripture quite frequently is fasting. Fasting can be described as giving up, or abstaining from something, for a set period of time for the purpose of prayer. In the Bible we find people fasting for things such as forgiveness. In the Jewish calendar there is a special day set apart for fasting, called the Day of Atonement, where people express the deep sadness in their hearts for the sin in their lives and seek God’s forgiveness together. Fasting was also accompanied with intercessory prayer, or praying on behalf of another person. . We find King David doing this as he plead with God to let his child live. But fasting was also simply part of being the Church. In the book of Acts, fasting as an act of prayer was a normal part of their life together, as the sought to make God’s Kingdom known. Further, in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt 6:17), we find Jesus telling his disciples how to act when they fast, not if they fast. Jesus, too, is assuming that fasting would be a normal part of people’s spiritual lives. 

Fasting, no matter what specific purpose it is undertaken for also ultimately, draws us closer to God. In the passage today for the prophet Joel, there is perhaps a mixture of all of these things, as he directs the people to return their heats to God, and to be met by God’s compassion and faithful love. 

So if fasting has such a rich history, why is not a more practiced discipline? Because we try to avoid it. The great classic author, Richard Foster, noted a few things in his book Celebration of Disciplines. First, fasting has got a bad reputation. That happened a few different ways. In the middle ages, people would practice fasting (incorrectly) as a form of self-punishment. As we noted last week, punishment and discipline are not the same thing. In fact, fasting got linked in a lot of ways with self-flagellation. 

This self-punishment was seen as a way to win over God’s approval. Which is another way we have abused the spiritual discipline of fasting. We have used it to say, ‘well if I fast in this way then God has to give me what I’m asking for.’ We cannot use any spiritual discipline, including fasting, to force God’s will or way. We don’t fast in order to win God’s approval. We cannot force God’s hand. 

We also have bought into the very American lie that if we don’t eat at least three very large meals a day, and snacks in between, then we are going to starve. Or that if we are giving up food then it must be for weight loss, which it most certainly is not for. And perhaps this is linked to a larger desire to have what we want when we want it. For we don’t have to fast just from food. We could fast from TV. Or other electronics. But we fear putting aside the things that we use throughout the day, claiming need over want.

It was in the class on spiritual disciplines that I took in college that I engaged in my first fast. I choose to fast from music. Many of you know that I love music. As I’m sitting in Starbucks working on this sermon there is both music coming from the overhead speaker and classical music echoing through my earbuds. When I travel in the car I listen to music or a book on tape or podcasts. When I work out there is music involved. Work, play, and everything in between involves music for me. So when I decided to fast from music for 24 hours it was not a decision I entered into lightly. For when we fast, we set aside something that we give time and attention to in order to focus on prayer. So for 24 hours, every time that I thought about putting on some music, I would intentionally be drawn into a time of prayer. 

There are lots of ways to fast. Some people fast weekly. Or monthly. Or yearly. Sometimes people fast alone, and other times people are called together for a communal fast, like what youth may do for the 30 Hour Famine or congregations may do at certain times of the year as they seek God’s wisdom or healing. But, however we may fast and whatever we may fast from, it is always linked with a spiritual focus on prayer. As we fast, we create space to listen for God’s voice, to seek what God is up to and ask how we can parter in God’s Kingdom in a powerful way. 

While there are many forms of the particular practice of fasting, I want to draw our attention back to food for just a moment. Once again, scripture doesn’t show us that this is for cleaning or weight loss. Instead, it is the voluntary denial of something (in this case food) for the purpose of prayer and has a spiritual purpose. Sometimes people fasted from all food. Other times they fasted from certain foods. Sometimes they still could have all liquids. Other times they simply had water. We see Jesus fasting for 40 days while he was in the wilderness, preparing for ministry. And Daniel altering his diet in order to fast. Esther had the Jews fast on her behalf before she went before the King asking for her people to be saved. Paul fasted after he met Jesus along the Damascus Road. 

Fast days are a call to a radically different way of living, where we set aside our will and freedom in order to seek God’s Kingdom first and foremost. There is a powerful scripture in Isaiah 58, where the prophet, essentially said that the people were missing the whole point of fasting. It wasn’t about fasting for fasting’s sake, rather about living differently. Being obedient to God and handing our will over to God. 

Brothers and sisters, what would it look like if we, again picked up the spiritual practice of fasting. Now if you have medical reasons not to fast, such as medications that need to be taken with food or dietary restrictions, then what if you fasted from television or music or something else that you find joy in? What if for 12 hours, half of one day sometime in the next week, we each fasted and were in prayer throughout that time seeking God’s vision for us as a faith community? That doesn’t mean that we pray continually for 12 hours, but whenever we find ourselves reaching for that thing that we are fasting from, that we are drawn in an attitude of prayer before our Savior.  Let us, come together, and fast for God’s direction. Amen. 

“Joy Together: Thanksgiving” Col 3: 15-17

What comes to your mind when you think of discipline? For many of us, discipline is an unwelcome term that we carry over to what we think of spiritual disciplines -  that which we engage in to help us grow in our relationship with God. We don’t like discipline - so we think we don’t need spiritual discipline. Is it any wonder then, that we often end up in spiritual stagnation?

As I was working on this sermon, a dear friend who is also a pastor, and I were knee deep in a project that we volunteered to be a part of. We were tasked with creating a Rule of Life, which is just a really fancy way of saying that we were in conversation about what spiritual disciplines are important to us and how we want to accompany each other on the spiritual journey by holding each other accountable to those disciples. 

At first, you would think that task would be easy. We could simply list out things like prayer and scripture readings, talk about why it was important to each of us and devise a plan to check in on one another from time to time to make sure we were doing what we said was already important to us. But the more we talked about it, we began to realize a bunch of different things. First, we too, bulked at the word discipline, even as pastors. Even as individuals who are deeply passionate about spiritual disciplines. We realized that when people tell us that we have to do something, it can quickly diminish our desire to do it, that may have been present even a day before. 

So as we worked on and prayed about it, we realized we wanted a Rule, this collection of spiritual disciplines, to be more like a labyrinth. I don’t know if you have ever walked a labyrinth before, but its a large circle that has a winding path through it. The thing thats interesting about a labyrinth is as complicated as it looks, there is actually no way to get confused or lost it in. The boundaries of the path are so well defined that you weave your way through it as an act of prayer. So what does a labyrinth have to do with spiritual disciplines? Well first, walking one is a spiritual discipline for some people, but for us we were looking more for well defined guidelines or paths or boundaries that we could live into with one another without making it feel forced, but instead something we simply did along the path of life.

For the next several weeks, we too, are going to be talking about spiritual disciplines - but not just any spiritual disciplines, but disciplines like that which my friend and I were seeking - ones that we can do together in community. Engage in together as the body of Christ.

Often when we think of spiritual disciplines, the first things that come to our mind are things like devotions and prayer - things that we can do on our own. But we can also engage in those things as congregations - think about places like Bible Study and prayer meeting, where as we engage in those practices together, we grow as disciples. 

In a lot of ways, this is a perfect sermon series to follow up on the last month we had together to talk about visioning. For visioning is seeking God’s will and way for us as a church, and these are some practices that can help us ask God to make clear that vision for us together. 

The first cooperate spiritual discipline that I want to talk about, may not seem like a discipline at all - thanksgiving. Another way to frame it is to say this is a discipline of praising God and saying thank you for the abundant blessings in your lives.

I want you to stop and think about your time of prayer. How much of it would you say is intercession or asking God for things - usually on the behalf of yourself or other people? And how much of your time in prayer is spent telling God thank you?

Lynne Baab is an ordained minister and spiritual author. She wrote the book Joy Together that this sermon series is based on. Rev. Baab found that whenever she and her husband would pray together, they were often asking for the same thing over and over, and weren’t feeling as if they were growing closer to God through the process. So one day they decided to shake things up and start each of their prayer times together saying thank you for something. At first it was a little odd and a little hard. But soon they found that there was so much to thank God for that it was almost overwhelming. 

The Apostle Paul understood the power of thanksgiving. Paul went through a lot during his ministry - in the books of Acts we often found him being beaten or tossed out of town and always being insulted. In several of his letters to churches he speaks about being in prisoned and not knowing when he would get out. Yet, he kept pressing on. Why? Because he was so thankful and joyful for what God had done in his life. 

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul encourages them to be thankful people as well. To have gratitude in their hearts. Why? Because the heart is the wellspring for the rest of our body - what resides their will bubble out in both word and action. 

So what would it look like to live into Paul’s word to that particular church, here and now today? What would it look like for us to be a church of thanksgiving? First, we can lift up joys, starting our time of prayer with prayers of thanksgiving. In order to do that, we need to have the eyes of our hearts open during the rest of the week to have things to share. But once our hearts become attuned to praising God with thanksgiving, it becomes easy to spot God’s hand working amongst us. 

Why do we pray daily? Most of us pray when we wake up or before we go to bed and at meal times. Why? Because those moments throughout the day give us the opportunity to stop and focus on God and be reminded of God’s goodness. 

What if, as a congregation we reached out to one another during the week to praise God and remind each other of God’s goodness as well? 

Here’s the thing church, when we fail to notice what God is doing, we tend to quickly forget God’s goodness. And when we forget God’s goodness, it doesn’t take much for us to look to other places for life and fulfillment apart from God - quickly getting off track. 

Our default when we think about prayer - both as individuals and as the body of Christ is intercession. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with sharing our requests with one another. But we also need space in our lives to simply reflect on God’s goodness and to be reminded of all God has done. 

Because when we are reminded of God’s place in our lives, we have space for the realization that God is in control. Not us. God. Rev. Baab puts it this way: “Prayers of thankfulness enable us to see what God has been doing and where God has been working”. We need a space to be a thankful people. To let our hearts rest in God’s goodness and grace. Let that discipline start here and now today. Amen.