EPIPHANY 6C - Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26 - 11 February 2007 - A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

Have You Found Your Source of Being?

INTRODUCTION - Hearing God’s voice

Sometimes people ask me, “How do you hear God’s voice?” I understand the question. But sometimes the flip side of that question should be asked. “How do you not hear God’s voice?” For sometimes, God is not exactly subtle.

Monday morning, during a time of quiet, I took my first peek at the lessons for today. My attention seemed to really zero in on the Jeremiah reading. Those who “trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength” are like a shrub in the desert, and shall “live in the parched places of the wilderness.” By contrast, those who trust in the Lord are like a tree planted by water - a tree that is not anxious in the year of drought. Psalm 1 echoes this imagery. Those who delight in the teachings of God are like trees planted by streams of water.

Tuesday morning comes. By this time I am about sixteen hours into a retreat with forty other pastors from around the country. During Morning Prayer, one of leaders reads this same passage from Jeremiah 17. A little while later, I am browsing through some of the books that are for sale, books which tie in to the theme of the retreat. I pick up one, The Deeper Journey (by M. Robert Mulholland, Jr.). It is written by a man I’ve never heard of, not one of our retreat leaders. I notice it has a chapter on the false self, something that Julia and I talk about in our couples’ workshops. I turn to that chapter, and all of today’s passage from Jeremiah is quoted. Okay, that is now three references to Jeremiah 17 in about 24 hours. You think God might be trying to get my attention?

God isn’t quite done with me yet. After lunch, as part of our retreat, we are given a four-hour block of time to go be with God. We’re encouraged to walk, listen, rest, maybe write something in our journals if something comes to us. But mainly, we’re encouraged to be quiet, to listen and see if God wants to say anything to us. There’s a little ridge above our retreat center. You know me. “A higher place than this? Hmmm. I wonder what the view is like? I wonder if I can see the Pacific from that ridge?”

I found a dirt road which met a trail, and in a little while I was on top of this ridge. Not exactly like being in a wilderness areas in Colorado. For one thing, our retreat center was very close to Interstate 5, and when I gained the ridge, I just became even more aware of the noise and the traffic. And the views? Well, too many other little ridges in the way to see the Pacific. But I tried to take in the landscape anyway. I am an outdoor enthusiast, after all. And I get restored when I’m in nature, even if it is the nature found in an urban area.

So I surveyed my surroundings. And you know what? It was really brown! Dry, brown, with the main plant life being tall thistle plants. Lots and lots of thistles! I was really in the midst of a desert, and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t a very pretty one. No beautiful cacti around me.

A few birds here and there. A few trees. Lots of thistle.

QUESTIONS AND REFLECTIONS FROM A TREE

But there had been one tree that grabbed by attention, just a little before I gained the ridge. And it was starting to get a little warm. I had my water, but I’d forgotten a hat. I strolled back to that tree - in the willow family, I would say. The only tree in this particular area, right next to the trail, twenty feet tall, several trunks with branches spreading in a way that made it 45' wide. I am used to seeing willows near streams. This one was on the side of a brown, dry hillside and was surrounded by thistles.

Where was its water source? That was what I was wondering. And I came to a very definite answer. I don’t know! It was a mystery. But I know this much. It clearly had one. It was a very healthy-looking tree, and provided some delightful shade, and I pulled myself up into its lower branches, where they all came together, and I had myself a mighty fine, cool perch there. And its drooping branches were such that you could have walked right by me on that trail - two feet away - and you would have never seen me in my little perch, unless you happened to look up into that tree, unless you were silly enough to be looking for pastors on retreat who happened to be sitting in the middle of a tree.

God seemed to give me a couple of other questions as I hung out in that tree. Where are all these people going, as they drive north and south on Interstate 5 in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon in February? Are they people who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, or are they people who trust in the Lord? Have they found the Source of their being?

And since I was on a retreat, and I was intentionally pulling back from my life and my work to reconnect with God, some of the questions were directed at me. Questions like these: “Peter, are you getting the message that I have for you, coming to you via Jeremiah 17 and Psalm 1 and from your little walk up to this dry (but not totally dry) ridge?”

And I heard God say to me something like this.

“Peter, you have a water bottle with you, but that is not your source of being. You crossed paths with a few other people as you traversed this hillside. That’s closer, but they are not your source of being, either. You were hoping to get a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean from up here. As you can see, the ocean isn’t visible from here. Instead, I gave you this tree. This tree has found its source of being. You know that underneath the ground, its roots have found some water somewhere - a reliable source of water - or it wouldn’t look like this.”

“You only have one Source of being, Peter, and it’s Me. Sometimes you run around like a crazy man, acting like those cursed people that Jeremiah wrote about, like the people of Jesus’ day whom he preached about - the people of woe.”

“Those folks who trusted only in themselves, who thought they had it made with their good jobs, their families, their education, their money, their nice cars driving down the interstate, as they talk on their cell phones and listen to their Ipods. Those folks with their full bellies, their laughter, and the praise they receive from men. All that can be gone in a flash, Peter. You know that.”

“Those who are blessed are the ones who trust in Me, the ones who know of their need of me, the ones who know that they can’t make it in this world - they can’t find any measure of meaning or abundance or joy or hope in this life without Me. Those are the ones who are like this tree. It may not look like this tree has a reliable source of water, but that’s the mystery of it all. And when you start thinking you know all the answers and you have life figured out, well... the truth is, Peter - at those times - you’re like a shrub in the desert, struggling to survive, anxiously wondering how long the drought might be.”

“Relying on your own devices is not going to make you a non-anxious tree. The only thing that is going to make your life work is if you keep returning to your Source. You need to keep turning aside, like Moses did when he stopped and turned aside, to see why the bush was burning, and yet wasn’t consumed. The moment he turned aside, I knew he was going to be okay.”

“You need to keep turning aside, Peter. No matter how important and pressing the concerns of this world might seem, you must stop and enter into the silence and the solitude, as you did today. Be still, and know that I am God. Be still, and reconnect with Me, the only Source of your being.”

I realized, as I got up from my perch on that tree, and picked a few berries off that willow tree, that on my urban hike, with all the noisy cars and trains and sirens, that I was participating in a sacrament. God gave me the sacrament, and the sacrament was that tree.

FLOCKING TO GOD

The people flocked to Jesus because they saw the Divine in him. They knew that his words, his healing touch, his compassion were the stuff of life, and that they came straight from God. My friends, we must not let anything get in the way of our staying connected to our Source.

You don’t have time to take a Sabbath day? You don’t have time to go and be alone with God, and listen, and read a few words from Scripture? You can’t unplug? You need to be hearing the news all the time, or listening to music all the time? You won’t survive without it? Nonsense.

The truth is, you and I won’t survive without rest, without silence, without some moments of solitude with God and only God. As Paul puts it, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19).”

Jesus didn’t die just so we could run around, cramming more and more and more into our days, never stopping to breathe, never stopping to listen and take in the quiet, never stopping to find that beautiful tree growing up in the midst of the desert, or out of the concrete jungle. Jesus died so that we could be reconciled to God. And if we squeeze God out of our lives, we are dead - deader than dead.

The Psalmist put it this way: “For God alone my soul in silence waits; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.” (Psalm 62:1-2)

All I can add to that is this: May I never forget this wisdom, O Lord. May I never forget that you alone are my rock, you alone are my Source of being, and without you, I am dead - even if it might look to all the world that I am very much alive.

How is it with your soul today? Are you feeling like a tree planted by the water? Or are you living in the parched places? If you are feeling a little parched, I have good news. The Lord, the Source of your very being, is only a breath away, a moment of silence away. You need to only stop and enter into the silence for a short while, and the next thing you know, you will be drinking in the streams of living water, all over again.

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out is roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:7-8)