Community and Suffering

 Ruth 1:1-22

The book of Ruth in so many ways shows us exactly the opposite of the book of Job.  In Job when everything goes wrong, he first piously pouts and prays, and then as things get worse and worse, he eventually yells at God.  I’ve shared with you before that I love the book of Job because it shows a God who responds to our pain, responds to our cries, responds even to our anger when it is expressed directly to God.  Our God shows up, is present and loving.  And in the end of Job, all that he had comes back to him in greater abundance than before.

But, while I deeply love the message of Job that God is there when we are honest, real and completely open with God, I think I love the book of Ruth even more.  In the book of Ruth, we see a very different response to a similar situation.  Naomi, who is, in many ways, the real star of the book of Ruth, has, like Job, lost everything.  As you know, women had no agency at this point in time.  They could not own property, they could not hold jobs.  Everything they had and everything they were was dependent on the men to whom they were attached.  So when Naomi loses not only her husband, but both of her sons, when her spouse and her children are dead and along with them, her livelihood, her property, and all that she has, she, too, has truly lost everything.  This can’t be understated.  Everything she knew was gone.  And as she says here herself, she is too old to remarry and produce more sons.  Unlike Job who can go on to remarry and have more children, Naomi is past that.  So, like Job, she too is angry and grieving.  As she says, “Don’t call me Naomi, (which means pleasant) but call me Mara (which means bitter) for El Shadai has made me very bitter.  I went away full, but the Lord has returned me empty.”  

Like Job, Naomi is angry.  Like Job, Naomi is in deep grief.  Like Job, Naomi seems beyond hope.  But unlike Job she does not act like she is beyond hope.  Job sits and complains.  Job sits covered in sackcloth.  But Naomi moves herself into action, instead.  She picks up to move back to her home land, having hope that there will be food there for her.  She doesn’t start with a complicated plan.  She just starts by putting one foot in front of the other.  We are told, “She arose… because while in the territory of Moab she had heard that the Lord had paid attention to his people by providing food for them.”  So while she may have been expressing pain, expressing despair, she chose to act out of her hope.

And what she finds, in this first step, this unclear, unplanned, but decisive first step to go home is that she is not alone.  Ruth, who has also lost her husband and therefore her livelihood as well, commits to going with her.  And Ruth is adamant in that decision.  Naomi takes a step into life, and in doing so finds she is not alone.

This is my message for each and every one of you today, and what I hope you will take from today.  When we choose to step forward in hope, to take action despite our feelings of grief, of loss, or of despair; when we follow the call to act, we will find that we are not alone.  We will not be sent on the journey by ourselves.  The helpers are there, and they will come.  And along with them, there is often a plan, often a vision, often the insight to see the call into the next step, and the next, and the next.

My family has been watching the series, “Call the Midwife”.  This week we watched an episode from the second season in which the main character, Jenny, is trying to help a woman who had been forced, out of complete destitution, to go into the workhouses in London.  She had been there for 35 years, until they closed.  And now her life is one of agony, one of deep poverty.  But at the base of her pain and her grief is the fact that when she had first gone into the workhouses, she had entered with five little children.  The way these workhouses functioned was that all children would be taken from you when you entered into the workhouse.  All five of these very young children were taken from her.  This woman, now an old woman, has no knowledge of what happened to her kids past the day that they were taken from her.  But she yearns for them, calls for them, cries out for them.  When one of the nurses goes to help her, all this woman can talk to her about is seeing her hope of seeing her daughter, Rosie, who at the time was the eldest of the five, and was 8 years of age, in particular, again.  The nurse, Jenny, is so upset by all of this that she decides to find out what happened to the children.  And she discovers that all of these five very young children died very quickly after being taken from their mother.  “Failure to thrive” it was said.  The system destroyed the children by taking them away from their mother.  Jenny doesn’t know what to do with this information.  She brings it back to Nanatus house, devastated by this history that she has discovered.  And the response?  “And what do you propose to do, Nurse Lee, now that you have garnered these unedifying facts?”  When Nurse Jenny Lee says she doesn’t know, the nun continues, then, to quote the apocrypha, “you have been curious in unnecessary matters.  The past remains the past.  The present, unamended.’”  Another of the sisters joins in, “Sister Monica Joan is right.  It’s what happens in the here and now that counts.”  Nurse Jenny Lee responds with, “Forgive me but her life in the here and now is not safe or filled with love.  She waits every day for a child.  For children that are never coming home.” The nuns respond, “Then you should turn your mind to that.”  And so she does.  Nurse Jenny goes and does more research, and she finds where the children have been buried, which is in a mass burial ground.  But within that mass grave, there are specific locations for each of the children.  She memorizes where each child is and then takes the old woman to the grave site.  She says “We are standing by a public grave.  There are many put in here.  This is where they buried the workhouse inmates.”  

“I had too many,” Mrs. Jenkins says.  

“Yes, and they are all here.”  Jenny replies.

“Together?” she asks.

“I was able to get plans of the cemetery and the graves in the public records.  It’s all written down.  Percy and May are lying next to each other.  Just over there.  Alice is to the right, over there.  I think in the summer that tree must cast some shade there.  And George is by the cross.  Rosie is right here, Mrs. Jenkins, almost underneath your feet.”  The old woman bent down, putting her hands on the snow over the grave of Rosie “I’d have liked her in with me to warm her feet.  But I can see she’s tucked up safe.”  She sobbed and cried, but was then was able to grieve properly and to finally find some peace, knowing where they were, knowing what had happened to them.  Jenny then invited her into a new life: invited her to help her community to sew and make costumes for the Christmas pageant.

Nurse Jenny had seen a problem: the suffering of this older woman who had no closure, no way to grieve, no way to move on past those horrible 35 years.  And while Jenny did not know what to do, she took her own suffering, her own pain, her own despair to her friends.  While they didn’t give her the exact answer, they pointed her in the right direction.  And in the end, after Jenny had taken the steps to learn, to share, to help move Mrs. Jenkins forward, it was the entire Convent that helped Mrs. Jenkins to find work, to find meaning in making the costumes.  They, together, invited her into their community, and they, together, helped her to grieve, to mourn, and to find peace.

 I think about Moses who knew what he had to do but was afraid to do it.  In choosing to step forward, God provided that Aaron and Miriam would go with him and would help him.  He was not alone.  

I think about the women who started MADD: when Candace Lightner’s child was killed by a drunk driver, she knew something had to change.  She put it out there and Cindi Lamb joined her (who had also lost a child due to a drunk driver).  Together they were able to make a huge change.  MADD has lowered the number of those who have died from drunk driving by half!  That is huge.  

The work that people are doing to help refugees from the Ukraine they are doing together.  The work that Hope Solutions is doing to help the homeless in Contra Costa County started with people from a church dreaming and envisioning and planning together.  There are so many needs in our world.  But when we get stuck in the “I don’t know what to do” there is no movement.  Pray, ask God what is the thing that is concerning you the MOST right now.  And then speak about that!  Share with us your fears, your concerns.  Do you try to solve these problems alone.  Together we can do so very much!

When we are in pain, when we are grieving, when we are struggling against loss and fear, we are called to listen to that pain as a calling from God to act.  And when we do not know what we can do to act, the first thing we must do is to say “yes”.  That’s it.  Say “yes, I will act.”  The second thing then that we are called to do is to remember that we are not lone rangers.  None of us is here alone.  Not one of us has been put here on this planet to solve the problems of the world on our own.  We are made for connection, we are made for community.  That pain in your heart, that tugging on your sleeve, that call to action: it is not given to any one of you alone.  Our lone ranger complexes keep us stuck in inaction.  And while God showed up for Job, and God will always show up for us, too, Job was not able to do what Ruth and Naomi did.  Job stands as a lone book.  Ruth, in contrast, is an ancestor of Jesus.  Our ideas that we should be able to figure it all out on our own keep us from acting at all.  We end up being Jobs rather than Naomis when we forget that God has not put us here alone.  

It was together that Ruth and Naomi were able to rise above their situation and survive.  It was together that Ruth and Naomi were able to make enough difference in the world that Ruth is listed as one of the ancestors of Jesus.  It was together that they were able to thrive.  And it is together that we, too, will change our world.  All we have to do is say “yes”.  And then look for the helpers.  They are there.  God makes sure of it!

"I'm just being honest"

     I love that phrase, "I'm just being honest."  I equally love the phrase, "I'm just speaking my truth".  Please note the heavy sarcasm in my comments.  These are two phrases that are used to justify cruelty.  Somehow, as a culture, we believe that honesty and the integrity of being one's genuine self are acceptable excuses for truly unkind, hurtful words.  But really, are they?

    It's not that people don't need feedback.  And it's not that people don't need to hear hard truths.  We all can grow, we all can learn, we all have blind spots in our self-understanding that mean that the constructive feedback of others can help us move forward on our journeys.  Seeing things in a new way, learning how things we have been part of or have done might have caused damage: these are important lessons for all of us.  But please notice that I used the word "constructive" when I talked about feedback.  Attacking someone's personality or saying things in a way that is simply negative is not constructive.  Those comments are seldom truly heard in a way that can communicate something helpful to a person and it is extremely rare that a person can grow from mean comments.  There are ways we can communicate truths that do help people to grow, to learn, and to move.  

    Bottom line: when people say "I'm just being honest" or "I'm just speaking my truth" what I now hear is "I am being lazy" - too lazy to think through a positive, constructive, or helpful way of giving feedback or speaking truth.  There are always ways to communicate that are equally honest, but are not cruel, generalizing, vague or violent.  While it may take work to figure out how to say those things, that work is worth the effort if it actually has a chance of communicating something helpful, something important, and something that is not just inflammatory or destructive.  Cruel words are damaging, not "honest".  

    I struggle to understand, truly, why people do say those mean things.  Do they not see that this reflects much more on themself, on the kind of person they are choosing to be, than on the one they are attacking?  Do they not understand that when people hear meanness coming from someone, they are much less likely to trust and value the person expressing the cruelty than they are to then see the one who has been attacked in a negative way?  

    Unfortunately, I guess this is not universal.  I did hear someone recently extol the "loyalty" of another person, who then went on to describe that loyalty as manifesting in the attacking and unkind words they spoke to another person that they both didn't like.  I found myself staring at the one telling me of the "loyalty" of the other, wondering how long it would take them to realize that someone who is unkind is someone who is unkind.  While that person's unkindness was directed at another in this instant, how long will it take for that unkindness to circle around to the one praising it at that moment?  Not long.  Never long.  

    So, to take my own advice here, I don't want to just stay in the "attack" but also want to offer other ways we can express our truths that might be more helpful.  Using "I" phrases is always a good start.  "I feel x when you do y because of z".  "When x happened, I felt y because of z."  Those are good starts.  Wondering is also helpful, "I'm wondering about this thing over here that happened.  Can you tell me more what you were hoping for/working towards/expecting when you said or did x?"  "I'm wondering how it felt to say x?  I'm wondering what happened that led to this?"  We can learn to address specific events rather than globalizing.  Instead of "Why do you ALWAYS..." we can say, "I'm thinking about what just happened and wondering if you can tell me more about it from your perspective."  "I noticed that Saturday when Naomi said x, you responded with y and I'm wondering what that was about for you."

    I understand that sometimes these things feel contrived.  But isn't it better to work on learning to communicate in helpful ways?  It may take practice, but we can learn and then it will become second nature and not feel contrived anymore.

    I write this to myself as well.  I am currently wondering what led that person to use that phrase, "I'm just being honest." And I'm feeling sad that I heard it yet again because it triggered for me memories of when, as a child, another child used that as an excuse to say unspeakably cruel things.  I wonder what they were hoping to communicate.  And I'm hoping that I can learn more from the underlying beliefs and ideas when I am able to ask deeper questions.  

    One step at a time, here.  One step at a time.

Another very personal self-reflection: on hope

     I was watching MASH yesterday with my son.  He loves MASH and is leaving to return to school on Saturday, so we spent some time last evening watching a few reruns of this wonderful, wise program.  One of the episodes we watched was Dear Sis in which Father Mulcahy is basically narrating some of his time in Korea through the writing of a reflection letter to his sister.  The episode starts with an altercation between a patient who is flailing and being horrible to Margaret, refusing to accept the help of the nurses or anyone else.  Margaret calls for Father Mulcahy's help.  When he tries to help, the patient acts out towards the Father, saying he is not qualified to help or even deal with the patient and he punches the Father, hard.  In an unexpected moment of both self-defense and anger, Father Mulcahy punches the man back!  He then spends much of the episode dealing with that instinctual response.  He apologizes to the man, he tries to explain, but the man is basically a jerk in this episode.  He continues to attack, verbally, the Father, saying he is in no way a holy man and must have gone to seminary at the YMCA.  The patient cannot see his own actions as having been part of the problem, and he has no ability to offer grace or forgiveness.  Father Mulcahy just accepts into himself all the attacks that come from this man.  He leaves the hospital room, goes outside where Hawkeye finds him and the interaction between the two is as follows:

Father: You know, I used to coach boxing at the CYO. I told my boys it built character.

Hawkeye: Father, why don’t you stop punching yourself on the chin.  Pick on someone your own size!

Father: I’m Christ’s representative. “Suffer the little children to come unto me.  Do unto others… I’m not just supposed to say that stuff.  I’m supposed to do it.

Hawkeye: All you’re supposed to do is the best you can.

Father: Some "best!"

Hawkeye: Best is best!  Look.  Suppose you were sitting here right now with somebody who had done his best and was feeling lousy about it.  You’d let ‘em off the hook, wouldn’t you?

Father (still reeling in feelings of guilt and shame): Sure I would.  And if the hook didn’t work, I’d probably try an uppercut.

Hawkeye: Father, get off your back.

Father: It isn’t just that.  I don’t seem to make a difference here.  I hang around on the edge of effectiveness.  And when I do step in, I really step in.

Hawkeye: Look.  This place has made us all nuts.  Why should you be any different?   We don’t sleep. We don’t eat.  And every day a truck dumps a load of bloody bodies at our feet.  Okay so you hit someone.  We have to stand here and watch so much misery we’re lucky we don’t all join hands and walk into a chopper blade.

        I found myself struck deeply by this conversation both from a personal place, but also from a communal place. While we are not living through a literal war, in many ways we ARE living through a metaphoric one.  Our war is against this tiny little virus who has many tricks up its sleeve, and who appears to be using them all.  We are in a constant state of stress, of fear.  Will we be the ones to get it next?  How will it affect our families?  Our loved ones?  Our communities?  We think we see the end of the pandemic, and then something else happens and it goes on with more violence and damage than before.  At this point I think few of us have avoided losing a loved one to this disease.  Even fewer have remained unaffected by the illness.  As Hawkeye said, "We don't sleep.  We don't eat.  And every day a truck dumps a load of bodies at our feet." Holding on to hope right now is difficult.  Everyone remains tense, many are grieving, people are fearful and anxious, and everyone has moments when they are less able to act their best, to be their best.  We are all making mistakes and the results, because during this stress it is difficult to step back or to take things with the ease we otherwise might, are broken relationships, torn communities, and a fractured world.  

    We see this in so many places in our world: deepening anger, acting out, rage, violence.  We also see it, more personally, in the church.  There have been numerous articles written, including one in the Wall Street Journal (article) saying that church communities in general are experiencing a return of only about 50% - 70% of their people because of COVID.  Many of our churches are simply having to close as a result of this loss of membership.  Churches are learning to adapt, but pastors' burn-out level is extraordinary right now.  That, too, seems to be the subject of many articles crossing my desk recently: the mass exodus of pastors from church leadership.

    Why are they leaving?  There are many reasons.  One is that things are simply very stressful.  Pastors are having to learn and even create new ways of doing church during fluctuating, changing situations when we can meet, then can't meet, then can meet again but with differences, with limitations, with restrictions.  We are having to discover or create new ways to connect people and to stay connected to our people.  These new learnings take time and energy and most of us were already working more than full time at our jobs.  We are navigating a new world, one that changes monthly if not weekly and sometimes even by the day.  This is hard and we don't know where the next change will come, where we will need to adapt next.  Our congregants struggle with these changes too, so not only are we carrying our own stress, our own need to roll with the punches, but we are also called on, constantly, to be the face and voice of calm assurance, of hope, and of promise for our members.  We are called on to navigate the conflicts that are arising as we try to sort through these changes: some want masks, others don't.  Some are pro-vaccine, others aren't.  Some say we open to all, regardless; others say we need to limit who and how people can attend.  Not only do we need to be making these decisions, but we need to be reassuring and comforting those who would have wished we'd made different choices.  That in itself is exhausting.  Add to this that members are acting out their own fear, stress and anger by attacking those in leadership positions.  Pastors are easy targets and are receiving more than their fair-share of blame and anger.  

    But I think the story above about Father Mulcahy points to another reason why pastors are leaving.  We are not immune to the stress of this situation.  And we are not perfect.  I've written before about the unrealistic expectations that people have for their pastors, so I won't go into the details of this here again.  But the bottom line is we aren't more than human.  We are human.  In the Presbyterian church we recognize that pastors are not even more "holy" than other people.  All of us, every single person on this planet, has a call, and for all of us that call includes learning to be more loving, forgiving and gracious.  As Jesus said, "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."  We are all on a learning curve, on a path of growth.  And that means all of us will fall, will stumble, will make mistakes.  But the expectations for pastors remain very high.  When you combine huge levels of stress with the expectations that we will somehow be better, navigate the struggles better, walk through this terrible time with more grace, more patience, more wisdom and insight than everyone else, the reality is that we will disappoint people.  We will make mistakes.  We will, at times, fail.  And when we fail, it is not just our parishioners who struggle to forgive us.  We struggle, deeply, to forgive ourselves.  As Father Mulcahy said, "Do unto others… I’m not just supposed to say that stuff.  I’m supposed to do it."  But sometimes in stress when someone hits us, we won't be able to step back and respond with grace.  Sometimes we will, instinctively and without thought, punch back.  And when our apologies are not "enough"?  When they are not accepted?  When, like Father Mulcahy, we are sneered at, accused of being "fakes" and told that we are simply horrible at what we do?  Well, we have a hard time not taking those comments in.  

       And then it goes even deeper.  Again, as Father Mulcahy said, "It isn’t just that.  I don’t seem to make a difference here.  I hang around on the edge of effectiveness.  And when I do step in, I really step in."  There are times when it is hard to see that what we do makes a positive difference, especially in a time when affirmation is little and far between, and when the world around us continues to crumble, to tear, to struggle, no matter how hard we work.  We remember every time we have made a mistake.  We remember, with a voice that yells in our heads pretty constantly, every time we should have responded differently, should have seen things we didn't, should have acted when we failed to do so, should have, would have, could have...  It is hard, at times, to avoid focusing solely on the things we should have done and the things we shouldn't have done and to instead see any good we might have done.  It is hard, in these times, to hold on to a sense of purpose, of meaning, and most especially, of hope.

    I am grateful that when I have hit those lows, I feel that God has, every single time, stepped up and stepped in with reassurance and grace for me.  This weekend I hit one of those bottoms where my very career was in question for me once again.  It doesn't help that a member in my household is going  through the usual pastor's-kid, teenage rebellion thing and is telling me, with some regularity, that religion causes nothing but damage and that my job not only does no good, but is actually harmful to the world.  While I have my own arguments against this, it still hits hard and I do sit with their words, wondering how much is true.  Additionally, I'm coming off a very challenging month where we were struggling with family health crises and the demands on my time between family needs and my job during Advent and Christmas were frankly too much.  I was, like Father Mulcahy, very much in the "I don't seem to make a difference here... And when I do step in, I just seem to make mistakes" mentality.

      But three things happened for me, right in a row, all converging at the same time.  The first was seeing the MASH episode where Father Mulcahy's words resonated so deeply with my own feelings.  Seeing his struggle when the character does so much good in the series was a gift and reminder that we can't always see the good we do, we are simply called to do the best we can and trust that God will take our best and infuse it with grace.  Not everyone will be able to forgive our errors: the soldier in the MASH episode never did forgive Father Mulcahy.  But, as we know, that lack of forgiveness hurts the one hanging onto the grudge most of all.  That is a choice another can make.  One we cannot change.  All we can do is be aware of our own errors, apologize, and do our best not to repeat them. 

    The second thing that happened for me was that an individual took the time to tell me that something I had said to her had been life-changing and had put her on a different path forward, one with hope, joy and amazing possibility.  Without betraying this individual's confidence or situation, I see the change.  And I am grateful to have been allowed to be part of that.  

    The third thing that happened needs a little more explanation.  I've been feeling strongly that the most important part of my job right now has been and continues to be giving hope.  Even when I have not felt it myself, I have felt deeply called, impelled even, to be the bearer of hope during this time of extreme stress, confusion and pain.  In every bible study, every meeting of our anti-racism group, and in many of our committees and small group meetings, then, my voice has been the voice trumpeting hope in the face of anger, pain and despair.  That has been my job and my call for this last year and a half.  As times have darkened, I have felt this even more strongly.  Recently, then, I added into our worship services a "moment of hope" where I share a positive story, a story of someone doing good, being kind, making a beautiful difference, even in the face of these difficult and painful times.  Again, I feel the deep importance of being that voice of hope, even when I cannot summon it for myself.  With that back-drop in mind, every epiphany we do an exercise at my church where we pass out paper stars that have spiritual disciplines and gifts written on them.  No two stars are the same each year, and each person picks one out of a basket.  Out of all of the stars that I could have chosen, the one that I picked, the one that came to me, was "hope."  While I usually am a bit of a cynic when it comes to the chance that a word would come to each person that was exactly the right word at exactly the right time, I felt an electric shock run through me when I saw that word on my star.  Yes, my focus and my call has been centered on hope.  And that star was a reminder that that hope is there for me as well: offered to me, even when I am struggling, and even when I cannot see if what I do makes any difference at all.  The star was a both a reminder of my call right now, and a promise that hope is there for me, too.

    I would wish the same for all of you: that you would find and hold hope during this very difficult, very challenging time.  Practice kindness. And look for where God is: where there is light, joy, love, grace, forgiveness, mercy, and, above all, hope.

The Spiritual Discipline of Guidance

Philippians 2:12-18, 1 John 4:7-16

Today we continue our look into spiritual disciplines.  As you know, I have been trying to focus on ones that we don’t talk about as often or as much, and today we will be focusing on the spiritual discipline of guidance. 
As people of faith, we recognize that we need God’s guidance.  But how do we seek that?  How do you seek out God’s guidance? 
Many of us are good at asking advice from loved ones when we are struggling to make a decision.  But as a spiritual discipline of guidance, we are called to frame these questions and the conversations with others differently.  Rather than asking, “What should I do?” the spiritual discipline of guidance calls us to ask, “Where is God in this decision?  What is God calling me to do?  Which choice will best allow me to serve God to my fullest potential?  Which choice is best not only for me, but for all of God’s people?”  This last question is especially important because it calls us to see that every choice we make impacts more than ourselves and that every choice we make, therefore, is a choice about if, how and how much good we do for God and God’s people.   It again, honors the Spirit in the “other”.

One way we seek out spiritual guidance is to pray, but then do we take the time to listen for the answers? 

Contemplative listening is a practice that many spiritual directors learn as they listen to their directees, but it is one that we can do with ourselves as we listen to God as well.  It involves asking God a question and then literally sitting in the silence and listening.  We try to listen for God in a non-anxious space.  We try to limit the rattle of our thoughts and our comments to God and simply be with God.  We pay attention to the feelings that emerge in our bodies, the images that come to our minds, the questions that pop into our heads, as ways God might be leading us to think, reflect and move differently. 
Another practice in guidance is reading scripture, but as we use it for guidance, we are called to read it differently, to sit with it, practicing things like lectio divina, which means “divine word” and is a call to really listen to what scripture is saying to us in each moment.   
The spiritual discipline of guidance includes other things though as well.  We are called to recognize that God calls not just individuals but communities, and that God’s wisdom is to be found not just within scripture or within one self but also within the community of God’s people.  We have come to recognize that the Holy Spirit can talk through groups as well as scripture and prayer, and that we are called to seek out the wisdom and guidance of all those whom the Spirit touches.
As Presbyterians, especially, we believe that call, any call (and we believe that all of us have a call) is discerned in community.  Our call process for pastors, for example, involves many people who must affirm and support each potential pastor’s call into ministry.  Each pastor-to-be goes through extensive interviews and examinations in ever widening circles. A candidate for ministry must be trained in a theological school system, must also go through rigorous testing that takes place separate from the school, and also must pass through a committee at their home church, and a committee at Presbytery, one on one interviews as well as interviews with committees, finally ending with an examination before the entire Presbytery to discern if that person really is called into ordained ministry.  This belief that call is discerned in community is very central to who we are.
Several years ago, there was a debate on the floor of the Presbytery I was part of at the time about whether or not a pastor seeking ordination through our Presbytery should be required to attend at least a few classes at a Presbyterian seminary.  There was one pastor who argued vehemently that pastors wanting to be Presbyterian ministers should not have to attend any classes at a Presbyterian seminary.  He himself had never attended any classes at a Presbyterian seminary and he told us all that the Committee on Ministry had insisted that he do so.  He said it like this, “The Holy Spirit was calling me to attend a different seminary, but the Committee on Ministry told me I had to attend at least a polity (church government) class at a Presbyterian Seminary.  I refused to do that, and I’m fine as a Presbyterian Minister.”  But as the debate continued, it became clear that he was not, in fact, fine as a Presbyterian pastor.  He had failed to understand this very basic principle of Presbyterian belief that a call is discerned through community.  The Holy Spirit was calling him, through the committee and through the Presbytery, to take one class at a Presbyterian seminary.  He refused the call of the Spirit, and arrogantly assumed that his wishes were in line with the Spirit despite a whole group of people whose call it was to help others discern, telling him otherwise.  And as a result, he had no understanding at all of what it really means to be a Presbyterian pastor who recognizes and values the Holy Spirit’s strong and amazing work through communal discernment.  Not surprisingly, he left the denomination a couple years after this debate, joining another denomination that does not believe in the call of every individual, nor in call being discerned in this communal way.
Still, the truth is that this is hard for all of us.  We all can become arrogant at times and assume that we know what God wants, especially for ourselves, despite a praying body of people who are telling us differently.  We all can assume that we are hearing the Spirit more clearly than the body.  We all can, at times, fail to follow the call that we are led to through the discernment of the body of Christ in community because we are so individualistic in this culture and we are, frankly, out of practice in discerning God’s will through community.
So, how do we do this with regular concerns?  There are several practices of guidance and discernment that are available to us.  I mentioned above contemplative listening, study and simply asking God and others for help, and guidance.  But there are many other ways as well. 
The Quakers practice something called Spirit Rule.  When Quakers worship together, they sit in silence, listening for God.  Sometimes a Quaker worship service will be entirely silent for the whole hour.  However, often times a person will feel called to speak.  He or she will say what they feel compelled by the Spirit to express and the rest listen for the underlying truth in what is said.  Anyone may speak - woman, man, child, visitor, member.  But they see their worship time as a corporate seeking of God’s will.  All present are encouraged not to respond to what others have said, but to continue to sit in the silence and listen for the Holy Spirit’s words to them. 
Another, non-denominational practice of guidance is something called a “clearness committee”.  A clearness committee can be called by any individual for the seeking of guidance around a very specific issue.  I graduated from seminary with a concentration in spirituality and one of the required classes for that concentration was a semester long course on clearness committee.  We were divided into small groups and each person brought an issue to the group for group focus for a number of weeks before moving to the next person’s question.  The purpose was for the group to work together to listen to and for the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  The person with the question for discernment presents their question, their issue along with any background information that may be informing the question for them.  During the first sitting, the members of the group are not to give advice, but to ask questions with the purpose of moving the questions deeper.  The questions are not to be hidden advice.  For example, “Have you thought about doing x?” is not really a question, but advice.  Similarly, “My brother once tried x and it worked for him” is not a question, it is advice.  Instead, the questions might be, “How do you feel when you think about this part of what you shared?”  “What memories or images come up for you around this part of the issue?”  “When you ask God about this part of what you shared, what do you hear?”  Other questions might ask for more information, clarification, or deeper thinking.  The next session, the person with the question gives feedback as to where their thinking has moved and what has been helpful and then again, the committee asks questions.  At this point, committee members can also talk about how they have been impacted by the issue the one member is facing.  But again, this must never be framed in terms of advice, but more “when I think about x, I feel anxious because I remember when I made a similar decision and this is what happened.”  Or “when I reflected on y, I felt moved to make a change in my own life…” etc.  Also , the focus person may ask clarifying or thinking questions of the committee. There is a great deal of silence during these meetings as well, as people listen for the Spirit, and listen for the movement of feelings, etc.  The process continues for several weeks, but the key component is that while it is a committee of folk helping one person have greater insight and discernment, advice is never given.  We can never fully understand what another person is going through.  So helping another person gain insights, remember factors, explore the issues is helpful.  But giving advice is not because it is always based on limited information.  My own personal experience of clearness committee was that as a listener it was hard not to give advice.  At the same time, all of us found that the exercise or practice of listening becomes impeded when we are thinking in terms of advice.  When we are just called to listen, the listening can go much, much deeper because we are not distracted by trying to think about what we are supposed to say.  As the focus person, it was extremely helpful to not be bombarded with others’ advice, but simply be accompanied in the journey of discernment by wise and thoughtful people who were willing to ask the questions and reflect back what they were hearing without giving direction or advice.  This is a practice that I think would be very helpful for any of us to try, and if any of you would like to be part of a clearness committee, or have a particular issue you would like help with, please let me know and we will put one together.
      The final practice of discernment or guidance that I want to mention this morning is that of seeking out spiritual direction.  Spiritual direction includes many things, and listening to sermons or being part of small groups studying scripture is an aspect of spiritual direction.  But actually visiting with a spiritual director is also extremely helpful.  Their role and their goal, again, is not to give advice.  They listen for God, they help their directees to listen for God, they push questions about where God is acting and what God is guiding us to do.  My personal experience is that seeing a spiritual director is extremely helpful in deepening our relationships with God, which then allows for much clearer decision making.
     I want to point out one last time that seeking guidance as a spiritual practice is not asking for advice.  It is not giving advice.  I can’t state this strongly enough.  The practice of guidance is a practice of listening for God, deepening our relationship with God, being led by the Spirit, truly, whether that Spirit is talking through an individual or a community.  The process of guidance can be distorted, there is danger in it, but the greatest danger comes in the form of charismatic voices trying to give advice, telling us what we need to do, and claiming that they know what needs to be done because God has spoken to them.  This is a good reason in itself why advice should never be part of it.  And when someone is giving you advice in response to your seeking guidance, I would encourage you to be very wary.  Guidance invites you deeper into relationship with God.  Real spiritual guidance never seeks to manipulate or control.
          The purpose then of seeking guidance is not to have all our problems fixed and to know exactly what we need to do in any moment.  The purpose of seeking guidance is to deepen in our relationship with God.  That is why it is an important spiritual discipline.  We deepen our hearing of God, we deepen our seeking of God, we deepen our experience of God.  And we do so with the humility to recognize that we can’t do any of that alone.  We are led by the community of God’s people as well as the Holy Spirit in our deepening.  We acknowledge that none of us have all the answers or really any of the answers.  Only God does, and when we have the humility to seek guidance in these different ways, we remember that God is always there to lead us when we but ask.  We remember that God wants us to be in full relationship with God because in choosing relationship with God, we are choosing to be the most whole, genuine version of ourselves that we can be.  We remember that God’s answers are perfect, and are just waiting to be given.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.