Reflection
Call to Worship
Wisdom dances in creation bringing to life a spirit-filled world.
Wisdom ways are right and true and blessed are we who follow.
Come, let us seek the ways of wisdom.
Wisdom’s voice is heard in the deep simplicity of a child’s insight,
in the stir of youthful challenge,
and in the certainties and questions of adult faith.
Come, let us seek the ways of wisdom.
When wisdom takes root among us
justice is found through peaceful means
and all creation is pleased.
Come, let us seek the ways of wisdom
and live in communion with God and creation.
A Prayer
Creator: Gather us and guide us with the opening of our
minds, to knowledge and truth.
We move into a different world, and we need your presence in
each new encounter,
to find the hand of love and the call of the cross in every
Lenten echo around us.
Journey through the wilderness with us, we pray, in Jesus'
name, Amen.
Ask. Seek. Knock.
At the heart of any sense of spirituality is another being, or force, or higher power, to borrow AA’s word. Whatever we conceive the word ‘God’ to contain, our spirituality is about aligning ourselves with that sense. One writer says we become like the God we adore – in other words, if we perceive God to be about harsh unyielding judgement that’s how we’ll treat everyone else. If we perceive God to be about compassion, that’s how we’ll act too. The Biblical record gives us a variety of ways to put imagination into the word God. But they are consistent in the sense that they are all relational. In other words, God is relating to us in such a way that we can relate to God. Not something other or so distant there’s no content to the word God. Jesus offers prayer as a point of contact. But he doesn’t talk about God very much at all. So we’re left with a series of parables and sayings that offer his hints, his glimpses. And we’re left to imagine God in the ways that work for us.
Ask, seek, knock are glimpses into a way of spirituality. Look behind those three words a moment. What are the questions that immediately come to your mind? Ask what? Whom? Seek what? Where? How? Knock on what door? What is this door? Where do I find it?
The answers are not immediately obvious, because there is no one answer. What there is though is a way of understanding the quest to align ourselves with God. In order to ask, I must understand the limits of what I know. I must know that I don’t know. Not everyone manages this well. For some people, to suggest that we don’t know it all is tantamount to a call to war. So there is an attitude we must adopt on the spiritual quest – one of appropriate humility in the face of life. In order to ask, I have a hole in my net of understanding that I want to have repaired or filled. I need to know I don’t know, but I need to also note that I really want to know. The wanting to know is the driving force. Knowing will lead to more unknowing, and so I’ll be aware that once I’ve got an answer to this, it will lead me to that and I’ll now not know something else. In other words, this is an ongoing process of understanding being developed, not a once for all time bit of knowledge that I can learn and there’s an end to it. It begins with humility – of being comfortable with ragged edges to life, and of a deep hunger to align myself with whatever I understand God to be. I have to learn therefore to let go of the need to be totally certain in order to live an asking life.
Two things are also important about this quest to align ourselves with God - the importance of acceptance, and the centrality of mindfulness. “Acceptance is the ability to see things as they are and deal with the truth. If I can’t accept the truth about myself, the world or a given situation and the imperfectability of all the above, then no real change is possible. Mindfulness is the ability to be in the present moment and having an open awareness of what is happening. Mindfulness embraces the golden sunset with gratitude and notices the suffering of another person with compassion. It is an awareness of all that I feel-the good, the bad and the ugly-and what those feelings can teach me.“ (Todd Weir – Blooming Cactus.com)
To live an asking life is difficult, but necessary if we are to have a sense of alignment with God. We are small creatures in a huge universe. Not everything always makes sense. Sometimes things turn out with grace-filled surprise; others turn out to be a disaster. To follow Jesus into life is to sit with the paradoxes and puzzles, and learn to undo much certainty in order to find the humility to be in the asking place. “Ask and it will be given to you.”
Seek. Looking for something. U2, the famous rock group have a stunning song with the hookline “And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. Again, it’s an attitude to life rather than an event which is at the centre of all these things. Keeping a watching brief for understanding, seeking out new ways, new places, new people, implies that we are able to put some things down, to hold lightly to them in order to gain new insights. Putting down a Sunday School old man with a white beard God in order to seek a God who speaks to our uncertainties and ups and downs is something that we all have to deal with at some point – or not as the case may be. Seeking also has the idea that we are looking past our current horizons. We want to find more. We are open about the future and what we might find there. There are always other places to look. As you know, for me the times I have in Japan are often times when I discover another insight into the way I relate to God. Sitting alongside a Buddhist priest or my Japanese son in law and hearing how they make their meaning informs me. Others to whom I speak about this shudder and turn away as if I am now contaminated. We all have our places of seeking and a feature understanding of today’s world is that no one watering hole is likely to supply all our needs any more. Essentially a seeking life is about holding lightly, looking closely, and paying attention to all things around and beyond and within me. It is an attitude of openness.
Knocking at the door implies that I am persistent. Resilience is a hugely important attribute in all matters of our life. If we are brittle and easily give up, we will stay stuck, and often we’ll be tempted to withdraw into a fantasy world where we are in control of it all. Rather like the current ANZ bank ads – a world that operates with us at the centre. But it doesn’t. We are not the centre of the universe, or even the world, or even our neighbourhood. Knocking implies that we have an attitude that again is open to whatever is on the other side. One issue people have with God is that they believe they are knocking and either there’s no answer or the open door reveals something they didn’t want or expect. What then drives some folk into a “chuck God in the trash can” response. Sometimes life’s like that is hard to cope with if we have a world view that we will live a privileged life once we say we are following Jesus. A life of trust in God is not about smoothness, but about attitude in the face of life.
Ask, seek, knock. They are small words. But for me they hold the possibility of a way of understanding how we might live as we try to follow Jesus’ way to God. Living lives of openness, resilience, questing, always on the move to find deeper understanding. I’m also aware that these things are easier to say than do. But saying is the first step to doing! 3 small words in English. But then God is only 3 letters too. What would life be like if all important things came down to only one syllable I wonder. Maybe I’ll go ask about that.
Dearest Earth Our Mother
Tune: Cranham Irregular - G. Holst. CH3 Hymmary 50. Lyrics: (c)Bill Wallace
Dearest Earth, our mother,
Kind and bountiful;
Loving all your children,
Giving life to all;
We are all your whanau
Joined by spiral thread,
Binding all the living,
Linking all the dead.-
Earth will live forever
Ancient wisdom said
Modern wisdom tells us
Earth may soon be dead.
Mother Earth lies bleeding
Tortured by our hands
Seeking endless profits
From the finite land. -
A-o-te-a-ro-a
Sacred Island space,
Home where God is nature
Shows a furrowed face
Land for all our children
Born and yet to be -
May your weeping help us
Long to set you free!
Today's World
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God of compassion: we often feel that we are far from the centres of power and
influence, of turmoil and pain in this world.
But we know that we really are not so far:
We are joined by our common humanity, our sharing of this world,
its resources, its blessings and its pain.And so we specially pray
for the victims of war:
in The Lebanon, in Palestine, in Afghanistan, in the Sudan,
in East Timor and Iraq.
Innocent victims; bereaved families,
and all caught up in the horror of events:
We pray for families who have lost their fathers and their sons:
or lost their children through malnutrition
in the aftermath of sanctions.Guide our leaders in seeking to address the underlying causes of such events.
May they learn to act with justice and effectiveness,
without escalating the spiral of violence, injustice and hate.
We pray for all arms manufacturers and traders,
Military and political leaders engaged in escalating weapon systems
May they come to see that their enterprise brings no security at all.Guide all who work for just peace: diplomats, protestors,
Missionaries, peacekeepers and aid workers.We pray that religious faith may not be distorted to incite bigotry,
fanaticism and hate, and instead promote understanding, respect and a sense of care
for all peoples, all creation.We pray that those who warn about environmental problems may be heeded: that the
tide of species depletion and global warming may be turned; that we may all learn to
tread lightly on this fragile earth;
Appreciate its sacredness, and our deep connection to all life, habitats and cycles of
nature.Finally, we commend to your healing love O God, all those who are sick,
all who are bereaved, all who are troubled.
We pray in the name of Jesus, whom we calThe Christ.
Amen
Dedication Prayer
We commit ourselves to join with you O God
To care for the plants and the animals,
And the sacred womb of air and sea and soil.We offer with these token gifts,
Our ability to create and our potential to release
people's loving energies for the benefit of all creation.We sing with you the song of the universe
We dance with you the dance of life!
We are yours, and you in us are hope for the renewing of nature
through the healing of the nations. Amen!
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Go into the World
Go into the world: Dance, laugh, sing and create:
Go into the world: risk, explore, and love.
Go into the world: believe, hope, struggle and remember.And go with the assurance of God's Love! Amen!
Divine Wisdom
In our worship we have discovered something of the
presence of God: Holy Spirit; Divine Wisdom.May that holy presence guide and direct us
in the fullness of Life.
In our worship we have discovered
that there is always another way.
May ours be the way of Christ,
the way of peace, and of accepting love.
So bless us as we go, in Jesus' name,
Amen.