From Laura: Spiritual Practice - Loving God
One of the scribes… asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
~Mark 12:28-30
I have written and spoken previously of the three markers I see in thriving churches, ancient wisdom repackaged:
They are oriented around spiritual practice. (Love God)
They have healthy internal relationships. (Love one another)
They take the actual needs of their literal neighbors seriously. (Love neighbor)
I promised a series focusing on each of these, and I start with the first one, found in all three synoptic gospels. The verse Jesus begins by referencing here is a central prayer in Jewish faith, and it rings with our Christian confession that Jesus is Lord. In a world of competing loyalties and people scrabbling to set themselves or others up as lords, the confession that God/Jesus/Spirit remains our one true loyalty is radically reorienting. Opening to Jesus, allowing the Trinity to be at the very core of our individual lives and our life together as a body, means that all other identities and priorities find their rightful place, revealing a broad land of Love made incarnate and infusing all of life. Our problems usually arise when we act as though any other secondary identity, priority, or loyalty is the core of our lives. Other identities, priorities, and loyalties are not innately bad, they are simply not primary. Our life distorts when we lose sight of the Holy One at the center of it all.
We are opening into a season of transformation in this district. God has invited us to this place, and Jesus is showing the path forward step by step. Moments of temptation, fear, judgment, and cynicism come quickly, though, in the face of the uncertainty and enormity of saying yes to any change that the Spirit wants to work in us. We have been sensing, those of us who have started to stand at the edge of these hard conversations that we don’t want to have, that we will need all the courage, grace, forgiveness, joy, and hope that we can carry. You may have been sensing it in yourself, too…
“Egypt was better… we were slaves, but at least we had good food there…”
“Who me? You couldn’t possibly mean me. You probably meant to call my brother Aaron”
“That direction? The people are strong and the cities are fortified over there. How about we just wait here for a while, regroup, go later…”
“Give it all away? Couldn’t I just keep a little bit of it?”
Jesus doesn’t promise us easy, comfortable paths when we follow him. Jesus, in fact, promises us a cross-shaped love and a resurrection-shaped life. Which will we choose?
It is becoming clear that in this season of change it will be essential to stay close to God, by engaging in the practices that we know keep us rooted and grounded in love, growing tall into the full stature of Christ. Often our practices are the first things to fall away when life gets busy, fear and cynicism set in, and temptations arise. At the same time, they are the most important tool we have to reorient toward Jesus, who can calm storms with peace that surpasses understanding. This is our most important work in this season of uncertainty: to lean into practices that tend to body, heart, mind, and spirit, practices that form us bit by bit, reorienting every part of our lives toward Christ who redeems us and the whole world.
The district board is meeting in a couple weeks to continue our movement toward transformation, to wade into the deep questions without clear answers, questions of purpose and mission and values, of how to be Christ’s Body together when we feel so different from one another and sometimes even disconnected or untrusting. We have decided that, if we are to see this thing through all the way to new life, if we are to be faithful stewards of God’s vision for us and this district, we have to start with the practices that keep us connected to what is most sacred. We will spend our first evening together considering what keeps us close to God, and what spiritual practices God might be calling us toward to deepen our relationship with Christ. We will be starting to develop “a rule of life” (look it up!) to form us more fully into people who follow the Way.
I wish you could (hope you can) see what I see… from here, I see wise people offering exactly the right gifts for exactly the right time. I see God calling people to the table from near and far, people drawn to light and bearing light themselves. I see God forming people, beyond our fears and false selves, into wounded healers and courageous disciples. God is working some underground abundance in this world, and using us to do it. Do you see it? (If you do, tell someone about it!) I catch glimpses of this movement daily, wisps and echoes that I often can’t piece together into a clear understanding of a bigger picture. But that’s not my job… that’s the Spirit’s job. I only need to be faithfully orienting my life, my mind, heart, strength, and soul, toward Jesus.
This month, I invite you to be aware of your own spiritual practices and those of your congregation. How are they forming and reorienting you and your congregation? What spiritual practices might God be inviting you to shift into or away from in this season? If you don't have spiritual practices that form and reorient you, how might you learn about or experiment with new ones?
