A sermon
preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 5 January
2020, the Epiphany Sunday, by Bruce Van Voorhis. The scripture readings that day were Exodus 3:9–15, Psalm 46, John 17:20–26.
We give thanks, Lord, for the life
and the love you’ve given to us. Be present with us today and guide us on our
journey, our pilgrimage, to you who dwells as a source of love in our hearts.
We offer this prayer in your Son’s name. Amen.
The focus of our message this morning is Christian meditation, which
is sometimes known as contemplative prayer or “prayer of the heart.” When we
think about meditation today, I believe we often think of Zen Buddhism or
Hinduism but not Christianity. However, our faith has a long tradition of
meditation that begins with some of the earliest Christians—the Desert
Fathers and Mothers in the third century in Egypt. These hermits, and later
monks and nuns, influenced the monastic movement that emerged in the Middle
Ages in Europe. Over a period of several centuries, however, the practice of
meditation among Christians declined. In contemporary times, a Benedictine monk
in England, Fr. John Main, resurrected this movement though in the 1970s. Upon
his death in 1982, the movement, which has become known as the World Community
for Christian Meditation (WCCM), has been led by Fr. Laurence Freeman, another
English Benedictine monk.
As we begin a new year and, indeed, a new decade, I would
like for us to consider making meditation one of our New Year’s resolutions as
a regular practice of our faith.
Why though should we do this?
Meditation is done in silence. One could say it is the
“holy silence” or the “divine silence.” It is in silence that we have the
opportunity to listen to God, to be with God. If we’re busy talking while in prayer,
God doesn’t have a chance to reveal himself to us. In our reading in Psalms
this morning, we are told in verse 10 of Psalm 46 “to be still and know that I
am God.”
Meditation is also about being present in the present
moment. One again could call it the “holy moment” or the “divine moment.” It is
not in the past; it is not in the future; it is now. We are present with God;
we are just being. We do not think about God or anything else; we are just to
be.
If we look at our Old Testament reading in Exodus today,
God tells Moses that his name is I AM. In a similar manner during meditation,
we are to work through the identity and images of ourselves that our ego has
given us over a period of time that we portray to others as ourselves and
instead be our true, unique, genuine selves. It may feel scary at first; we may
have some fear. However, if we persevere, we will find, I believe, our reward
of accepting ourselves as the child of God that God created, as the child of
God that God intended. God doesn’t make mistakes.
At the heart of Christian meditation is the belief that
God dwells in the heart of every human being. Our New Testament reading in
chapter 17 of the Gospel of John this morning proclaims this reality in verses
21 to 23:
“[E]ven
as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that
the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory which you have given me
I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in
them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may
know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
And in verse 26, Jesus adds:
“I
made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with
which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Meditation is simply a path to discover God in us.
We have been talking about meditation, but meditation is
something to be done, to be practiced, so let us try meditating. It’s not difficult. We
sit up straight in a relaxed position and close our eyes. You can place your
hands in your lap in any way that feels comfortable to you.
The word that we’ll use for our mantra is maranatha. It’s an Aramaic word—the language that Jesus spoke—that
means “come, Lord.”
We meditate by saying our mantra, maranatha, when we breath in, and we say it again when we breath
out. If your breathing is slow, you can say the whole word when you breath in
and when you breath out. If your breathing is more rapid, you can break the
word in half—mara when you breath in
and natha when you breath out.
Let us now try to meditate. Normally, we would meditate
20 to 30 minutes in the morning and 20 to 30 minutes in the evening. However,
we’ll just meditate for five minutes today as a kind of an appetizer. I’ll
strike the bowl to begin, and I’ll strike it again to end. If you’re like me,
you’ll probably find your mind wandering about something in the past or
something in the future. This is normal. Just refocus and return to the mantra.
To begin, I’ll say a few words to guide us. Let us close our eyes and try to
coordinate your breathing with mine.
(Meditate for five minutes. I’ll says the words focus, word, breath, silence, be still, let go, surrender, trust, peace, joy, and love when we exhale.)
I hope that you enjoyed your brief experience of
meditation. In reality, however, meditation is not about our feelings but is just
about being. Through being faithful to the practice of meditation and
maintaining the self-discipline that it requires, we may find that we are less
judgmental and more forgiving, more patient and less frustrated and angry
through this process over time. We may also come to gradually lose our egos so
that we may gain our authentic selves or, to paraphrase Jesus, “those who lose
their lives for my sake will find it.” We can reinterpret these words of Jesus
to say that “those who lose their egos to find me will find their true selves.”
Meditation, as was previously noted, is about just being; and in just being, we
may discover the love of God that radiates within each of us. This discovery,
in turn, gives us much indescribable joy that we feel compelled to share with
others or, indeed, we share it naturally and unintentionally with others.
A byproduct of meditation may be a sense of inner peace. This
inner peace may contribute, however, to our efforts to promote peace in our
city and in our world.
By now, you have probably noted that meditation is an
individual activity which, like today, can be done in community. Through
meditation, we may become more peaceful, more full of love and compassion, more
patient, etc., that can help us become wiser and more useful peacemakers. We
are all aware of how chaotic, tense, violent and divided our community of Hong
Kong has become and, of course, many other places around the world. Our city
and our world are in great need of more and better equipped peacemakers. A line
of a popular song in the 1950s and 1960s, Let
There Be Peace on Earth, is “let [peace] begin with me.” Through
meditation, we begin to take steps that peace may, indeed, begin with me and
you.
I hope from our brief encounter with Christian meditation
this morning that you will feel motivated to make doing meditation regularly
one of your New Year’s resolutions this year. May you find the love of God in
your heart on your journey of divine silence. Amen.
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, January 05, 2020
