SEATTLE MENNONITE CHURCH
Second Sunday of Easter, April 7, 2002
Sermon: Weldon D. Nisly
TITLE: Undergoing God
THEME: The Easter Feast: Discernment
TEXTS: 1 Peter 1: 3-9
John 20: 19-31
The thirteenth century mystic, Meister Eckhart said, “Our happiness does not lie in our accomplishments, but rather in the fact that we undergo God.”
Jesus knew what Meister Eckhart meant to undergo God. Meister Eckhart got his understanding for undergoing God from Jesus.
Last week our question was, “Do we believe in Easter?” This week our question is, “How are we undergoing God?” It is a question of discernment - a quest for discernment.
The word discern comes from the Latin word discernere. Discern means to distinguish between or
separate. Discerning means “showing
insight and understanding.” Discernment
means the ability to “grasp and comprehend what is obscure,” (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition)
The Greek word dokimaso,
appears 31 times in the New Testament, meaning to “test,” “examine,” or
“interpret.” (Minister’s Manual, p. 220)
For the church, the heart of “spiritual discernment means distinguishing
the way of life from the way of death” (Marlene Kropf,
“Discernment: Grounded in God.”
This second Sunday of Easter names our need for spiritual discernment in the church. We face many opportunities for discernment in the church. Certainly a major discernment before us is our vision process.
Events of the world, especially in Palestine and Israel this Sunday of Easter, cry out for true discernment. The violent tragedy of suicide bombing and the crushing of Palestinian villages and peoples cries out for the world’s attention and ours. We are called to a spiritual discernment to become forces of love and peace rather than hate and violence.
Our attention today is on the discernment of our gifts -- what gifts we call out and offer for life rather than for death as a church.
SMC sermon – WDNisly – 4/7/02 – p. 2
The Gospel today takes us to the disciples on the first day that Jesus rose from the dead. The disciples face a serious discernment task. Was Jesus dead or alive? What did it mean for their lives?
It was Sunday evening of that traumatic crucifixion
weekend. The disciples were gathered
together behind locked doors. They were
afraid. Afraid to be without Jesus. Afraid of the authorities. Afraid that they now had responsibility to
carry on for Jesus. Afraid of the
discernment that was now in their hands.
Suddenly Jesus appears in their midst and greets them, “Peace be with you.” The disciples are overjoyed. Maybe they can go back to the security of the pre-crucified Jesus. It would be a lot easier to have the pre-Easter Jesus around – Jesus before the crucifixion and resurrection!
The Risen Jesus’ offers them peace and sends them on. “Peace be with you.” This offering of peace provides the greeting, the mood, the atmosphere, and the groundedness that disciples will need forever. Jesus continues, “As God sent me, so I am sending you.” Then Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” From that day on disciples are sent by Jesus who has been sent by God. Jesus is saying, “Undergo God!”
A week after the resurrection Jesus encounters the disciples again. Thomas missed the first encounter and wants stronger evidence. Thomas clung to the Pre-Easter Jesus over the crucified and risen Christ. Yet here Thomas confesses, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus speaks to Thomas and all the disciples then and now. “Because you have seen me, you believe. Blessed are those who never saw and yet believe.”
This Gospel account of the encounter of the disciples with the Risen Christ, is a mirror for our struggle to see and to know, to pray and to act, to wait and to discern the way of God for the community of faith. It is about the new life offered by the Risen Christ.
The Risen Christ gives new life to the church as a discerning body to see and believe and act on a vision that takes faith and doesn’t have everything under its own control.
Peter says it well in the scripture heard earlier:
Blessed be the God…of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whose great mercy we have
been born anew, into a living hope that draws its life from the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead….1 Peter 1: 3.
Easter launches a new possibility, a possibility to be a living discerning body united with the Risen Christ. What does it means to be a discerning body with a living hope? This is a good Easter question for us as we begin a new period of gift discernment in the church.
SMC sermon – WDNisly – 4/7/02 – p. 3
A wonderful booklet called, Grounded in God: Listening Hearts Discernment for Group Deliberations, defines spiritual discernment as “our effort to tap into the flow of divine wisdom.”
Discernment means distinguishing
God’s Spirit from other spirits that are present in a given time and place
– such as the spirit of a nation, the spirit of the times, the spirit of
competition....Discernment is a prayerful, informed, and intentional attempt to
sort through these voices to get in touch with God’s Spirit at work in a
situation and to develop a sense of direction in which the Spirit is
leading. Discernment is more journey
than destination. We may not find
answers for all our concerns, but we can be receptive to God’s presence as we
ponder the questions….Sound rational analysis based on the best available
information is crucial to good discernment.
Yet spiritual discernment goes beyond the analytical to engage our
senses, feelings, imaginations, and intuitions as we wrestle with issues. It often points to a decision, but it is not
problem-solving. The goal of our
discernment efforts is to find the mind of Christ….for those who would
have their lives grounded in God. (pp. 6-7)
In other words, for true spiritual discernment we
must undergo God.
Marlene Kropf, Minister of Worship and Spirituality for the Mennonite Church USA, offers 4 biblical foundations for spiritual discernment. (“Discernment: Grounded in God”) Spiritual discernment is:
1. Grounded in
God’s love
Spiritual discernment begins in love [and] is rooted in God’s original blessing of
all creation and desire for peace and wholeness for all people.
2. Grounded in
God’s Covenant and Call
The God who loves and blesses at creation does not give up when we disobey or
turn away. Instead God offers a life-giving covenant. God reaches out to embrace
and guide us.
3. Grounded in
God’s vision
Critical to understanding God’s ways is the capacity to recognize where God is
and where God is not….God is present wherever freedom, healing, and
reconciliation flourish. Whenever we see life coming forth from death, we
recognize an unmistakable sign of God at work….Discernment is where prayer
and action meet.
4. Grounded in joy
An ongoing source of vitality and joy, the spiritual discipline of
discernment…links us intimately with God’s future.
In addition, Marlene, offers 4 key attitudes of the spirit
for spiritual discernment. (“Discernment: A River Runs
Through It”)
SMC sermon – WDNisly – 4/7/02 – p. 4
1. An expectation
that God desires to guide us
The church’s practice of discernment rests on God’s identity as a self-revealing God, One who wants to be made known….In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, we
see how God feels and thinks and acts. In the Holy Spirit, who is the presence of the Risen Christ among us, we are promised a guide and companion who will show us the truth (John 16:13). Thus our practice of discernment is rooted in a belief in a Triune God who is present with us and will reveal what is needed for the church to be faithful.
2. A willingness
to listen
Recognizing that we are created in God’s image and for fellowship with God, we
believe we have the ability to hear and respond to God. Thus a basic capacity
required for discernment is a willingness to listen, a readiness to be open to the
inner and outer promptings of God’s Spirit.
3. A commitment to
spiritual practices
Christians….listen to God by a variety of spiritual practices….personal….and
communal spiritual practices as a way of nurturing the entire group’s capacity to
listen to God.
4. A response of
obedience
Because discernment is where prayer and action meet, it is necessary for those
who listen to God to respond with obedience. After a group has done its best to
discern God’s way and has received a shared sense of God’s leading, it can move
forward with confidence. Even though the entire way may not be clear, the group
can move toward the future, trusting that God will [give] further revelations or
corrections as needed.
Beulah Steiner, a Mennonite spiritual director from Ohio, has given us a fresh image for discernment.
Imagine….that God’s ways are like the current of a wide river flowing to the sea. To be a discerning church means finding the current, becoming aware of its power, and flowing with the Spirit. The grassy banks of the river on either side are like our scriptures – a trustworthy guide to keep us from straying. The church’s history, traditions and wise past practices are markers, like reliable buoys, that keep us in the current and out of harm’s way. Flowing with the current, we are guided and upheld by its dynamic energy….
(“Discernment: A River Runs
Through It”)
SMC sermon – WDNisly – 4/7/02 – p. 5
When Ted Brackman and I attended the conference on “The Theological Legacy of John Howard Yoder” at Notre Dame a month ago, I picked up John’s just published book, Preface to Theology (Brazos Press, 2002). When I took the course from John 25 years ago, we received an assortment of mimeographed pages and scribbled notes as the earliest versions of this book.
We are reminded again that a common thread of John’s
teaching for the church is about the “universality of giftedness” within
the Christian community. Every person of
the gathered community is a gift and participates in the gift of the Holy
Spirit. John challenged patriarchy –
male domination -- in the church, precisely because how any Christian exercised
their gift in the church necessitated the community’s discernment process and
should not be restricted by prior logic or regulations. (Hauerwas & Sider,
“Introduction,” p. 29.)
Meister Eckhart was right 7
centuries ago in telling us of our need to undergo God.
God beckons and draws us. God permeates and shapes us.
Our response in allowing ourselves to undergo God
is to be graced by a willingness to listen to God together. To undergo God is be given the
patience of not needing instant answers or change. Undergoing God is to offer a
deep “yes” to a new pattern of communal attentiveness, listening, discernment,
and prayer. (Stephen V. Doughty, “Glimpsing Glimpses: A Quest
for Communal Discernment,” Weavings, Nov.-Dec. 1995.)
We bless God who gives us counsel…
we keep God always before us;
because God is at hand, we shall not be moved.
Therefore our hearts are glad, and our souls rejoice;
our bodies also rest secure….
You show us the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Addendum
A spiritual guide who often writes for Weavings journal, told the story about having just sat in on a rather difficult church board meeting as an observer. Afterward he and one of the board members were walking across the parking lot. She looked at him and asked earnestly, “Do you think our church can find God’s way on this?”
He was silent for awhile as he pondered the weight of that great question. “Do you think our church can find God’s way on this?”
He knew that there is more than one way to ask that question. “Can we find God’s way?” often means, “Can we find my way on this?”
But he knew she was asking the question in a hungering open way. There in the parking lot of the church he was quiet for some time, without answer. Finally she said, “That’s O.K. No answer for now. If we do find God’s way, it will, I know, take time.” They both nodded consent and talked on a few minutes than got in their cars and left the church.
He pondered her sincere question all the way home. Going to bed later at home, he tried to fall
asleep but could not put either the question nor her yearning out of his mind. (Stephen V. Doughty,
“Glimpsing Glimpses: A Quest for Communal Discernment,” Weavings,
Nov-Dec 1995)
All of us share this woman’s yearning in some way whether we are conscious or unconscious of the question. We long for even subtle hints from God on The Way for us. We talk. We pray. We wait in silence. And we talk. Sometimes it seems our waiting and the silence of God are interminable. Sometimes it seems our praying is inadequate or awkward or absent.
But at heart, we know her question is the right
question. But it’s so hard to truly ask
it: “Can we find God’s way on this?”
It takes a discerning body to ask that question.
Asking God’s way for us is a better question than asking God’s will. For who can know the mind of God? And how many of us have been skeptical at someone else’s certainty that they knew the will of God on some important matter.
We do well to hear but learn slowly a wise word from an
author I do not remember: “The head does not know anything until the heart has
listened, and the heart knows today what the head will understand
tomorrow.” (Flora Slosson Wuellner, Heart healing, Heart of Light, Upper Room
Lent online meditation, 2/24/02.)
Or, another way to say it that I like is “It is a knowing deeper than knowing” that is the way of the heart.