Scripture: 1Corinthians 14:13-19
I said before that I would not be preaching today, and I won’t. This will be just “a few words”, a meditation, a short meditation, and as the title says, the few words will be more in the nature of a prayer concern. They will try to express a prayer concern of mine, and they will be about what I think is, and should be, a prayer concern for all of us. I will be going on vacation for a couple of weeks starting tomorrow. While I am gone, we (you) will be beginning our formal discussions about the prospect of buying the church property at Monticello and Elliott. Since I won’t be here to take part in the first stage of those discussions, I wanted to say just a few things today.
The first thing I want to say is that I am in favor, in fact enthusiastic, about moving ahead and doing our best to make this purchase happen. I am excited about the opportunities it gives us both in terms of our internal life and our ability to do outreach and be a voice for justice in the immediate area around the church and in the greater Charlottesville/Albemarle community. I won’t go into any more detail about why I am in favor of pursuing the opportunity. I’m sure all the reasons I have will be voiced by others in the discussions to come. But I did want to offer a kind of public proxy ahead of time on this not only as a member of the congregation but as your pastor. It could conceivably be that it will matter to some people whether their pastor is on board on this, whether if the congregation decides to go ahead I would go along willingly and energetically, as opposed to grudgingly and resentfully or foot-draggingly, whether as someone whose job it is to provide leadership for the church, and who will need to be involved in much of the large amount of work that would be ahead of us, whether I would have my heart in it. So I did want to say ahead of time that the answer to all those questions is yes.
But there’s a second thing I want to say too, and it’s not a modification of what I just said, but an addition to it. We are entering into a time that really needs to be a process of discernment. That’s a word that has been used a lot in church circles in recent years to urge people when making decisions to get beyond the point of stating and defending positions and expressing personal opinions and preferences, to create an atmosphere where people are not divided into the pros and antis but where everyone together is trying to arrive at what the wise, right, or faithful thing to do would be. Some people have even created formal discernment processes that build in, for instance, times of silence to insure that there is time for thought as well as talk, and that ask people to examine their motives for taking the positions they have, and so forth.
My interpretation of all that emphasis on discernment is that it has been an effort to find a new way to talk about the more traditional idea of being prayerful about something. I guess I sort of understand that. It may be that some people have notions about what it means to pray about something that get in the way. Maybe when people say they are going to pray about something, others interpret that to mean that they are going to ask God a question and expect God to answer in some clear, unmistakable way. So some people want to talk about discernment maybe to get away from that sort of direct question and answer approach to prayer. I understand that, but I also don’t think that’s what most people mean when they say they are going to pray about something, and I guess I really prefer the traditional language.
I am hoping—it is my prayer concern—that we will all be prayerful as we go into this decision-making process, and as we go through it. It can be a little tricky, because some of us are already pretty enthusiastic about the possibilities, and it can be a little tricky to keep that enthusiasm, which is a good thing and we wouldn’t want to lose, but at the same time to be in a thoughtful, prayerful mode and mood as well.
Casting about for a scripture to go with these remarks, I uncovered one that appealed to me from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, just a few verses actually after the one that we read last week about love. Paul is continuing to deal with the phenomenon of speaking in tongues and what he says struck me as appropriate for us. “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive. What should I do then? I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.” There are lots of ways to pray. Simply having a quiet spirit, a thoughtful spirit, a mindful spirit, a listening spirit—these are all ways of being prayerful. And I pray that we may be prayerful as we go about our decision-making, that we be thoughtful about what we are about to do, that we be thoughtful of one another. And may the communion we are about to share remind us that our decision-making on this, or any other matter for that matter, exists in the context of our greater calling to be a people of faith, seeking justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with God, children of God, sisters and brothers to one another. Amen.
Jim Bundy
July 4, 2004