Trinity 7 7th August 2011

I want to say something about the value of contemplation this morning.

This is provoked by the 1 Kings reading set to illustrate the Gospel passage from Matthew 14. In both passages those open to God engage with him in contemplation after storms. Elijah finds God in ‘the sound of sheer silence’ and the disciples see Jesus mysteriously on the lake.

Our relationship with the Lord has the ingredients of penitence, thankfulness and the requesting of our needs but it is in its root a call to intimacy. It is a call to just be with him and listen to what he has to say to us. Just as at this moment we are opening our ears in church to the preacher expounding God’s word we are invited to grow more skilled in opening our ears to listen to what the Lord has to say to us day by day and hour by hour.

Contemplation in its call to intimacy is no call to cosiness but a call to being totally available to God.

To grow closer to Jesus we need to identify any resistance within us to the word of God. We need to be checking out daily if there is any difference between what we want and what God wants.

The school of holiness is in the circumstances of our life interpreted to us by the word of God.

In the first reading from the first book of the Kings Chapter 19 we pick up on the story of Elijah after his battle with the prophets of Baal. Threatened by Queen Jezebel Elijah retreats to Mount Horeb to seek God. In the account you can follow again in the news sheet we read of a storm which prepared the way for him to hear God. Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’

This passage has been much interpreted by writers in the contemplative Christian tradition which built up on Mount Carmel. To this day the Carmelites keep the Feast of Elijah as one who heard and handed on the word of God.

In the Gospel reading from Matthew 14 we see a similar dynamic: Jesus went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking towards them on the lake. But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’

God speaks again to awed, frightened disciples in the wake of a storm to give them courage.

In both passages storms are the immediate preparation, the herald for God to speak. For Elijah it is in the sound of sheer silence that he hears God questioning him. For the disciples the sight of Jesus and his word of encouragement follows a battering by the waves on Lake Galilee. In both passages disciples of God hear God speak - but only after being shaken around a little!

Isn’t this true of our own discipleship? Very often our attention to God and what he has to say to us is captured when life shakes us up through an unsettling of our circumstances. Of course God speaks to us in our settled routines, such as Sunday obligation to church, regular commitment to prayer, personal study of scripture, devotional reading and so on. But intimacy often grows when we are forced to contemplate and face up to him through a change of circumstances.

In the last week I have been privileged to enter some of your personal circumstances linked to the loss of a loved one, an unsettling of employment prospects and the coming to terms with a sudden loss of mobility through injury. In all of these tumultuous events we have been seeking to contemplate and attend to what God is saying. I become, in a famous phrase used last week to welcome me in The Green Man, the Maker’s rep. As Maker’s rep my task is to help people as best I can see the Maker’s instructions. I need them myself and will be seeking them from another priest as I confess my sins before next Sunday’s feast.

Sin is basically a refusal to listen to God who says to us again and again in his word, written and spoken, that we are loved. All the time we are busy developing strategies to help us think we are in control of our lives but the God of power and might is expert in gaining our attention to him – and to his repeated assurance, ‘I love you’. ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’

Contemplation is the heart of prayer - being still and knowing God is God. It’s no selfish navel gazing but the shaking up and out of self regard to see with excitement and awe how and who God is. Through such prayerful attention we come to see and love as he sees and loves.

As for Elijah this means letting go of lesser gods so we can welcome the God who is Love more profoundly. This letting go involves what has been called ‘the dark night of the soul’ since intimacy with the Lord demands withdrawal from unhelpful things and this brings pain. The heart is so complex and in need of purification.

The contemplative way is a way opened up by Our Lord Jesus, a way of death and resurrection into being a better human being so that the best contemplatives are shown up by their attitude to their neighbour.

May the eucharist we celebrate build a spirit of contemplation within us and a readiness to hear God’s word not just peaceably on a Sunday at 10 o’clock but in every turn, up or down of the roller coaster of our lives.