Sermon 9-6-07
Jim Burklo
Homecoming Sunday: SOUL YEAR 2007-2008
Welcome home! To Sausalito Presbyterian. Welcome home to laughter and tears, welcome home to young and old, welcome home to curiosity and creativity, welcome home to spiritual awakening and growth, welcome home to fun and fellowship, welcome home to worthy struggle with important personal and global issues, welcome home to deepening relationships with the divine Spirit and with each other.
And welcome home to a new program year at our church – when the life of our church charges forward, full-throttle.
One new thing we are doing, starting today, is Soul Year. Twelve months of sharing some simple spiritual practices, as individuals, families, subgroups and programs of the church, and as a whole church community. Soul Year is intended to draw us closer together with God and with each other, to take our relationship with the Spirit a step further as a church.
It’s sort of like spiritual homework, but there’s no test, and all of it is optional. It’s a new idea, so I’m going to take the liberty of jump-starting it. This year’s elements of Soul Year are ones that I’ve developed. I’m hoping that you’ll get enthusiastic about this process and that you will propose ideas for next year’s Soul Year program. I’m hoping that the spiritual disciplines we use each year will bubble up from the congregation as we get used to this idea.
Soul Year 2007-2008 includes a chant, a prayer and meditation practice, a passage from the Bible for contemplation, a set of books for us to read and discuss together, and an artistic project.
The concept: to repeat and practice these things for a year, at home, at mealtime, in business meetings at church, in events and groups and programs of our church, and in worship. The idea is that repetition will reinforce the meaning and the effect of these practices, and give us a common ground for sharing our experiences. In a year from now, we’ll pick different elements for the following year.
The chant is one which we use fairly often already in our Tuesday Night Prayer and Healing Group:
I am sending you light, to heal you, to hold you, I am sending you light, to hold you in love…
Let this be our “mantra” for the year – let it get into our minds and then our hearts and let it guide us so that we become better channels for the healing power of the love that is God.
The prayer and meditation practice can be done in silence or aloud. It can be done in a few minutes, or for an extended period of meditation of 30-45 minutes, which many people find helpful in being fully aware of the presence of God. The prayer is a structure in which you, or a group of people together, fill in the blanks.
Dear God,
I (or we) feel… (take your time to say/think what you are feeling in your body and in your heart. There is no more intimate thing we can do with each other, or with God, than to open up and express our truest and deepest feelings, no matter what they are, knowing they will be accepted and respected.) I (or we) want…. (again, take some time to reflect on what you really desire, whether it seems worthy or not. What do you want for you, and what do you want for others, and what do you want for the world? It can be a want for anything – including wanting to want things that are truly worthy of wanting!) I (or we) release… (consider what and who you forgive, what you want to let go, what you want to stop grasping, what you want to stop controlling or manipulating your life or the lives of others. Part of releasing in prayer is to let go of any expectations of prayer itself – really letting go of expectations of what is supposed to happen in prayer, and letting God naturally manifest in our hearts.) I (or we) accept… (consider what you are willing to receive, to let in, to gratefully accept, in this moment. This can take the form of an affirmation – imagining that you have already received the good things you want for yourself, others, or society as a whole, and thus activating your energy and ability to work toward getting what you want.) I thank… (God or others, and for what – what better religion is there than gratitude? Gratitude opens the heart and stimulates the flow of giving and receiving the good.)
So be it, Amen!
The Bible passage is a set of verses from the fourth chapter of the first letter of John in the New Testament:
1John.4
[7] Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. [8] He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.
[11] Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. [12] No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. [13] By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.
[18] There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
May these verses, read and repeated over and over again, sink into us and inspire us to be aware of the presence of God, who is love. May we deepen in the kind of divine, unconditional love that casts out all fear. May we find new meaning in these verses, may they take on a life of their own, as we repeat them and contemplate them not just with our minds, but with our hearts.
Over the next twelve months, the church will be reading books together. We’ve already started this process – which we call One Book, One Church – we read one book at a time, over a period of three or four months. Our first one was assigned this summer – it’s Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Many of us have already read it – if not, call Book Passage and see if they’ve still got copies. I preached about it this summer and our Thurs PM Spirituality Study group is using it as our study text. On Mon Sept 24, we’ll have a discussion of the book for anyone in the church who’d like to come and share their impressions. Alice Cochran and Julie Carlson are leading the One Book, One Church effort – if you have ideas for the books for this year, please let them know!
Year of Wonders is a very beautifully written novel about a village in England in the seventeenth century, which was stricken by the plague. It raises important theological and moral questions. Particularly it raises the age-old question of the problem of evil – which Scott Elrod discussed in last week’s sermon, by the way. Why do bad things happen to good people? How could a God of love have created a world so full of pain and suffering? The book makes you ask, just what does it mean for God to be love, as 1 John chapter 4 says God is??
The art project for Soul Year 2007-2008 is to make collages that illustrate our many responses to the elements of the Soul Year prayer: I feel, I want, I release, I accept, I thank. Have fun chopping up magazines and pasting pieces together as a visual prayer! Something to do at home, with adults and kids together, to do at special events and retreats at our church. We’ll display your collages at next year’s Homecoming Sunday! And there will be no judging of your artistic ability – whatever you do will be honored as a prayerful expression.
I wish you all a happy Homecoming Sunday and a deepening and growing Soul Year!