2009.12.27 - "Spiritual Let-Down" by Ken MacQuarrie (Ken MacQuarrie)
9.8 MB
10:40 min
Emotional and spiritual letdown after Christmas
So, who of you here are counting down the days until next Christmas? Only 362 days to go! Its funny – If I were to ask that same question a couple of weeks ago, people probably would have sat up a little straighter in their pews, excited about the opportunity to gather with family and friends, give and receive presents, and eat-and eat-and eat.
But asking that question today, after Christmas is over and done with makes everyone… well, tired.
The completion of Christmas can bring with it a sort of emotional let-down. Loved ones depart for their own homes and we are left to deal with garbage bags full of wrapping paper, a collection of pine needles on the floor, and a fridge stocked with enough leftovers for a month. On top of this, a belly full of turkey leaves us kind of lethargic even while we face the work ahead of us.
There truly is a kind of let down when major events and celebrations like Christmas draw to their close.
Emotional and spiritual letdown after major spiritual events
The same, I suppose, is true of major spiritual events. Looking through Scripture, again and again, we find individuals and communities entering into low spiritual states
The children of Israel, after their miraculous rescue from Egypt, are found crying out against God and Moses as if they will die lost in the wilderness.
Elijah the prophet, having defeated the worshippers of the false God Baal, is also found in the wilderness in a sort of depression, wondering why God doesn’t simply take his life.
After his own baptism, a great spiritual moment in itself – Jesus is drawn to the wilderness – 40 days of struggle, of reflection, of testing, of preparation. A challenge so intense that angels had to minister onto him.
These “wilderness moments,” these spiritual let-downs, occur quite regularly throughout scripture. And I think that they happen often to us as well. The moments of revelation, the moments of spiritual bliss, the “thin places” where the divine comes close enough to touch the temporal, the times and places where the vale between heaven and earth is reduced, the mountain top experiences – are often followed by valleys, by wilderness moments, when the memory of what previously happened becomes so faded that we are prone to forget it all together.
The risk of spiritual blindness
We are prone to spiritual blindness. Think of this morning’s scripture readings. This morning, we read of Hannah and Samuel and of Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas.
Eli and his sons, as priests of Israel, were charged with the responsibility of presenting sacrifices to God and serving in the temple. But over time, it seems that his sons grew blind to the holiness of their calling, and they found opportunity in their positions to extort and take advantage of others. They were blind – they forgot the ways in which God had redeemed and upheld their people in the past; they grew hardhearted – and they paid for their blindness with their lives.
Contrast this with Hannah, who remembered God’s past blessing to her, who lived in thanks, and received continual new blessing. Every year, she would make the journey to see her first born son and make her annual sacrifice to God.
The faithfulness of Hannah is a faithfulness that is passed on to her son, and he grows to take the place of the unfaithful Hophni and Phinehas as priest and servant of God.
From the sons of Eli, we observe that the risk of spiritual blindness is quite a destructive one – it has the potential cause complete destruction – as indeed, it destroyed them.
But observing Hannah, we see that living in constant gratitude of God’s good grace kept her remembering God’s good grace above and beyond all else.
How has the good grace of God blessed you? How has the good grace of God blessed our church community? When we find ourselves in an exhausted lull, it can be hard to remember, it can be hard to recall the many ways in which God has been good to us. But remembering keeps us from becoming blind to God’s continual grace.
Fortunately, even in our blindness, God’s grace continues to illuminate. In our Gospel reading today, Mary and Joseph lose the 12-year-old Jesus. After a 3-day search, Mary gives the typical parental line – “Didn’t you know that we would be worried about you?” to which Jesus replies, “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
Just twelve years before, the angels proclaimed, the shepherds wondered, and the Maji visited as heaven came to earth. And yet, just as we grow forgetful with the passage of time, it seems that the memory of this divine encounter faded from Mary and Joseph’s minds, even as the promise of it grew in their growing son.
And yet, God’s grace continues to uplift and up hold Mary, Joseph, and the growing Jesus, preparing them, and him, for what is to come.
How is God’s grace upholding and guiding us? What is the Spirit of God doing here among our church community?
As 2009 draws to a close, I have been trying to reflect on our year past to see where the Holy Spirit has brought us, and to consider what our next steps might be.
In 2009:
The board has overseen remarkable improvements to both the church building and the manse. We have also begun to record needs, which we anticipate facing in the near future, so that we might prepare to address them.
Through the work of our Session and congregational committees we have brought new elements into our worship services, there have been two congregation-led worship services, we have begun to celebrate important dates in the lives of our members.
We have celebrated lives lived and remembered lives past; we have celebrated lives begun, and held the promise of God’s gift to them in our hands.
We have taken some first-steps in beginning a planned giving ministry in our church by which those of us here presently might serve the future of this congregation and the church global with our gifts. Speaking of this planned giving ministry, following our planned giving service in November, two members of this congregation informed me that they have included their congregation in their wills.
We said goodbye to some close friends and family members, as their lives here drew to a close, and they found their way into God’s rest.
We have seen some new faces among us; our family grows to include new members as the Holy Spirit entrusts their love and care to us and as we experience the giftedness that they bring.
We have given generously to our community and our world through our contributions to Community Care, Enough For All, PWS&D and Presbyterians Sharing.
We have sought to live as faithful servants of Christ.
It’s been a busy year – no wonder we’re so tired! And we’ve done much much more…
Where will the Holy Spirit lead us in 2010? I don’t really know – but the same God who has been our faithful guide in years and ages past continues to have a plan for us.
Our challenge is to keep our eyes and ears open to God’s continual leading – that we might hear when he calls, that we might see the gifts that he offers and see the needs that we are called to meet.
And so happy New Year St. Andrew's; may God’s blessing be upon you.
Spiritual Let-Down
