“So Many Voices, So Little Time” Vance L. Toivonen
READING Psalm 19:7-14
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the LORD are sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is clear, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from the insolent; do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
READING Jean Houston, Forward to Physicians of the Soul
We are, at any given moment what our state of consciousness is; our state of consciousness is us. And if we reside too long in certain states of depression, anger, obsession, or any of the other toxic troughs of the mind, we become polluted with our own debris…We walk then in the muck and mire of our own making….What the great spiritual teachers offer that differs from most psychological therapy is the lure of becoming, the vision as well as the practices to attain our true divine condition. The great spiritual physicians of the soul lead us out of the dross of ordinary life into the awakening of extraordinary life. Each, in his or her own way, assures us that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but rather spiritual beings having a human experience.
SERMON
Three and a half years ago I came to Hope Church by the good graces of this community. At the time I had spent 18 years of ministry in Orthodox Lutheran settings. Of course, the main source for Orthodox Lutherans, and Orthodox Christians of all stripes and colors is the Bible. By the time Hope Church became the new setting for ministry, I had moved into a place internally that was a bit like a kid in a candy store. Suddenly I discovered this larger world of many sources, Buddhist sources, Hindu sources, Islamic sources, Sufi sources, and assorted others from long ago and from present day.
There is no doubt in my mind that wisdom swirls around us like a constant breeze. A few weeks ago I asked you to name some of your sources, and you did. We all pay attention to something, or someone that informs our choices and our living. It’s just that having many sources makes it more difficult for us to listen when the sources differ from our individual agendas.
For instance, I think that some of us here may genuinely want to hear what Jesus might have to say, but when what Jesus has to say makes us feel uncomfortable, or demands something of us, we can simply flip the channel to another source. It’s like we have this wisdom clicker in our hands, surfing the seas of sources we’ve accumulated for ourselves until we settle in on a channel we like. We then watch that channel until we lose interest in the program, and then commence our flipping once again.
The unorthodox approach to wisdom can be quite convenient for us. But is it the best approach? I suppose even Christians pick and choose when living within the confines of Jesus’ teachings, paying more attention to one saying than another. Christians might think it perfectly alright to claim Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life,” but when Jesus asks Christians to love their enemies, or sell everything they have, give the money to the poor, and follow him, they may have a slight difference of opinion.
The Psalmist focuses on the Torah, the law of the Lord, the precepts, ordinances, and commandments of God. The Psalmist declares that these precepts are “More to be desired…than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.” Not even the whole Bible, but just the first five books contain enough for this servant to dine upon. Perhaps the largess of our wisdom sources can be as much of a hindrance as it is a help.
The earliest followers of Jesus, participants in what many scholars call the early Jesus movements, had as their source a simple list of Jesus sayings. Scholars have come to call this source “Q” and suggest that especially the gospel of Mark draws upon “Q” as its main source. Here is that simple list.
It is that last one that stands out most to me. Am I letting God be the final arbiter of my life, or am I getting in the way of divine directives for me? Of course, since there are so many voices claiming to speak for God, and since there is so little time in a lifetime to sort it out, we do need to make choices. After three and a half years here I am just beginning to realize this. I am a slow learner. My kid in a candy store approach is wonderful, but perhaps I need to choose. I have been wandering through the wilderness of this new world of many sources, and it is enthralling to witness its glory and splendor. But the day may be at hand for me to say that while I respect all of those sources, and may still draw on them occasionally, one source is going to trump the others for me. One source is going to etch into my very soul a kind of bottom line, a place where the buck stops, so to speak. And again, I say, this buck will stop for me first and foremost.
The major question on the table is still the same, no matter what source I settle on: Am I willing to be transformed by the wisdom I ingest? Right now there are millions of Muslims who are not terrorists, suicide bombers, or jihadists. They are looking to the Koran as their primary source, culling its pages, seeking to absorb its wisdom, and wondering what they can do in their own lives that might contribute to bringing an end to the madness that surrounds them. There are millions of Buddhists who are pouring over the wisdom of the Gotama seeking guidance for their lives. There are millions of Hindus consulting the Bhagavad Gita, Sufis reading Rumi and other mystics, and Jews still studying the Torah after thousands of years.
Today I am simply asking us to consider, from a wisdom point of view, what is our primary source? Where does your “buck” stop, so to speak? Does any one source have a kind of trump card in your life, or mine? I am strongly suggesting today for myself, and for those who will share this question, that I may need to adopt such a source once again. For some of us that primary source may have been, and perhaps has always been, the same source.
No matter what the source, the goal still needs to be the same. Personal transformation is the only real reason we would adopt such sources into our lives. Our source, or sources, whatever they may be find their truest value when they call us beyond ourselves to some new way of being, some new reality, some transformed existence, something we do not yet know or fathom. Some of us might be able to accomplish this formative task with myriad sources. I look at the list I read earlier from the “Q” source and realize there are many things on that list I have yet to invite into my life. Just that list declares there is work yet to be done on this solitary soul, work enough to last a lifetime.
Elsewhere in the forward to Physicians of the Soul, Dr. Jean Houston writes,
Now the task of transformation…does not belong to Christ or Buddha or Mohammed or White Buffalo Woman alone. We will be equal to the requirements and the responsibilities of the Twenty-First Century only if we have nurtured the innate seed of our own divinity. The spiritual paradigm has shifted from the one to the many…Jesus the Nazarene carpenter had his death and resurrection as Christos; our version is the extinction of parts of our limited local self and our resurrection into a unitive reality that is both spiritual consciousness and global spirit.
You see, in spite of what some people might think, I do believe in resurrection. But the resurrection I am most focused on right now is not the one that “occurred” 2,000 years ago. The resurrection I am most focused on is the one that can happen in this moment, and the next, whenever you or I yield ourselves to a power greater than ourselves, change direction, and enter some new reality of existence. It is your death and mine, the demise of our individual and corporate egos, and our subsequent resurrection to new life that comprise my spiritual focus at this moment in time, on this morning, in this place.
The question is whether or not this personal and spiritual transformation is something we are all willing to make our highest purpose, our most impassioned goal. Are we willing to set aside all other agendas for this one, single, solitary task? We cannot expect anyone else to be nailed to a cross for us. The doctrine of atonement is the weak link in the Christian myth. It can tend to let us off the hook, so to speak. At the end of the day it is not the death and resurrection of anyone else but ourselves that will even begin to save us. May we, like Jesus before us, at least be willing to submit ourselves to such a death, and in so doing make a resurrection possible, if not altogether probable.