Seventh Thursday after Pentecost, Proper 9: Faith and Personal Power

Lessons: Psalm 18:1-20; 1 Samuel 16:14-17:11; Acts 10:17-33; Luke 24:36-53

The term personal power keeps playing in my brain.  I searched it and read a little on the internet but found nothing that grabbed me in a positive way.  I realized the phrase has come to me from infomercials by Tony Robbins and is not positively reviewed in total.  Yet I do know we all have power to influence and achieve a sense of satisfaction in our lives.  Knowing what measures that satisfaction is key to what makes us content.

No matter where you read in scripture one theme plays solidly through.  Our deepest contentment comes from a sense that we are right with God and self and others.  Perhaps it truly is in this order. Yet there is interplay of all three.  We arrive at this place of contentment progressively and turning and changing is part of this spiritual dance.  One could see this as the dance of repentance, of changing for the better, piece by piece, little by little, over time.  Avoiding this rhythm of change and becoming hurts us and the community in which we live.

That seems to be the struggle that plagues King Saul.  Once he has played lightly with God’s will for him as King and justified it, he falls out of relationship to God.  He will at times have a moment of repentance but it does not seem deep enough to effect change.  He suffers “an evil spirit from God.”  Is this a worried conscience or aloneness in his sense of power?  One must wonder.  It will show up as a jealousy of anyone he perceives as a threat.   

The soothing music of David’s harp calms him, momentarily heals him.   Some one very dear in my life is a harpist and there is a wondrous power to that gentle instrument well played.  Just the same, no long term change occurs in Saul and no long term healing.  Perhaps that is part of the cost of great power with little spiritual resource.

There is another voice in today’s reading that is more centering.  The promise is that if we hold this focus which allows us change we will progress in our journey to be right with God, self and others. 

In the Gospel Jesus in his resurrected body stands before the disciples gathered.  There is a beautiful phrase in Luke’s Gospel today, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’’’ (Luke 24:41) That so often describes our faith. 

On the one hand we hold the Gospel as true.  On the other, the implications of this truth are amazing to the imagination and hope is us, so joyful, that disbelief of its full impact and meaning lies near at hand.  I take Christ’s Body and Blood into me at communion to accept oneness with Him.  I yield to belief that in this moment He is at work in me, healing and drawing me in.  Change, deepening is underway.  And another part wonders how truly I will change and become one.  Often as I read His teaching a similar dynamic of openness to wonder at its impact is followed by some disbelief I will yield to its meaning.  Is that true for you?

At the end of today’s Gospel Jesus' resurrection appearances conclude and he ascends to heaven. Luke says: “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them.  While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. (Luke 24:50-51) To speak of this ascension is not truly to speak of a geographic or directional movement, neither up or down but throughout. Rather, he fully enters into God from whence he came.  We hold that God is everywhere and within us. So this going into God is a way of saying Christ is ever near, with us.  As we read of him, partake of him, we reveal his presence in our midst.  We re-member him here and now. What we call earth and what we call heaven, eternity, touch and mingle and draw us in. We but need to yield in prayer.

That is all that is happening in our Acts reading.  Both Cornelius and Peter are open men of prayer and self offering. Thus in their prayer they are each drawn to act in a way that is about to change a tradition of separation held by Jewish belief and codes of purity.  They are drawn into joint action by prayer in very separate physical places that seem so foreign to moderns.  Yet because of their openness, this tradition is about to repent of itself and what was held as unequal will become equal.  It is Peter who as leader of the Jerusalem Church holds the greater power.  He is now yielding his personal power to God’s will.  Tomorrow we see the outcome. What he will do for others in this yielding will make the next chapter of Christ’s work in creation highly effective.

So these scriptures ask us to think.  How do I yield my person and my power to effect God’s good in the world?  Is there a place I need to yield, a place of my turning that can help me flow into a better relationship to God, self and others?