6th Sunday of Easter, 9th May 2021
Last week, we heard John’s gospel affirming the importance of abiding. Abiding in my love. And it pops up again in this week’s gospel. And this is what I think prayer should be. Being still, abiding, becoming attentive. It’s the very thing that is so difficult.
Pascal wrote this in the 1650s: “All the misery of mankind comes from not knowing how to sit still in a room.” (Pensées, 139).
Many of you will know that I go on an annual retreat, usually to St Beuno’s in North Wales. Its involves 5 days of silence. I’d love to do the 8 or even 30 day retreat, but that’s a bit difficult to fit in at the moment. What shocks people is not just that it’s in silence: but no mobile phones, tablets, no internet AND no books. Otherwise, the tendency is to fill up our time reading. This is what the desert fathers and mothers emphasized. These were people who fled to the desert in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, where they would live ascetic prayerful lives. And slowly others followed the earliest monastic communities formed. There sayings and wisdom are still available.
Abba Alonius said that we must be totally alone with God and with ourselves in order to rebuild and reshape ourselves. He said that in the desert you discover your true self, without any masks or myths.
On my retreats, usually by the end of the first day, I find that after the initial relief of being away from the relentless noise and pressure of life, I become aware of features within my inner landscape that surprise and disturb me.
That’s because we are forced to come to terms with ourselves. We become aware of pain and hurts. We are confronted with our demons, without blaming someone else or our past. All this may sound terrifying. Which is why we busy ourselves with things to do. The first time I went on this retreat, after two days I headed to the pub for a glass of wine. It was really difficult.
What we can discover is that prayer involves a stripping back, which is what this Covid-shaped year has involved. And it’s been for many deeply uncomfortable.
But if we stay put, if we are able to resist the urge to “get me out of here”, we may begin to detect a deeper reality: an awareness, deep within, of a merciful, mysterious presence. This is where God’s hidden, silent, healing work happens. And it happens when we stop long enough to abide.
So, flee to the desert. That’s what the desert fathers and mothers used to say. And they literally did. For us, we can intentionally make time to go on a retreat. Or pilgrimage. Or simply to stop daily and turn off our mobile devices. Join our weekly meditation sessions on Monday at 6pm. We need to discover the desert in our urban world. There is no hurrying the process along. There’s no short cuts. It takes time.
Rowan Williams describes it like this. He says, prayer is a bit like sunbathing. Two things are necessary: first, you have to take off your clothes. And second, you must lie in the light. In other words, you must be prepared for exposure – to be honest with God and with yourself. And you must stay in that place where God, the light, can do his healing work within you. As you spend time simply being, abiding in his love.
Next, there is the need for detachment. This is something that the Buddhist tradition affirms, but it was also something important to the desert fathers and mothers. Detachment resembles the shedding of a number of coats of skin, until our senses are sharpened. Let’s try an experiment.
Try clenching your fist now. Hold together your fingers in a tight fist. With such a tight grip, its simply not possible to share something precious, or hold a lover’s hand. When we keep our fist holding tightly on to something it closes rather than opens up possibilities. The point of detachment is to open up.
To learn to let go of….. to let go of what? Well, that will be different for each of us. Anger, resentment, a desire for revenge, pride, self-obsession. Whatever it might be.
Fleeing to our urban desert, perhaps spending a few minutes each day without distractions, learning the process of detachment, we are invited to abide in God’s love.
When we begin the process of detachment something will change within us. We will slowly discover a shift from the focus of ourselves as the centre of the world to a place where put ourselves in service of others.
I think the key thing from our Gospel is to know how the love of God in Jesus Christ is our source. It’s where our love originates and deepens. Where it replenishes itself. In other words, if we don’t abide, we can’t love. Jesus’s commandment to us isn’t that we wear ourselves out in service to others. That we have to somehow to conjure love from our own easily depleted resources. Rather, it’s that we abide in the holy place where divine love becomes possible.
Jesus’s commandment leads us straight to a paradox: we are called to action via rest. We are called to become love as we abide in love. In other words, we will become what we attend to; we will give away what we take in. The invitation is to drink our fill of the Source, which is Christ, spill over to bless the world, and then return to the Source for a fresh in-filling. This is our movement, our rhythm, our dance. Over and over again. This is where we begin and end and begin again. “Love one another as I have loved you.” “Abide in my love.”
Reference: Debie Thomas
Revd Dr James Heard
Vicar, United Benefice of Holland Park