Creating sanctuary - obedience and humility
The Benedictines identify a number of stages – like building a house.
The first step is what they call “laying a floor”.
This step involves silence and prayer.
Silence
- We fear silence, we find it uncomfortable.
- Silence is difficult. It takes time to achieve.
Silence then leads to prayer
- Prayer is difficult too. We need not worry about being good at it, just honest.
- The meaning of prayer is to relate to God as someone familiar – parent or friend – to focus on God as “You” – not it or him. Conversation. “What shall we do today, Lord?”
The next stage is obedience & humility and here we build the walls of the Sanctuary.
We react against the words obedience and humility and thin, “what about freedom of choice?”
Today the secular world, at least in the UK, places great value on the concept of freedom of choice. Freedom to choose which school your kids go to, where you get your medical care, what clothes you wear, freedom to say what you like, freedom to come and go as you please, to drive or fly anywhere you want.
We even make it a characteristic of the Vineyard here – what we call the “opt out” factor. You can choose to stand or to sit in worship, to come and join in weekly worship or not.
The trouble is that we are told to make our individual choices; we give people that responsibility more and more (whether or not they want it); but then we are told – subtly or not so subtly - what to think, what choices to make.
E.g. I always give the opportunity for people to dance and express themselves physically in worship. I know many of you like to dance at parties and certainly express yourselves fully watching your favourite team. It is completely natural and very common in worship almost everywhere else and in many other cultures. You are completely free to allow your body to express what your heart and mind is feeling and thinking. But, most often, you don’t. Why?
Because although you may hear my voice giving you the OK you are also listening to a number of other voices saying, “what would people think?”, “you don’t want to make a fool of yourself”, “we don’t do that sort of thing here”, “I am not going to go first”, “people will just think you are trying to be spiritual.”
We say we are free – but are we?
There is the political statement that we are a “free society” but the practical statement is that we are materialists – or that we live in a consumer world.
You are free to wear whatever you like – but, “doesn’t that look so “yesterday”.”
You are free to listen to whatever music you like – so why do politicians have to like Artic Monkeys?
Our very economic structure in the UK is based absolutely on the command to go forth and shop – in doesn’t really matter what you buy so long as you spend money – borrowing if necessary.
You are free not to shop but everything is telling you to buy things, upgrade things, and get the latest model.
JG Ballard, Kingdom Come
P33. We’re facing a new kind of man and woman – narrow eyed, passive, clutching their store cards. They believe anything that people like you (the marketing executive) care to tell them. They want to be tricked; they want to be deluded into buying the latest rubbish. They have been educated by TV commercials. They know that the only things with any value are those they can put in a carrier bag. This is a plague area, Mr Pearson. A plague called consumerism.
P102. Consumerism is the one thing that gives us our sense of values. Consumerism is honest, and teaches us that everything good has a barcode. The great dream of the Enlightenment, that reason and rational self interest would one day triumph, led directly to today’s consumerism.
P105. Our “Streets” (of gold) are the cable TV consumer channels. Our party insignia are the gold and platinum loyalty cards. …The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have a choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens.
No matter how much we try we can’t avoid listening to the world’s voice
Obedience creates the wall of sanctuary
Obedience means, “to listen to someone else”.
“ob” – in the direction of – “audire” – to hear.
So freedom is not the absence of listening to what others are saying; that would mean living in a solitary confinement or on a desert island where we don’t have to listen to other voices. That’s not freedom.
We find freedom and create the walls of sanctuary when we choose to listen to the voice of God and do what he says.
Genesis 3 tells the story of the devil as the serpent speaking words to Adam and Eve to which they choose to listen.
(In verse 8ff) Then God comes looking for them and they hide from him. God calls out to man, “Where are you?” God is continually looking for us, calling out to us, “Where are you? Will you listen to me or to the enemy?”
Side by side with obedience – choosing which voice we will listen to – is knowing who we are. Being humble.
Humility creates the wall of sanctuary
The 1st step to self knowledge is to know we have fallen well short of who God calls us to be. This leads to repentance for our pride and deafness, to receiving his forgiveness and to humble life change.
- Not being less than our full personality but being aware of who we are (and who we are not).
- Not humiliation – I am not worthy, you can’t possibly love me, grovel, grovel etc etc – but it is about knowing our place.
- Not putting ourselves down or being less than a full personality.
- It is about coming to a true assessment of who we are.
Matthew 18:2-4
He called a little child and had him stand amongst them. And he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of God. Therefore whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Humble as a child. The characteristic of a child is that he or she is … A child.
Not a grown up. They don’t walk round meek and mild or feeling down about themselves with heads bowed humbly before us. They are just children.
Humility is simply a matter of knowing who we are and who we are not.
Homo-sapiens: humus = earth. Sapien = to know.
It means a clod of earth that knows it is alive.
The creator is God, we are not. We are clods of earth that know they are alive.
For me – this clod of earth - left to my own devices, doing only what I want, destroys any hope of sanctuary in my life. I know who I am and what I am like and like Jim Carey in the Mask I want to shout, “Somebody stop me!”
Likewise, in Romans 7:14ff Paul bewails his inability to be anything but human. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
This is for me one of the most compelling reasons why I have chosen to follow Jesus. I have looked at myself and realised that I am a clod of earth that knows it is alive. Like Paul I struggle to get the basic things right. So I look around for someone else from whom to take direction, someone to help me, someone who seems to have a better handle on life. Someone to listen to and obey.
So who else is there out there to whom I can listen and whom I can choose to obey – who may help me create sanctuary in my life?
The only person I can think of is Jesus. There are other meaningfully good people out there, although many of them also follow Jesus, but even the best of them can’t hold a candle to him.
Conclusion - build the walls of sanctuary
Having laid a floor of silence, prayer and contemplation we build walls by choosing to listen to the voice of the creator. Of the Father who loves us. We know who he is and we know who we are. We choose the freedom that comes from humility and obedience.
And so we take a further step toward creating sanctuary in our lives.
David Flowers, 25/10/2007