Step 11 of the 12 Steps: Knowing God Better

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.

This is the latest edition of the North Texas Conference newspaper and this week’s edition shows all of next year’s assignments of pastors to churches. This makes it official: David Weber, Jacksboro.

My heart is with those who are moving to new places this morning, because I remember what it was like four years ago doing the same thing. I was thinking this week of what that one last thing might be that I would want to talk to you about if we in fact were on our way to somewhere else. And what that topic would be is exactly the same theme as this 11^th Step.

Whether we are involved in the 12 Steps and learning to live sober, or whether we are moving through our lives with the desire to better know and more closely follow Jesus, we must arrive at a place- not a geographical place, but a spiritual place. It is that place where we enter into state of communication with God, a place of prayer and meditation with God.

Those words- prayer and meditation- are loaded with traditional meanings. If there is one thing I hope you know by now about me by now, and feel good about exploring for yourselves, it is that we must not ever bound in our journeys with God by the traditions of other people, no matter how old and well established those traditions are. There is the familiar story of the new bride who was serving her husband her family’s special roast beef. After a couple such meals, the husband asked his wife why she always cut the ends off the roast before putting it in the oven. “It’s better that way.. it browns better, I guess” was her response, which was the only response she had.

When the in-laws came to visit, mother-in-law prepared her version of the family’s roast beef special recipe and new husband watched her as she cut off the ends of the roast, too, before adding various spices. “Why do you cut off the ends like that?” he asked.

“It just makes the roast better, more juicy, it cooks better that way..I think. Anyway, that’s the way we’ve always cooked it in our family,” was her answer to the question that she’d never been asked before.

At Christmas, new wife and husband made the journey to grandma’s house. On Christmas Day, grandma announced that they would be having her special roast beef dinner. New husband immediately inserted himself in the kitchen to do more research. He watched as Grandma got an old, slightly dented roasting pan from under the stove, and set it beside the cut of roast.

He watched as Grandma, too, meticulously cut the ends off the roast, before putting it in her pan. “Why, Grandma, why do you cut the ends off the roast?” he asked, again.

And finally he heard the real, very unmysterious answer: “So it will fit in the pan,” she said.

It never hurts to ask, “Why?” about anything. Roast beef or God, it doesn’t matter. Because the answers, when we find them, are almost always rooted in formerly unquestioned traditions, and sometimes- even in questions about God- we find that it had to do with something as silly as the size of the pan, or the size of the mind that God was being fit into.

Why do we pray in the ways that most of us pray? We know the answer, historically, and it doesn’t have very much to do with anything particularly “holy.” In the Middle Ages, as the relationship between the Church and the State was growing stronger, by force from the leaders of both parties, it was decided to pattern some of the outward worship practices of the Church to the well-established legal traditions of the State. There really wasn’t that much difference anyway between standing in a court of law and standing in a church at that time.

People would get on their knees when approaching royalty, or representatives of royalty like judges. Sometimes they’d even crawl from the back of the room to emphasize their lowly station in life compared to the high and mighty person in front of them. So we now kneel to pray. And lower our heads. Kow-towing, they called such a practice in China.

Similarly, because mere mortals were not allowed to look directly into the eyes of some royalty, some priests adopted that custom, too, and made the people close their eyes in prayer. Even in the 18^th century, in New England, ushers would walk around the room and make sure people had their eyes closed during prayer. If they didn’t, they might get a little knock on the head from the sticks the ushers carried with them. So we close our eyes, too.

When people would beg mercy from the court, they would put their hands together, in a formal sign of pleading. So we put our hands together in prayer.

Priests and judges were regarded as necessary intermediaries between God and humans; you want to have God hear you, then you go to the places where priests and judges hang out- the church or the courtroom. Even today, you’ll notice that courtrooms often, suspiciously, look like the front of a church. Actually, it’s the other way around. Churches were designed to look like courtrooms- the jury box, the judge’s bench, the bar. So we come to church to pray.

“Why?” It’s always a good question.

Here’s another one: Why are so many drunks reluctant about coming to church, and why, when you do get them there, do they sit there in a cold sweat, running their fingers down the bulletin to see how close we are to that last hymn, and “how fast can I get to the exit?” Well, it’s because many of them have stood right here in places that look a whole lot like this.

“License suspended, 30 days, 2 years…”

Or worse: “The prisoner is reprimanded to the jailer..”

And even if the drunk has never been to court, or even if a person has no problem with any of the obvious addictions, coming to church is made to feel like a threat sometimes, like the preacher, or God, will be keeping tabs on what you wear and how still you sit, or even be able to know somehow what crazy, “unholy” thoughts you may be having while sitting there. Yikes!

Now, back to the original thoughts I was having about the most important thing I could say to you, about prayer and meditation. About everything, really. And that is this: Follow Jesus.

Follow the priests and the judges, if they are following Jesus, until you can strike out on your own directly behind him, if you need to. Learn about and practice prayer in church, if you need to, but only so it becomes a natural and normal part of life outside of here as well. But make that your ultimate goal- following Jesus- and everything else falls into place.

So, as we’re following Jesus, where and when do we observe him praying? Everywhere and often, apparently. There were times of formal prayer on his part that were recorded- think of his teaching of what we call the Lord’s prayer, or think of that night in the Garden of Gethsemane before his death. We know how the Hebrews prayed- like this: arms spread up and out, eyes wide open. Not at all unlike a puppy or a cat who rolls over on its back to show its vulnerability and trust in you. Openness is the key here I think, an invitation, not a wall. And eyes wide open, listening for God, but also watching for God, not only during prayer, but during life, all the time.

And if communication with God through prayer by following Jesus is the most important thing- that, I think, is the most important thing about prayer: keeping our eyes, ears, hearts and minds open; permitting our imaginations, our visions, our dreams, even our daydreams, to be ready, on call, and aware that God is everywhere and can speak to us, be seen by us, in church yes, but everywhere else, too. If we choose to see God in all things.

Again, following Jesus: he drew lessons from the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, grains of wheat, fig trees, rocks by the road, from bread, from a cup of wine. He saw the image of God in children wanting to be near him, in a widow dropping her pennies in the collection plate, in a short guy up in a tree, in lepers, in a demoniac, in fishermen, tax collectors, grieving people, poor people, sick people, in people who were hungry, thirsty or in prison.

His eyes were wide open. Imagine following him! Imagine him stooping down to watch the ants, imagine him sighing when he looks out a field of wildflowers, imagine him tracing the clouds with his eyes, or becoming lost in the moon’s glow.

Imagine him reaching out to touch those lepers, those children, those fishermen, that drunk, that addict. It’s not hard at all to imagine is it? We can easily imagine that because it’s the Image of God in Jesus and the same Image of God in us, talking back and forth right now, and that is prayer. That is praying like Jesus prayed, all the time, aware and awake, open and vulnerable to messages in the wind that are without words, and to the silent thunder of God’s voice in the quiet of a sleeping child’s face or in the serene face of one whose body is about to die.

The path behind Jesus that I am describing is at odds sometimes with the practice of religion as it is often taught. A lot of people sitting around a Twelve Step table come to realize that. It is not about the rules of church, the very rules that some of us were rebelling against (we thought) when we began to drink, or use, or otherwise sacrifice our souls on the altars of our Selves. It’s not about religious dogma and human doctrine, it’s about relationships, between ourselves and God and with each other.

It is about learning to be grateful for those same birds of the air and lilies of the field that Jesus was. It’s about not being afraid, like Jesus wasn’t afraid, to touch lepers and scoundrels. It’s about not being completely spiritually satisfied by meeting together in church, as beneficial and inspiring as that might be! It is about being anxious to get back into the world and follow Jesus there in all the places where you may not have thought before about his being present.

Step 11, again: Prayer and meditation are so that we can “improve our conscious contact with God.. so that we may have knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”

If we can get over the notion, and I know Jesus enables us to do this, if we can get over the notion that we are standing on top of a world that was created for us, and realize, instead, that we are a part of something that is still being created, then- no matter who are or what we have been- everything can be new.

Religion has often taught, tragically, that the world, the earth, other people, and everything in the world are ours to exploit, to use at our leisure as quickly as possible. That system of thinking came directly out of the Greco-Roman world that Jesus stood up to and died fighting against. That system of thinking is a breeding ground for jealousy, greed, and all kinds of psychological problems because it flies in the face of God’s face, God’s image, in us. It is easy to be disappointed and even bitter toward the world and the people around us when we have bought into that easy-to-buy-into tradition, It’s also easy to drown that disappointment and bitterness, for awhile, or to smoke or inject it away.

But Jesus leads us into a better way. We can follow Jesus into a continuing

Creation, where he shows us the tools- love, grace, and forgiveness- with which we can be co-creators, with God, of this part of God’s universe. We can follow Jesus into a world that burning with God’s beauty and we can be changed by it in the same way Moses was when he encountered the burning bush of God’s voice.

If we’re on top of the world, we’re alone. If we are part of Continuing Creation, we are in community with every single thing in the universe, from the rings around Saturn, to the baby blue jay learning right now to fly, to the sunflowers beginning to bloom, to the healthy baby just born anywhere in the world, to the old man or woman dying somewhere else.

And why in the world would someone want the dark curtain of alcohol, or the wretched selfishness of drugs to remain standing between themselves and..all of that?

Next week, Step 12, and we’ll talk about the very best thing step of all- helping others escape from behind that dark curtain and leaving behind the soul cancer of selfishness. We’ll see the real party that following Jesus leads to.