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"Overflowing"
The Rev. Jan Kwiatkowski
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I want to tell you a story this morning. There was a man, a very well dressed, educated man with a very good job. And this man went to a spiritual teacher and the one question he had on his mind for the spiritual teacher was “How am I to do the will of God and what is the will of God?” And the man began telling the teacher where he had gone to school, all the things that he had been doing in his life, how many times a day he prayed and how many methods of prayer he knew, all the methods of study he was about to do and he was even thinking about going and becoming a priest one day so he could really be sure that he was doing the will of God. And his teacher began to pour into a coffee mug and the student went, “Wait, wait teacher, can’t you see that the mug is overflowing,” and the teacher said, “Well of course I know it’s over flowing, you who are so full there is no way that I can teach you anything about the will of God. And in order for you to learn anything you need to empty yourself.”
St. Christopher’s is in the early stages of discerning the will of God. There was a meeting this morning, the first transition meeting and we came full of questions, full of fears, full of anxiety and hope, full of confidence and some trepidation. Full of a lot of knowledge and history looking forward to a future that we aren’t quite sure what is. And we are full this morning and what we need to do in our discernment is empty ourselves. Empty ourselves.
When we talk about discerning God’s will there’s a little clue in that. Discernment is a fancy word that Episcopalians use that simply means to figure out where we’re going, what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, how we’re doing it and if we are going to do it. The will of God as it is used in today’s scripture when Jesus said not those that say to me “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven but only those who do the will of my Father. The thing is we already know the will of God. Every one of us knows what the will of God is. The will of God is that we live humbly, live with kindness, and walk justly with our God. Humility, kindness, love and justice. Those are the things that we are to fill ourselves with. And discernment is really a process of seeking what it is that we already know about ourselves. That knows the will of God and how we are to do that and to empty ourselves of those things that don’t lead us to delight in God’s will. And doing God’s will is the key. To do God’s will all we have to do is delight. Do something that will delight God. And what will delight God is walking humbly, walking kindly and walking in justice and love. How we do that and if we do that is up to us to decide. But God’s will is simple to love, to walk in justice, humility and kindness.
Now, it is very possible for us to use the discernment process wisely. Wisdom as translated in the scripture today, people of wisdom are people who search deeply and fill themselves with knowledge, prayer, and conversation and study and patience and fun and curiosity. People who discern well are people who are willing to come again and again, even when they get impatient, even when they are not sure of how things are going. And in that process, we speak what our hearts are already full of. Our hearts are already full of the knowledge of God’s will. What we are not so sure about is how we’re going to do that next. We had a pretty clear vision for the last six years. What we don’t know is how we’re going to delight God next. But, what we do know is that that is something that we want to do. We want God to delight in us and so what we will do is we are starting a process today of emptying ourselves. We started that process this morning by asking questions of our Vestry. Asking questions of Ran and Tom and all the people who were here. We started today by listening to each other and expressing what was on our mind. It was how we emptied ourselves of some of the anxieties that we may have brought with us today. How we possibly any preconceived notions of what this process could be like. But it is also very possible to fill ourselves and our discernment process with things that will not allow us to delight in the will of God. It is very possible to do that and how we might do that is by insisting on our own way, by giving up when things get tough, by not being honest in our questions, by not praying everyday. All those little things that will make a difference and will thwart God’s will for this parish. And it is very possible that we could choose to do that too. We could choose to delight God or we could choose to thwart God’s will in this time and place. Churches behold the church at large, individual parishes and people have a history of delighting in God’s or choosing to thwart God’s will and if we chose to delight in God’s will then we must empty ourselves of all those things that we hold in us and discernment right now is really about emptying ourselves of all those things that might hold us back.
Did you notice that every time I filled this mug and every time I emptied this mug the water went somewhere. It didn’t just sort of splat on the floor with no purpose. The water went into this container and this container; this baptismal font is where we need to be sure that we are living all this time during transition and whatever time transition counts after that. It is in our baptismal promises that we are full, that we are so full of what God delights in. Those promises about love and justice and being there for others and proclaiming God’s news to the world. Caring for the sick for the poor for the injured and for those downtrodden, caring for those around us and in the community, that’s what baptism is about. Baptism is our entrance into the Christian community, a Christian community that comes now to be fed at the table, every week to nourish us so that we can be about this business of doing God’s will, of doing what will delight God. And that’s what we are about. And the paradox is that in order to do that we always need to empty ourselves, we need to empty ourselves. And it is in these holy waters, these blessed waters of baptism into which we were immersed and blessed that we return again and again and again. It is in these waters that when we are empty and need to be filled with what is of God that we come it is when we are too full of ourselves, too full of our anger to full of our own ideas, too full of anything that gets in the way that we need to come to these waters of our baptismal promises and empty ourselves. So our whole transition process will be about filling and emptying. Centered in our baptism.
The wardens, the vestry and I have been in a lot of conversation today of what this process will look like for us. They talked a little bit about this morning at the transition meeting. So you have some idea of how we are going to figure out what we are full of and what we need to empty. And then what we need to be refilled with again. And the most important thing we can do is recognize that in this transition time there will be emptying and there will be filling and the most important thing we can do is fill ourselves with the love, the promise, with the light, with the hope and everything that comes from our entrance at baptism and our living out of this entrance in baptism in our whole life. And if we do that no matter what this parish decides to do we will delight God. And in delighting God we will be living out God’s will and what more could God ask of us.
Amen.
