March 1, 2009:  CONTAGIOUS COMPASSION
Mark 8:27-9:1; Mark 8:1-15; Psalm 25:1-10
Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church

            The monthly prayer day I have observed through my 9 years with you has progressively shrunk from 24 hours every month without fail, to 6 hours if I can squeeze it in, one month out of three.  I tell you this not to whine, but to explain why I approached this month’s prayer day so intentionally.  Not wishing to waste a single moment of that precious, creative, energy-giving time of focused prayer, I brought with me a subject for meditation, something I read in Thomas Merton about the discipline of expectancy. 
            Unfortunately, I got confused.  Maybe because I’d been reminded of how the Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia began their ministry in 19th-century Baker City, Oregon.  The Sisters arrived in Baker with no place to stay, to a town that wasn’t just rough, it was downright hostile.  Living in conditions that were primitive even for the frontier, the Sisters wrote their superior for permission to return home.  The response they received was, “Remain in obedience.”  That story got mixed up with what I’ve been reading in Kathleen Norris’ book, Acedia & me, about faith and depression.  It’s no wonder I got confused and found myself meditating not on “the discipline of expectancy,” but on “remain in expectancy.”  Nice way to start Lent:  in confusion.
            Let’s be clear:  expectancy is not the same as expectation.  Merton speaks of the discipline of expectancy.  Expectation feels concrete, specific—the expectation of spring as daffodils and birds nesting and ordering seeds for the garden.  Expectancy seems about me and my relationship to the thing in question—expectancy of spring as looking to see signs of its coming, anticipating new life, hope for the garden, alert to what might happen.  Discipline, of course, is nothing about being grounded or punishment.  Discipline in the spiritual realm is related to the word disciple, which is about learning or training.  And if learning, then certainly openness and intentionality.
            This turned out to be a better early-Lent meditation than I thought, as I began to realize that, if my life is so full, so efficiently planned, so stuffed-to-the-gills, utilizing the best possible management of time and resources, there is no room left for the unexpected.  There’s no room for grace.  Who’s got time for it!?  There used to be posters in construction trailers with a drawing of a frazzled, overworked person headed by  the slogan, “I’m too busy to be stressed!” or “I’ve only got one nerve left and you’re standing on it!”  It reminded me of my newsletter article about Jesus’ instructions for fasting and prayer:  simplify. In today’s scripture, Jesus gives discipleship instructions to explain the meaning of believing what Peter confessed, that he is the Messiah.  Peter states it as a fact; Jesus unpacks the implications believing it.  It’s as if the disciples ask (which they don’t), “You’re the Messiah, what’s that to me?”
            Author David Rhoads(1) asserts that what this confession means is God’s kingdom, a kingdom that both gives the courage to risk one’s life for others and which empowers believers for living.  Mark didn’t write his gospel as a biographer or to teach “about” Jesus.  He wants his readers to be like Jesus.  As Jesus’ followers embrace kingdom values, their goal is “a society of mutual service, free from oppression.”  The discipline of expectancy.  Here’s Mark’s caveat, though:  God’s kingdom brings blessings, but the blessings are not an end in and of themselves.  Remain in expectancy.  Mark’s revolution moves from self-centered life to other-centered living.  It’s a life of compassion.
            I need to be perfectly clear.  Jesus’ teaching about discipleship gets used so badly sometimes.  His discipleship teachings are hard, but there are some things they are not.  His directives to follow and take up personal crosses, to deny oneself, to lose one’s life do NOT advocate suffering for its own sake.  Jesus tells his disciples to pray not to suffer!  Jesus does NOT say that sickness and demons and death are God’s will or punishment.  His ministry and healings release humans from their power.  Jesus does NOT urge people to suffer on behalf of those who have power over them (e.g., wives for the sake of an abusive spouse).  When Jesus urges his followers to deny themselves, he asks them to do so for the sake of others.  The word Mark uses is diakonos, our word for deacon—to “deny” yourself as a deacon.  This is compassion, and it applies especially to those who have some power.  Those in power are to give up the self-serving values of the dominant culture, choosing instead to live by the subversive values and status and power of God’s kingdom, to live by compassion.  To take up one’s cross means there will be ordeals in living for others, but it’s a matter of enduring unavoidable persecution for the sake of proclaiming the gospel.  The point is to proclaim in spite of suffering because of one’s commitment to gospel-living and proclaiming.
            This notion of losing one’s life strikes a little close to home for a congregation that has experienced so much death and loss recently.  It feels like we’ve lost a whole generation.  We need to grieve these treasured persons and what they represent.  We also need to grieve other losses—the perfect marriages (that turned out not to be), situations and relationships with which we’d done our mission together (and which went sour), people we thought we could count on (who departed or turned out not to be who we thought they were).  We’ve lost part of our tradition, but we haven’t lost who we are.  Tradition is important to knowing who we are, like Jesus asking, “Who do people say I am?”  But  tradition isn’t about preserving dead ashes, it’s about keeping the fire ablaze.  Remain in expectancy.  Not expectation—not expecting that things will stay the same or that what we love or who we think we are won’t be called into question.  Expectation is specific like, “it oughta be the way I think it oughta be.”  It’s about control and power in its negative sense.  To remain in expectation is sure to disappoint.  Keep in mind my insight about my too-full life, that when there is no room for the unexpected, there is no room for grace.  Part of grief work makes room for expectancy.  Openness.  Discipline.  Intentionality.
            There’s a saying in the Church, “There’s no Easter without Good Friday.”  It reminds us that death is a necessary precondition for new life.  However, I am not saying it’s a good thing we’ve lost beloved friends and parts of our precious tradition, because that makes more room for the new.  I’m not speaking of humans when I speak of the necessity of death.  Death is part of being human, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.  There is a reason we find reassurance in knowing that, in life and in death we belong to God. 
            I’m talking about the discipline of expectancy, of making more room for grace.  Remain in expectancy.  Expectancy as the antidote for acedia.  Remember my mentioning Kathleen Norris’ book, Acedia & me?  Acedia hasn’t gotten much press for the last 1500 years or so, but Norris thinks it’s epidemic.  She defines acedia as a lack of care we sometimes call sloth, laziness, boredom, hopelessness, passivity, disdain, depression.  Acedia is the opposite of energetic devotion.  It’s the opposite of the discipline of expectancy.  One writer(2) suggests that sloth (acedia?) means “not living up to the full potential of our humanity, playing it safe, investing nothing, being cautious, prudent, digging a hole and burying our treasure.” 
            Can we remain in expectancy?  Can we believe God still has much to do with us?  Even when we grieve our losses?  Even when we lose our lives and how we thought life was going to be?  Can we remain in expectancy?  Every time we come to prayer, we come in expectancy—that God will hear, that God will be merciful.  Perhaps that is the discipline.  Perhaps that is what Jesus means when he says, “take up your cross.”  Remain.  In expectancy.