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Talk for Yearly Meeting Gathering, Sunday morning 26.7.09

(NB, the spoken talk varied to some minor extent from this text)

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

So, Friends, I was thinking about preparing this talk. I was, to be honest, terrified. And very busy. I had realised I might say something about this section of the Gospel of Matthew, and when I came to reread it I stopped for a long time at this point, where Jesus sat down.

Just before this point in the story, Jesus is walking up to people he’s never seen before and telling them to follow him, and they’re dropping whatever they were doing and coming along. And they’re straight into a hectic schedule, because they are travelling throughout Galilee, healing all kinds of hurts and shouting about the good news and gathering the crowds. The disciples are in the middle of the business of changing the world, as soon as they’re called. And then, after this has gone on for a while, Jesus sits down, and the disciples come to him.

Is this where we find ourselves, Friends? We don’t always have time to sit and think before the action starts. We don’t always have time to do our spiritual practice in advance, to make plans and be sure we know what we’re letting ourselves in for,. If the Spirit always waited for us to be really sure, or really spiritual, or really centred, before beginning to work through us, we’d be in trouble. But still, at some point in the middle of things, maybe when we’re swept off our feet, maybe when we’re wondering what’s going on, we have to sit down. A little way from the crowds, a little way from the big tasks of healing and changing the world. With all the other people who are caught up in this, and aren’t quite a connected community yet, but might become one. And here we are.

Jesus sits down, because in his culture that’s what teachers do. So at this point the disciples don’t gather to make a plan, or to solve a problem, or even to share their experiences; they gather to listen. Early Friends talked about their gatherings as listening to the Inward Teacher. Listening to the same Spirit that was in Jesus and was always there, with them, to be listened to.

Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I suspect a lot of the disciples were feeling rather inadequate. Or confused. Or wondering what they could possibly contribute. Not really holy enough to be in this community, let alone trying to proclaim the good news of God’s reign to anybody else. Probably only too glad to sit down for a little while and have nothing demanded of them. I imagine the wonder and comfort they felt at hearing these words: blessed are the poor in spirit. Or, if you like, it’s good to be the people who aren’t feeling very spiritual, aren’t sure what they’re doing here, or could use a bit of help.

Our advices and queries 10 says: Come regularly to meeting for worship, even when you are angry, depressed, tired or spiritually cold… Let meeting for worship nourish your whole life.

I hear it like this. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Come when you’re angry, depressed, tired, spiritually cold, or simply can’t be bothered – but come! It’s your kingdom of heaven! It’s your good news! It’s your party! Don’t bring anything, just bring yourself; but please come, because we can’t start without you!

What does that mean for spiritual practice, for our connection to the Spirit? Perhaps it means that this is a strange kind of practice, because it’s a practice of being-ready-to-receive. Of just turning up. And that can be the hardest thing to do, if we’re used to contributing something, to having something to give; or if we’ve been told that we don’t deserve respect unless we Make A Contribution (to the economy or society or the Meeting for Worship for Business or whatever), and that we can’t have Something For Nothing. I don’t know. I’m not sure that works in the spiritual life. Perhaps God doesn’t play the zero-sum game. Perhaps God doesn’t need you to give God anything, perhaps God doesn’t make deals. Perhaps the Spirit is given without measure, just to the people who are there; perhaps the blessings of abundant life really are there for the taking. And perhaps if we believed that we would be better able to admit, sometimes, our feelings of poverty.

But I’m not sure I really believe that myself, not so that you’d notice, not so that I live by it – because it sounds too good to be true. I’m so often drawn back into thinking I have to Do something. I ask myself how my life would be different if I really believed that the Spirit of love and life and truth was utterly free and abundant and given to everyone. In my case, I guess I’d be a little less worried about what other people think of me, and I might have been less scared about doing this talk. A good spiritual practice for me is: doing nothing, not actually trying to be good or clever or spiritual or holy or Quakerly; just turning up and paying a little attention. If you like, being just an attender. I’ve been a member for years and I still aspire to being an attender.

That’s all very well. But Meetings for Worship for Business have to do something, don’t they? They have to make decisions.

Here’s something else the disciples hear, sitting on the mountain: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

I remember rereading this sometime around the time of the second Gulf War in 2003. What was that time like for you? To me, reading and listening to the news around then, it felt as if I was getting more and more caught up in a tangle of lies, suffocated under a heap of lies, and not knowing how to start finding truth or speaking truth. And being very tired and somehow at the end of my ethical resources.  It wasn’t really even about that specific issue; there was something about how it exposed the everydayness of falsehood and violence and wrongness. And I remember how this text leapt out at me: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

This didn’t call me to make an extra special effort, pull myself together and sort it all out. Nor did it tell me to be a really spiritual person. It blessed me in my need and my longing, just because of my need and my longing.

I wonder sometimes whether a spiritual practice to which Friends pay too little attention is: just calling out for what we need or what we want. I’m surprised, in a way, when I realise how much emphasis there is on this in Jesus’ teaching. Even the Sermon on the Mount, even the place where Friends and others so often go to learn how to act in the world – at the beginning of it there is this blessing on people who bring nothing but their need, and in the middle of it there’s a lesson in how to pray.

If you don’t want to think about it as prayer, I don’t suppose that matters. Maybe what’s going on is that we need to name what we care most about, what troubles us most deeply, what we’re crying out for. Sometimes in our spiritual practice, when we look within ourselves, alone or in Meeting for Worship or in Meeting for Worship for Business, we don’t find wealth and certainty, we find a need and an openness to receive.

Maybe Meeting for Worship for Business is about hunger and thirst for righteousness. We come here, we don’t know the right way forward, we aren’t even sure we have it in us to find the right way forward; but we want it, or we wouldn’t be here. We’re longing for truth, for justice, for a way of living together, we’re longing for guidance. The astonishing thing about Meeting for Worship for Business is that somehow, sometimes, we find that we receive together what we need. We are filled. It’s a blessing.

I sometimes wish Quaker protocol would let me shout more about the blessing bit. It’s not a pat on the head. It’s not a consolation prize – hey, things are going badly for you, but have a blessing. It’s the best thing there is. It’s happiness. It’s the kingdom of heaven, it’s the world transformed.

Is that what we have come here for, Friends? Do we dare to hope for it, and do we dare to ask for it? As we begin this yearly meeting, can we acknowledge what we most need and what we most hope for, and await it together?

“We have to practice the discipline of love for each other, if we are going to seek God’s will together and trust that the Meeting is discerning. The Meeting as a whole is expected to hold back from deciding until we find ourselves together in the unity that the Holy Spirit creates amongst us. I know I find it easier to trust the Meeting if I have heard the explanation of how our understanding and experience of God, the God of the oppressed, compels us to act as we are describing in the minute”.

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