Third Sunday in Lent - Intent: Understanding

Sermon given March 4, 2018
Donna Miller

The Intent for this third Sunday in Lent is Understanding. If you look that word up in the dictionary, there are a number of different meanings:

• the ability to comprehend something
• mastery, grasp, assimilation, knowledge and awareness, insight, expertise
• the power of abstract thought (i.e. sharp intellect)
• a particular angle of perception or judgment of a situation
• an informal or unspoken agreement or arrangement

The word understanding is also defined as:

• to be sympathetically aware of other people’s feelings, tolerant and forgiving

Although all of those aspects of understanding can be positively applied to our lives and to spiritual growth, it’s that last one that is emphasized in the liturgy readings for today—to be sympathetically aware of other people’s feelings, tolerant and forgiving.

Even in this context, however, the other aspects of understanding play their role. Sympathy and forgiveness comes from the heart, but, in the living out of that, the mind is not thrown out the window. Even if we have a heart of gold, a heart filled with love and compassion, we can’t actually function in the application of that love without the partnership of the mind, without some of the other aspects of understanding—comprehension, insight, discernment, and knowing how to come to agreements with others.

One thing about understanding is that it isn’t a fixed thing. There is a relationship between knowing and unknowing. Our understanding of many things keeps changing, sometimes radically, as we grow as an individual and as a culture. We often find that we have to unlearn something we had totally taken for granted, realizing that we had misinterpreted something or that new evidence has proven otherwise. This happens in science all the time and also in human relationships.

In the writings of Christian mystics, the word unknowing is applied to a necessary part of spiritual growth, a dramatic shift in identity—that is, in order to shift into a genuine complete knowing of our divine heritage, we have to unknown our assumption that we are separate from God or from all of creation or that we are unworthy of God’s love.

For many in our culture, the idea of unknowing holds no attraction at all. Even the idea of not knowing, in some very specific way, can be intimidating. It seems like a very good thing to know completely, without blind spots. The more we know the more confident we feel. It’s embarrassing to many people to say, “I don’t know,” even if it’s a context in which we really have no desire to know. In my own case, for example, if someone is following a particular news story in which I have no interest, and they say to me, “Wow! Can you believe what so and so said this week?” and I have no idea what the person said, I generally feel embarrassed admitting that. I get caught in the very common desire not to appear ignorant.

We tend to want the security of knowing—holding clearly in our own minds as much knowledge as we possibly can or at least we want to believe that what we do know is accurate and will serve us well. Part of knowing, however, is the honest awareness that knowledge is not etched in stone, that it is perceived from many different angles, and that it keeps evolving.

What about the realm of understanding other people? I will speak for myself here. I have spent an awful lot of time trying really hard to understand others, trying to figure them out, gain insight into their patterns and motivations. And it’s usually out of love for them and a desire to help them get out of what I, rightly or wrongly, perceive as a tangle they are caught in. I can be very diligent in my pursuit, often with the help of inspiring books, reflecting deeply, writing in journals, or even asking for God’s guidance. But the glitch is that I am looking for the guidance to be in the form of me having a clear insight, some kind of concrete understanding of what to do, as if the solving of that person’s problem relies heavily on me and my help. This may all come from a sincere compassion for the person, but it overlooks the fact that there is much at play in that person’s life that I don’t know, that I can’t see no matter how much attention I try to put on their life.

When someone we love is struggling or suffering, it’s natural to want to relieve them if we can, but it’s a bit dangerous to assume that we know what they need better than they themselves do. With all good intentions we can try to fix their lives, set them straight, or even just give them a picture of what we would do if we were in that situation. I also have a tendency to get into cheerleader mode—“You’re great! You can do it!” But what they actually need may be something altogether different. I have a friend who often says, “I just need a hug.” And I may think, “Wait. That seems like a cop-out. Here I am, willing to spend lots of time helping her sort out her problem and all she wants is a hug?” But, actually, that is what she wants and it gives her comfort and she feels better afterward. Loving and helping our neighbor doesn’t mean trying to take on their problems and solve them from our own perspective.

I have a bathrobe that I love in the winter months. It’s a double layer of soft flannel, red plaid on the outside, with a lining of warm gray. It came with the usual belt that I found bulky, so I removed it and sewed on two ribbons to close the robe up the side more elegantly. A couple of weeks ago, as I was untying one the ribbons, it mysteriously tangled into a tight knot. It was a fairly thin ribbon and I spent a ton of time trying to no avail to untangle that knot. I even used pointy tweezers but no luck. I finally realized that I just had to let go, accept the fact that I was not going to untangle that tight knot and that I was better off just sewing on a new ribbon, which I could have done in a third of the time I spent trying to untangle the knot.

This knot became a metaphor for that tendency of mine to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to untangle the problems of others and, of course, my own problems as well.

The letting go of that obsessive attempt is a metaphor for “letting go and letting God”—which doesn’t mean passively doing nothing. It means adding a new ribbon. It means shifting to a trust in God’s reliable love and omniscience to lead us and others to the strength or insight needed, even in very particular circumstances. For me, when I do that, when I drop the obsessive attempts to figure it all out by myself, and fall into that kind of trust, there is a grace to the solution, whether it is in my own life or someone else’s. The new understanding and even perhaps an action or words happens as a gift, often a surprise, rather than as the result of my incessant efforts to piece together an understanding.

There is a lovely scripture passage from Proverbs that makes this point: (Proverbs 3:5-6)

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not unto your own understanding. ⁶ In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.

This passage and others like it give us a vision of understanding that is based on our trusting relationship with God, a relationship that Jesus demonstrated through his life. Christ, as our Indwelling Light, brings to us, from inside, a natural integration, a way to live our innate divinity in our very human lives with many other human beings. The blessing and gift that Christ offers is one of the ultimate support: (Matthew 11:28-30)

²⁸ Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

In today’s Gospel story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus beautifully invoked that ever-present Indwelling Light in His way of dealing with the people ready to throw stones at the woman. He did not analyze the situation. He didn’t accuse them of being confrontational and he was not confrontational. He didn’t call them on their manipulative plot to undermine him. He didn’t give a moral lecture or point out each person’s own sins and compare them to the woman’s. He didn’t give them an instruction to be forgiving and loving toward her. Instead he said one sentence—“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” That sentence acted as a spark to ignite their own Inner Light of conscience, prompting them to change their course of action.

The Epistle reading today describes the wonderful qualities of unity, compassion, blessing and courtesy, goodness, peace, and charity. These are outgrowths of greater and greater connection to our divine roots in God’s infinite love and goodness.

There is an image found in many spiritual traditions, including Christianity. It is a Tree of Life that has two aspects: one is right side up and the other is upside down. In the upside down tree, its roots are in Heaven, nourished constantly by the Divine and its branches grow downward into earthly, human life—expressing God’s wholeness blossoming as the many parts we experience as life on earth. The right side up tree represents our temporary illusion that we are primarily rooted in humanness, separate from God to whom we are trying to grow high enough to reach.

The unity of these two trees is what the Christ energy is all about—we are simultaneously rooted in heaven and earth. As incarnated beings, we are meant to discover in these human lives our original never-changing roots in the divine, even as we accept and honor our humanness. Jesus’ emphasis on loving God and loving one another highlights both of these sides of our lives on this earth.

We have, built into us, a yearning to reach that knowingness—our divine heritage—the truest understanding through which we naturally find ourselves overflowing in love for others. This inner longing drives us onward in our spiritual path, no matter how circuitous it may be. We say every week in our liturgy, “Our hearts are ever restless till they find their rest in Thee.” We can trust that pull from God to us, drawing us in all love through many means, as we grow into full understanding of God’s never-failing love for us.

What we are doing now, as we continue with our Eucharist, is receiving a gift—a concentrated experience of that Light and Love of the Indwelling Christ, to help us grow into the full awareness of our divine heritage.