Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 5, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

A few weeks ago I told you that I had experienced a kind of convergence around the question of divine call, so I preached on call. This past week I had a similar kind of convergence experience, although this one wasn’t about call but about retreat, that is, about the need for Christians to take time away from their usual lives to be intentional about their relationship with God. Last Sunday I shared with you an announcement I had received about a Conference women’s retreat to be held at Pilgrim Firs in March. This morning three of our men aren’t with us because they are off at the Conference men’s retreat. And until yesterday, I had thought that Jane and I were leaving this afternoon to go the Conference clergy retreat. That plan has changed, in part because of my desire to stay here to minister to Lee and Betty Hodo as Lee struggles to recover from a very serious and complex medical situation related to the destruction of his aortic valve by infection and surgery to replace that valve. So at most Jane and I may go over to Pilgrim Firs tomorrow for one day of the retreat, or we may not go at all. Still, our intention to go to the clergy retreat was part of my convergence experience about retreats earlier this week. There’s just a lot of retreat stuff happening around here.

So I was struck by the line in our Gospel reading this morning about Jesus going off by himself to pray. Mark says: "In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed." This incident is just one of many in the Gospels when Jesus goes up a mountain or someplace else apart to pray. It was the regular rhythm of his life. For a time he would engage in his life’s work. He would be out among the people preaching, teaching, and healing. He’d have good times when people listened and understood, and he’d have trying times of controversy and opposition. Then he’d need retreat time. He’d go off by himself to pray. It’s always precisely to pray that he would go apart. Then he’d come back and do it all over again.

There’s an important lesson for us in that pattern of Jesus’ life, and I think it is a particularly important lesson for us progressive Christians whose passion runs in the direction of social justice and peace issues. We reject the notion that faith is only a personal, inner, spiritual matter. We believe that our faith calls us into the world, not out of it. We believe that God calls us to engage the world and its powers, not merely to judge them and withdraw from them. After all, we follow a crucified Savior who himself did not reject the world or flee from it. Rather, he entered into the world and into the evil and darkness of the world. On the cross he entered fully into the worst the world can do, into undeserved suffering and unjust death; and in doing that he sanctified the darkness and called us to follow him into it.

To say the least, that’s not an easy thing to do. When you engage the world deeply and authentically the world beats you up. The world doesn’t want to hear the real Gospel of God’s love for all people and real peace, peace that has the courage to reject violence and to meet hatred with love. The world resists. The world fights back. The struggle bloodies us, in spirit at least if not often for us in body. And even ordinary, everyday life can do the same thing. Even if we’re not often out there fighting the good fight (and most of the time I’m not), we all have struggles in our lives. We all have conflicts. We all from time to time feel a bit battered by life. In the movie Field of Dreams the Kevin Costner character Ray Kinsella looks at a picture of his deceased father as a young man, his face full of life and hope. Ray remarks that it is his father "before he was broken down by life." I know what he meant, and I know that many of you do too. For most of us, at least from time to time, life just isn’t all that easy.

Jesus knew that. His life wasn’t easy either. In fact, it was a whole lot harder than ours. After all, it was his life that ended up getting him killed. And so as a regular practice, he’d go on retreat. The Bible doesn’t put it exactly that way, but that’s what he did. He went apart, out of his usual life, to be intentional about his relationship with God. He went apart to pray. He knew that he needed to set aside time to cultivate his relationship with God. He knew that he needed time away from the struggles, away from the stress, away from the danger. Not even he could live continuously in the world. He needed to get away, not for recreation but for re-creation, for renewal and reviving. To use an anachronistic metaphor, he knew that he needed time to recharge his batteries. He needed time to lay the burdens of his life at God’s feet, to feel God’s love and grace, and to receive from God renewal of his spirit so that he could continue his work. And so he regularly went on retreat, he went apart to pray. We’re no different in this regard. We too need retreat time. We too need time apart. We too need time lay the burdens of our lives at Jesus’ feet, to feel his love and grace, and to receive from him renewal of our spirit so that we can continue our work.

There are lots of different ways to do that. Today Manny, Virgil, and Hans are off doing it at one particular kind of retreat. In that kind of retreat, we take several days and go to another physical place and participate in a pre-planned program. That kind of retreat takes time, and it usually costs money; but it is one very valuable kind of retreat. I have a seminary classmate, until recently when she had to quit because of ill health a UCC pastor in Oregon, who goes every year to a Catholic monastery in New Mexico for this kind of retreat. She used to speak effusively about how wonderful it was. I recommend this kind of retreat to all of you. Find one and do it if you possibly can.

But retreat time doesn’t have to be like that. It wasn’t for Jesus. He didn’t go to a retreat center for a specified program. He just wandered off into the hills, trying to get away from the crowds that followed him. It seems he rarely got very much of this time. The Disciples or others usually tracked him down and pulled him back into the world. During the time he had, all he did was sit by himself and pray. We can all do that kind of retreat. We can set aside time, regularly if not every day, to sit quietly and pray. It doesn’t matter how we pray. We can talk to God about our lives, or pray for others and ourselves. We can engage in a classical prayer practice like Lectio Divina. Or we can just sit in silence, practicing the ancient and universal spiritual discipline of silent meditation in which we simply open our hearts to the presence of God. We can do any or all of these things. The point is only that we do something, that we have some kind of retreat discipline in our lives.

When we do, God’s Spirit flows into our hearts and enlivens our own spirits. God strengthens us and renews us. God gives us the peace, patience, and courage to return to our lives in the world renewed, refreshed, and restored. Jesus is our model. He retreated regularly from the world that he might more effectively enter the world. I recommend his practice to you, and to myself. Amen.