A Form and Practice of Prayer
A Homily on Genesis 28:10-19 and Matthew 28:16-20
by Griff Martin
For the Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (and the Eighteenth of Covid Worship)
For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
July 19, 2020
*This document comes from an oral manuscript.
Balinese dance is a holy, sacred art form which has existed for a long, long time. This style of dance is a sacred part of most Balinese religious and spiritual practices and has been forever.
In the 1960s, tourism became a major industry in Bali, many Western folks wanted to visit Bali and on their visits they became fascinated with Balinese dance. Tourists started showing up in the temples to observe and watch this dance which changed the temple because it became a tourist stop and there were so many visitors that those who belonged to the temple had trouble finding space and seats. Thus, someone suggested that instead of tourists coming to watch the dances, what if the dances and dancers brought their art to the tourists, straight to the resorts where the tourists stayed?
Now, what happened as a result of this move was even more fascinating… the Western tourists were appalled by this practice, how dare the Balinese dancers bring their sacred dance to a secular resort, didn’t the Balinese people know that God exists in the temples but not in the resorts? Which created quite the confusion… You see, Eastern minds don’t do the sacred and profane division that we Western minds do. Thus, they were quite confused on these categories since to their mind, all was sacred and of course God existed just as much alongside a resort swimming pool overlooking the ocean as God existed in the midst of a sacred temple. Why would there be any division?
Now, hospitality is a high priority to the Balinese nation, thus they sought to find a way to help ease the tension, which was not a tension in their minds. So the priest and dancers decided to create dances which were new, thus not sacred in their ancient religions. Everyone was happy.
The dancers performed these new dances, visitors got to watch the new dances sitting poolside, they got to witness a new form of beauty which was not sacred, and all were happy. For a while.
And then something happened because these silly resort dances became more and more refined and customary and tradition for the Balinese dancers, in fact the word we might use was those dances became transcendent and they became sacred and really important to the Balinese dancers and culture while at the same time some of the dances that had traditionally been done in the temple were losing their power. Which led the priest to a new idea, what if they brought some of these new dances into the temple to help revive the ancient worship which was becoming somewhat dry to the Balinese folks?
Which means the new dances which were created to be performed as non-sacred dances were now bringing life back into the temple and into the sacred. They were right all along, all was sacred.
As Elizabeth Gilbert writes of this whole history, “The meaningless dances became holy dances because the holy dances had become meaningless, And everyone was finally happy -- except for the high minded Westerners who were now thoroughly confused because they couldn’t tell what was holy and what was profane. It had all bled together.”
Now, I believe that is a pretty good way of simply stating God’s entire purpose for all…. The holy and the profane bleeding into one beautiful dance where all belongs.
It’s the promise of paradox… Things can be two seemingly polar opposites and still most true together.
You all know the great importance I place on paradox, the ability to hold two contradictory truths in our minds and souls, and my disdain for binaries, the way we attempt to take paradox and instead of embrace the “both and” we try to create an “either or.”
For instance, right now one of the paradoxes I am holding in my mind is this: on one hand I can’t wait for this quarantine time, this Covid period to end, and on the other hand I am terrified about this quarantine time ending… both are very true in my soul.
Contemplating paradox, holding paradox, is I believe a form and practice of prayer.
But it’s a hard one for us. Westerners hate paradox, we live in systems that have tried their hardest to create binaries so we don’t have to hold the tensions.
For instance that binary we created between sacred and profane, spiritual and ordinary, temples and resorts, houses of worship and our houses, jobs and vocations… All of this gives us rules to live by, behaviors appropriate to each but ultimately each creates a box for God, God exists here and does not exist here… I think one of the best exercises we can do is we each need to spend some time listing those categories and exploring the areas where we believe God does not exist or probably in our hearts we say the places God does not care about, there is much much soul work to be done in those places on our “profane” list. Where you think God isn’t is the exact place you are now called to go find God.
In fact, I would venture much on the bet that the more exploration we do on those “profane” lists, the more we come to the realization “Surely God was in this place and I did not even know it.” And that realization changes everything, it’s a form and practice of prayer.
It’s the very story of Jacob, who is on the run because he has tricked his father and his brother, and his enemies are very real and very present, so he gets the heck out of dodge. Afraid that he has lost his family, his religion, everything about the life he once knew, suddenly he finds himself in a very real quarantine where the life he once knew is gone… he is running and he runs until he must finally stop because the sun has set and it’s dark.
And there, finally he does the act of surrender, which is the essential form and practice of prayer in a quarantine -- the prayer of surrender, he stops and he surrenders and he sleeps, he gives up control and he rests.
And when he does that he has the most beautiful realization, the very place that he is standing is a portal of sorts and the sacred and the profane are mixed up and all in this together, here is the full mix of humanity and divinity, the sacred and the ordinary are both present, all is well.
And his response: Surely the Lord was in this place and I was not aware of it, how awesome is this place, the very house of God.
And it’s not just words, he finds the rock that he had been using as a pillow and he makes it a monument… not so much to the actual place but to the realization that God is present right there and right here, everywhere. Because that is what happens when you fully realize God’s presence, you realize that it cannot be contained, it is expansive. If it’s here, then it’s everywhere, and soon we are all doing the messy beautiful dance of finding God in all the places.
The profane becomes sacred, the ordinary becomes holy.
I have seen this over the past few months. It’s almost like we have been on the run, we lost our routines, we lost our places, we lost a lot of what we believed made us "us" in the past eighteen weeks. We have done the messy work of surrendering and hopefully we have found, we have found that God is in places we had never before really observed….
God is present in our backyards and flowerbeds as the world transitions from spring to summer which has become our place of worship, God is present on our couches and recliners which are suddenly our Sunday pews, God is present at our kitchen tables which have become communion tables, God is present in the faces of those we quarantine with and our neighbors who we have gotten to know better who have become our choir, God is all over the walks we take around our neighborhood which are our pilgrimages, God is present in old 1950 casserole recipes we are pulling out to make for our unhoused neighbors which is our mission work, God is present in a stack of books we always meant to read and a yoga mat we had been meaning to pull out and use which is our Sabbath.
God is present.
And it’s a surprise to us but it’s not a surprise to God, God has been there all along just waiting to be found; you see, being discovered is one of God’s greatest joys.
There is no division between the holy and the ordinary, the sacred and profane, if God is found anywhere then God will be found everywhere. We can’t run from God, instead we just run further into God.
Which is why I think today is a day we need to be celebrating the departure of Jared Slack as our Formation and Mission Pastor, Jared is leaving us to run further into God (another paradox: sometimes to run further into God when we leave church).
When I first asked Jared if he wanted to change his role here at First and become the Formation and Missions Pastor, he thought about it for a while before saying yes; in fact, I thought he was going say no. He was not sure that missions was his thing, that he would find his calling in this work, his giftedness thus far at the church centered around creating community and providing incredible liturgy. And then he took a brave step and said yes to this work and he found himself falling in love, so it was not a surprise to me at all that not only has he found himself in love with this work, he has found himself called to do this work with a local organization that fights poverty and works to create better, whole lives for our downtown neighbors experiencing homelessness.
He found his pulpit in a new space… because if God is everywhere, then pulpits and houses of worship exist everywhere, too.
I saw it slowly happen as he began to form deep relationships with our unhoused neighbors who came into our offices to ask for assistance, these relationships became central to him and his life became about this work of justice. Those of us who serve and office next to him got to see this experience, to see him realize “surely the Lord was in this place…”
His brave yes became his prayer and his giftedness began to impact our world in a whole new way.
It’s what happens in love… We fall further into God, we discover More, we realize surely the Lord was in this place.
It’s what we can all learn from Jacob and from Jared this morning… there are times that life is going to put us in interesting places, places where we feel far from our routines and familiar life, places where we feel a bit lost, places where the challenge in front of us seems a bit daunting, places where it’s all a bit scary… We take a deep breath, we do the surrender work that is so complicated and we prepare ourselves because we are about to discover God in a whole new way.
Which is no surprise, you see, it’s not just Jacob and Jared, it’s the words that Jesus said to us right before he departed: go… go do my work and when you do my work I will be with you.
It’s almost as if the Balinese dancers knew the instructions of Jesus… We go and we take church with us and suddenly we are going to realize that church was already there… we go and we dance and the secular becomes sacred and the sacred becomes secular until we realize there never really was a distinction, that the only truth is that God is present everywhere, which means the possibilities are endless and the world is our church.
Which means right now, instead of simply longing for what we had eighteen weeks ago, we look at this as a chance to discover God anew and then we see where that discovery is going to lead, when we do all return to community together, what will we bring from our there that enhances what we do in here.
Which means that right now, as we look at all the challenges in front of us, we take strength in the fact that the difficult journey of confronting our whiteness and working to create a more just, equal world, that God is going to be with us on every step of that journey.
Which means that right now, we look at all the challenges life has given us and we take strength that our call is the same… to go and do the the work of Jesus and God is going to be found there… and really, what more promise could we need?
When I was little, I was out at my grandfather’s ranch and I was out riding a dirt bike and I stumbled across what I thought was an oasis, I raced home to get Dida and to show him this new discovery that I had made. He was napping and, as I am learning, 8-year-old boys don’t care if you are sleeping. At first he said, “Griff I am sleeping,” but then he opened his eyes and saw my joy and he got up and he walked to this new oasis with me and he celebrated this find with me.
Now when I am out at the ranch I have realized that this discovery was really not much of anything, it’s a pond at best and you can see it from a mile away and Dida had seen this pond every time he drove out to the ranch, but there was joy in me finding it.
I think that is what church is about… us all realizing that God is everywhere and then coming back to share that with each other, because there are times you are going to see God in places and persons I have missed and you will then introduce me to more for God, and there are going to be times you find God in people and places I knew well, but seeing your joy about the discovery revives my heart.
I am revived this morning by Jared’s call, it means God is still speaking and it testifies that what we saw in Jared, the world saw. I am revived by all the challenges in front of us because it means God is still working. I am revived by the places I have found God the last 18 weeks because it means God is abundant.
Alice Walker said this best in The Color Purple: “...have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”
May it be so. Amen and Amen.
*artwork: "Jacob's Ladder" by Lesley Friedmann
*artwork: "Jacob's Ladder" by Lesley Friedmann
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