First Corinthians 2:1-5, 12-16 September 23, 2007

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual. Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God's Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else's scrutiny. "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

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There was once an old Scottish woman who went from home to home across the countryside selling thread buttons, shoestrings and other small items. When she came to an unmarked crossroad, her standard practice was to toss a stick into the air and go in the direction the stick pointed when it landed. One day, however, she was seen tossing the stick up several times. A curious bystander asked, "Why do you toss the stick more than once?" "Because," replied the woman, "it keeps pointing to the left, and I want to take the road on the right."

Isn't this a curious story? Here is a woman who, somewhere along the line, had decided to act as though she trusted in fate, the toss of a stick. But, when fate didn't give her the answer she wanted, she simply kept consulting it until it did. At first, I wondered why anyone would bother keeping up such a pretense. But then I remembered a game we used to play as children. Occasionally, my mom would say to my brother and me, "one of you is going to do the dishes. I don't care whose turn you think it is. Just figure it out and don't fight about it." What usually happened next, is that one of us would pull out a quarter and say, "heads or tails?" But then, no matter who won the toss, the other one would immediately say, "best two out of three," then, "three out of five, four out of seven…." We got so we could put off doing the dishes for quite awhile by stretching out the process of, "letting the coin decide." We gave ourselves over to fate, but only so long as it gave us the answer we wanted.

How do you make decisions? Did you ever think about that? In a situation that calls for a choice of some kind, on what basis do you make that choice? It's an interesting question, I find. On any given day, we make hundreds, maybe thousands of decisions. Most of them are so routine they barely reach the level of consciousness: how many times to brush your teeth on the upper right side, whether to pick lint off someone's sweater or where to place your foot when stepping around a puddle. For decisions like these we can generally trust our automatic responses while we go right on wondering whether the Yankees are going to catch the Red Sox in the pennant race. But even at this level of near unconsciousness, there is a decision making process of some kind going on virtually all the time. It may be habit that makes the choice, but nonetheless, we are still deciding.

When it comes to the bigger decisions though, habit won't do. If we're buying a new car, choosing a college for our children or deciding where to spend vacation, a whole different and very much conscious process kicks in. We need to gather information, consult other people and consider all our options before making what we hope will be our best choice. The question I'd like to pose this morning is this: While you are making these decisions, does God ever factor in to the choices you make?

When I ask that question, what occurs to me is something that may sound completely unrelated but actually isn't. We are people who value the separation of Church and State, are we not? However much some churches are trying to break down that wall these days, our church tends to attract people who think the separation of Church and State is one of the best ideas people have ever come up with. However, over time, this separation has had an unintended side effect. The division of things into what's appropriate for church and what for state has produced a separation in our lives and in our thinking. The way most of us were raised, "Church" is understood to be private, personal and confined mostly to Sunday morning, while "State" represents pretty much everything else, our public and social lives. We have come to draw a clear distinction in our minds between what is sacred and what is secular. And one result of this is that it is very easy to forget about God when were engaged in anything having to do with our so called "secular" lives.

You probably remember that the Pope recently released a list of ten commandments about how we should drive our cars. My first reaction was, that's just weird. Where in the Bible did he come up with that? But then I got to wondering. Why does it seem so strange? I think it's because driving is something most of us think of as a secular activity. There's nothing particularly holy about popping all over town in the car, (unless it's a Prius of course) Why then would we bother to take God into account when we get behind the wheel?

But think about that for a minute. If what's true of driving is equally true of all the other things we think of as "secular" activities, then God doesn't end up having much space in our lives at all. If we're mostly in the habit of not taking God into account in the rest of our lives, that habit will tend to spill over into how we think and behave even when we're at church. The separation of church and state is a great thing, politically. But for those of us who consider ourselves Christian, it is important for us to keep something in mind. That is, that as far as God is concerned there really is no such thing as a secular life. There are only times when we acknowledge God and times we don't. I sometimes hear people say that God feels distant and unreal. Well no wonder. If we systematically ignore the divine while we're living out the great majority of our lives, we have no reason to expect that God will seem real to us. So with that in mind, let me ask again. Does God factor in to the choices you make? Is what God wants you to do taken into account?

But how are we supposed to know what God wants? Well, that's a terrific question. If we're asking that - What does God want of me? - it means we are beginning to take our faith seriously. We're beginning to think of faith as something that applies to the whole of our lives. (We can hardly know what God wants if we're not even wondering.) But how are we supposed to know what God wants?

In the church, figuring out what God wants is what we call, "discernment." We have our own special word for it. And discernment, according to the book we're reading, is one of the hallmarks of vital churches. Discernment as an ongoing process of opening ourselves to the Spirit of God; seeking actively to determine what it means to be faithful, and not simply taking for granted that this has already been resolved by our forbearers. Discernment has always been a tremendously important process in the life of the church. But we have not always done it in the same ways. In the opening chapter of Acts we find Jesus' inner circle of eleven disciples trying to decide who would replace Judas, the betrayer. They had two possible candidates: Joseph and Matthias. As the story tells us, first of all they prayed, "Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen…" And then it says, "they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles."

Now those of us who like to think of ourselves as enlightened might find it a bit embarrassing to hear that the disciples "cast lots" to discern God's will. To us, casting lots isn't much different than tossing coins or sticks in the air. We would call it more a matter of luck than Spirit. But the disciples were confident that God could speak to them in that way. For them it was very real when it came as the end result of passionate faith and prayer. And though casting lots isn't something we're likely to do as a means of hearing the voice of God, unless we're going to dismiss God altogether, we do need some means for hearing that voice; some way of discernment.

In our book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, there is a great little passage that puts it beautifully. "Christians," Bass writes, "believe that human beings have the capacity to hear, see, touch, and feel God - a genuine sensing of truth and beauty through which we know God and know God's will." This doesn't have to be seen as miraculous or supernatural though. "Christian tradition," she says, "points toward something more mundane: discernment as a practice that can be developed through participation in reflection, questions, prayer, and community." (page 91)

Do we indeed "believe that human beings have the capacity to hear, see, touch, and feel God"? I do. That has been my experience, and I've come to believe that experiencing God as something real and tangible is essential to living a life of genuine faith. If we don't sense the reality of God in some way, well, there isn't much point in asking what He wants is there. And there wouldn't be much point in the church either, since the church exists first to discern God's will, and then to carry out that will in community. It's also been my experience though, that discernment, truly knowing what God wants, is not as simple as flipping a coin. It is a matter of seeking, of studying, of praying, of living with an open heart and mind to the guidance of the Spirit, of listening for that still, small voice and sharing what we hear with other people.

Both in our individual lives and in the community of our congregation, we need a living, dynamic and ongoing process of discernment. To be a vital church we must be continually seeking what Paul called, "the mind of Christ." And that's what we're doing right now, this fall, as a community. Our whole Vital Christianity series is aimed at bringing us all into the corporate practice of discernment through, "reflection, questions, prayer, and community." We are here to embody the mind of Christ, to live the will of God. We can't do that if we don't know what that will is, and neither can we do it if, in practice, we seek God's advice, but only take it if it goes in the direction we want it to.

Let me leave you with this familiar story.

A monk and his friend were walking down a busy city street. There were people all around, horns honking, tires squealing and sirens wailing. Suddenly, the monk stops and says, "I hear a cricket." His friend is astounded, "What? You must be crazy. You couldn't possibly hear a cricket in all this noise!" "No, I'm sure of it," the monk said, "I heard a cricket." They both listened carefully for a moment, and then the monk walked across the street with his friend trailing behind. He looked in some bushes and sure enough, there was a cricket. His friend was utterly amazed. "That's incredible," he said. "You must have super-human ears!" "No," said the monk. "My ears are no different from yours." "But that can't be!" said the friend. "I could never hear a cricket in this noise." "Yes, you could," came the reply. "Here, let me show you." He reached into his pocket, pulled out a few coins, and dropped them on the sidewalk. And then, with the street noise still blaring in their ears, they noticed every head within 5 yards turn and look to see if the dropped coins were theirs. "See what I mean?" asked the monk. "It all depends on what's important to you. It all depends on what you're listening for."

Does God have a role to play in the whole of our lives? Absolutely, if we're willing. Is it possible for us to discern the mind of Christ, for ourselves and for our church community? Absolutely, if we make it a priority. It all depends on what's important to us. It all depends on what we're listening for. May God bless and vitalize our discernment.

Amen.