Sunday, February 8, 2015 | 8:00 a.m.

Rooted in the Sky

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 147:1–11
Isaiah 40:21–31
Mark 1:29–39

Just as the tree derives power from the rays of the sun, so we are rooted in the sky.

Simone Weil

Nothing like hitting the road running! Just to listen to what Jesus did in one day makes me tired. The Gospel of Mark begins with Jesus spending the morning teaching in the synagogue and amazing people with the authority with which he spoke. Then he healed a man of an unclean spirit. In the afternoon he may have thought he was going to get some downtime at the home of Simon and Andrew, but when he learned Simon’s mother-in-law was ill, he proceeded to heal her. Word of mouth spread quickly about him throughout the area, and by evening of that same day, the whole city was gathered around the house where Jesus was staying. They brought all who were sick or possessed by demons to him, and he cured many from diseases and possession. The next morning, the crowd was back in full force, wanting more of his healing touch.

Perhaps you can relate. Not that you are necessarily famous or sought out but that you, too, experience constant demands for your attention. Now more than ever—with Internet access, emailing, Facebook, Twitter, and texting—others can stay in touch with us 24/7. We may not ever really take a break from work, because even on days off we still read our work emails on our iPhone or at home. Or if you are a parent who takes care of little children, you may feel the only time you can be by yourself is by locking yourself in the bathroom now and then. How often when you are asked how you are is all you can think of “busy, too busy”?

I would bet many of us could admit that we are too busy to pray. It’s not easy to carve out time to be alone in God’s presence. If you are like me, as soon as you arouse from sleep, you begin thinking about what you need to get done before going to work and then, once at work, what you can accomplish to scratch off your to-do list. We are driven by expectations, some from the outside and some of our own making. Then at night we are too tired to be disciplined about praying—or much of anything. The next morning, we are at it again.

In light of our pace of activity, and in light of Jesus’ life, it is striking that we find this sentence in scripture: “In the morning, long before dawn, [Jesus] got up and left the house, and went off to a deserted place and there he prayed.” In the middle of sentences loaded with action, we find these quiet words. Henri Nouwen wrote, “In the center of breathless activities we hear a restful breathing. Surrounded by hours of moving we find a moment of quiet stillness. In the heart of much involvement there are words of withdrawal. In the midst of action there is contemplation. And after much togetherness there is solitude” (Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life, p. 13). He continues, “The more I read this nearly silent sentence locked in between the loud words of action, the more I have the sense that the secret of Jesus’ ministry is hidden in that lonely place where he went to pray, early in the morning, before dawn” (pp. 13–14).

One reason Nouwen may have thought that the secret of Jesus’ ministry is hidden in his time apart to pray is what happens next in the story. When the crowd appeared again in the early morning, a few of Jesus’ disciples became a bit frantic. They couldn’t find Jesus anywhere. They went to hunt him down. When they finally found him in a deserted place they told him, perhaps with some exasperation and urgency, “Everyone is searching for you.” You can just hear them also wondering out loud, “What are you doing here anyway? Why didn’t you tell us where you were going? Don’t you know everyone is talking about you? Everyone wants you. You’re on a roll. You are more popular now than John the Baptist! Time’s a-wasting. You’ve got a lot to do!”

But amazingly Jesus does not respond, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I must get back and start attending to the people who are looking for me.” No, he gets up and says, “Let us go to the neighboring towns.” Instead of feeling obligated to meet more needs of those in the same village, he said, “We’re moving on.” Why? So that he would proclaim his message in new places. That is what he understood his mission to be. Jesus arose from a time of silence and solitude, apart from the crowds and activity, with a clear sense of direction. After being alone, listening to God, he arose with conviction about his identity and his purpose. He would not let other people run his life. He would not organize his days around the demands and expectations of others. By being in that deserted place with God, Jesus was strengthened to focus upon God’s purpose for him and not be buffeted about by what others thought of him or wanted from him. He was not tempted by fame or popularity. He stayed focused and energized through prayer. Going to a deserted place in the wee hours of the morning enabled him to listen to the voice within and the voice above.

Many years ago, David Riesman, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, wrote a book called The Lonely Crowd. He made a distinction between those who are “other-directed” and those who are “inner-directed.” Riesman’s lonely crowd was made of people who are other-directed—who put their own minds in neutral and let someone or something outside themselves tell them who they are or who they should be, how they should live, what their standards of conduct and aspirations ought to be. In contrast, inner-directed people have an internal rudder by which to steer their little boat on the sea of life. They take their direction from a tradition which they have internalized, from goals and standards they themselves possess (Eugene Bay, “Outward Disciplines and Inner Direction,” sermon preached on 6 February 2000). Jesus clearly was inner-directed.

An article on leadership put forth that a leader must have the “capacity for self-definition.” Leaders need to be able to define their own goals and aspirations, values, standards, and priorities. A leader must not get trapped or driven by other people’s expectations. The article lifted up Jesus as an example of such a leader. Not just in the beginning of his ministry, but all the way along, Jesus encountered others who had expectations and needs of him. Some constantly found fault with his teaching or criticized his ministry or sought to test and trap him. But he resisted such pressures to betray what he believed God was asking him to do and be (Anthony B. Robinson, Leadership That Matters, Christian Century, 15 December 1999).

We, too, are called to be inner-directed, to strengthen our capacity for self-definition. When we think we are too busy to pray, we are revealing both a symptom and an underlying issue. I have found it difficult to carve out time to pray each day. But it’s not really because I don’t have time. It’s because I am so eager to be about doing. I am influenced by our goal-oriented society, which places so much emphasis on productivity. I have a strong desire to accomplish something, big or small.

Perhaps all of us like to think about ourselves in terms of our contributions to life. The problem comes when we not only desire to do meaningful things, but also make the results of our efforts the criteria of our self-esteem. We not only have successes, we become our successes. When we begin to be too impressed by or dependent upon the results of our work, we come to the erroneous conclusion that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing points to measure our worth. Before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. Then we become what the world makes us, rather than who God hopes we will be. When we have sold our identity to the judges of this world, or our internalized judge, we are bound to become hungry for constant affirmation and praise. We are no longer inner-directed.

What can break this pattern is for us to pause from all the striving activity, all the goal-driven effort, to take a sabbath. When we are still, intentionally present to God, we are reminded that our worth is in God’s love, not in what we do. It is in solitude and silence that we discover that being is more important than having and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts. In the deserted place alone we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness.

We can learn about this from a Taoist story about an old tree:

A carpenter and his apprentice were walking together through a large forest. They came across a tall, huge, gnarled, old, beautiful oak tree. The carpenter asked his apprentice, “Do you know why this tree is so tall, so huge, so gnarled, so old and beautiful?” The apprentice looked at his master and said, “No, why?”

“Well,” the carpenter said, “because it is useless. If it had been useful it would have been cut long ago and made into tables and chairs, but because it is useless, it could grow so tall and so beautiful that you can still sit in its shade and relax.” (Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude, p. 23)

When we are willing to be useless for awhile, creating a space in the midst of our actions and concerns, then our successes and failures slowly lose some of their power over us. We can be free to fail. We can be recalled to our true self, who is embraced by God’s love. We can be part of a community of faith that takes itself seriously, but never too seriously. In such a community we can adopt a little of the mentality of Pope John, who could laugh about himself. When some highly decorated official asked him, “Holy Father, how many people work in the Vatican?” he paused a bit and then said, “Well, I guess about half of them.”

The title of this sermon is “Rooted in the Sky.” It comes from the Christian mystic, Simone Weil, who wrote, “Just as the tree derives its power from the rays of the sun, so we are rooted in the sky.” Our rootedness, the foundation of who we are, is in God. It is prayer that helps ground us in God. Prayer directs our attention away from the demands and expectations of the crowd so that we can hear what God has to say to us. Prayer centers our lives and opens up the space for us to remember our identity in God. Listening to God helps us gain clear focus on what we are to be and do. Without prayer we can easily be uprooted. We can lose our compass. We need to spend time apart in God’s presence to sense God’s direction and to receive God’s strength for the journey.

I still find it a challenge to pause every day to pray. That’s part of the reason I occasionally walk the labyrinth and go on twenty-four hour silent retreats away from home a few times each year—to make sure I dedicate a significant block of time for prayer. In order to create a habit of being in silence and solitude with God you may find that you need to carve out time on your calendar like an appointment. Or you may find it helpful to have a spiritual friend hold you accountable for how often in a week’s time you spent time in quiet reflection with God.

All of us can be inner-directed people. The key is to do what Jesus did: find that deserted place where you can listen to the voice within and the voice from above. That outward discipline is the key to being inner-directed. Through prayer God shapes our identity, nurtures our roots, focuses our purpose, and gives us strength. May you do what you need to do to become rooted in prayer yourself.