7.22.2007 Christian Reflections on the Secret #4 Powerful Processes
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
July 22, 2007 “Christian Reflections on The Secret” #4 Powerful Processes
Long ago, can you see them living outside the city gate? Can you see them coming down the city street on a regular day calling out, Unclean! Unclean! Did anybody see them long ago, unless they were their relatives? No these folk were unseen, like a cleaning woman in an executive boardroom meeting who enters and leaves and nobody can remember that she even came in. Long ago these men were homeless, outside the city gate. Lepers!
Long ago these lepers were a law unto themselves. Nobody wanted lepers, not the Samarians and not the Aramaens who were besieging the city to bring it to its knees. Can we see them at the close of the day, long ago, getting desperate and talking to one another? There are four of them.
Let’s listen in: “Why are we sitting here waiting for death? There is no point in going into the city. They have no food there and if they did they wouldn’t give us any! We will just die there. If we stay here, we shall die just the same. Come on let’s go over to the Aramaen camp. If they spare our lives then we will live. If not we shall die. What have we got to lose?” So the little group of four sets out at dusk to discover an abandoned army camp. The place is full of food! The tents are left, the horses are left. And so these outcasts have a field day! They go in and help themselves to wine and food. They carry off the silver and gold and clothing because these Aramaens had been there for a long siege. There was stuff everywhere and the lepers took it and hid it. They did the same in the second tent and hid the loot. Still no one came. And suddenly conscience struck. They were doing wrong. They were being utterly selfish and ungrateful. It was all about them. Or was it? What about the other folks in the city? Should they care about them? So long isolated from the community they had to ask: “What responsibility do I have as an outcast to my fellow citizens and members of my community?” Gratitude told them what to do and into the city they went with their incredible good news!
Centuries later in the New Testament the scene is hauntingly familiar. It is Samaria again and there are still lepers. They still go about calling: Unclean! Unclean! They keep a respectful distance from Jesus and they ask him for help. Jesus takes pity on them and as they are going to the temple they are healed. There are ten lepers this time that is nine and one. One returns and gives thanks. He is incredibly grateful. And he is a Samaritan.
The Jews, we remember, had no dealings with the Samaritans at the time of Christ. But Christ did. His parable of the Good Samaritan was a landmark saying because of the non acceptance and discrimination and prejudice against Samaritans. But Jesus never discriminated and look what happened to him. He got gratitude from a man who was not only a leper but persona non grata. A double whammy of gratitude and Jesus exclaimed; “No one has come back to give thanks to God but this foreigner”, or in our terms, this resident alien, this gay man, this stranger, this Arab, this Muslim, this Sikh, this Samaritan, this persona non grata. And he says to this rejected one, “Stand up and go on your way, your faith has saved you!” Jesus is so wonderful!
Something here is very important to Jesus though. He says: “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” Gratitude is so important to Jesus! Why?
Do we feel imprisoned today? What kind of a mood are we in? Are we having a bad day? Did we not sleep well last night? Do we think that our current life is who we are? Are we full of jealousy, resentment, dissatisfaction and feelings that there is never enough? Are we angry all the time? Do we complain all the time? Are we tense, upset, afraid? Are we inconsiderate to others? Are we just plain depressed and at the far end? We don’t have to be like this you know… There is an antidote.
Enter chapter four of the Secret; Powerful Processes.
Lisa Nichols an empowerment advocate says, “When you want to change your circumstances, you must first change your thinking.” James Ray, personal performance coach says; “Most people look at their current state of affairs and they say this is who I am. That’s not who you are. That’s who you were. Let’s say you don’t have enough money, or you don’t have the relationship you want, or your health and fitness aren’t up to par. That is not who you are. That is the residual outcome of your past thoughts and actions.”
According to the folks in The Secret, how do we turn our lives around? We need to use gratitude as a discipline until it becomes natural to us. Rhonda Byrne the author of The Secret writes a statement that I find myself in total agreement with. Rhonda says: “With all that I have read and with all that I have experienced in my own life using The Secret, the power of gratitude stands above everything else. If you only do one thing with the knowledge of The Secret use gratitude until it becomes your way of life.”
Let me give you a personal testimonial here. Since reading The Secret and seeing the DVD I have been practicing gratitude on a daily basis and it is magic indeed! If I am down about anything I start to give God thanks for everything I can think of. Of course I learned this from St. Paul long ago but didn’t pay much attention. Did I practice it as a daily discipline? Not I! How many times did I hear the story of the lepers and how many times did I not change anything about the discipline of gratitude? My whole life, until I read The Secret! Looking back now I can say, “How can I have ever been so unaware of this mighty truth?” The answer is always the same. When the student is ready the teacher appears. You might not be ready today to practice gratitude and that is okay, but if you are I can relate to you that it is utterly life transforming!
If you are interested in this practice, might I suggest, from The Secret, that when you get out of bed in the morning and put one foot down on the floor say “thank” and then put the second foot down and say “you”. Thank-you! Stand in front of the mirror and give God thanks for everything you can think of—the water in the tap, the electricity, the toothpaste manufacturer, the soap maker… you get the picture. Do this every time your feelings are low or you are upset or angry or resentful throughout the day. In Thessalonians Paul says to the church “Be at Peace amongst yourselves.” In other words make peace our intention. This involves peacemaking. We are to admonish the unruly, those who are out of rank with established and standard procedures.
Then according to St Paul, we need to be in the business of encouragement. We help to build one another up. We are to help those who are weak in faith and worldly resources. We are to pray for those who are not in good health. We are never to repay evil for evil but always seek to do good to one another. Then comes his amazing formula and it is straight down the middle of The Secret methodology: Here it is Be happy at all times, pray constantly, in all things give thanks. The church at Thessalonica became an exemplary leadership church community! They must have practiced Paul’s three point formula for success.
1) Be happy at all times. (That is a command.)
2) Pray constantly. (This is an attitude of prayer that Paul is talking about. Prayer is focused intention, as Mike Dooley of The Secret says: “Always and only dwell upon the end result.” That is a great idea of what prayer is all about. And strangely but this is another sermon, we must at the same time let go of attachment to outcome as we dwell always and only on the end result.
3) Give thanks to God for all things. Why? Because gratitude is what God expects of us, if we are Christian. Why? Gratitude is powerful. It heals us and the world. Gratitude is of God.
The second powerful process in the Secret is visualization.
Norman Vincent Peale was into this stuff long ago. He tells the story of a man with a vision who was an illustrator. He went from newspaper to newspaper to try to sell his cartoons and they told him that he had no talent. But this man kept his vision. (The Bible says where there is no vision the people perish. The same thing is true for us as individuals. We must keep our dreams when others would dash them.)
Finally a pastor employed him at a pittance to draw advertising pictures for church events. The man needed a studio and a place to live. The church had an abandoned mice infested garage and they told him he could live there. He watched the mice and conceived of an idea; Mickey Mouse! For Walt Disney the rest was history …
Then Peale goes into his understanding of The Secret. But he calls it “the law of successful achievement.” He says, “Begin with a sharply focused objective.” He writes: “You must know what you want to do, where you want to go, and what you want to be.” (That is intent!) And then he says, “Have no doubt about it.” (I think Peale was reading Jesus; “Whatsoever things you ask for in prayer, believe that you have them already and they shall be yours.”) Peale goes on: “The next step is to pray about this goal to be sure that it is the right objective.” Do we have a scheme, an idea, and a strategy, something we want to achieve? Is it loving to everyone? As St Paul said in Thessalonians: “Does it build up the whole community, does it give courage, or care for the weak, is it patient, and is it peaceful?” Then go for it! Peale says, “Be sure it’s the right objective because if it isn’t right, it’s wrong, and nothing wrong ever turned out right.” (Don’t you love Peale?)
Then he says, “hold the goal tenaciously in the conscious mind until it sinks into the subconscious, and when it becomes firmly fixed there, you have it because it has you—all of you, your thoughts your hopes and your efforts. Then put behind your goal positive thought. The negative thinker lets loose destructive forces that can destroy him. In sending out negative thoughts he activates the world around him, negatively.”
Then comes this amazing line from Peale’s book You Can If You Think You Can and please note this is a long time before the publication of The Secret. It is vintage 1974 and it’s a very good wine! Peale says; “There is a law of attraction, Like attracts Like. Thoughts of a kind have a natural affinity. The negative thinker tends to draw back to him negative results. He attracts them. The positive thinker, in sending out optimistic and positive thoughts, activates the world around him positively…People who think in an upbeat hopeful manner inevitably do the best with life. The dismal thinker is likely to come up with dismal results. The hopeful person can expect constructive results… The hopeful person projects hope and faith into the darkest situation and lights it up.”
One person, who loves Westminster and loves God, as so many of you do, spoke to me last week and said something that was heartfelt. She said something that she has felt as many of you have felt for years, long before I came here. Westminster has been blessed with so much. We have a great warm loving congregation. The Session has always been strong, the Deacons legendary in their compassion. The mission outreach to Loaves and Fishes, downtown and to Park Place has been strong. We helped found C.A.D.A., The Interfaith Service Bureau and both of these are strong and extremely relevant today. We have started other churches. The fellowship within the congregation has been strong. We have cared for the poor the refugee the homeless as well as many of the leaders in our community. We have a building on the Register of Historic Sites for its outstanding architecture. It is completely paid for and in excellent condition and the congregation is endowed so that maintenance to date has been paid for largely from endowment and parking lot revenues. In other words we have been incredibly blessed here at Westminster.
It was in this context of abundance and blessing that this person said to me, what are we missing at Westminster? When I first came to Westminster I heard from many of you the same thing, that there was something missing. For six years I have thought and prayed about this along with many of you, because many of us I think experience that something is missing here… It’s a big picture thing…Whatever could it be because all the usual explanations come up so short because we have been so greatly blessed?
I think that the answer is in our Scriptures today in the words of Jesus. For whatever unconscious reason, we have become a “nine to one” congregation. Not enough of us, and I place myself in that category, consciously practice gratitude as a daily discipline. We have unconsciously been taking each other and things for granted. I know I have.
Pastor Garry and I were walking across the park the other day talking about gratitude and Garry said something wonderful. Gratitude, he said, takes us into consciousness and to living in the present.
I don’t think that the nine lepers that were healed were bad people. They were probably ecstatic that they were healed, but they were unconscious, asleep, and not mindful. They took their healing for granted.
So to answer the question, here is my heartfelt reply. I believe that we need to reverse the ratio here at Westminster and become people who deliberately practice gratitude. I believe that that is what is missing and I believe that it could be totally transformative! There is so much need out there in the world. If we were like this, gratitude would spill over and out the doors of Historic Westminster!
I would like us to pause here at the end of this sermon for a moment and consider whether we could all commit ourselves before God to make gratitude a discipline of our everyday lives? I wish to ask your indulgence here for a silence of thirty seconds to think about making a daily practice of gratitude. I want you to think about the following statement: Beginning today I solemnly promise before God to practice daily the discipline of Gratitude. I will give thanks in all things.
At the end of the silence I will ask you in the quiet of your hearts with your heads bowed to make the commitment as I read it again to you. On the communion table there are polished gratitude rocks for you. If you have made the commitment I wish you to take a rock and carry it with you every day. Let us pause now to pray…
Beginning today I solemnly promise before God to practice daily the discipline of gratitude. I will give thanks in all things.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
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