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Inward Transformation – Social Transformation The Rev. Dr. Peter Terpenning Matthew 14:13-21
Contained here is one of the basic conflicts and rhythms of a life seeking to serve God. On the one hand is the call to compassion, the enormous, insatiable need of the world for food, for love, for healing and hope. On the other hand is our personal need for God, and for the replenishing of our own spirits. When I went off last summer on Sabbatical and spent some time in a Carmelite Monastery, a couple of people asked me what I thought of the monastery. They were genuinely confused and concerned. They wondered what the monks do all day and how they justified their faith if all they do is sit around and pray and stare at their navels. What about Christian action for justice? What about serving the poor and needy? Isn’t monastic life just self serving and not particularly Christian? They aren’t really doing anything, are they? This is a question that had occurred to me in the past as well. There is a strong current in Protestant Christianity toward service and suspicion of those who just sit around and pray or meditate. I tried to explain that the monks do service, and are involved in local justice ministries and worldwide peace efforts. That out of the inner life of solitary prayer and meditation grows compassion and a sense of being connected more fully to the whole of humanity and indeed, all creation. I’m not sure I convinced them. I think this touches on an essential truth in Christianity, and indeed in any spiritual life: the inward journey and the outward journey are both necessary. Inner transformation can not be separated from social transformation. It is the breath of faith; we can not breathe only out, or only in, both are necessary. Try it sometime, breath out, out, out…and eventually you desperately need an in breath. Or, breathe in, in and in, and eventually you desperately need an out breath. Give and give and give, and we get burned out, and have no compassion left for others. Sit and pray, rest and relax, and eventually, one’s life becomes empty and calls us to action. There is a definite link between the inner life of faith and the outer life of social action and justice. It must be said that both the inner life and life of social action are unsustainable without the other. In fact, my experience with meditation and prayer is that the result of the contemplative life, whether it be Christian or Buddhist or Hindu, results directly in compassion. As one gets in touch with one’s inner spiritual life, this leads inevitably to a sense of connection to the whole. Thomas Merton, after many 17 years in the Catholic monastery, went on an errand to downtown Louisville, Kentucky, and standing on a corner of Fourth and Walnut, watching the masses of people go about their business, suddenly experienced an awaking of sorts. He said, “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate, holy existence is a dream…It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake. I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. ‘There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun’.” The contemplate life leads inevitably to a life of compassionate action. On the other hand, the opposite is true for those who are deeply involved in lives of service and sacrifice. These lives tend to burn out those who carry on too long without returning to the well of God’s life giving faith. The stories of servants who burn out and lose their faith from too much self sacrifice are so many that probably most of us could tell one, often from personal experience. We can not separate inner transformation and social transformation! Communion is an excellent symbol for this breathing out and breathing in of the spiritual life. In this symbolic meal, we are fed with the bread of life. This is not food that sustains us physically; it is a symbol of faith that is essential to sustaining our lives of love and compassion. The early church lived this out in fact, for as they began to meet for table fellowship, to remember that Jesus told them to remember him when the broke bread, they began to include those who were needy, feeding them an actual meal. Jesus did not only feed the multitudes with spiritual food, healing and teachings of love, but he told his disciples to also serve the physical needs of the multitude; “You give them something to eat”, he said. Both sides of the spiritual journey are needed: the inner journey of transformation, healing and replenishing of faith, and the outward journey of service and love for our fellow human beings, and indeed, God’s whole creation of plant and animal life.
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