Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

Our Pastor

Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

July 1997

Freedom in the silence, or learning to let God free me from my own oppression.

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

Why is doing the right thing from the wrong reason a problem? Isn't helping always a good thing? Shouldn't we be "perfect as your heavenly father is perfect."? (Mt. 5:48) What is the problem? Rev. Michael, why don't we get on the real issues like hunger and injustice? I look around at the world, and I see pain. I look closer and I recognize some of that pain. I have felt that same pain inside. My internal world is reflecting the struggles I see in the external one, or is it the other way around?

Give me liberty, or give me death, that's what Patrick Henry said. Actually he was just being more honest than most of us. The choice really is between freedom and death, especially on the inside. On July 4th in the United States we celebrate freedom. Usually we mean freedom like Norman Rockwell painted, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from oppression. Those truly are freedoms, but if we look around, we still see want and oppression, and neither religion or speech are valued. Despite the patriots blood spilled to hallow the work, we still do not live free. Why is that? So many have tried for so long, why do we still live in the midst of bondage? The vision of a nation conceived in liberty was a reflection caught of the kingdom of heaven on earth. In the early days of our country, before conscientious objection was recognized by law a young Quaker stood before a judge to be sentenced to a long jail term for refusing armed service and the judge asked him why. "Because of Kingdom come" he replied. The judge said, "But the kingdom of God has not yet come." "The Kingdom of God has not come for you, your honor, but it has come for me." In his conviction he found himself free, whole and complete, even though he was in prison. For most of us, the kingdom has not yet come, we are not yet free.

One of the reasons that the world is so far from the kingdom is that our external reality often reflects our internal landscape. I am starting to discover that many of you are like me, we carry our oppression around within us. It is a small thing, an attitude, a brokenness, but it works to keep us from God. I'm not talking about murdering someone here, I mean the little attitudes we learned as we were growing up and which became unquestioned truth inside us.

This reawakening started with my vacation to Narnia. Val wanted to know when was the last time I time I was alone with God, away from people and the noise of things to do. I couldn't remember. So she stranded me at Buffalo Eddy for 1/2 a day. It was hard and very good. Hard because I kept thinking of all the things I "should" be doing, and good because I recognized my hunger for God and the emptiness I was trying to fill by meeting other peoples needs, again. Many of our spiritual works need to be done many times. Then I took a class at Creighton on Family Systems and Spiritual Direction. Our primary book was Urging of the Heart, A Spirituality of Integration by Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon. It is a great book, but a little scary, because it looks like God had them write it just for me. Listen to the Chapter titles: 1) Holistic Spirituality: Our Hunger for Wholeness, 2) The Abandoned Self: The Shadow and Wholeness, 3) Codependency: A Betrayal of Wholeness, 4) Perfectionism: A Pseudo-Wholeness, 5) Envy: A Longing for Wholeness, 6) Overwork: A Hindrance to Wholeness, 7) Intimacy: A Crucible of Wholeness, 8) Compassion and Collaboration: Loving with the Whole Self. In the third chapter they said "Holistic spiritual growth requires what the codependent avoids, namely, the solitude and honest self-reflection that create the space and conditions in which intimacy with self, with God, and others can grow. A common pitfall for codependents is their tendency to mistake their excessively busy schedules and superficial relationships as authentic Christian living and to think themselves exempted from the need for solitude, leisure and prayer." (page 51) I am trying to put together a class on this book for Vacation Bible School, (July 28-August 1) because as they told me in Seminary, "You never really know something until you teach it", and I think God really wants me to know this.

The second truth that leapt out at me in the book was "Know Your Motive". It was continually repeated in class as well. Doing a good thing will not bring you closer to God, if you do it for the wrong reason. Just as giving money can not buy you love. The only love available for purchase will betray you. (The only exception being buying a cat from the Humane Society. But then you are not buying the love, just freedom for the cat that wants to love you. Ask our church secretary Sara about her new cat Jester). If my motive is wrong, then the way I chose to help will not lead myself or others to God. This demonstrated itself in my life recently when I admitted to one of my friends that I was having economic difficulties. Now that friend will no longer let me buy dinner, but still wants to go out and eat with me. It is HARD to let someone else buy dinner all the time. I love being generous and giving. It hurts and I feel deprived and guilty, even more so because it was in unwise giving over the years that got myself into this situation. That was the first clue, this is too much emotional response for such a small imbalance like buying lunch. Yes it seems unfair to my friend, but I have discovered a part of myself that thinks unless I am doing good for others, I do not deserve to be loved. In psychology they call this Codependency, but even more important to me is that this is a spiritual problem. I can not earn the grace of God. The love of God is a gift that I can not earn. Such love is not something that comes because of my actions, it something I receive because I am. My only action can be to respond to it, to love in return. If I reject myself as unlovable, I also reject God's love of that self. If I reject God's love, then those around me will not feel God shining through me, and the kingdom has not come where I am. I am not free. Of course sometimes I forget and let myself me loved and love God and those around me tell of moving closer to God. Then I get stuck in my false self and the doubts come back and I am unlovable. All great works of the spirit are things we practice, disciplines we work at daily. We get closer and then stumble as the world and our interior struggles buffet us around. But a recognition of the struggle and growing towards loving of ourselves as God's child, accepting our imperfection and loving anyway is how we can be the Kingdom Come where we live. For if we love, God, others, ourselves, then truly the world will know we are Christians, brothers and sisters of Christ. Help each other and me, for it is in our loving that we get closer to God.

Your brother-in-Christ, Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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