100815 - iWeather

Yr C ~ P12 ~ Luke 12:49-56
“You hypocrites!” Not exactly a breezy way to start a summer sermon, but it’s certainly an effective way to get someone’s attention! “You hypocrites,” Jesus says, “You know how to interpret the weather, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” [Luke 12:56] We’ll get to the hypocrites part in a minute, but for now I want to talk about the weather.
 
When we lived in Nova Scotia we learned very quickly that a local phrase that sounded like one of those sayings that wasn’t really true really was true. They say, “If you don’t like the weather wait 15 minutes.” They weren’t kidding – that was fact! Weather systems would blow in and blow out very quickly. When you went out for a day you learned to put in contingency clothing to handle whatever might come up that day.
 
I don’t know why our society is obsessed with the weather, but we are. We check the forecast several times a day sometimes, or catch it on the radio every few minutes. Some people leave the Weather Network on their TV all day just so they can keep up to date (the programming may not be very exciting but at least there are no reruns!). We know all sorts of fancy weather terms like humidity, precipitation, barometer, uv index, meteorologist. Obviously, this is serious business.
 
Whatever did we do before the Weather Network? Or the TV or radio news? I guess we had “I Witness Weather” with Les Nessman. Les was a quirky character on the show WKRP in Cincinnati and he liked to do a fancy weather forecast called I Witness Weather – not E-Y-E-Witness, “I” witness. He’d go to the window and witness the weather. That’s how it used to be done – we just stuck our head out the window and looked up. If your face was wet, it was raining, if it was cold, you put on a jacket. How did this get so complicated? All we really need is a bit of information so we can know how to go forward with our day.
 
So how does the weather relate to Jesus calling his followers (that’s us by the way) hypocrites? Let’s try to unlock this. “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the weather, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” The time that Jesus is talking about is important. He doesn’t mean 4:00 pm, and he doesn’t mean “in the year 33” (or whatever year it was), and he doesn’t mean “these days”.

 
The Greek word for time in that verse is kairos, not chronos. Chronos is ordinary clock time, but kairos is God-time, God’s opportune time, a decisive moment. So what Jesus is actually asking here is why don’t we know how to discern this decisive moment? Why can’t we see that this is God-time? This idea of a decisive moment is referring to whether or not the people Jesus is teaching (again, that’s us) – whether we’re “getting it”.  
 
I tend to take scripture personally, so to speak. So when Jesus is frustrated here he’s frustrated with me. When he says “how come you understand weather but you don’t get what I’m laying down?” he’s talking to me. So the kairos moment here is the decisive moment for where the rubber meets the road in my faith journey. And that’s why he calls them (us) hypocrites. A hypocrite is someone whose walk doesn’t match their talk. 
 
Take a second and visualize Jesus. What stance or gesture do you think he did the most often? You’re probably envisioning something like this – Jesus standing with arms open looking like he’s getting ready to hug us. The cross is almost the same pose. But I think the most common pose Jesus found himself in dealing with those duh-sciples day in and day out was a facepalm!
 
Out they’d come every day – duh-sciples and crowds of people – come to sit at Jesus’ feet to learn about his Way – probably all appropriately dressed for the weather because they checked the Weather Network before they came – and the vast majority of them walk away saying “Yeah, that’s really true – he’s got it going on!” but failing to consistently incorporate those Ways into their lives.
 
“You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the weather, but why don’t you get what I’m saying?” It’s an indictment of his followers. And I think if you look at the Christian church as a whole it’s an indictment that we’re guilty of. We’ve been at it for 2000 years and we still don’t walk the talk. How can we sit in our churches year after year (century after century) and not have a clearer understanding of the Kingdom of God and what it means (and takes) to plug in to it and be nurtured by it as your spirituality is expanded and your faith is formed?
 
Jesus preaches personal transformation and communion with the Kingdom of God that is within you. It’s not about buildings and trappings and empire and power it’s about God and love and shalom and grace. It’s about Communion, Compassion, and Connection. I happen to think that here at Faith we’re doing a pretty good job striving to work through this. We work hard here on the foundations of faith hopefully giving us more passion and power and energy and commitment to walk our talk more and more authentically.
 
But here’s the tough part – how do you know? How do you know if you’re “getting it”? How do you know if your walk is matching your talk? How do you know if you’re experiencing transformation? I suppose the answer is “you can just feel it” or “you’ll just know” – well, that may be true but it seems to leave a lot to just kind of guessing. What if you’re fooling yourself? What if you so want it to be happening that you convince yourself it’s happening even if it isn’t? Haven’t you ever talked yourself into something?
 
If only we had some sort of assessment tool for our faith journey, then Jesus wouldn’t need to call us hypocrites so often. Oh wait, we do!
 
When we first looked at our “A Person of Faith” initiative with the big guide book and everything the second part of it was a Personal Assessment Tool. The idea is that 2 or 3 or 4 times a year you’ll assess how you’re doing at balancing the various aspects of being a follower of the Way of Jesus. We’re coming up to September and a new Program Calendar will be coming out teeming with possibilities for you to experience. I hope you’ll use the assessment tool to see how you’re doing in this season of your faith and identify a place where you’d like to do some growing and jump into a course or an activity.
 
That’s great stuff. But you wouldn’t want to be doing one of those assessments every week, or every day. It would just be too much. It wouldn’t make sense. So does that mean you should only look hard at your spiritual journey and take your faith temperature a few times a year? I think not. So we need a different tool or technique to keep our walk more in line with our talk. What I think we need to do is bring our obsession with weather to bear on our faith. We all need to subscribe to iWeather in our hearts.
 
I think we should be checking our spiritual temperature like we check the weather. Let’s call it “iWeather” for fun. The “i” would stand for “inner”.  Every day you check the outside weather so you know how to prepare for your day.  Well, which has a more profound effect on your day, the weather or your faith?
 
So iWeather – Inner Weather – would do the same thing for your day that the Weather Network does, only on the inside instead of the outside.   Just for fun, check your current inner weather forecast. Right now, in this place surrounded by friends and music and immersed in the Spirit of God it’s probably sunny skies and warm breezes, despite what it might be like outside. What’s your short term forecast for your inner weather? What will your spiritual status be later today? What’s your long range forecast? Is it a lifetime of sunshine?
 
Sometimes your journey will be stormy. There will be lightning and wind. It may be loud and unpleasant for a while but we trust that there are clear skies ahead. We don’t live in a climate controlled environment – either outside or inside. We ought to expect storms. Sunshine is great but without rain things don’t grow. Gentle breezes are refreshing but without big winds threatening to push us over our trees don’t grow strong, deep roots.
 
Maybe what Jesus is saying to us is, “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the outside weather, but why don’t you know how to check your iWeather?” You focus a lot on “out there”, why don’t you focus on “in here”? [heart] Or, to use one from his own repertoire – you know all about the specks in everyone else’s eyes, what about the plank in your own?
 
What would it be like to check your iWeather as often as you check the outside weather? What would it be like to be as tuned in to your spiritual temperature as you are to the thermometer? What would it be like to be so constantly consciously present to Presence that you never felt like you left worship? Wouldn’t that help your walk stay with your talk?
 
It would be like leaving the Weather Network on all day. Imagine being tuned in to the iWeather Network – all faith, all day. Worship on the top and bottom of every hour. Prayer on the 10s. Outreach and service information on the quarters. Your local faith forecast every 5 minutes. World faith report twice daily.
 
Or maybe you could install one of those little iWeather bugs in your heart like I have on my computer screen for the outside weather. Right there in the bottom right corner of my desktop is a tiny yellow box that constantly displays the temperature. I confess that two or three times a day I click it and it shows me the current, short term, and long range forecasts. I’ve just got to know!
 
Why not install an iWeather bug that functions the same way! Right there in the corner of my awareness would be a constant subtle reminder that my spiritual temperature needs consideration. Right there at the tip of my fingers is an opportunity to give it some more attention (a mental click) and I’m gauging my walk. Nothing complicated – it’s just a casual glance, a simple bit of awareness, but it keeps it on the front burner all day long.
 
Let me tell you about my iWeather bug. I’ve just learned this technique from author and mystic Richard Rohr, and I’m loving it. You’ve probably heard that the Jewish name for God, YHWH (commonly pronounced yah-way), is considered to be so sacred that it wasn’t to be spoken aloud. Rohr teaches that the reason it wasn’t spoken aloud was because to pronounce it properly it cannot be spoken at all – it can only be breathed.
 
The Hebrew pronunciation of those letters – Yah-veh – is an attempt to imitate the sound of inhalation and exhalation. You breathe in “Yah” and you breathe out “veh”, but you don’t make any sound other than breath sound. We’re going to try it! We’ll do it very slowly and deliberately. You’re going to breathe in nice and deep through your mouth making the shape of “Yah” as you do, and when you breathe out just let the force of the air brush your bottom lip against your top teeth which creates the “v” sensation.
 
Ready? You’re about to pronounce God’s name – maybe for the first time! You’re about to breathe God! Think “Yah” as you inhale and “veh” as you exhale. Close your eyes and give it a go.
[congregation breathes YHWH for a minute]
 
That’s the YHWH Breath Prayer. If you can activate that iWeather bug several times a day, just taking a breath or two to consciously and intentionally breathe in and out the name of God, you’ll find that you are more and more able to be present to Presence more and more of the time. There’s certainly no guarantee that you won’t still be a hypocrite, but it’s a lot harder to lose touch with your faith when you know you’re breathing God in and out all day.
 
Jesus said, “I came to bring fire. I came to teach you how to have your life utterly transformed. I came to remind you that every single breath you take is a prayer. I came to inspire you to care more about your iWeather than the weather outside. I came to show you how to walk this talk. Every day won’t be pleasant. There will be storms along the way. But the journey is holy, and the Spirit is with you and within you every step. It’s as close as breathing.”
Amen.