Downward Mobility
Slowing Down, part 9
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
January 31, 2009
Upward mobility is the strongest pull of our culture. When you think of the American dream, what do you think of? I think about someone starting out poor who is able to start a business, and work hard until it becomes profitable, and then maybe sell it to a larger company and use the profit to start an even bigger and more successful business, which goes public, and eventually is worth millions of dollars. That to me is the American dream. And if that’s not exactly what you think of when you think of the American dream, then any differences are likely differences in extent, not in essence. In other words, there might be differences in in how far you imagine a person going, but what we all think of is a person who starts in a low position and moves to a high position – usually involving power, prestige, and/or money.
That’s the American dream. The problem is, that’s not really how Jesus defined success. Jesus’ seemed to define success as continual downward mobility. Continual giving up of ourselves and our lives and our ambitions, to embrace God’s plan for us.
Matthew 10:39 (NIV)
39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Tonight I want to talk to you about downward mobility. Downward mobility.
We live in a culture that says we have an inalienable right to “the pursuit of happiness.” The assumption is that as we “move up” in the world, we will become increasingly happy – that the way of happiness is the way of upward mobility. The only problem with that is that religion has always shown what is now known to psychology – happiness will never be found as long as it is pursued. That’s like trying to pursue intimacy. You will never find intimacy in your marriage. It’s not something that can be pursued. But what you can pursue is a few more moments together. What you can do is shut off the TV and talk. What you can do is go for a walk. What you can pursue is getting some counseling. What you can pursue is a plan to take a vacation together. What you can pursue is worshipping together and creating a strong set of shared values. If you do all those things that CAN be pursued, intimacy will ensue – it will be the by-product of a lot of other things you pursued.
That’s the way happiness is. That’s the way peace is. We can’t find them while we search for them, but what we can do is find out how happy people live and learn to live like that. We can find out how peaceful people live and learn to live like that.
Jesus is actually saying that life itself is built on this same principle. Rather than trying to improve our lives, rather than pursuing upward mobility and always trying to get more for ourselves, what we have to do is forget about all that stuff, and empty ourselves of it. See, the main reason I am unhappy is because of me! I’m my own worst enemy, and so are you!
James 4:1-3 (NCV)
1 Do you know where your fights and arguments come from? They come from the selfish desires that war within you.
2 You want things, but you do not have them. So you are ready to kill and are jealous of other people, but you still cannot get what you want. So you argue and fight. You do not get what you want, because you do not ask God.
3 Or when you ask, you do not receive because the reason you ask is wrong. You want things so you can use them for your own pleasures.
All this comes from the selfish desires that are located where? Inside of me! So the harder I try to find happiness, the harder I push to get all the stuff I want, the more I am depending on the very person who is the problem, and that’s me.
That’s why Jesus said we have to lay down our lives. Jesus holds out to you and me the liberating promise of continual downward mobility! In laying down our lives, in refusing to pursue our own happiness, we find ourselves happy. In refusing to defend ourselves, we find that we are able to rest in God who is our defender and provider. In refusing to be dominated by our schedules and calendars, we find ourselves living in a world that is beyond time. That’s why observing the Sabbath is an act of rebellion against our culture. Our culture says we are invaluable, far too busy to do nothing for a day. Sabbath says, “Phooey – I’m not that important – watch how well the world will go on without me today. I don’t have to be out there 24/7 making things happen.” When we serve a timeless God, what difference does a day a week make?
Jesus practiced downward mobility. He lived far below the level of his potential. He didn’t produce all he might have otherwise produce if he’d been doing his own thing. But he produced the right things as he emptied himself of himself and filled himself with God’s Spirit. And that’s what we will have to do if we want to learn to follow Jesus.
That’s what I want to talk to you about today – pursuing a life of downward mobility. I told you last week that I’d cover the four parts of The Daily Office with you tonight, and so I shall, because The Daily Office will make you downwardly mobile. But first I want to put it in proper context. We do not do The Daily Office as a way of recharging our spiritual batteries. We do not do it so we can live more effectively on our own strength. We do not do it because we’re engaged in pursuit of happiness or the American dream and we think this will help. We do The Daily Office in order to learn to live life with God. We do it as a way of learning to empty ourselves of ourselves (which is all of our biggest problem!) and live not from our own limited resources, but from God’s eternal resources. We do it as a way of embracing and practicing the kind of downward mobility Jesus taught. We continually step down from our projects and plans, and step into God’s purposes and peace.
The four components of The Daily Office, as I said last week, are stopping, centering, silence, and scripture. Last week I ended with the question, “What do the Sabbath and The Daily Office have in common?” The answer, my friends, is that they both require us to stop. Sabbath is a day where we intentionally stop the hellacious busyness of our week, and The Daily Office is where we stop the numbing busyness of our days.
We will never grow in God if we don’t learn to stop. Stopping is what everything else hinges on. Before I went to J-term last January, I always figured that serving God was about doing. Doing prayer. Doing Bible reading and memorization. Doing church. Doing ministry. At J-term I realized that’s not actually the case. Serving God is not about doing, but about yielding. Now think about this subtle yet powerful difference. If serving God is about doing prayer and doing church and doing ministry and doing stuff, and I’m engaged in the busyness of my day, and I suddenly think about devoting time to God, then all I’m thinking about is moving from one activity to another. It can be very hard to yank myself away from whatever I’m doing in order to do prayer. But if it’s not about doing but rather yielding, then I realize that when I’m up to my ears in busyness and tasks, the most important thing I must do is stop. I must turn off the computer. I must turn off the television. I must get out of my office chair and into my recliner where I rest, where I get away, where I stop, where I cease doing and learn to BE. When you’re driving and you encounter a yield sign, is that sign telling you to do something, or to stop doing something? It’s telling you to stop doing something. And it’s hard, isn’t it? Once you’re going, you just want to keep going. That’s how it is with our tasks and agenda and lives – once we’re going we just want to keep going. It’s never easy to stop.
The #1 obstacle between you and God, at all times, will be a difficulty with yielding. Think of yielding as submission. Think of God as constantly calling out to you, “come be with me,” like a husband might say to his wife, “Come be with me.” She could say, “I’m ironing – I’m cooking – I’m cleaning – I’m going to work this weekend,” and he would just keep saying, “Come, be with me. Yield to me. Submit to me.” What will determine whether that husband and wife spend time together? Whether, in this case, she is willing to stop. In other cases he’s reading the paper and watching the game. She approaches him and sits on the arm of his recliner, sending signals that she wants some of his attention. At that point, what determines if they will spend time together? Whether he will yield to her – stop what he’s doing and be with her. Stopping. Yielding. Submitting. It has to happen for connection to occur. Always. So when it comes to God, you simply stop whatever you are doing in order to yield to God who is always with you.
Next after stopping is centering. Let’s go back to our busy wife who has just stopped to be with her husband. It’s going to take her a few minutes to get the dishes out of her head, to stop thinking about work today, to focus her attention fully on her husband. The wife needs to center. She needs to spend some time getting in touch with her values, reminding herself that she loves this guy, and that she really does enjoy spending time with him. Maybe she’ll think about how if this should lead to sex, perhaps there’s some good pillow talk in this for her tonight. Maybe he’ll hold her for a while. Maybe long before sex he’ll ask her about her day – give her a massage – take her to dinner. Yeah, now that’s more like it. The more she thinks about that world – the world where she has a husband who loves her and who calls to her and wants to be with her – the more she disconnects from the laundry, the dishes, the job – the more she finds herself centering on her husband. Once she gets to that place, she can’t believe she cared so much about all that other stuff.
Once the husband turns off the game, he’s going to keep thinking about it for a while. At first he’ll wish he could turn it back on, and is looking for some chance that she might say her piece and let him get back to it. He’ll have a hard time focusing on what his wife is saying. But soon he sees that this isn’t going away and he begins to commit himself to her. He realizes his evening is invested with her. As soon as he realizes that, what does he think? “Hey, this could lead to sex.” He starts thinking about it, and realizing this is the woman he married and he does enjoy her company and he knows that if he’s willing to invest a little bit now, she’ll make it worth his while later on. At this point he’s engaged. He is centered and focused on her.
Centering is a mental act where - after we have stopped – we pull ourselves away from thinking about what we have just stopped doing, and intentionally focus on what we are doing now. So you have just pulled yourself away from your computer at work. Now you need to center – to get work out of your mind. You make some coffee. Turn out the lights in your office for a minute. Close the door. Get comfortable in your chair, and you begin reading Psalm 1.
Psalm 1:1-6 (NIV)
1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Etc. You do something that centers you on God and the importance of stopping to be with him. You do this until you begin to feel centered.
After you have stopped and centered, you enter into silence. Dallas Willard writes: …solitude and silence are powerful means to grace. Bible study, prayer and church attendance, among the most commonly prescribed activities in Christian circles, generally have little effect for soul transformation, as is obvious to any observer. If all the people doing them were transformed to health and righteousness by it, the world would be vastly changed. Their failure to bring about the change is precisely because the body and soul are so exhausted, fragmented and conflicted that the prescribed activities cannot be appropriately engaged, and by and large degenerate into legalistic and ineffectual rituals. Lengthy solitude and silence, including rest, can make them very powerful. But we must choose these disciplines. God will, generally speaking, not compete for our attention. If we will not withdraw from the things that obsess and exhaust us into solitude and silence, he will usually leave us to our own devices. He calls us to "be still and know." To the soul disciplined to wait quietly before him, to lavish time upon this practice, he will make himself known in ways that will redirect our every thought, feeling and choice. The body itself will enter a different world of rest and strength. And the effects of solitude and silence will reverberate through the social settings where one finds oneself.
Did you understand Willard there? If we do not learn to spend time in silence, our souls will be too wound up and impoverished to benefit from prayer and Bible reading and church attendance. Like I’ve been saying, we have structured our lives in ways that make it nearly impossible to live the way Jesus would have us live, despite our good intentions.
So you sit still and in silence. You quote the words of Jesus, “Peace, be still” when you find your mind wandering. Or perhaps instead of saying those words, you repeat again and again, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Or you quote a favorite short verse of scripture again and again. What matters is that you sit in silence. God will not compete for your attention – you must voluntarily give it to him. As for solitude, solitude is simply the environment where silence is most likely to be found. You will rarely find silence in the company of others.
After stopping, centering, and silence comes scripture. You are now in a place to maybe hear what God might be saying to you. You have given up your busyness to be with God. You have focused your mind on him. You have spent time in quiet, further separating your soul from distractions, worries, and goals. Now scripture can be read attentively, with an ear that is tuned to hear God’s voice.
Perhaps you are reading through the Bible in a year. Perhaps you wish to read a bit of the NT, a bit of the OT, a Psalm, and a Proverb each day. If you were doing four daily offices, you could read one of those at each office! Perhaps you would want to read a short Bible book over and over again at each office for a week or two. The Psalms are the prayer book of the church, so you might simply pray one of the Psalms.
To conclude this sermon, I want to work through a sample daily office with you, showing you how to do each step, and I’ll close by praying some verses from Psalm 139, which I have been doing frequently in own times of prayer recently. How do we start? We start by stopping, right? We step out of the “listening to sermon” mode and engage with God. So let’s do that now. I want you to relax and close your eyes. Try to get comfortable. Make the mental shift from listening to the sermon to engaging with God.
Now we center. Tell God you are available and that you are listening.
Psalm 1:1-6 (NIV)
1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
See the rest of life moving to the edges, and God moving to the center. See him. Focus on him.
Now we enter into silence. Take however long you need on your own, but we’ll do sixty seconds right now. Keep repeating to yourself the word, “Jesus” or something that will help you focus on God.
And now we engage with scripture. I’m going to show you how to pray the Psalms. Once you have heard this done, you will be able to do this anytime you choose to, and I highly recommend it.
Psalm 139:1-12 (NIV)
1 O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know how I am feeling right now. I don’t need to hide from you.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You see me sitting here now. You’ll still be watching me as I go, and you know everything I am thinking at all times – all the pure thoughts. All the impure ones. Everything.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
You know my tendency to be too brash. You are familiar with my temper. You know how I struggle with guilt, or with regret, or with patience, or with lust. Thank you that I can enter your presence and you already know all of this. Every time I come before you, I bring all of this with me – you are familiar with all my ways.
5 You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Thank you that you keep me safe, and secure, like a baby wrapped in a blanket. You cover me and protect me. Your hand is on me and I am the beloved. I can’t fully grasp this, but I’ll try.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,"
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
God recently I have been in the darkness of depression and fear. It has felt like the darkness was taking over – that it would eventually cover me up and that I would be lost beyond recovery. That the light will become night around me, and I will not be able to find you, or see you. I am deeply comforted knowing that dark is light to you – that no matter how dark my life is, you can see me just fine – you know where I am and how to reach me, and you will not abandon me ever. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Amen.
And that is the daily office. Now imagine doing this three/four times a day. Do you think this would begin to shape your mind in new ways and for the first time pose a legitimate threat to the relentless press of the empire in your life? I tell you it would, especially if you combined this with weekly observance of the Sabbath. You would find the whole foundation of your life beginning to change and you’d see that it’s a foundation upon which you could logically and naturally build a life of obedience to Jesus. That is what is needed for your soul, and for mine. Not five minutes of devotions. Not just a sermon every week or a small group meeting, but a practice of stopping, centering, silence, and scripture that orients us to a new kind of life in the world created for us by God. This is the life that dispels fear and regret, that bestows peace and rest that leads us to find that God’s mercies are new every morning and that he is faithful. It is in this way of life that you will find fulfillment of Jesus’ promise:
Matthew 11:28 (NLT)
28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
This life of downward mobility – this is how we will take hold of the life that is truly life, and I pray that you will invest your energies in pursuit of the downwardly mobile life
