Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

The Reverend Paul D. Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, May 30, 2010

 

 

Life is a balancing act. In our working lives we are balancing our careers, our families and personal time. In retirement we are balancing our time making sure we have things to keep us busy.

 

 

We know that when our lives get out of balance we have this need to find it again. We find ourselves doing nothing but work and decide to take time off. We find ourselves sitting around too much and decide  to get out and do something. Or maybe we’ve been obsessed with a project around the house or garden and just have to step away for a while.

 

 

What about other areas of balance? Life can get really out of balance with no time spent on developing our spiritual lives. When we keep putting prayer or study or attending worship aside for other things we will soon begin to get lost in narcissism; living for nothing but ourselves or those we care about.

 

 

We also get out balance with our intellects. When we think that our strongly held beliefs and opinions are the truth we fall out of harmony with others. We lose the ability to compromise, to grow, and to get things done. We see this in our government and in our churches.

 

 

In college I took a year off to live with a community of Benedictine Monks. I learned a lot about balance from these brothers. The Benedictine motto is, “Prayer, Work, Study.” These three are kept in balance. You are instructed to not do any one of them for too long.

 

The daily life of Benedictines is schedule around just enough pray, work, study and recreation to keep a balanced life.

 

 

I will always remember spending time with one of the Monks, Fr. Tom. We would sit and discuss theology and the life of the Church. Just as we were really getting into the conversation, Father would stand up and say, “Let’s go clear some brush,” or “Let’s go paint those chairs.”

 

 

 

 

 A life out of balance is a life out of harmony. This Trinity Sunday we contemplate the mystery of God in Three Persons. One way I understand this mystery is to think of God as Harmony. God is not an “it.” God is pure being. And in God’s being we find a perfected Harmony. In God we find Creation, Redemption and Sanctification all in perfect balance.

 

 

In the end, the Holy Trinity is incomprehensible and uncreated. This is hard for us to understand because we are not used to perfect harmony. We are more used to defining things and then getting those definitions put in place. We have a hard time with this because in our cultural context we worship science and technology. Everything is explainable, right? There is no room for mystery.

 

 

Jesus tells us, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit comes he will guide you into all truth.” So this relationship we have with God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is something that unfolds for us overtime. We begin to comprehend the nature of God’s Being when we learn how to find harmony in our lives.

 

 

We are in the right Christian Tradition to learn about the ins and outs of a balanced approach. Anglicanism has always been about finding balance. We are a Reformed Catholicism. We have both Protestant and Catholic traditions and theology within one body. It is hard to explain this balance to others. We live in a culture that asks, “Are you Catholic or Protestant?” And we Episcopalians answer, “Yes.”

 

 

The Anglican motto is, “Via Media”, the Middle Way. We are not going to choose between the human invented categories of Christianity. We are going to take the best of all of it and try to create a synthesis, a harmony.

 

 

And while we are very proud of this we also know how hard it is. Anglicans have been fighting with each other over doctrine and liturgical practices since the 1530’s. Because we are trying to live in a balanced way we are always in danger of letting something fall away. Some of us are in danger of becoming more Catholic than the Pope.

 

 

Others of us are in danger of being so Protestant that we forget our Catholic heritage. And then there is that third group who are always in danger of worshipping the value of inclusiveness and comprehensiveness so much that we have no foundation to stand on.

 

 

Working for balance is hard. But working for something that is difficult is a good thing. As St. Paul writes to the Church in Rome, suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character. It is easy to pick one way of being, seeing or doing. But there is no wisdom in living this way. We never grow up in Christ if we are never being challenged to look at things differently. There are things now that we cannot understand but if we give our life over to Christ, the Holy Spirit will come and teach us.

 

 

A life of balance leads to a life of wisdom. Wisdom is of God. And as we hear from the Book of Proverbs, Wisdom has always been. She waits for us on the heights, beside the way, at the gates and at the cross roads.

 

 

When we learn about balance which leads to harmony which leads to wisdom then we become in our hearts and minds what we worship with our lips.