Guided Meditation for the 106th Annual Council of
The Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta
Friday and Saturday, November 9 and 10, 2012
The Rev. Stuart Craig Higginbotham
I remember when I was in college back in Arkansas, having a dear Pentecostal friend of mine tell me about a revival service she once attended. Don’t you love revivals? Just hearing about it made my eyes get wider! She told us about how she and her parents were there as the ushers came around with the plates. They didn’t have those polite bags with the handles that I have seen in some churches. You know the kind I’m talking about: the ones that let you fake it just by sticking your hand in there and acting like you’re putting in money when you know you really aren’t.
No, they had the plain old wooden offering plates, the ones you can see in and watch!. So they passed these down the pews as the preacher stood up there and stirred everybody up. After a few “Amens” and a couple of “Hallelujahs,” the preacher looked at what the ushers had brought forward. He sent the plates back around again after sharing a few thoughts with the congregation about what it meant to give. Looking back on that now, I think, “Not a bad idea!”
Teryn said by the time that it was over, her mother had put in her own wedding ring and other people had put in not only more money but car keys as well! As the ushers brought the plates up that last time, they not only had the money that clinks and folds, but also rings, watches and other jewelry and even a couple of Chevys and a Ford pickup truck!
The Lord loves a cheerful giver, Indeed!
I thought about that story as I prepared this meditation, because I began to wonder about how we really understand our call to make an offering to God. And, not only what it means to give but how we decide what to give. Even with an offering as radical as what my friend described, as I reflected on it, I realized that it was still external. You can give more money, you can give your jewelry, and you can even give your pickup truck. And then you can get more of those things to replace what you have given, to fill in the whole of discomfort that you temporarily experienced.
As disciples of Christ, we are called to give something more, to give something that is not external to who we are. We are called into the deep space found in a prayer of oblation. The writer of Ephesians once said,
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us,
a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God
(Ephesians 5:2),
Now, that’s a pretty radical image: be imitators of God and live in love as Christ loved us. And, how did Christ love us? Christ gave himself up for us. He gave himself, not something external to himself…
You see, giving outside of yourself isn’t radical at all when you consider that we are called to give our entire selves. We are called to give it all… We fixate on externals all the time, and we don’t even see that they aren’t even the most radical piece of our practice of faith. A prayer of oblation is not about giving things. No, it is about giving our selves, our whole selves, over to the purpose of the Spirit.
Oblation is radical. We use this word in Sunday School sometimes when we are exploring the different types of prayer. But, my experience is that we skim the surface mostly because, honestly, this one puts us on edge just a bit. There’s something about Oblation that’s a bit weird. It’s a strange word, and there’s something about it that’s not quite….tamable or able to be domesticated.
Oblation IS about seeing the visible bread and wine brought forward for the Eucharist, but it doesn’t stop there. Oblation is also about taking that next step and seeing that the bread and wine do, indeed, represent us, our selves, brought forward, blessed and transformed by God’s graceful Presence among us and within us. Oblation invites us to surrender our selves to the Spirit’s purpose.
We live in a world that is chronically self-centered. We are surrounded by a culture that, instead of encouraging us to lose ourselves in a greater purpose, screams at us to seek out success, fame, popularity, riches, the next big thing, the biggest and the greatest. But we are called to something more than a mere standing ovation; we are called to be a Standing Oblation, a living sacrament shining a light in a broken world.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us,
a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians 5:2
One more thing: I did Google “Oblation,” last week. And, in the middle of the “churchy” definitions was a reference to a medical procedure. It turns out that this procedure’s name is sometimes misspelled. I have known of people who have had “heart ablations,” (with an “A” instead of an “O”) but I had not given it much thought—until I read what this procedure does.
It turns out that, when a person’s heart is out of rhythm, as one resource described, energy can be applied to the heart to bring it back into its natural rhythm, where it is functioning normally and in a healthy way.
What an image for us to consider as we continue to grow and discern as a diocese: how can energy be applied to our own hearts so that they are brought back into a deeper rhythm of how the Spirit is calling us: to move beyond the externals and see the claim of God upon our whole lives.
Holy One, bring our hearts back into the deep rhythm of your purpose and open our eyes that we might see your claim on our whole lives. Give us grace and courage to lean into that call, to let go of those things which we hold up between You and us. May we enter more deeply into and be empowered by that Greater Self, that Presence of Christ that offers us true grace and hope. In the Spirit of Christ we pray. Amen.
