2/3/19 “Accepting the Anxiety of Being Incomplete” by Nancy Petty

Texts: Prayer of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Malachi 3:1-4

“Ahead of one’s time.” Merriam-Webster defines this phrase as, “too advanced or modern to be understood or appreciated.” The example Webster gives is: As a poet, he was ahead of his time. Another way to think about this idiom is that if someone is ahead of their time, they have new ideas a long time before other people start to think in the same way. I’m sure you know or have known someone personally whose life fits this saying.

For me, it was Bob Poerschke, one of my seminary professors and a member of this church until his death. Over the course of our relationship, first as mentor/mentee and ultimately as close friends, Bob would tell me a particular story numerous times. He would begin, “When I was young I wanted more than anything in the world to be a doctor.” From an early age, he would recall, he had his heart set on studying medicine and being a doctor. This desire fed both his inquisitive and curious mind and his compassionate and caring heart. But, as Bob would tell the story, his mother wanted him to be a minister – and if that wasn’t enough, she suggested that he be a foreign missionary. A faithful and committed Christian, Bob would say, it was her dream that her son would go into the ministry. He would recall to me that every time as a young boy he would express his interest in medicine, his mother would say to him, “But Bob, you’re going to be a minister.” Not wanting to disappoint his mother, whom he dearly loved, Bob followed a path to the ministry. However, eventually, his compromise was to be a professor at a seminary.

Bob was an extraordinary theologian, pressing his students and colleagues to think not just outside the box but beyond the box when it came to theology and faith. But if you spent any time at all with Bob, you learned quickly that Bob’s mind was that of a scientist. He could see things and know things and understand things about life and the universe that was so far ahead of his time. His questions and observations could jolt the most forward thinker out of their orbit. He would entertain complex theories and equations and philosophies that some – most of us – would label as “out there.” He embraced the unknown. He wasn’t afraid of the instability that comes with discovery. And he loved the process of letting new ideas gradually form into realities. I still have papers he wrote for the Grope Group about religion and science and space. He would have made an incredible doctor. He was, indeed, a man ahead of his time.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was also a man “ahead of his time.” Born and raised in Auvergne, France, he was a lifelong member of the Society of Jesus. He also studied physics, chemistry, geology, and paleontology. (Wonder what his mother wanted him to be.) He was a volunteer stretcher bearer in the First World War and received the Military Medal and the Legion of Honor. Following the war, he lived for many years in China and was a major participant in the discovery and classification of Peking Man. His academic distinctions included a professorship in geology at the Catholic Institute of Paris, and directorships of the National Geographic Survey of China and the National Research Center of France. Teilhard lived in New York City after the Second World War and continued his philosophic work there until his death. His is buried in the United States. Most notable, however, of his life is that during his lifetime Teilhard was barred by his religious superiors from teaching and publishing his philosophical and religious works because their content was perceived to be dangerous, borderline heretical. His manuscripts, which he bequeathed to a friend, were not published until after his death.

The prayer of Teilhard that is our text for today might just give us a hint as to why he was barred by his religious superiors from teaching and publishing his thought; and why he was a man ahead of his time.

Think with me for a moment about the construct that we have been taught to live in, even as people of faith. We have been taught to race to the finish line as fast as we can. We receive thousands of messages in our lifetime that tells us that life is about the destination – a partner and the 2.5 kids and a dog, landing that forever job that offers security, owning the dream home, taking that fantasy vacation, having the right number in the retirement account – I think it is up to 5 million now. We are guided from early adolescence to think about what we want to “be” and “do” when we grow up. Parents start charting the course when their kids are in elementary school for them to get into this private college or that prestigious university. We live for stability because we are told that instability denotes a flaw in us. We are taught that the round peg goes into the round hole and the square peg in the square hole and even when we are left holding a round peg with nothing but a square hole in front of us we try and force it believing that we can make what doesn’t fit, fit. We loathe the idea that we are incomplete people – still in the process of growing and maturing and taking shape. We focus on the destination of who we see ourselves as being. We have been told that the unknown is scary and dark and so we go toward the known even when we can feel deep inside that the known is killing our soul and our spirit.

The basic premise, I believe, of this societal construct is one of consumption. Consume as much as you can, while you can, for as long as you can. And this consumption goes beyond just consuming things. We consume life itself. We dance as fast as we can to get it all in. We stay up late and get up early living dependent on good ole cup-a-joe to get us through the day. Instead of walking in the meadow to smell the flowers, we buy them at the grocery wrapped neatly in brown paper bundled together by rubber bands with that little pouch of “stuff” that is supposed to keep them fresh longer. And I’ve never figured out what that stuff really is. We consume life at our convenience. And it seems the systems we live by are designed to promote this kind of consumption living. Go hard and fast gathering all you can at the greatest convenience possible. The world we have built depends on us to live this way – because this way keeps people off balance, easy to control, unconscious, just as religion has always been used to keep its subjects under control. And because we are all focused on consumption, we are distracted from the only thing we actually have – this very moment.

In a world that promotes this kind of construct, Teilhard writes this prayer:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually – let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. It may be the greatest spiritual challenge we face in the 21st century.

Like Bob Poerschke, we all have stories that are pivotal in our lives that we keep telling until the end. One of those stories, for me, I have told you about in at least three different sermons. It happened about six months into my ministry with you. I was working so hard as your minister of Christian education to get things all of our educational programs in order. Mahan Siler, then pastor and my supervisor, called me in one day to ask me how things were going. And I launched in immediately telling him of all the things I was working on and how once I got this in place and that in place and something else ordered and organized it would all be done. When I finally took a breath, he burst out laughing. He just looked at me and laughed. My heart fell and my eyes welled with tears. He noticed my embarrassment and said with compassion, “Nancy, you’re doing a good job but the sooner you learn that ministry is not something you can put into a pretty box and tie a bow neatly on top and say it’s done, the more you will enjoy this work. Ministry [he said] is messy, it’s never done, and most of the time we don’t get to see the outcome of our work. It is a work in progress, always incomplete.”

Accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. Mahan was trying to teach me this lesson years ago. And in many ways, the lesson still feels as hard today as it did 26 years ago. The anxiety of not knowing, the work of being patient when things are unclear, the courage to live through the stages of instability, the willingness to not force what tomorrow needs to look like, the wisdom to wait on the slow work of God and to trust God in the incompleteness of self is the hardest work that we shall ever do. And yet, in the fleeting moments when we experience the words of Teilhard’s prayer, we get a glimpse of what it’s like to live “ahead of our time.” To sit in the intermediate stages not needing to force anything but waiting patiently on the unknown to come into focus. To bless the instability that may be carrying us to something new and life-giving. To accept that we are still becoming even in death. Teilhard prayer transports us to that place where we can feel what it is like to trust in the slow work of God. And in that place, we find the grace needed for tomorrow.

If you are feeling impatient with life, wanting to skip the place where you find yourself, despising the instability you feel, ready to force a decision that still doesn’t feel quite right, and frustrated that you are not where you want to be in life, take heart this morning. Take heart because you are living a life of the spirit. Take heart and trust in the slow work of God. Individually and communally we are incomplete, always in process, being shaped by the refiner’s fire. This is our hope and our salvation. Thanks be to God for the grace that accompanies the journey.