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It is really quite lovely, the theme you have chosen to guide your activities in the coming days, the wonderful quality of service which, when cherished, acts to enlarge borders and strengthen the foundation. Because it must, it will.
And so, with a clear mission, we gather this morning not to see what Mind is unfolding for us, but to be what Mind is unfolding as us. We are not here to learn about service, but to be service, and so we begin with a clear mission as Jesus did. His mission was certain and He never varied from it. He announced it in many ways at many times. We remember, especially, these words: ". . . To this end was I born, for this cause came I into the world that I should be witness unto the Truth. . . ." (John 18:37).
He never faltered in completing His mission. When, in the garden at Gethsemane, he prayed: ". . . O my Father, If it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." (Matt. 26: 39). I like to think he was saying something like: I am in agreement with what we are doing, but if there is some other way for it to be done, I am willing. If no, let's go ahead. It is your way, not mine. The important thing is that it gets done.
Now, I am sure and so are you, that the thing that was "getting done" and that always has been done, is Love. And in the case of Jesus, an unselfed love.
How important that unselfed Love is. Mrs. Eddy points that out in the very first sentence in our textbook as she tells us, "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, a spiritual understanding of Him--an unselfed love." Not an unselfish love, but an unselfed one. One that is based on humility--on the recognition of God as the only true Selfhood. A love without a trace of personal sense, which leaves all to God with no need to provide a course of action or to outline an outcome.
But how easy it is for us to slip into the "What can we do?" mode of thought with the arrogance of self that says like a child in the highchair, "Me do it," and furthermore, "me do it my way!"
The disciples had a bit of a tussle with this, didn't they? It is recorded in John that they asked Jesus, ". . . What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?" (John 6:28). As you well know, His response went right to the heart of things: ". . . This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent" (John 6:29). Could He not have been saying, Look, this is your work: to believe in Him, to believe that He who sent me sent you, and that as My Father and I are one, so are you one with the Father and the Father, He does the works.
In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (456:22-23), our Leader writes, "Truth does the work, . . ." We are not the channel or the medium for God's work; we are God's work. Jesus didn't go around looking for a man to heal. He was healing itself. His very nature was one of service, not to mankind, but to God Himself and as such to mankind. Service to God is service to man. As we know, the light does not set out to remove the darkness, it just does. Because it must, it will.
And speaking of the light, my son and I were sleeping outside last month during the time of the full moon. I don't ever remember the moon being so glorious and bright. We mused that the brightness of this moon was being recognized and loved by people everywhere. Its magnificence was undeniable, its light astonishing. And yet as we know, the moon has no light of its own. It is complete reflection. I thought as I basked in that glorious light, that that was a way of thinking about unselfed love. The light shining, but having no light of its own. No ownership for maintenance, no authority for decision making, no responsibility for performance. In fact, the only thing the moon has to do is to show up, as Woody Allen used to say. "Just show up," and as we show up we, like the moon, fulfill our mission of service because our presence as the reflected light of God is expressed, and as Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 266 of the textbook, "Man . . . reflects the beatific presence, illumining the universe with light." (SH 266:28-29). It is not our light. The origin of that light is not in man, as it is not in the moon. It is in and of God. But how often the human self with the best intentions longs to shine, to be the authority, to be the responsible one, maybe even the adorable one. How easily the self is convinced that it knows not only what to do but exactly how to do it and others, though well meaning, just can't do it like it should be done. And if someone else does it, personal sense tells us that we are pushed aside, unwanted, and not appreciated because someone else is doing it! I don't think the moon cares about such things when it is just a crescent moon or even when it is not seen at all. I don't think it becomes impatient or unsettled when it waxes and wanes. It just completes its mission.
No personal sense there! Or here either. The sense of person with its own history, agenda, and mission must yield to the complete service of and to God. It is not service to self. The mission to serve God requires that we give up all resistance to this divine service. As Jesus dissolved the material personal sense of himself so we must dissolve the material personal sense of ourselves. Then we can more fully understand and appreciate our Leader's astonishing words: "The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fires from the ashes of dissolving self and drops the world." (Mis 1:16-18). How important are those dissolving ashes.
I am learning to bow my resistance before the Adorable One, the resistance that would cause me to hold on to that which calls itself Marjorie, that which argues for its own self with its opinions, evaluations, and above all, limitations. That sense which thinks it knows and knows what it thinks. Out of the dissolving ashes comes the knowing that is God's knowing and the fresh forms, which show a world more bright. A knowing that is far beyond human discernment or identity. As Mrs. Eddy puts it: "Christians rejoice in secret beauty and bounty hidden from the world, but known to God." (SH 15:25). This knowing comes from God alone.
I would now like to tell you about three experiences of service. In a way, we might call them "forms" of service with the last evidencing the ashes of dissolving self. I think you will find them quite interesting and telling. They are actually about the church service, which finally becomes the service of Church.
Some years ago, I was travelling in the Midwest of our country and on a Sunday morning, I went to a Christian Science church which had only a very few members. I was greeted at the door by a member who welcomed me and explained that they had no soloist and the order of Services in the Manual called for a solo--so could I please sing one. Well, I have a passable voice and am somewhat of a musician, so I attempted to sing the solo in compliance to the Manual. I can assure you that a very shaky, wanting-to-be-helpful and obedient to the Manual churchgoer sang the solo that day.
The second experience was not mine but was one belonging to one of my fellow church members. She had just completed a term as Second Reader and was visiting a church in her hometown in the southern part of our country. It, too, had few members. As she walked in, someone handed her the Bible and said "You need to be Second Reader so we can have the service. And there is no one else." Now, I'm quite sure that she read well and was quite happy to provide a service that allowed the church to happen.
The third experience is one which I experienced while I was living abroad. Having an opportunity to visit a small village outside of the city where I was living, I was told that there were a few Christian Scientists in the area holding services in the back room of the local tavern! Over a year and a half I went to this service about 6 or 7 times. The first time I went, I found my way to the back door, picked up a Quarterly from a table and entered into a small room with a few people sitting on benches in quiet prayer. I began at once to feel an all-encompassing sense of love and to feel absolutely encircled in divine goodness. So inspired was I that when I opened my Quarterly and read the neatly lettered penciled words clipped to that day's lesson "Today you will be the soloist," I was not at all shaken but realized that I wanted to sing. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to want to sing praises to God, the source and substance of that Love. I puzzled a bit about how this was to happen. I had no idea who the pianist was or even if they had one. I had no idea what I would sing. None of this seemed to bother me or anyone else. Everyone continued to pray. When it was time for the service to start, nothing happened. Some minutes later, a man walked to the desk and sat down. Then a bit later, another man sat down by him. A gentleman moved to the piano. I got up and gave him a hymnal opened to a hymn I dearly loved to sing. He nodded. They all continued to quietly pray and I continued to feel the most precious awareness of the presence of an all-embracing Love I had ever felt. At some point when the Reader sensed that all was in readiness, he announced the opening hymn. The service proceeded in an orderly way and I sang the solo with a feeling that we were not attending the service, we were the service. And we were. There was no doubt that the love of God was the reason for this meeting. And the form grew out of that Love, while it included the practical nature of "you have to read" sense of that southern church and the "Manual must be followed" sense of my first experience. This was the living palpitating presence of Church like I had never witnessed before. Each time I went to that church, I like everyone there received a penciled note, neatly written, saying "Today you are the . . ." When I was the usher I was perplexed because there was no one to usher. I had never seen anyone stand at the door before and so not knowing what to do, I sat quietly. Soon thoughts of welcoming love filled my consciousness and a steady stream of inspiring thoughts, which I recognized as divine, presented themselves, one after another, like members filing in the door in a steady stream. I, while sitting on that bench, felt a love which strengthened the foundation of church and enlarged its border until I understood that the congregation was the Mind of God and not individual persons. I never gave a Quarterly, took a coat, or helped find a chair, but through the consecrated prayer of those members I was ushered into the understanding that ushering was a divine service and I understood that church was the unfolding of God's love. I knew it was of God and not of Man.
When I was about to leave the country, I attended my last service there and I spoke to a woman about their way of Church. She stated that they could give everybody the same position, but they chose not to. They felt that each member grew in their understanding of Mrs. Eddy's church by experiencing the inspiration of Love's direction so that each member's sense of divine Love expressed itself in spontaneity and joy coming from the entire congregation operating as the Mind of God, not as persons holding to a position.
I believe that this was unselfed love in operation. When you walked into this church you had no idea what part you would play. You might be the reader, the soloist, the usher, or you might be the congregation. Regardless of the role, Mind was bringing forth its idea called Church, demonstrating what it is.
Man does not demonstrate Church. God does. There was no resistance to this idea.
But the interesting thing to me is that I do not think these people met ahead of time and decided to fill the service with Love. I think that their Love filled the service. I think all they did was to show up! But that showing up had with it the humility that was willing to leave all for Christ. To leave the fear of being thought foolish because they had no vocal training and couldn't really sing, the anxiety of knowing that they might have to read and they really hadn't understood the lesson or that they felt tired and uninspired from a tough week or that their sore throat might keep them from being heard, that they didn't much feel like welcoming folks because they might not feel welcome themselves, and so on. Their willingness to be at the ready, we might say, to do what was asked of them for God's sake and not the sake of the service, not because if they didn't read no one else would, or if they did not have a solo they would be disobedient to the Manual, but because they must, they did. And they must because they understood their relationship to God and that understanding must be demonstrated. Not through toughing it out or by pulling up their socks and doing whatever it was their duty to do, but because they were the humble servants of the one restful Mind. That Mind, both individual and collective, demonstrated itself as it always does. Truth does the work. This group's work is complete but not completed because Mind does not repeat itself and the fresh forms of dissolving self will continue to enlarge the borders and strengthen the foundation of service in their hearts.
You always fulfill your mission. Sometimes it seems that you won't get through the job before you, but you will always fulfill your mission if you start out by proving what God is and what He does for man. This was, of course, Jesus' mission. On page 26 of our textbook, Mrs. Eddy writes, "His mission was to reveal the Science of celestial being; to prove what God is and what He does for man." (SH 26:16). You are, as it were, the fulfillment of your own mission. Nothing can rob you of it, or of the fruits of your work, or of the evidence of your service, or of the fulfillment in all ways of your own life. You prove your mission by knowing that you are the expression of God, Love, forever filling its own mission, not through you, but as you. You just show up and shine as God's reflected light. But if you work from and for effects, you have started from the wrong place and the mission is yours and not God's.
Mrs. Eddy's mission was clear to her. And certainly she fulfilled. According to her own words: "I withdrew from society about three years,--to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Man that should take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative Principle,--Deity." (Ret. 24: 22). So similar to Jesus', isn't it? They both wanted to reveal what God does for man. Not what man does.
But most surely our service to God is also one to man. We cannot neglect our duty to mankind and it seems to me that if we do our duty to God by loving him supremely and our duty to our Leader by living Christian Science, then we do fulfill our duty to mankind. If we love God supremely, and live Christian Science with consecrated steadfastness, we are the reflected light that we saw in the moon and in the love of those church members. And that light knows no darkness because there is no personal sense to deflect it, filter it or obscure it--only unselfed love.
And we then may ask how can we recognize that unselfed love which is the impulse for our service.
I think that first of all we need to really understand the importance and need for dissolving the sense of a personal self and not just walking along with it, pacifying and coping with its assertions. It is not our mission individually or collectively to glorify the self. We need to be absolutely clear that we are not attempting to preserve, extol, or enrich our so-called humanhood or anyone else's. We are not in the business of becoming better human beings. We have never been a human being. We have never been born into matter. We were not somehow snatched out of the arms of divinity and taken captive and made to serve other gods. We are not dreaming and we have never been in the dream. The dream dreams itself.
Some of you know that I frequently tell of the woman who interrupted my friend's conversation with Paul Stark Sealy by saying "But Mr. Sealy, I am 80 years old." To which he immediately asked, "Who told you that?" What a thought-provoking response. Who told you that? Who told us about us anyway? Who defined that us which has never been us at all and that we are trying so hard to hold onto? It is, indeed, the divine Us that we recognize as our selfhood defined by the all-informing Soul.
Another thing we can do is to do what we have been repeatedly asked to do and stop outlining our healings and what should happen and when it should happen because we are holding to the Truth. Certainly we have the expectation of good, but the exact form that takes is up to God. To keep expecting the humanly normal as opposed to the divinely natural is to ". . . hold spirit in the grasp of matter, . . ." as our Leader has written (SH 28:6-7). But not just that, it holds us in bondage to the human expectation because it tends to keep us thinking and expecting the human sense of a working out. Our Leader writes about Paul and John's ". . . clear apprehension that, as mortal man achieves no worldly honors except by sacrifice, so he must gain heavenly riches by forsaking all worldiness. Then he will have nothing in common with the worldling's affections, motives, and aims." (SH 459:3-8). Do we want to be a good man or do we want the "stuff" which we think a good man gets? Riches, popularity, approval, and even immediate healings because, after all, we are praying, reading the lesson, and serving on umpteen committees in church.
Let's take a quick look at an experience a friend of mine had recently. This friend had been dealing with a challenging situation about place for quite sometime. Her husband worked in a foreign country and for numerous reasons it was not desirable that she move there with him. They tried various ways of being together but there seemed to be numerous roadblocks. There seemed to be great consternation and confusion in spite of their prayers. One day, my friend, who was here in the States and feeling a bit unsettled herself, received a call from her husband who was missing her and was feeling a bit depressed about the situation. She called him from her car, which she parked in the shade on a rather quiet country road. As she was listening to him she noticed a young man walking along with a very large backpack and another smaller one. In addition, he was using both arms to carry a large duffle bag. After a bit, she noticed he had to stop to adjust this load. As he walked past her car, she noticed military tags on his clothes and bags and a flight tag. She, at this point, recognized that he was returning from service. Suddenly, nothing else mattered to her because she was absolutely certain that this man was not to walk but to ride. She knew that his highest sense of service which lead him to serve our country was leading him right then to be on this road and that he could carry no burden. She knew that she would give him a ride, not as a person, but as Love meeting Love. At this moment a motorcyclist in full leather regalia, looking rather tough, came whizzing around the corner. He immediately stopped and began a conversation with the man who motioned as if to say "A ride? On a cycle?" They shook hands, the cyclist rode to a nearby house, entered and after a few minutes came out with part of his cycle clothes on and a Hawaiian shirt half buttoned, a big grin, obviously in a hurry to help this man. He loaded his bags in his car and off they went. Immediately the words of Hymn 258, "Standeth God within the shadow / Keeping watch above His own." came to my friend. She saw that this man started out on this road not knowing a ride, maybe two or maybe even three, would be there for him. But Love knew. Love always stands in the shadow keeping watch. That shadowy part which is unknown at the time we start our journey becomes the light on our path as we begin to move. Sometimes you really don't know how it will play out but you don't really have to know. All you need to know is that God knows. You can trust His constant care. All you really need to do is to show up.
So, today, we have started on a journey to understand how we who serve become the service. We are reminded that a few members served church with such unselfed love that they became the service. We saw how a troubled woman talking to her troubled husband gave way to an unselfed, impersonal love that recognized in herself light within those shadows. The light, which lit her brother man's way. She didn't need to do anything. There was no desire to be the one who helped, no ego to be assuaged, no "me do it," no "What can we do to do the works of God?" Just the all-encompassing knowing that God is there keeping watch above his own. That my friends, is unselfed love. And we do it because we must. Because we must, we can.
Peter Henniker-Heaton said it quite well in his poem "Capacity."
God requires the utmost farthing paid,
His will completely done;
Therefore our hearts may answer unafraid
Because we must, we can,
We can see fresh forms from the ashes of dissolving self, we can see ourselves as the humble servant of the restful Mind, and in so doing we can touch the universe of unselfed love.
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