Pleasing God

The Rev. Sara Fischer

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Years ago, I had a spiritual director who gave me some good advice, which was given to him years before: when you go off to seminary to be a priest, have a prayer. What he meant by that was that as soon as I even made it known to anyone that I was thinking of going into the ministry, people would expect me to pray, at the beginning of meetings, at meals even if they were at other people’s houses, at the start of an adult ed class, at someone’s birthday party, or at someone’s bedside. When he said “have a prayer,” he meant that everyone should have at least one prayer that they have memorized that is appropriate for any occasion. The prayer he suggested was the collect for proper 19, the collect we prayed together this morning.

Well, some of you know that I can’t memorize anything word-for-word; that’s why our Episcopal Church is so perfect for people like me; it’s all written down! But I did spend time with this prayer, and I do consider it indeed a perfect prayer for almost any occasion.

O God, because without you we are not able to please you. What does this mean? Without you we are not able to please you. Think about the people we try to please in our lives: our bosses, our friends, our teachers, our parents, our children, our spouses. We do this in all sorts of ways. Often, when we are in the act of trying to please, it feels like this is a one-way street, that we are the ones who have to come up with exactly the right gift or the right words or the right action to bring about that other person’s pleasure. But it takes two, doesn’t it? You cannot please someone all by yourself. And so it is with God.

God gives us the grace to do what God asks us to do. This is the essence of faith, I believe. If you study the Sunday collect each week, or if you sit down sometime with your prayer book and read through them all (beginning around p. 159/211), you’ll see that this is stated in one way or another in every single collect. God gives us the grace to do what God asks us to do. God provides us with the strength to do God’s will. Without God we are not able to please God. This suggests that with God, we are able to please God. So what is it that God asks us to do? Ah, there’s the rub. Isn’t that one of “life’s persistent questions” (to quote Garrison Keillor’s Guy Noir)?

Today’s readings provide some clues.

Each of the readings tells us something about what God asks of God’s people: In the reading from Deuteronomy, God demands faithfulness and worship. And yet, God forgives unfaithfulness. It is the returning that counts. The psalm speaks to us about the importance of confession. God creates in us a clean heart; all we need do is ask. Paul’s letter to Timothy speaks to us about Paul’s own experience of conversion. If Jesus can save Paul—who persecuted the earliest Christians before they were even called Christians—Jesus can save anyone. Paul is a living, breathing, walking illustration of the words “without you we are not able to please you.”

In the gospel, God’s will for us unfolds in a couple of different directions. It all depends on where you place yourselves in Jesus’ audience. Are you one of the pharisees listening to the parable? Or one of the tax collectors and sinners who come to listen, although they are not normally welcome in nice company?

Most of us have moments in our lives when we criticize the company others keep, or pass judgment on someone’s behavior. What pleases God is for us to take on the heart of God, to ask God so to direct and rule our hearts that we might understand God’s joy at the company of those others might call sinners.

This is good news for us, because we all have our moments of passing judgment, excluding someone for one reason or another. It is also good news because, like it or not, most of us lose our way like lost sheep. What this gospel tells us is that it pleases god when we are found, when we allow the shepherd to bring us home. This story is truly an illustration of God’s grace; you’ll notice that neither the the lost sheep nor the lost coin does anything to get found; grace intervenes.

I’ll never forget a story I heard a coworker tell years ago. Her five-year-old daughter became very angry with her and decided to run away from home. The mom, my friend, didn’t try to stop her or call to her or even worry about her. She followed her out the door and through the twists and turns of their subdivision, staying just far enough away that her daughter didn’t know she was there, but close enough to know exactly where she was and what she was doing. When the little girl stopped and turned around, and there was her mother, waiting for her. The daughter ran into her mother’s open arms, and they returned home.

Faithfulness, worship, return, confession, conversion, and allowing ourselves to be found so that God can work all these things in us. These are the building blocks for discipleship, for being a community of disciples ministering together in God’s name. O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.

I’d like to close with a favorite prayr from the Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.