Seminar | I. “Contemplatives in the Heart of the World” | Bill Haley

On the first Sunday of the next five months, we will share a series of talks Rev. Bill Haley offered Christ Church Austin during a retreat they hosted entitled “Spiritual Formation for Kingdom Action.” Taken together, these talks offer a powerful invitation into an integrated and transformed Christian life. In this first talk, Bill introduces the Christian contemplative tradition and makes the case for its ongoing relevance in the 21st century.

View Our Full Archive of Soundings Seminars

Explore the Full Archive of Bill’s Sermons

inthecoracle.org  |  @inthecoracle

Transcript

Drew Masterson: 0:16

Hello and welcome to For the Journey, a podcast offering formation and inspiration to Christians longing for more of God in their lives and in the world. For the Journey is presented by Coracle, a ministry committed to inspiring and enabling people to be the presence of God and the brokenness of the world through spiritual formation for kingdom action. We want to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God so that you can go further into the world with God's loving, healing, redeeming power. For the journey is a space where each week we hope to help you encounter God and live a more integrated life of faith in the world by offering a regular rhythm of reflections, guided spiritual practices, thoughtful conversations, and more. On the first Sunday of the next five months, we will share a series of talks Reverend Bill Haley offered Christ Church Austin during a retreat they hosted entitled Spiritual Formation for Kingdom Action. Taken together, these talks offer a powerful invitation into an integrated and transformed Christian life. In this first talk, Bill introduces the Christian contemplative tradition and makes the case for its ongoing relevance in the 21st century. Here's Bill.

Rev. Bill Haley: 1:38

It's good to be with you. It's good to be near you. Thanks for letting me be with you. I'm excited to be here because of you. Because so much of what you're doing is an incarnation of two of my deepest longings that I've been pursuing for, I think it's safe to say, my whole adult life. So many things that you're doing that I do or have done or want to do more of. This first longing is under is to understand and to explore and try myself to live an integrated life for my own sake and also for the sake of others. This demonstrates that you're exploring what I've been exploring for many, many years. And let me just read it's a phrase that comes right out of Scripture. This is from Colossians 1, starting at verse 15. It's all about Jesus. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. And frankly, I think we should pray, don't you, since he's with us? So let's talk to him. Jesus, thank you very much that you're with us. Thank you for this. Thank you that you are God. And the image of the invisible God. And even as we read this passage about you, we can't help but pause and just say, thank you. We're with you, you're with us. Amen. So Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and here it comes, and in Jesus all things hold together. In Jesus all things hold together. And so my mind says, okay, how does it all hold together in Jesus? Because there's an awful lot of all out there. How do beauty and brokenness relate? How does suffering coexist with the sublime? How does what is gorgeous coexist with the grotesque? How does the spiritual discipline of silence relate to what's going on in Syria? How does prayer relate to Palestine? How does the country relate to the city? How does discipline relate to grace? How does Jesus relate to genocide? How does contemplation relate to action? How does the ecclesia, the church, how does the ecclesia relate to economic disparity? How does community relate to solitude? How does Bach relate to brokenness? How does work, how does my nine to five relate to the mission of God in the world? How does eating relate to worship? How can community navigate both marriage and singleness? How does the contemplative life relate to the urban environment? What's the relationship between changed lives and a changed world? What's the relationship between spiritual formation and kingdom action? So this list that's just a very short list of a very, very long list of how do all things hold together? And the best way to explore how it all holds together is not by thinking about it only and trying to figure it out, but rather by thinking and then living and then thinking some more and talking and praying and then living some more, trying to figure out the right questions and then live into whatever the answers are and just go where it all leads. Right? I've been I've been for some reason in my life unwilling to let go of anything that was true. Rather, I want to see if these things are both true, I want to see how they they hold together. And more importantly than just figuring it out so that I can know, much more importantly than that, figuring it out so that then I can live some sort of response to it. And that's what you all have been doing for a while now. So the second longing, so this first longing that I feel like we share based on the little bit that I know about you, is this longing to figure it out how it all holds together, these things that are seemingly disparate. The second longing that I feel that has a deep resonance with your longing is this, and it's not unrelated to the first, and that is this it's holding two things in tension and trying to live a faithful response to them both. Trying to hold two things in tension and trying to live a faithful response to them both. And these are the two things the reality of the world and the reality of Jesus. I've been to a lot of countries now, and I could tell a lot of stories. From Bolivia to Peru to Israel, Palestine, to Nepal, to Congo, to Sudan, to Darfur, to what sometimes feels like a third world country, and I'm not kidding, your capital, the inner city of Washington, D.C., which has the social indicators of things like child malnutrition and infant mortality and homelessness and uh drug addiction that rival third world countries. I'm not kidding. I've been to Thailand, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, Russia, lots more. And in the coming weeks and months, I'll finally have some stories to tell from China, where I've wanted to go for a very long time, and Burma, where I've also wanted to go for a long time. And I am confident, um, I know there's lots of stories from Guatemala, and I am confident that there are stories that you have from all around the world that you could tell as well. Stories that have shaped you, stories that have created your questions. And frankly, you don't have to go around the world to have some of those questions emerge. All you have to do is spend some time looking at things in your own town that a lot of people don't want to look at. There's one country, though, that especially captures my imagination and has formed me, and that is India. Has anybody here ever been to India? So you know what I'm talking about, right? There is nowhere in the world quite like India to observe the vast scope of the human experience and to see up close the best things that human beings have to offer and to experience, but to see as close as that, as on broad display as that, the utter horror that some are forced to live in and that some force others to live in. So other countries, no doubt, will have the same range of disparity between sheer beauty on the one hand and dreadful realities on the other. But no other country has them on display on such a massive scale. India is the distillation of the human experience, all in one country, partly because there are so many human beings living in one small place. Um India now has a population of over, it's it's close to 1.2 billion people living in a country one-third of the size of the United States. Three times as big population-wise in a country one-third the size. So you could fit all of India. Do you guys even think about what's east of the Mississippi here in Austin? Is that on your screen? Okay. Um uh good, good to know. If you take the eastern part of the country from the Mississippi going east, you could fit all of India in there. And can you imagine 1.2 billion people living in that space? It's quite remarkable to think, isn't it, that one, basically one sixth, one in every six people on the globe is Indian. You ever thought about that? It even gets a little bit more amazing to me, anyway, when you think about China, right? Again, 1.2 a little bit more people. So one in six people on this globe is Chinese. Put those two together, and one in three people on this globe are either Indian or Chinese. And I think this is one of the reasons, certainly for India, but also for China, of why these two countries especially have been on my screen for so long, because when it says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever would believe in him should not perish, but would have everlasting life, huh? A big chunk of the world is India and China, right? And uh, and so I've thought, you know, Bill, if you're gonna say that you have a heart for the world, then you also need to have a heart for India and China. It's just a lot of people live there. Um, India has a long history. Um Isaiah and Jeremiah were prophesying in Israel, Buddha was sitting underneath the bow tree in northern India pursuing enlightenment. Isn't that wild to think about? At the very same time, at the very same time, India has a long religious history. Hinduism is 5,000 years old, which is 1,000 years before God called Abraham out of Ur in Genesis 12. It's just a fascinating place. It's so beautiful with the colors and the culture, the animals and the rivers and the mountains and the tropics and the food, and of course the people. Just a gorgeous, gorgeous place. But but it's so awful. It is so awful. Poverty, grinding poverty, slavery, and it's slavery, sex trafficking, prostitution. In Calcutta, where I've spent a good amount of time, there's a the red light district is called Sonagatchi Street. It's actually more than one street. It's a series of many blocks, actually, that form basically the red light district of that that that place. And um I won't get into all the details about how people end up there who end up there, but it's very disturbing to learn that the very first mention of Sonagatchi Street being a red light district, of in which both the bodies of women and girls, children, are trafficked, it's very disturbing to think about when you learn that the first mention of it being a red light district was written in a British tourist guide in 1873. 150 years at least, of this place being that kind of place. It's almost unthinkable. You know, the human toll of something like that. That India India represents in many ways the reality of the world, and one city in particular typifies India, and it's the city of Varanasi. Um, where do you want to die? Jerusalem, right? Um if you are Muslim, where do you want to die? M Mecca, yeah. If you're Christian, where do you want to die? Texas. That's I was I was hoping that was gonna be the answer. Yes. If you're a Hindu, if you're Hindu, you want to die in Varanasi, which is in the north part of the country, because um the the the belief is is that if you die in Varanasi, your reincarnation cycle will be stopped. Okay? So if you've got bad karma, which is gonna send you back in another life as something less than a human, then you definitely want to die in a place where your reincarnation cycle is gonna stop, don't you? And so, Varanasi, the holiest city in the Hindu religion, is a city of death, actually. Where you come into it, a city of several million people, and so many of them have come there literally just to wait to die. And so they have buildings that are sort of set apart just for people to basically stay in small rooms until they pass. And then the river Ganges runs right through it, which of course is a holy river, right, for the Hindu religion. And all and um uh Hindus generally don't bury, they burn, right? And so all lined up along the Ganges River are funeral pyre after funeral pyre after funeral pyre after funeral pyre of just bodies being burned and burned and burned. And so you see bodies being carried through the streets on the shoulders of family while they take them down to the river to burn the bodies. And if you are um pure, according to the Hindu religion, which means uh a person who has not yet been intimate, a woman that has not yet been intimate, or a holy man or an infant, you don't need to be burned. They just throw your body into the Ganges River. And so when you take a water taxi from one side of the river to the other side of the river, it was not uncommon to literally have a corpse wash past you. It's a city of death. It's awful. It's one of those places where evil is palpable. I'm sure some of you have been in places like that. So I was there in Varanasi going, wow, if this is what Hinduism has to offer, you know, set against the backdrop of the brokenness of the country and the what what is perpetrated in that country. If this is what Hinduism has to offer as a culture, I'm not so sure about that. And I took a 24-hour train ride all the way to Calcutta to see something very different. What do you think I saw? That's right, Missionaries of Charity and Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa lit on the world screen in the mid-70s when a British journalist named Malcolm Ruggerage brought her to the world scene by writing a short, uh, short book about her called Something Beautiful for God. And uh and Mother Teresa truly was something beautiful for God. I've often said I'm grateful to have been walking on the globe at the very same time with at least four people. Like somehow, somehow I feel graced that I get to share the planet with these four people. Um, my wife, Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, and Bono. You know, my life is just better for having shared a little bit of existence with all those folks. Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa changed my life. But interestingly enough, it wasn't in the slums of Calcutta that she changed my life. Rather, it was in a gorgeous, hoity-toity, fancy schmancy ballroom in Washington, D.C., at the Washington Hilton. She was speaking, I believe it was 1994, at the National Prayer Breakfast, and she gave a very famous talk there. Um it was amazing. Mother Teresa, I took, I was a communications major in college, um, and of course went to seminary and learned all about preaching and stuff like that. And so I kind of have some sense of what makes for a good speech and what doesn't, what are the rules you ought to follow and which ones you don't, right? And Mother Teresa literally broke almost every rule in the book. It was amazing. It was, it was, on the one hand, one of the worst delivered speeches I've ever heard, except that it was by far the most powerful speech that I've ever heard, and it changed my life. I mean, just as an example of how she broke the rule, I mean, do you remember how small she was? Do you even know? She was like 4'10 or something. Very, very small. And so um, so when she came, when she finally found her way to the podium, she wasn't sitting at the head table with the president and the vice president and with uh a Supreme Court justice and with a couple of senators. She wasn't sitting at the head table, that wasn't her style. She was actually sitting back in the kitchen because that was her style. And so finally she found her way through these gigantic curtains, you know, to find her way to the head table. And, you know, you literally, for about 30 seconds, you just see the whiffling of curtains, you know? And she finally comes out, and Bill Clinton was the president, then everybody stands, gives her a standing ovation. Bill Clinton's a tall man. Mother Teresa's a very short woman, and so she comes out, and she comes out, and literally you can't see her. You can't see her behind the podium because she's so short. So they hustle and they run and they go find a box. And so there's kafuffal all about that. And then when she finally gets up on the box, you know what she looked like then? Like that. You know? Um, and then, you know, there are other ways that it just wasn't a great setup for her, but like I said, it was the most powerful speech I've ever heard, and it changed my life. Now, that speech that she gave is remembered for her comments about abortion, um, which were impressive given the audience. But those were not the words that changed me. Two phrases in particular. One, um, she said, said, sometimes people ask me, Mother Teresa, how is it that you've loved the poorest of the poor for so long? And she said, I don't even understand the question. I'm just loving my husband. And I thought, I grew up in Wheat, I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois. Um, some Christians would want to die in Wheaton, Illinois, not one of them. Um for a very long time, it was kind of the mecca of evangelicalism in our country until Colorado Springs took up the mantle. Um But I grew up in, I grew up in a I grew up in a solid Christian home, went to a solid Christian college, um, had been to seminary, was in seminary Gordon Camell at the time, um, had read a ton of books, been to a lot of church, um, and I had never in my life ever refer hear hear somebody refer to Jesus as my husband. And I thought, this is a whole different world about a way of being in relationship with Jesus that I don't know anything about. But then here's what she really said that that just was so compelling to me that I said, if I ever get the chance, I'm gonna go see I'm gonna go see what this is about. So Adrian, there should be a quote up there. She said this she said, we must be contemplatives in the heart of the world. We must be contemplatives in the heart of the world. It's part of a longer quote. She was saying, we are not social workers, talking about missionaries of charity. We may be doing social work in the eyes of some people, but we must be contemplatives in the heart of the world. There's something to hold intention, isn't there? A contemplative is simply somebody who is seeking union with God. That's all. There's a sense in which every one of us in this room is a contemplative. Because all of us want to experience deeper union with God, right? All of us want to sit at the feet like Mary, right? And hang on his words. All of us want to reflect on the love of God for us and let that change us, right? That's all a contemplative is. And Mother Teresa is saying we must be those sorts of people right in the heart of the pains of the world. And for her, of course, very famously, she started her work in the home for the dying, which you just heard how I described how Hindus died in Varanasi, right? Alone. You know, almost animalistic. Um, and in Calcutta, even worse so, in the gutters. Um, you know, the and and Mother Teresa began her work by pulling people out of the gutters, taking them into a building that she had bought. Um, and even if they were to die, she at least wanted to give them dignity and show them the love of God before they died. You know, it was it was the starkest contrast you can believe between the horror and the darkness and the death that I saw in Varanasi, and then a 24-hour train ride later, what I saw in the Home for the Dying with Mother Teresa. She was adamant about this vocation of missionaries of charity. She said, Our primary vocation is not to love the poor. She said, our vocation is to belong to Jesus. So one of the things I so much appreciate about uh your church and some of the things that you've done is how much emphasis you've you've put on being with folks who are uh on the margins of of society. I um and and interacting with with them and interacting with their needs. Um so the church under the bridge is gorgeous. I want to hear more about that, and I hope to. The urban garden for the homeless, gorgeous. You know, again, just things that I've also experienced. Um, Potter's House in Guatemala and whatever it is that you're doing there. I mean, I got this list from Cliff about some of the things that you're involved in. It's like, gosh, I want to know these people. Because they're holding some things in tension. But isn't it a gorgeous thing to think that actually the primary vocation of this church is not to do all those great things for others, but that your primary vocation is to belong to Jesus, and out of that becomes everything else. So hearing Mother Teresa in that hotel room in 1990, that ballroom in 1994, I said, if I ever get the chance, if I ever get the chance, I'm gonna go see what she's talking about. And God, you know, he does things the way that only God can do things. In 1995, that opportunity came. Um and I had an opportunity to travel uh around the world for 18 months, literally by myself, um seeing reality, asking big, big questions, and meeting God. And when that opportunity came up, um it really didn't matter where else I went. I put basically a pin onto Calcutta and said, that's actually my destination. And then it was just a long circuitous path to get there and a long circuitous path home. But I did get to I did I got to see it. And it was like what she said it was. And among other things, Mother Teresa's, well, among many other things, I suppose, but Mother Teresa's life and ministry set a certain course for my life. Um, and very much for my wife's life. I'll tell you about that in a second. So for 20 years almost now, uh, and still, you know, just trying to be a like you, trying to be a compassionate presence, by any means necessary, wherever it is that God has me, in whatever context we're in. So this might have looked like, as Cliff mentioned, um, the associate rector at the Falls Church Anglican, which is a big ol' Anglican church up there in Northern Virginia. Um, and uh for quite a few years, my primary responsibility for me was to take that gigantic, affluent congregation and try to lead us to a greater engagement with the poor in the city and the poor around the world. Um led to me working around the world with the most vulnerable poor in developing countries. You know, these trying to find a way of holding together the reality of Jesus and the reality of the world and seeing this modeled by somebody like Mother Teresa and so many others led to us rehabbing a house in this in this in the inner city of DC. Uh and you know, it was the house that we bought, man, when we bought it, it was awful. I'll tell you a little bit more about that tomorrow. Just awful. Again, just one of those places where evil is palpable, you know? And you don't even want to know what happened in that room. Stuff like that, and turning that into a place of shalom, um, which it still is, led to us meet uh planting a church in the inner city of DC and um where we um met in a homeless mission, the chapel of a homeless mission. Um again, there's so many similarities of some of the things that y'all have done and things that I've had uh opportunity to explore as well. And now, while I'm still with the Falls Church in some very meaningful ways, um now God has led my wife and family and I out into the country to start a sort of retreat center where we provide spiritual direction and um personal group retreats and stuff like that, and and trying to take care of God's good earth. And we started a nonprofit called Coracle, which enables us to do that and enables me to do stuff like this. Um But a better person to answer the question, how did Mother Teresa shape your life would be my wife. Um she uh came back to the United States and so inspired by how meaningful it was for people who are in distress to simply have loving, healing hands laid on them, she uh ended up getting her nurse practitioner's degree, specifically so that she could do poverty medicine, both in the inner cities of the United States and then also in the developing world. And so that's what she's done for a very long time now. So I suppose Mother Teresa really poured gas on the flames of that lifelong quest, holding Jesus and holding the world together, holding together this life of prayer, this life of action, trying to figure out how does it all hold together and then living? I've already mentioned in that long list of long list of things what we are talking about this weekend, and Cliff mentioned it as well. What's the relationship between changed lives and a changed world? What's the relationship between spiritual formation and kingdom action? Now, the operative word in this retreat, five words, right? Six words? Change lives for a changed world. Is that six words? Okay, thanks. Shall we do this together so that we all have it down? Change lives for a changed world. The operative word in that phrase is for. We are not talking about spiritual formation for my self-actualization. We're not talking about Jesus as a way to be a better me. For its own sake. We are not talking about changed lives for more comfortable lives. No. We are talking about changed lives for a very, very, very Good purpose, and that is a changed world. So, in other words, all that we're gonna be talking about this weekend, on the one hand, it's all about us, and on the other hand, it's not at all about us. Does that make sense? We're talking about we're talking about us becoming like Jesus for the sake of other people. So, yes, the world is beautiful, yes, the world is broken, and yes, you are beautiful, and yes, we are broken. These things we hold in tension. But brokenness is not the end of the story, it's not the end of the story either for the world or for us either. In God's design, there is an answer to a broken world, and it's broken people finding wholeness through Jesus, and then from that fullness offering the fullness of God in the world, whatever your world is. Family? Church? Austin? Inner city? Maybe it's the world out there, like we've been talking about, a little bit more global. Maybe your world is your marriage, or your friends, or your job. I know a very significant part of your world is your job. Maybe it's your school. In God's design, there is an answer to a broken world and whatever we encounter that is broken in our worlds, and that's people finding wholeness in Jesus, and from that fullness, offering the fullness of God in broken places. Yeah. In Christ, in Christ, all things hold together. In Christ, somehow it all can make sense. So that's what we're talking about this weekend. Changed lives for a changed world. Well, let's pray then. God, I'm so very aware that so very aware that the things that I would love to see happen this weekend that I cannot make them happen this weekend. So very aware that it's only by your Holy Spirit that we will have an encounter with you that will touch us, change us, encourage us in the deepest places. Strengthen us in our weak places. And I see these, your children, I see this, your family. And I see your love for them. I see your delight that they are here. And I just ask that you would send your Holy Spirit and power on us this weekend as we as we open ourselves up to you, as we open ourselves up to each other, would you come? Would you come? Show us the way. Give me the words, give us the questions, give us the discussions. Show us your Son, Jesus. So, God, please send your Holy Spirit to do just that. We have a lot of gratitude tonight. Thank you. Thank you for thank you for this church. Thank you for this place where we can be. Thank you for fun. Thank you for our bluegrass band. Thank you for food. Thank you for friends. Thank you for our families. You've been so, so good to us. And we thank you. And all this we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Drew Masterson: 33:55

Thanks so much for listening to For the Journey. We hope you'll join us again next week, and in the meantime, you can explore past episodes and see what we're up to at in thecoracle.org and on social media at in thechoracle. If you've been blessed by what you just heard, please subscribe as we'll be releasing new episodes each week. Please also rate and review this show and share it with others who might be blessed by it. For the journey is made possible by the generous support of our Coracle partners, the wonderful men and women who choose to support this ministry through their prayers and financial gifts. If you are one of our partners and are listening, we are so, so grateful for you. If you would like to join us as a sustaining partner, you can set up a monthly donation of any amount at in thecoracle.org slash support. The link is in the show notes. Our growing community of partners gives access to tailor-made resources, gifts, and events, and we would love for you to be a part of that. Our theme song is Mystery Hymn from our friends at Lowland Hum. Please give them a listen wherever you get your music. And so, friends, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen, and we will see you on the journey.