Saturday morning- María Yi Reyna, Cuba Yearly Meeting

María Yi Reyna, Cuba Yearly Meeting, addressed the Triennial during worship on Saturday 18th August 2007 as follows:

‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffers long and is kind. Charity envieth not, charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, does not think evil. Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth, but whether there be prophecies they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease, whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.’
1 Corinthians 13: 1 - 8

Let us sing the hymn ‘Alleluia’.

I have been singing for a long time, but not speaking! So I want to say good morning, Friends. I want to thank God, I want to thank the World Committee and I want to thank my Yearly Meeting, which I represent, that I am here. My passport had been sent, was sent back, and finally the word arrived that I could come. Now it is almost time to say good‑bye, but we continue seeking: ‘follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts especially the gift of prophecy.’ I invite you to pray.

Dear Lord, we come weighed down with our tiredness and our worries, but also with our joys today. Now we want to listen to Your voice and may Your word be life for our lives. Please show Yourself to us today. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

We are always looking for things in life - company, work, health, food. It is as if everything was going to run out all at once, and we do it for ourselves many times. In our churches, we don't keep good order and sometimes we don't even know what we are looking for. What's even worse, we don't know or sometimes are even indifferent to what others come seeking, thinking that our extraordinary actions imply holiness.

So the first point that we want to think about today is that Jesus knows when we are spiritually indifferent persons. I believe that there is no small number of people in our countries who think that not doing anything bad is enough to satisfy God. Jesus urges the church to abandon our tendency to spiritual omission. God knows when our offerings are motivated by selfish interests, when we sit in a particular bench or pew in the church in order to be noticed or when we raise our hands in a mechanical way, when we read the Bible just in order to fulfill our daily obligations or when we pray beautifully, but with no passion, when we look at the poor with disdain and at the rich with interest. God knows all things and wants to cure us of indifference! God affirms that He does not look indifferently on our spiritual coldness, and tells us that His heart is sad because we do not live in the wholeness that existed in the beginning of time. Often we feel proud of having obtained wealth through our own efforts. This is when Jesus also knows that we are people who are spiritually arrogant. A church that prospers materially outwardly can easily fall into the trap of thinking that outward prosperity is the measure of its spiritual prosperity. We humans build our identities based on models.

In John 14:12, the evangelist tells we are capable of performing the same work that Jesus did. Mark reveals that Jesus came from a humble background. Some passages in the Gospels tell us about the social level from which Jesus came. He began His ministry in Galilee, His fame spread throughout Galilee. He cast out demons and preached, He promised His disciples before his crucifixion that He would also appear there. In the process of warming up our spiritual lives, we pass through the life and example of our Master. If we don't rid ourselves of our obsession with material wealth, we will never have time to dedicate ourselves to building a healthy spirit. Dedication to our neighbour, especially to those afflicted, is absolutely necessary.

But there are signs that could help us avoid being deceived: what are those signs? They are the signs of love, of service, of sacrifice, of respect for the opinions of others in many cases, those of the truth. Christ is wherever we can see the signs - the marks of the nails. From Jesus we receive advice to be more merciful; however bad a community may be, there is still light in it, not through its own merits but because of Jesus' mercy. He is always ready to correct, to forgive and to welcome. The church is a project that was created in the heart of God. Jesus corrects us when we tread the path of a cold uncompromising spirituality.

Let's look at our third point - the lack of commitment of the churches of today.
People experience their spirituality at one extreme or the other. Some are interested in praying, fasting, living deeply mystical experiences with the spirit of God even though this may not result in loving service in solidarity with our neighbours. It is inconsistent to seek the power of the Holy Spirit unless this goes hand in hand with commitment to nature and to our fellow humans. We must complement it and guide it towards the help of the planet Earth. The problem is not one of seeking the gift of speaking in tongues, which is perhaps one of the most mystical experiences of Christianity; rather, it is in the separation of this search from commitment to the transformation in the society in which we live. On the other side are those who completely leave out such experiences and only concentrate on social action. The mystical life, without a loving commitment to nature and to the human race, is pure vanity. Social action without the warmth of the Holy Spirit of God in our hearts leads to nothing. Either the two experiences must intertwine in a way that they complement each other or we will never enjoy genuine spirituality in our churches. The healthy alternative is found in the word ‘wholeness’.

When we do things - either inside or outside of the church - based on love, it is because we have grown in the Spirit to the point that Jesus continues to be our first love. When we do things just to be doing them, to support the institution or the denomination, or when we are seduced by numerical growth in the church or fame or the status to be gained in the city, or for other reasons of this nature, our motives are impure or misguided. The church is born, grows and develops, and runs the risk of doing things for their own sake, day after day, Sunday after Sunday; worship becomes just more worship service; the preaching is merely one more sermon that may or may not please people. I think that this process is similar to what we experience when we first come to know the Light. We encounter Jesus, and we are filled with new perspectives that lead us to a life filled with passion for the Master. Over time, we can grow cold, lose our motivation and no longer do the things that we were doing at the beginning of our walk with the Lord. It may be that things are becoming routine because we have gone cold and our own actions are just routine. In part, this explains the disillusionment many people feel towards institutions and churches which are more concerned with maintaining what they have already gained rather than stretching themselves to gain something new. Repentance in this case means returning to the acts of love that were present when it all again. The Apostle Paul urges us to this repentance, through I Corinthians 13: 1-8 which we read earlier.

As Quakers, we are living in a time when this exhortation is very relevant for us. I don't mean to speak of any country in particular, but I can't forget about the things that are happening in my own country. Marketing, turning sermons into theatrical presentations, competition between churches, manipulation of the masses of people, turning faith into a spectacle - all these tends to undermine Christian love, motives and ethics. As a result, the means of success for these churches will turn into the reasons for their failure eventually since all these things one day will go out of style - they become obsolete, worn out, ‘but love abides’.

The first purpose of the church is to love God with all our hearts: ‘the church exists to worship God’. Jesus invites us into a relationship of intimacy. Even when the church is in a cold deplorable state, Jesus stands at the door at the heart of each individual seeking to enter into Him. The image of Jesus at the door of our hearts, of our lives, awaiting the moment when we leave our isolation and indifference to dine with Him clearly illustrates the type of relationship that God wants with His church, an intimate relationship. One of the ways of achieving that is, precisely, through worship and that demands exclusivity.

These days there are many idols; many are devoted to money, to excessive worry, to selfishness or to things that should only be secondary to the reality of the sacred, but which end up being recognised as gods.

We know that worship is not confined to one location. But there is only one path for worship. Jesus, who worshipped the Father in spirit and in truth, there is only one path for worship - the path that Jesus walked. It was difficult because his path involved the Cross and involved the defence of those who suffered. Worship is a style of life. The Spirit is accompanied by loyalty, by truth. The Son died and He gave Him to humanity for love, for loyalty to life. The Father is interested in those people who worship Him with the same faithfulness towards human life that He had and that the Son of God has. God is Spirit, He is dynamism, He is love, He is surrender. He wants worshippers who worship Him in this way.

Today many people call themselves worshippers of God. They are people who are capable of raising their hands to the heavens, but not to their neighbour as a gesture of love. The experience of love is an experience with God and it should produce in each one of us the ability to love generously in the same way that each of us is loved. We must learn to love as God loved! We must learn to make our lives away of worship and of surrender to human life. Let us not keep the Lamb of God waiting. Let us open the door of our hearts and hearts of our churches so that the Son of God can come into dine with us. Let us enjoy the most delicious experience on the face of the earth: intimacy with God! A church that keeps its purpose of living a spiritually fervent and committed life does not sicken its Lord and Saviour. It blesses the life of its members and is seen as a challenge to the visitor.

Our churches in Latin America are present in all the levels of society, in the depths of the mountains and the jungles, in the country and in the cities. Everywhere there are communities, people of God, the houses of the Holy Spirit, centres of affirmation and the gifts that God has distributed as a blessing to all and they are called to be places of comfort and reciprocal help. The fact that the church is present in all of these places is a great blessing, but it also is a great responsibility. It is a blessing that puts us in touch with all sectors of society and in particular with the most poor and with the neediest. That is why we are called together as places of welcome, of support, of comfort, of hope and of sustaining people.

How many solitary people there are in the big cities; how many millions of people have left their homes in search of a better life in these cities? But sometimes they only find disappointment and loneliness. That is why we are there as faith communities, as communities of love to offer help to the lonely one, to listen and to share the experience of the blessed love of God. That is in the same way our continent is full of violence, starting in the bosom of the family and we must be of comfort to the ones that suffer. We need to speak to the tragedies that affect the health of the community - AIDS, drug addiction, things that isolate and discriminate and separate us.

As we reflect on the work of God in our daily lives, we must pay attention to what this reality means in our countries. Marked by constant news that warns us about ecological damage, it is evident that the deterioration of life is not only in the larger economic arenas, but also in the personal arena. Listening attentively to our daily lives means incorporating this reflection in the questions and the experiences and in the searches on these new subjects and scenarios. It means starting from the point of where people are, with real concerns and uncertainties in a world that is increasingly less meaningful for them. Our elders don't want to dream anymore or envision the future because it seems that the common denominator is productivity, and for agile leadership in the work of God they are not qualified anymore. For this desire for immediate results is what seems to be what counts. It is very troublesome to see in the congregations that they don't give an opportunity for ministry to children, to boys and girls, to youth, to people who are handicapped or different or to women or those who don’t have the theological preparation or to elderly men or women. In this way they are excluded just as they are excluded from the homes that they are fleeing from in search of the warm embrace of our congregations. But in the face of this reality, God presents himself with His love and this is a recurring theme in our sermons and in our daily devotions. The care that God has for His sons and daughters is manifest in them as a constant reason for praise and recognition. Our congregations are not sure of this reality of suffering and they ask themselves about the pain that accompanies their lives. Some needy souls look among the offerings in the religious marketplace for things that are convenient to them, such as salves, songs, liturgies, balms, sanctified earth, recorded sermons, all to help with the suffering and the pain.

What are Friends doing? We need to return to talk about mercy and love, not through inactive lives, but through our daily lives we need to witness to a daily life that is prophetic, that is revitalising. We must be prophets who denounce sin and announce love, but to do this requires great reflection on what that means. I give thanks that God has allowed this meeting the sufficient time to search for what is love and to frame our aspirations towards receiving spiritual gifts to announce the Good News of salvation. This Spirit of God urges us to be creative just as the flowers in some of our fields bloom after ten years of drought. That challenges us. A different view of reality can be seen in the daily things, in the path we walk, because, even with its difficulties, in our countries clear signs of the Kingdom of God are sprouting.

To conclude: our Meetings do not establish statutes and disciplines just to rule our internal lives, we also make statements appreciating human values and the community. They are readings that wish to be prophetic about social situations that challenge our Christian consciences. The images are varied - a people of God, a house of God, a body of Christ, the resting place of the Spirit - but they are all references to the presence of God and to the works of the Holy Spirit. In other words, any reference about being a church is necessarily a reference to its birth and life in God, to our identity and vocation in the Holy Spirit, in the permanent search for holiness, that gives testimony to the Holy God who sanctifies and who gives us the vocation of universality, that embraces all creation, and assumes responsibility for all human beings, carrying the message of the love of God in Jesus Christ. After this great event, let's not just keep this in our thoughts, but we need action, we need to commit and to be profoundly spiritual. Let him who has ears, let him hear.