A rumour was circulating in a small town church that the minister had been offered a position in a different church. One of the parishioners, a good friend of the family, went to the minister's home to check this rumour out. The door was answered by one of the children, who said her father was praying for guidance about whether they should stay or go. "Is your mother home, then?" the friend asked. "Yes," came the reply, "but she's upstairs packing."

When it comes to difficult decisions, some of us take more time than others. And some decisions are more difficult than others. Some of us agonize for months, while others flip a coin.

In the passage you just heard from Matthew, Jesus tells about a father who asks his two sons to work in the family vineyard. One says no, but changes his mind and ends up doing the work he was asked to do. The other says yes, but never gets around to it. The point of the story is that the important thing is not whether we pray God's will be done, which we do every time we pray the Lord's Prayer, but whether we actually do God's will. Jesus points to the tax-collectors and prostitutes who are responding to God's kingdom, joining the Jesus movement, while the holy people, the priest and elders, are resisting it.

In a spiritual sense, this story challenges us to go beyond simply praying to do God's will, to actually doing it. It is not enough to want to do God's will, to actually do it is where the rubber hits the road. But between wanting to do God's will and doing it, there is the 64,000 dollar question: what is God's will? What does God want for our lives, for our marriages, our families, our workplace, our communities, our congregation? Or, to put it another way, what is the highest good we can imagine in the concrete realities of our daily existence?

To know God's will is relatively easy at a general level. We know, most of us, that love is better than selfishness, justice is better than cruelty, kindness is better than apathy and hope is better than despair, in part because love, justice, kindness and hope are things that connect us to the heart of the universe. They are things that we believe God cares about.

It is when we get down to the specifics of everyday life that it gets confusing. In the muddle of marriage and family life, what specifically does love mean? In the struggles of a workplace, what does kindness mean? In the struggles over government priorities, what does justice mean? In the challenges of congregational life, what does hope mean?

In the fourth century, the monk John Cassian taught that the narrow way of faithfulness must avoid two dangers: on the left there is the way of carelessness and sluggishness; on the right there is the way of presumption and excessive fervor. When it comes to knowing God's will, the danger of presumption is to be so sure that we know God's will that we identify our own beliefs with those of God, falling victim to pride. The danger of carelessness is to fall victim to despair, thinking that it doesn't much matter, that we cannot know what the right thing, that God's will cannot be known or doesn't much matter. Between those two dangerous paths there is a middle way, a faithful way, the way of humble openness to God's leading, the way of discernment.

As a congregation, that is what we have been trying to do over the past year as we have been trying to discern whether we are called to become an Affirming Congregation: we have been trying to avoid the dangers of pride and carelessness in relation to this decision. And each of you, at different times in your lives will have to discern a way through a personal struggle in your family, your workplace or your community.

There is a tension in two of the readings we heard this morning. In Exodus, Moses is standing against the crowd, urging trust against their fear. He is a spiritual titan, drawing on his personal encounter with God as a source of inspiration and guidance, refusing to be influenced by the fear of the crowd. In Philippians, Paul holds up the theme of self-surrender, urging them to regard others as better than themselves, and to look not only to their own interests but to those of others. Much of discernment moves between that tension, between the deeply personal sense of call and conviction on the one hand and the need to live in relationship and respect the needs of others in our family and community on the other. Focusing on one at the expense of the other is unhelpful: to focus only on the personal call can isolate us not only from others affected by our decisions, but from sources of wisdom and insight we need for guidance. On the other hand, to take Paul's advice too literally and count others better than we are overlooks the ways in which God's spirit speaks to our spirits and offers guidance and insight.

Discernment comes from the Latin discernere, which means to separate or to distinguish. To discern is to distinguish God's way from other ways, to distinguish the narrow road less traveled from the wide way most people take, to distinguish the conventional path from the way of God's kingdom. Much of the time, discernment is not distinguishing between a purely good and a purely evil path. Most of us need little effort to discern those choices. The really difficult discernment comes when we are trying to distinguish between a number of choices, none of which are all good and none of which are all bad, but all include elements of both. In such situations, discernment requires a little more effort, a little more intentionality.

There is a long history in the Christian church of trying to help people learn to carefully discern God's way through difficult decisions. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit monastic order, taught a path of discernment that emphasized the use of the imagination, biblical images, and attention to our feelings. People involved in discernment took time to test matters, resting matters in their heart, looking for consolation, which leads toward God in pace, or desolation, which leads away from God in distress. Other medieval mystics taught that discernment can happen through seeking out our deepest longings, which are for God, and stripping away every other desire.

While the focus of the mystics and monks was on the individual discernment, Protestants emphasized the importance of communal discernment, offering guidance for gatherings to deliberate about important questions. The common theme is that the wisdom of a group is deeper than our individual wisdom, and that different perspectives are brought to a question when we share our experiences, feelings and convictions.

These various traditions about discernment have led to the development of a ten stage process of discernment for important decisions: Framing, Grounding, Shedding, Rooting, Listening, Exploring, Improving, Weighing, Closing, and Resting. Like any new process, this one can seem a bit complicated at first, but as it is learned, it becomes second nature, and you will find yourself using the pieces you need even without reverting to the whole.

Let's go through these one by one, using as an example, a woman who has been offered a new job with a different organization and is discerning what her response should be:

Framing - we commit ourselves to discerning God's will on an issue. This commitment frames the issue as one about which we seek guidance. So the woman discerning whether to take a new job might ask whether God is calling her to share her gifts in this particular context.

Grounding - we identify the values which will ground our discernment. It is helpful to articulate those values in a guiding principle statement. So for example: the job candidate might use as a guiding principle: "I will base my decision on whether I feel enthusiastic that my gifts and skills will be honoured and put to constructive use in an organization whose mission I support, and where I will be adequately compensated for my work." That guiding principle may need to be revised a number of times as the process goes forward, as addition issues come forward.

Shedding - we lay aside anything: ego, biases, assumptions, preconceived notions - that keeps us from carefully considering an issue. The job seeker might meet with some friends to discuss what changes in her life the new job might mean: it might mean a change in location or transportation issues; it might mean more money or less money, more status or less status. Such issues are important, but by naming them we are able to shed them and put them in perspective.

Rooting - we root our discernment in our spiritual and ethical tradition by intentionally calling to mind religious themes, biblical stories, moral teachings and deepest convictions. The job seeker goes for a walk with a friend who she trusts, and together they discuss the theme of call in the Bible and how it is related to her decision. That Sunday, in church, the congregation sings a hymn "Take My life and let it be, consecrated Lord to thee." That hymn provides a new focus for the decision she has to make.

Listening - we listen carefully to those who are impacted by the decision, and those who may have an important persepective, attentive for the voice of the Spirit in those other voices. At this point the job seeker speaks to her family, her friends and others impacted by her decision. She finds out as much as she can about the organization offering her the job and imaginatively considers the clients and coworkers with whom she would be working.

Exploring - we release our imaginations to consider alternatives consistent with our guiding principle. For example, in addition to the two obvious options of not making a change or accepting the other job, our job seeker might consider expanding her job search, retiring, going back to school, starting her own business, taking on volunteer work, or undertaking discussions with her current employer about ways she could find her current position more fulfilling.

Improving - we choose two or three options and consider ways in which they can be improved. The job seeker explores ways in which the two or three most appealing options might be made even better. Perhaps she considers taking additional training within her current organization or looks into small business loans to help her start her own business.

Weighing - we sort, test or evaluate the various options in response to the leading of God's spirit. Our job seeker considers each of her preferred options, testing them using her mind, heart and spirit.

Closing - we move toward a decision, discussing the proposed decision with others, modifying it as necessary. Our job seeker settles on a path, discussing with her family and friends what she is thinking and planning.

Resting - we test the decision by resting with it close to the heart for a few days, noticing feelings of peace and consolation or distress and desolation. Our job seeker spends the weekend working in her garden, and notices as she does so that her sense of confidence and peace in her decision is growing. Although she is not certain that the path she has chosen will work out as expected, she is confident that the decision is the right one for the time being.

These stages, like the stages of grief, are interrelated. We often find ourselves going back and forth from one to the other, as our understanding deepens. They are also not purely rational, although reason is involved; they are not purely emotional, although emotion is involved. Discernment is a spiritual process in which we bring our whole selves, our intellect, emotion, imagination, will and spirit to bear on the process. It will seldom lead to absolute certainty about a decision. In fact, absolute certainty may be a sign that we have not entered the process with sufficient humility that God's will may not be the same as our own. Nevertheless, when we discern carefully, we will often find a sense of consolation that our decisions align with our deepest sense of God's movement in our lives.

Martin Luther King once wrote that "most people are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion." What we should strive to be, he said, is not a thermometer, but a thermostat. A thermometer records the temperature. A thermostat "transforms and regulates the temperature of society." When we make decisions quickly, unconsciously, we act like thermometers, repeating the conventional wisdom of the way things have been done in the past. Discernment is the process by which we interrupt that repetition, drawing on our deepest spiritual insights and traditions in order that our decisions may respond to the movement of God's Spirit in our presence. May it be so, for you and for me, and for us together. Amen.