July 20th Sermon on Prayer
I preached this last week, the 29th in Duluth. I hope you like it, it created a lot of questions and conversation about prayer and was quite enlightening. I did not finish it, so someday hope to conclude it in a way that is more final and even more clear. Enjoy.
Preaching about, much less talking about prayer is a difficult thing. Because what about those unanswered prayers, what about those times when we feel God never got up out of bed to answer the door. Or worse, what about those times when we feel God gave us a snake or a scorpion instead of food and sustenance? Prayer can be a difficult thing, some of us must be more holy than others to have had our prayers answered, while others clearly were not holy enough, and that is why their prayers were not answered. Today’s Gospel is the story of how we came to have the Lord’s Prayer as our central Christian prayer. It is the giving, the teaching of Jesus to his disciples who desired to know how they should pray when they needed and wanted to be in communion with God.
“There is one thing wrong with the traditional definition of prayer: it misrepresents God.” So says Joan Chittister, a Roman Catholic theologian and nun. She continues, "Prayer," the old definition read, was "the raising of our hearts and minds to God." As if God were some regal, distant judge outside ourselves. But God is not out there on a cloud somewhere, imperious and suspecting. God is the very energy that animates us. God is the spirit that leads us and drives us on. God is the voice within us calling us to life. God is the reality trying to come to fullness within us, both individually and together. It is to that cosmic God, that personal, inner, enkindling God that we pray.”
Many of you know Sara and I, with Eliot and Naomi experienced a traumatic event over the past 7 or 8 months. I wrote in the Alleluia Booklet we did this year at Gethsemane the following passage: “It was the longest however-many-minutes of my life; I hope I never have to experience it again. When the doctor finished telling Sara and I about leukemia, and how this disease was affecting our little boy, and how they would cure it, when he finished and had left the room, I remember this feeling of great elation, great joy, great relief and I hugged Sara like I had never held her before. It was as if I had been reborn, made new, resurrected and given new life. Our lives had been ripped apart, torn asunder, bared open all the way to the bone. It was a holy place for us, in that moment that little hospital room became infected with God's holiness; it became a thin place, a place where the Kingdom of God and the earth we walk upon met. That hospital room became a place, a holy place of fear and fright. We became vulnerable in our fear and in our vulnerability were able to hear God's still small voice in our lives, a voice of re-birth, a voice of a beloved two year old, ‘Eliot want hug too.’”
In the days that followed we found ourselves on prayer lists all over the world, literally all over the world, and it sparked many conversations between Sara and I, and many people in the Cities, and even with some of you. Many people would say to us, “We’re praying for you.” And I would often respond with a kind thank you, or I would ask people to pray for us. Some people didn’t know what to do or say around us, while others said: “I do not pray because I do not believe in a God that intervenes in life in such a way.” This last sentiment often came from people who had lost children, or loved ones. It was always the one that got me to thinking, what makes the prayers different if Eliot ends up being cured, and others do not. Is it something we as a family have done? Is it because I am a priest? Why is it Eliot walks away from this with such vitality and energy while others do not? It is this question that has always haunted me as I have thought and imagined what the function of prayer is in my own life. Then today’s Gospel comes and I begin to wonder more about what it means to pray.
There are two questions that strike me as I think about Jesus’ response to the Disciple asking him to teach them how to pray. The first is the prayer itself that Christ teaches, and the second is the postures Jesus speaks of as he describes the action of prayer. First, look at what Jesus is teaching about prayer. He does not say pray for the poor, pray for those who are sick, pray for those experiencing a little trouble in their lives. He does not have that sentimentality that we have come to expect when we think about prayer. Instead he says, pray to God, and pray that God’s Kingdom may come on earth. Evelyn Underhill, a mystic said, “The prayer is not that we may come into the Kingdom, for this we cannot do in our own strength. It is that the Kingdom, the Wholly Other, may come to us, and become operative on our order; one thing working in another, as leaven in our dough, as seed in our field.” The idea that we would have to accommodate the Kingdom that we must adapt for the other to come into our lives is vitally important, I believe. It is not so much that we must be changed or simply work hard to enter the Kingdom somewhere else, it is that we must be transformed so that we are now able to see the Kingdom in our midst; we must see ourselves as holy people walking upon holy ground. As Joan Chittister said, traditional definitions of prayer are misleading, because the God we believe in is not far from us, in a distant land or place, the God we believe in is here, now, with us, among us, the spark of our existence, the light of our world, today.
Jesus’ teaching also says to forgive others who have sinned against us, and to ask simply for the bread we need for today, not bread for the next 5 years, nor 10 years, just today, this day, the here and the now. It is the praying for the Kingdom that has most struck me, the praying for God’s kingdom in the world, so that we might be sent, our response to this coming of the Kingdom is to say to God, “Here I am, send me!”
The second thing that struck me was the postures of prayer that Jesus describes in the Gospel. Many of you may have that song stuck in your head, or I am about to cause it to be stuck, do you know it? “Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened unto you. Alelu, Alleluia.” Ask and it will be given you; search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened. When we stop to think about the postures of these prayers it becomes clear they are meant to bring about humility and awareness of our own dependence on the abundance of God’s love. Asking makes us beggars. Asking takes on that form of being on your knees and begging for help. If it weren’t for Sara in that room, I would have been on my knees, and we both have had to learn to ask, asking for prayer, for money, for support and what we have found is not only a generous and abundant God, but people full of love, joy and support, people who were as generous as I ever imagined God to be.
Likewise, searching and knocking put us in places of vulnerability, of humility, on our knees, or facing something we know nothing about. Searching often leaves us on all fours looking everywhere for that which we have lost. Knocking on a door, a door we know nothing about, a place which we wonder what lies on the other side, leaves us to the whim of the person or thing answering our knock. These postures of prayer tell us a lot about the purpose of prayer, and they tell us that without action our prayers are nothing, for as is clear in Jesus’ teaching, Jesus did not pray for those who were oppressed because he was liberating them, Jesus did not pray for those who were sick, he healed them; Jesus did not pray for those who were sinful, he forgave them. Without asking, we will never receive, without seeking we will never find and without knocking we will always be left in the unknown.
Joan Chittister says, “We do not pray in order to coax satisfaction out of the universe. God is life, not a vending machine full of trifles to fit the whims of the human race.” She continues, “We pray not to appease a divine wrath or flatter a divine ego. We pray in order, eventually, to fall into the presence of God, to learn to live in the presence of God, to absorb the presence of God within.” The postures we use to pray are not simply reverent and solemn, they place us in the position of the oppressed, the prisoners, the sick, the lame those who are in need. Our posture of prayer is to remind us not that we need healing or that God will take care of everything, but to remind us that there are others in need in the world, others who must experience the holy, others we must welcome into our warm embraces. The posture of our prayer is to coax us into the Kingdom of God, and into our role as God’s sent people, sent into the world to proclaim the Kingdom near, and only in our humility, only in our meekness it is only in our prayer rooted in beauty and love that we will discover that God is here, with us, among us, alive and living, present and close.
Preaching about, much less talking about prayer is a difficult thing. Because what about those unanswered prayers, what about those times when we feel God never got up out of bed to answer the door. Or worse, what about those times when we feel God gave us a snake or a scorpion instead of food and sustenance? Prayer can be a difficult thing, some of us must be more holy than others to have had our prayers answered, while others clearly were not holy enough, and that is why their prayers were not answered. Today’s Gospel is the story of how we came to have the Lord’s Prayer as our central Christian prayer. It is the giving, the teaching of Jesus to his disciples who desired to know how they should pray when they needed and wanted to be in communion with God.
“There is one thing wrong with the traditional definition of prayer: it misrepresents God.” So says Joan Chittister, a Roman Catholic theologian and nun. She continues, "Prayer," the old definition read, was "the raising of our hearts and minds to God." As if God were some regal, distant judge outside ourselves. But God is not out there on a cloud somewhere, imperious and suspecting. God is the very energy that animates us. God is the spirit that leads us and drives us on. God is the voice within us calling us to life. God is the reality trying to come to fullness within us, both individually and together. It is to that cosmic God, that personal, inner, enkindling God that we pray.”
Many of you know Sara and I, with Eliot and Naomi experienced a traumatic event over the past 7 or 8 months. I wrote in the Alleluia Booklet we did this year at Gethsemane the following passage: “It was the longest however-many-minutes of my life; I hope I never have to experience it again. When the doctor finished telling Sara and I about leukemia, and how this disease was affecting our little boy, and how they would cure it, when he finished and had left the room, I remember this feeling of great elation, great joy, great relief and I hugged Sara like I had never held her before. It was as if I had been reborn, made new, resurrected and given new life. Our lives had been ripped apart, torn asunder, bared open all the way to the bone. It was a holy place for us, in that moment that little hospital room became infected with God's holiness; it became a thin place, a place where the Kingdom of God and the earth we walk upon met. That hospital room became a place, a holy place of fear and fright. We became vulnerable in our fear and in our vulnerability were able to hear God's still small voice in our lives, a voice of re-birth, a voice of a beloved two year old, ‘Eliot want hug too.’”
In the days that followed we found ourselves on prayer lists all over the world, literally all over the world, and it sparked many conversations between Sara and I, and many people in the Cities, and even with some of you. Many people would say to us, “We’re praying for you.” And I would often respond with a kind thank you, or I would ask people to pray for us. Some people didn’t know what to do or say around us, while others said: “I do not pray because I do not believe in a God that intervenes in life in such a way.” This last sentiment often came from people who had lost children, or loved ones. It was always the one that got me to thinking, what makes the prayers different if Eliot ends up being cured, and others do not. Is it something we as a family have done? Is it because I am a priest? Why is it Eliot walks away from this with such vitality and energy while others do not? It is this question that has always haunted me as I have thought and imagined what the function of prayer is in my own life. Then today’s Gospel comes and I begin to wonder more about what it means to pray.
There are two questions that strike me as I think about Jesus’ response to the Disciple asking him to teach them how to pray. The first is the prayer itself that Christ teaches, and the second is the postures Jesus speaks of as he describes the action of prayer. First, look at what Jesus is teaching about prayer. He does not say pray for the poor, pray for those who are sick, pray for those experiencing a little trouble in their lives. He does not have that sentimentality that we have come to expect when we think about prayer. Instead he says, pray to God, and pray that God’s Kingdom may come on earth. Evelyn Underhill, a mystic said, “The prayer is not that we may come into the Kingdom, for this we cannot do in our own strength. It is that the Kingdom, the Wholly Other, may come to us, and become operative on our order; one thing working in another, as leaven in our dough, as seed in our field.” The idea that we would have to accommodate the Kingdom that we must adapt for the other to come into our lives is vitally important, I believe. It is not so much that we must be changed or simply work hard to enter the Kingdom somewhere else, it is that we must be transformed so that we are now able to see the Kingdom in our midst; we must see ourselves as holy people walking upon holy ground. As Joan Chittister said, traditional definitions of prayer are misleading, because the God we believe in is not far from us, in a distant land or place, the God we believe in is here, now, with us, among us, the spark of our existence, the light of our world, today.
Jesus’ teaching also says to forgive others who have sinned against us, and to ask simply for the bread we need for today, not bread for the next 5 years, nor 10 years, just today, this day, the here and the now. It is the praying for the Kingdom that has most struck me, the praying for God’s kingdom in the world, so that we might be sent, our response to this coming of the Kingdom is to say to God, “Here I am, send me!”
The second thing that struck me was the postures of prayer that Jesus describes in the Gospel. Many of you may have that song stuck in your head, or I am about to cause it to be stuck, do you know it? “Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened unto you. Alelu, Alleluia.” Ask and it will be given you; search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened. When we stop to think about the postures of these prayers it becomes clear they are meant to bring about humility and awareness of our own dependence on the abundance of God’s love. Asking makes us beggars. Asking takes on that form of being on your knees and begging for help. If it weren’t for Sara in that room, I would have been on my knees, and we both have had to learn to ask, asking for prayer, for money, for support and what we have found is not only a generous and abundant God, but people full of love, joy and support, people who were as generous as I ever imagined God to be.
Likewise, searching and knocking put us in places of vulnerability, of humility, on our knees, or facing something we know nothing about. Searching often leaves us on all fours looking everywhere for that which we have lost. Knocking on a door, a door we know nothing about, a place which we wonder what lies on the other side, leaves us to the whim of the person or thing answering our knock. These postures of prayer tell us a lot about the purpose of prayer, and they tell us that without action our prayers are nothing, for as is clear in Jesus’ teaching, Jesus did not pray for those who were oppressed because he was liberating them, Jesus did not pray for those who were sick, he healed them; Jesus did not pray for those who were sinful, he forgave them. Without asking, we will never receive, without seeking we will never find and without knocking we will always be left in the unknown.
Joan Chittister says, “We do not pray in order to coax satisfaction out of the universe. God is life, not a vending machine full of trifles to fit the whims of the human race.” She continues, “We pray not to appease a divine wrath or flatter a divine ego. We pray in order, eventually, to fall into the presence of God, to learn to live in the presence of God, to absorb the presence of God within.” The postures we use to pray are not simply reverent and solemn, they place us in the position of the oppressed, the prisoners, the sick, the lame those who are in need. Our posture of prayer is to remind us not that we need healing or that God will take care of everything, but to remind us that there are others in need in the world, others who must experience the holy, others we must welcome into our warm embraces. The posture of our prayer is to coax us into the Kingdom of God, and into our role as God’s sent people, sent into the world to proclaim the Kingdom near, and only in our humility, only in our meekness it is only in our prayer rooted in beauty and love that we will discover that God is here, with us, among us, alive and living, present and close.
Comments
I think a good part of the relevance of prayer has to do with us becoming open to the Spirit and in sync with God. I think it's more complex than that...a dynamic interaction that opens all kinds of possibilities that I don't understand well enough (yet?) to talk much about.
The idea of us asking favors of a guy in the sky or of a manipulator who we hope will be on our side doesn't consistently work well for me. This doesn't mean that I don't ask God for things...but the perspective on that is different sometimes...there's a lot more this might lead to...but enough for now...