In his letter written from a prison cell to the Philippian church, St. Paul writes, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” This past Lent, the program that I offered focused on prayer and I made the claim that to be a Christian is to be someone who prays. One modern theologian has said that the primary and most important job that clergy have today is to teach people to pray. As I’ve said in several sermons this year – given changes in society and declines in church attendance, what the future of the Church looks like is uncertain. And while there is no single or simple response to this reality, the answer, most certainly, begins and ends with prayer.
Given
St. Paul’s admonition that in everything we should pray, this sermon will focus
on the power of prayer. One way of viewing power is that power is about being
able to act. And there are three broad categories of what prayer makes able –
prayer roots us in God, prayer awakens us to the activity of God, and prayer
opens us to new possibilities in God.
First,
prayer roots us in Divine presence. Just as a root gives a tree stability and
nourishment, so too does prayer give us roots that strengthen and sustain us. This
need to be rooted is something that all people have. It’s why people, even
those who are not interested in religion, practice yoga, meditation, or mindfulness.
We all need rest and reflection, and prayer is something that the Christian
does to be grounded in a love that defies explanation and a peace that passes
all understanding.
This
is what prayer means. Prayer is not a set of words that we say. Prayer is not
about following a particular pattern or formula. It’s best to think of prayer
not as something we do, but rather something we give ourselves to. We might say
that prayer is a better adverb than it is a noun. Prayer is not our goal as
people of faith, but rather prayerfulness is. Prayer is an attitude, a
disposition, an orientation. When we are living prayerfully, we come to realize
that we live, and move, and have our being in the grace and love of God. Things
that we often consider to be prayers are simply tools intended to establish
this rootedness in God.
Another
way of thinking of prayer comes from St. Paul’s writing in Romans – it’s not so
much that prayer is something that we do, rather we are the location of prayer.
The Holy Spirit is the divine spark that gives us life; the Spirit is what
animates us and makes us alive. And, as a part of the Holy Trinity, the Spirit
is always communicating with God the Father and God the Son. Because the Holy
Spirit dwells in us, our hearts and minds become something like a temple, a
place of prayer – a place where God is happening. Our prayerfulness is about us
being rooted – strengthened and fed – by this prayer of the Spirit that happens
in us. In prayer, we are simply paying attention to the Spirit’s work in us.
I
know this might sound a bit theoretical and esoteric – but it’s something we’ve
all experienced. Those moments when you gained a voice that you did not know
you had, when you had newfound courage, when you had hope in a hopeless
situation, when you were surprised to have a word of forgiveness instead of vengeance
on your lips – those are moments when the Spirit was speaking and acting
through you; when your life had become an enacted prayer. Every moment
intersects with eternity, with the harmony and beauty of God, and time in meditation,
in quietness, in prayer is about being rooted in this peace of God that passes
all understanding.
Being
rooted in prayer, we are then able to be in this world differently. This
grounding in God’s grace and love awakens us to what God is up to. The former
Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, compared prayer to bird-watching.
Both endeavors take endless patience and stillness in pursuit of an often
elusive goal. As Jesus says, the Spirit, like the wind, blows where it will and
is unpredictable. Prayer is a means by which we are awakened to these fleeting
glimpses of God at work in the midst of our busy and distracting lives. Just as
the birder learns, prayer requires us to be in the world more attentively and
deliberately. We have to cease from fidgeting, fussing, and making noise and
focus on something. In bird watching, we focus on a specific rock or branch and
see what comes into our range of vision; in prayer, we focus on an icon or
verse of Scripture. And then, slowly, when something flashes across our sight,
we’ll be ready to notice it.
God
did not stop the work of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis – creation is
continuing to unfold because the love of God continues to pour forth from God’s
infinite and abundant grace. In CS Lewis’ Narnia books, when it seems
as if the situation is dire and people are not sure where their hope will come
from, someone will notice a rustling noise in the forest, or a distant growl,
or feel their skin tingling with expectation and, invariably, one of the
characters will say of the lion, the Christ-figure in these novels, that “Aslan
is on the move.” Sherlock Holmes would say the same thing differently – “the game
is afoot.” However we want to talk about it, prayer awakens us to what God is
up to.
This
awareness is at the heart of the prayer and why I think that teaching and demonstrating
prayerfulness is the most important thing that I do as a priest. If we are a prayerful
people, a people who are actively looking for God and catching glimpses of the
Spirit’s work in our world, then the rest takes care of itself. We don’t have
to worry about fundraising if people trust that something holy is happening in
their congregation. We don’t need to cajole people to come to worship if they expect
to meet Jesus in song, Scripture, and Sacrament. We don’t have to beg people to
volunteer when they are presented with opportunities to serve if they approach
service in the same way that a birder approaches migration season.
The
problem, as I’ve mentioned in previous sermons, is that we live in a
disenchanted world. Our minds have been taken over by scientism, which is not the
same as science. Science is great, but scientism is stifling because it reduces
everything to cause-and-effect and what is observable, measurable, and repeatable.
Our world and logic are dominated by an imagination that has been closed, restricted,
and impoverished. But prayer is a means by which we are awakened to the wonder
and possibilities of God that transcend our ability to make sense of them.
One
theologian has said that prayer matures into the practice of memory. In a
commentary on the Psalms, which are a collection of Jewish prayers, this
theologian writes that as we pray “It becomes evident as we do this that memory
is not nostalgia. Memory is not an orientation to the past; it is vigorously
present tense, selecting out of the storehouse of the past, retrieving and
arranging images and insights, and then hammering them together for use in the
present moment.” As we pray, we are being shaped to live in a world that remains
enchanted with wonder and beauty which is beyond all understanding. And once we
have become awakened to this reality, once we have seen the brightness of a
cardinal, we are changed. Prayer transforms us into people who anticipate and
expect the holy to always be just around the corner.
And
this expectation then makes us a people who are open to what God is doing. The
world can be a difficult place, and so, out of self-preservation, we learn to
be closed and guarded. St. Paul writes that our prayers will fill us with the
peace of God which passes all understanding which will guard hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus. Our problem is that we so often try to guard our own hearts
and minds, turning ourselves into fortresses of solitude, into people who are
closed off from one another. To avoid disappointment, we set our sights too
low. To avoid betrayal, we are stingy with our dreams. To avoid hurt, we are reserved
with our love. To avoid running out, we live in a world of scarcity instead of
embracing God’s abundance.
But
Jesus guards our hearts and minds. And if Jesus is the one who keeps us safe,
then we can be lavish in love, prodigal with our resources, audacious in our
hope. Just imagine what things might be possible in your life, in our
community, in our parish if we weren’t worried about the worst things that
might happen. If we really and truly trust that all shall be well, what risks
might we be willing to take? What resources might we be willing to spend, what
new ideas might we try, what attempts at reconciliation might we make if we
knew that Jesus was going to guard our hearts and minds, that he will always be
with us to pick us up when we fall, to forgive us all of our sins, to bring Resurrection
life to all of our deaths? In short, we’d have more glimpses of the Kingdom
coming on earth as it is in heaven. Instead of being protected and closed,
prayer allows us to be open to the amazing and wonderful things that the Spirit
is doing.
I’ve
laid out a case for how prayer roots us in God, awakens us to what God is up
to, and opens us to new possibilities. But, you might rightfully ask, but how
do I pray? I’ll leave you with a few thoughts and then some examples. For one, prayer
works best when we don’t have expectations and when we don’t compare ourselves
to others. If we expect prayer to look like this or feel like that, we’ll likely
be disappointed. If we say, “I’m going to spend 15 minutes in quiet so that I’ll
get an answer about what to do about that thing at work,” we’ll likely be
disappointed when we don’t find that clarity. Instead, we might say “God, I’ve
got 15 minutes and I’m going to give that to you.” Maybe God will give you some
clarity, maybe God will give you something better to focus on. Prayer isn’t something
to do with an agenda and goals, rather prayer is about remembering that we are
on God’s agenda of grace and love.
Nor
is prayer competitive. Some people talk about amazing experiences of prayer,
but that’s a rarity. It’s sort of like images of models that we see in the media.
For every photo that we see of someone looking amazing, there are hundreds of
photos that didn't make the cut. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to
prayer – so don’t worry about prayer is like for other people because if you
do, chances are, you’ll miss how God is uniquely speaking to you.
That
being said, there are some tried and true ways to pray. There’s the Daily Office
– the tradition of the Church around praying with Psalm, Scripture, and written
prayers. It’s helpful because we do it in community, even if we aren’t together
when we do it, and we don’t have to make it up. The Prayer Book has a short
version of these prayers to be used as daily devotions on pages 137 through
140. There’s also a great app called “Venite” that helps you to pray Morning and
Evening Prayer – it does all of the page-turning and formatting for you. Just click
the button that says “pray” and you’re on the way.
Or
you might use the Jesus Prayer – “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” – and repeat
that with each breath for a period of time as a way of remembering that you are
in God’s presence. You can say the Lord’s Prayer slowly and meditatively. You
can make use of a labyrinth – we have an outdoor one at the corner of Church
and Jackson Streets that you can use anytime. Or purchase an Anglian rosary and
use it to guide your prayers. Before you go to bed each night, you might use
the practice known as the Examen to review your day and anticipate the next. It
would be my duty and delight to meet with you to talk about these and other ways
of praying – so let me know how I can help.
We
pray because it roots us in the love and peace of God which surpasses all
understanding, because prayer awakens us to the Spirit who is on the move, and
because prayer opens us to the difference that Christ is making in our lives
and world. Come, Holy Spirit, and fill your people with prayerful hearts and
minds, that we might become the people you are shaping us to be.
