On Prayer

A Morning Prayer Sermon, 8th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
Onancock, Virginia

Ephesians 4:1-7. 11-16
Mark 6:45-52

"And he went up on the mountain to pray."

Spirituality is in and religion is out. That’s the new trend these days. Stroll down the aisles of any bookstore and you will see many titles purporting to help your spiritual growth. We no longer need institutions such as the Church to bring us into a life of holiness; we can now do it alone. Spirituality, I believe, is a hyped up synonym for prayer, and prayer is something that we do not talk enough about in the Church. As a life-long Episcopalian, I cannot recall a single Christian Education class that even remotely came close to the topic of learning how to pray. Prayer is simply a given, so we believe, Jesus will teach you how to pray and your life will be prosperous. Ask and you shall receive! Knock and the door will be opened to you! That is prayer. . . come again? That simplicity fails to recognize the complexity and diversity of the human situation. How do we pray as a community? How do we pray privately? How do we know if we are doing it the "right way?" Unfortunately, there is no step-by-step numbered guide for instruction in prayer.

Building a rich life of prayer is more like an adventure, a journey to the heart. I sometimes wonder that the reason we neglect to seriously address this critical part of the Christian experience is because we are afraid that we will be found out—found that we cannot or do not pray or even believe that we lack the theological language to express our feelings and emotions, fearing our simple ways of the heart before the throne of the Almighty. I want to be a priest who prays. So often I see in parish profiles that parishes are searching for dynamic, visionary leaders—someone who can preach and help move a congregation to grow. We seem to take for granted that all of this should come automatically. It doesn’t. Only if it comes from a life deeply rooted in prayer.

Prayer is the essence of the Christian life, and we see that modeled in this morning’s gospel from Mark. Last week we heard the story of Our Lord feeding five thousand hungry souls, a miraculous action that still astonishes us today. And now this week we see the reflective side of
Jesus: “and he went up on the mountain to pray.” The model, we learn, is that of action and reflection—a paradigm of movement and rest. Which one comes first, well, that seems to be a chicken-and-egg question. The point is that Our Lord takes time in his earthly ministry to be alone and to pray. We see this pattern again and again. To go up to the mountain symbolizes a lot of the movement of the Gospel story—a movement of ascent, up to the heavens, the language of resurrection. Mark does not give us the content of the prayer and we can only presume that in that act of prayer there was more movement of descent, God indwelling in the recesses of the heart than could ever be reported. There is nothing wrong with the language of resurrection, for it’s a critical component to our story and our common life. However, we seem to have lost the language of Pentecost, the language of Incarnation—God descending to us, God desiring to be in an intimate relationship with God’s creation. The language of spirituality, and I would be willing to wager that most books on Spirituality, neglect this essential descending movement of prayer.

The problem is an old one and continues to plague the church even today. The problem in prayer is intellectual ascent. Culturally, we are hard-wired that education equals success, degrees equal security. Smart people are promoted, smart people make six figure salaries and have second homes. But when that logic is applied to the life of prayer it only reduces God to an object—an object that can be studied, measured, and ultimately contained. Prayer becomes like any another intellectual activity. But God is not an object, God is limitless and surpasses our human understanding.

So, we cannot climb mountains and think our way into heaven. God came down to us first, descending into our hearts and stirring us to work for the Kingdom. The action part of the model comes out of and is informed by, a rich life of prayer. The Christian life is not about doing good works in order to obtain heavenly salvation, the point is to be the hands of Christ, the mouth of Christ, and the visible and embodied love of Christ here and now. All this flows out from the totality of our life being consumed by Christ in prayer. I suspect this is what the Gospel passage is pointing us towards. “Speaking the truth in love,” as St. Paul says in today’s epistle, is only possible through intimacy with Christ in prayer—a total and complete dependency upon God as the strength and source of our action. Thus, prayer is at the very heart of all ministry—a piece of equipment that every saint and sinner needs.

If then prayer is at the heart of our common life in Christ, it must also be work. For this reason, we come up with a lot of reasons to avoid or put off praying. “There’s no time for praying, I am way too busy.” Believe it or not, this is heard more than you would imagine in our seminaries these days. There’s always a vestry or committee meeting to attend, a church fundraiser to organize, the altar brassware needs a good polishing, the Vacation Bible School needs my help—and these are just some of the more common Christian excuses. The call of God to prayer is deep and we need to get past our limitations that we place on God, for God is not interested in how pretty our altars look, how concise our bulletins are, or even how well we think we worship. God is interested in what is in our hearts, the very substance of our souls. When we descend with the mind into the heart, there we find God’s presence that was instilled in us from our creation. There we find our integrity and authenticity, there we see our sinfulness

surrounding by God’s gracious mercy and love.

If prayer is work, then prayer is also dancing. With each beat, each rhythm of the heart, God calls us onto the dance floor to be in intimate relationship. God’s love comes to us in prayer: we do not have to have a heightened vocabulary or even much experience of prayer, all we have to do is go out onto the floor and be guided in our footsteps.The dance is both vigorous and slow, close and yet far apart, strange and somehow very familiar. It is work and yet is also rest—it is the most intimate way in which God comes to us

So, then, we as church have our work and our fun cut out for us: we need to talk openly about our life of prayer—our struggles, our disappointments, and our breakthroughs. The community, the body of Christ, is the ultimate support group and is necessary in prayer. No book can offer you this, it is experiential and embodied in flesh, not paper. When we allow ourselves to be consumed by the risen Christ, we can with our minds descend into our hearts and find a wellspring of the living presence eternally inside of us. Prayer is the vehicle to wholeness, the means for us to remember that it is “not I, but Christ who lives inside of me.” Being spiritual or religious is completely meaningless unless it is dependent upon prayer. What ever your language, your style, or situation in life, pray. Pray and pray always that God is the source of your ministry and the foundation of your being. God can teach us to pray, we only need ears to listen. Amen.

Views of the Eastern Shore of Virginia

Some random shots that I've taken while here on the Shore.

My Summer Field Ed. Parish

My diocese asked me to do several weeks of parish field education back home. I was very fortunate to land at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Onancock, Virginia (Diocese of Southern Virginia).

Unexpected Friendship

In light of my recent post, "The Faces of God: God the Unexpected," I want to share a story with you.

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I lit my cigarette and began to walk down the garden path on the monastery grounds.  It had proven to be an extraordinarily long day.  The stress and anxiety had been building all day in our small flat in the retreat annex; the children had indeed driven my wife to the brink.  So when I arrived back from a day journey to interview a priest, I walked into the thick of it rather unexpectedly.

As I strolled along the gardens, I heard the bell calling the community to Compline--the final service of the day.  Compline simply means "complete" and it's a way of completing the day with a beautiful service praising God for the blessings of the daytime.  I fell down into the comfort of a wooden bench, perched strategically behind some blossoming flowers.  Privacy, I thought to myself, and a brief escape from the world.  I could not bring myself to enter the 

monastic church that evening, I was beyond my capability to use words or find a sentence to utter in the coming twilight.

After I snuffed out the butt, I sat there in a daze.  I wondered all about the predictable stuff: did we make the right decision to move our small family to England for a time?  At what cost was this to my family to merely live out one of my longest-held dreams?

Before I came round, I could see the movement of black cassocks in the distance.  I snapped to and glanced down at my watch.  Blimey, I thought, Compline was over and so was my free time. I needed to get back to help get the children to bed.  While I had not discovered any new answers to my cause, I had enjoyed a brief respite from the hell of cranky children and a distant spouse.  I dreaded going back, fearing another screaming, crying meltdown from the kids.  My ears were exhausted.  

Just then, a black cassocked monk strolled along the path.  He rose about five feet in the air

 and his grey scapular was neatly swaying as he walked with his hands clasped behind his back and his head hunched over.  It was too ironic or coincidental that this one brother of the Community had taken to fancy night walks following Compline and here I was in his pathway. He was clearly deep in reflection or what one professor loves to say when he daydreams, "off in wonder, love, and praise!"  I had met Father John several weeks ago during a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham down in Norfolk.  He is a Guardian of the Shrine and a runner.  A monk-priest from Northern Ireland, John has been in the Community for nearly thirty years--an incredible source of spiritual wisdom!  I remember vividly waking up from my power nap on the bus back from Walsingham when I overheard him talking about running to a nearby seminarian--he must be in his late 60's and the shock jarred me out of my slumber.  What was more surprising was this seemed to be the first time I felt as though I had something in common with another person in the Community.  Running, I thought, was the perfect God-given commonality so I went for it and begin a conversation with John.

"Father John," I cried out, "do you have a minute?"  Knowing full well that the CRs enter into their silence following Compline lasting until Matins, I chanced it.  I was desperately reaching out.  Being fully pastoral, John broke his silence and sat down next to me on the bench.  I had managed to pull myself together by this point, wiping away tears and fearing my awful smoke-stained smell.  

It did not take any remarkable power of observation to see that I needed the company and someone to talk to about what was going on inside.  John was able to talk sweetly in his Irish voice and helped me calm down.  His faith and insight truly makes him stand twenty feet into the air even though I tower over him. 

Thus began an unexpected spiritual friendship that continued on throughout my time at the Community.  He agreed to serve as my temporary confessor and spiritual guide and I remain forever grateful to him.  Just as I began to think I was alone and disconnected to the community that I found myself in, God gave me Father John.  It surpasses the explainable coincidence, this was truly a gift and one that I quickly recognized in the silhouetted figure of a small, Irish monk off in the distance.

God the Unexpected was the face that I saw that evening.  I even smiled afterwards thinking about this blog post and knowing full well that I had encountered this joyous face in the midst of my own stress and spiritual loneliness.  Thanks be to God for this and for what I believe will be a friendship for the rest of my life.