Ephesians 6.10-18, Matthew 6.5-15
Third Sunday of Lent, 8 March 2015, Queen Camel
There are many ways of praying. Many people I talk to say that they pray most - and best - not on their knees in church, not by the bedside at night, but out in the fields walking, or whilst driving the car to work - presumably with their eyes open.
I love the old celtic prayers, the household prayers of the ordinary people of these islands which have been collected and handed down to us: prayers to be said at wash time, whilst making the bed, when leaving the house to go out to work, prayers which welcome God’s presence in the here-and-now, which transform the mundane details of everyday life into heavenly encounters:
Bless to me, O God,
Each thing mine eye sees;
Bless to me, O God,
Each sound mine ear hears;
Bless to me, O God,
Each odour that goes to my nostrils;
Bless to me, O God,
Each taste that goes to my lips;
Each note that goes to my song;
Each ray that guides my way;
Each thing that I pursue;
Each lure that tempts my will;
The zeal that seeks my living soul,
The three that seek my heart,
The zeal that seeks my living soul,
The three that seek my heart. [1]
I love the naive prayers of children: the internet is full of examples, such as ‘Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother; but what I asked for was a puppy,’ and the three-year-old who at bedtime, after a typically exuberant day for he and his six-year-old brother, said, ‘Please bless that tomorrow we can be less horrible to mummy.’
There are many ways of praying. I was involved for some years in a group of Spiritual Directors who offered a listening ear to people exploring their spirituality, and one of the outcomes of that activity was the production of a book called The God You Already Know [2] which lists dozens of examples of different ways people have found to draw close to God - methods you’d expect from the ancient traditions of the church such as silent meditation, lighting candles and praying with the Bible; but others such as dancing as prayer, swimming as prayer, even Sudoku as prayer - of which the person sharing their experience said, ‘I have to trust that there is an answer to the puzzle, which is discoverable, even though I can never see it to begin with.’ [3] Yes, that sounds like a very good description of our experience of prayer.
But probably the kind of prayer we are most familiar with, or to put it another way, the sort of thing we tend to mean when we talk about prayer - is prayer as intercession. The dictionary describes intercession as ‘the action of intervening on behalf of another, for example, he only escaped ruin by the intercession of his peers with the king,’ and more specifically as ‘the action of saying a prayer on behalf of another.’
Scripture is full of such prayers - from Abraham pleading with God against the destruction of Sodom [4] and the prophet Jeremiah praying for the welfare of his people [5] all the way through to Jesus praying for his disciples ‘As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me,’ [6] and Paul praying for the Ephesian believers, ‘that the eyes of [their] heart[s] may be enlightened in order that [they] may know the hope to which he has called [them], the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints’. [7]
Of course, in the history of the English Church it was the Saints who used to intercede for us, and whilst that continues to be the case in some denominations today the development of the Protestant religion has seen the decline of that sort of intercession and the rise of the prayer direct to God.
Intercessions can take the form of the longest litany or the shortest, ‘arrow’ prayer to God. In our church services we always have a time of intercession and the guidelines which the prayerbook offers us are that we pray specifically for:
- The Church - because despite its frustrations it is where we most deeply belong;
- Creation and human society, the sovereign and those in authority - because although we’re overwhelmed with the darkness of the world our prayers involve us in bringing a ray of light;
- The local community - even those we don’t know or don’t like;
- Those who suffer - even though our faith in their healing may be faint; and
- The communion of saints - for it is their example which can guide and inspire us on our own stuttering journey of faith … [8]
The prayerbook encourages us to always pray to the Father ‘In the power of the Spirit and in union with Christ’. [9] - for as we make our prayer we are not alone, we are joining ourselves in the mystery of God.
Leading intercessions in church is traditionally the work of the people, not the priest. In churches today this is demonstrated by the prayer rota which involves a group of congregational members each taking turns to lead; and in some churches they will lead from the centre of the aisle, in the middle of the pews, so that the voice of the people comes from within the people. If you think that God might be calling you to be an intercessor in church, do have a word with me about it, I’d be glad to help and support you in that valuable role.
But we don’t just intercede in church. Everybody intercedes, sometimes. Whether we think of it as prayer or not. [10]
Those cries for help when we're in some sort of trouble. Those silences we fall into when something beautiful is happening, or something very good or very bad. The sounds we make when we see a new-born baby for the first time, or when we hear a beautiful piece of music. These are all prayers in their own way.
They all come from deep inside us and they reach somewhere deep outside us, familiar and yet also strange.
Now, according to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it. He puts this rather comically, as though he thought it was rather comic to have to explain it at all. He says God is like a friend you go to borrow bread from at midnight. The friend tells you in effect to drop dead, but you go on knocking anyway until finally he gives you what you want so he can go back to bed again. [11]
Be importunate, Jesus says. Keep on praying. And on this one point, at least, all the religions of the world agree.
Some people of course, have doubts about prayer, not being sure there's anyone listening. And that's understandable if you've been praying for years for something that still hasn't happened, or if you're going through a trauma which seems like it will never end. But, even if you don't think that God is there, whatever else it may or may not be, prayer is at the very least talking to yourself, and even that, in itself, is not always a bad idea.
If you can't believe God is listening, you can still talk to yourself about your own life, about what you've done and what you've failed to do, and about who you are and who you wish you were and who the people you love are and the people you don't love too. Talk to yourself about what matters most to you, because if you don't, you may forget what matters most to you.
Even if you don't believe anybody's listening, at least you'll be listening. [12]
But Jesus wants us to believe somebody is listening. I remember my first attempt at prayer, as a youngster many years ago, which went something like this: ‘God, I'm not sure if you're there, but if you are, let me know, I want to know.’ And, over time, God has let me know. Still is letting me know that he's there.
Jesus wants his disciples to believe somebody is listening. He wanted them to believe in miracles. He wants us to believe in a generous, gracious, kindly God.
A God who will give us each day our daily bread.
A God who will forgive us our sins.
A God who will build in us the joyful and generous spirit which means we can forgive those who hurt us.
A God who does not want to bring us to a time of trial.
Jesus wants us to believe that everyone who asks receives from God, that everyone who seeks finds. Even those who find it hard believing in the power of prayer.
This is as true for those prayers about the wider life of the world - about those things outside us - as it is true for those things within us. We are not alone when we pray. We’re connected into a power greater and higher than ourselves, alone. And we’re demonstrating our connection with others in the world, and creation itself - demonstrating the truth that we are actually never really alone.
Hence St Paul’s summons to us to join in the almighty struggle ‘not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’ You pray against ISIS and the persecution of Syrian Christians in this way. And as you do you share in the same mission and draw on the same power as those who in the past prayed for an end to apartheid, for the emancipation of women, for the abolition of slavery.
When we intercede for the world we recognise something very profound - that the world is a spiritual place; we play a part in what one writer has called the re-enchantment of the world, [13] a world driven by scientific materialism towards nuclear and climate destruction, in which humans are in desperate need to rediscover ourselves as participants in the cosmos, not as isolated observers. ‘The dis-ease of modern society is fundamentally spiritual, and the cure must be as well,’ writes Walter Wink. [14] Each of our intercessions, however modest, is a balm to the wounds of the world. He continues, saying,
The message is clear: history belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being… Even a small number of people, firmly committed to the new inevitability on which they have fixed their imaginations, can decisively affect the shape the future takes. These shapers of the future are the intercessors, who call out of the future the longed-for new present… the reign of God. [15]
Of course, we may not always receive from God what we ask for, we may not always find what we thought we were looking for. But in my experience what God has given has always been a better thing than I could ever have previously imagined.
‘Pray without ceasing,’ says St Paul. [16] Let’s do that.
Notes
Thanks to Yolanda White for guidance and ideas for this sermon.
[1] Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations from the Gaelic.
[2] Henry Morgan and Roy Gregory (eds), The God You Already Know.
[3] The God You Already Know, p.153.
[4] Genesis 18:16-33.
[6] John 17.21.
[8] Common Worship: Holy Communion, Order One, ‘Prayers of Intercession’.
[9] Common Worship: Holy Communion, Forms of Intercession.
[10] The following section of the sermon is borrowed from an earlier talk, Teach us how to pray, preached in Liverpool in 2004
[11] Luke 11.5-8.
[12] A light adaptation of Prayer in Frederick Buechner: Wishful Thinking, a Seeker's ABC. And also on Frederick Buechner’s website here.
[13] Morris Berman, The Re-enchantment of the world, cited in Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers, p.154ff
[14] Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers, p.167. I’m re-reading Wink’s The Powers Trilogy for Lent this year - gaining so much more than I did the first time I read these books, which is saying something, for they remain among the most influential, worldview-altering, texts I’ve ever had the privilege to engage with.
[15] Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers.
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