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July 25, 2010,
Ninth Sunday After Pentecost/ Trinity 8, All Souls' Episcopal Church
Lord, teach us
to pray.
Our Epistle lesson from St. Paul’s
letter to the Colossians is really very clear about the
fact that if we are Christians we must walk in Christ
and live out our faith, growing in holiness. St. Paul
writes: As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus
our Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him,
and stablished in the faith. (Col. 2: 6-7) I love
the phrase “rooted and built up in him.” Prayer is
essential to this growing up. Prayer is crucial in our
being rooted in Christ and transformed into
Christ-likeness. The Catholic theologian, Cardinal de
Lubac, said: “Christ is the form which humanity must put
on in order that it may truly be itself.” This
ultimately is what prayer by God’s grace enables. Prayer
helps us to be who we really and truly are in Christ.
In today’s Gospel lesson the
disciples find Jesus in the place where he had gone to
pray, and they ask, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Our Lord
teaches them what we now know as The Lord’s Prayer. I’m
not going to remark extensively on the Lord’s Prayer
today, but we should at the very least examine its
structure. First, our Lord teaches us to pray to our
Heavenly Father. This means among other things that we
are not simply praying to some great unseen power, a
vague and unknowable life-force. We are praying to a God
who loves us and who knows us infinitely better than we
know ourselves. As Christians we believe that God loves
us and also that God is love; that love is of God’s
nature; that at the very heart of the oneness of God is
a loving communion of Persons. And so, we pray to our
Heavenly Father who calls us to know Him in a communion
of love. Our Lord then teaches us to adore God –
“hallowed be thy name.” He teaches us that in prayer we
should surrender and dedicate ourselves to doing God’s
will, “on earth as it is in Heaven.” Surrendered to
God’s will, we ask him to provide for us – “give us this
day our daily bread.” We are taught to seek both to be
forgiven and to forgive since repentance and forgiveness
come from the same love which seeks union over division.
Then, in the clarifying light of confession and
forgiveness, we ask for guidance – “lead us not into
temptation but deliver us from evil.”
In our mind’s eye we tend to
picture ourselves deliberately moving towards God in
faith when what is happening is that God is drawing us
to Him. Prayer is an engraced response to the call of
God. There are various kinds of prayer. One easy way of
remembering is by referring to the acronym ACTS which
stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and
Supplication. Adoration means praising God – “hallowed
be thy name.” The Bible says “the goodness of God leads
to repentance,” and in a similar way, adoration leads to
confession. Now, confession is meant to be
transformative. The biblical word for repentance means a
change of mind and outlook; a turning around and moving
in a new direction. When we confess, we learn to repent
not only of the things we’ve done and failed to do, but
also of those bad habits, self-defeating attitudes, and
nagging fears. Confession is transformative, and
confession leads to thanksgiving. A thankful heart is a
heart focused on the love of God. With the clarity of
heart and mind that comes from a thankful spirit we move
on to supplication in which we ask God for what we need
and intercede on behalf of others.
All of these kinds of prayer:
Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication,
are included and are a part of what we do here together
in church in our corporate worship, and especially in
this Holy Communion. Let me be clear that when I speak
to you of corporate worship I do not mean only the
worship offered by us here in this place right now; this
gathered community. I do mean that, but I also mean a
lot more than that. When I speak of the Body of Christ I
mean all the Christians in this world … and I mean more
than that. I also mean St. Paul and St. Peter, the
apostles, prophets, and martyrs; all members of the Body
of Christ now and forever. The church as the Body of
Christ exists in this world and in Heaven. The head of
the Body of Christ is our Lord himself in Heaven, both
God and man. In the Bible, Jacob had a vision in which
he saw angels ascending and descending between heaven
and earth on a ladder. Jacob’s ladder is an image of our
Lord Jesus Christ. He unites Heaven and Earth in
himself. For this reason St. John says that the angels
ascend and descend upon him. St. John also says that
Christ is our beginning and our end; he is Alpha and
Omega. In Christ we move backwards and forwards
simultaneously; at once moving back to the pure
beginning and forward to the fullness of perfection.
This is what education must be ultimately; a
simultaneous movement back to the pure, original source
and ahead to the purity of perfection. For now, what we
must realize is that in our corporate worship of Holy
Communion, when we say we pray with “angels, archangels,
and all the company of heaven,” we mean it. Corporate
worship is all of that.
In today’s gospel lesson we’re
told that the disciples went to where our Lord had gone
to pray. Jesus frequently prayed this way. He was
faithful in attending to corporate worship on the
Sabbath and then during the rest of the week he would
get up very early and go off by himself to commune with
his Heavenly Father. We must do likewise. I know that a
number of you already set apart a certain time of the
day for prayer and devotion and I want to encourage you
in that. I want you to keep at it and I want you to stay
the course. Just remember that not every occasion when
you’re with your children seems or feels equally
rewarding, but the important thing always is showing
up. I encourage you to be the same way with your prayer
time. During such times we may meditate on a passage of
scripture, or we may be silent during these quiet
moments and focus on God’s presence. We may humbly talk
with God. This kind of daily prayer and quiet time not
only is something we seek out as we learn to love God,
but is also a means by which God reveals His love for
us. We grow through this sort of prayer. We grow in
God’s love and we also grow because God makes us aware
of our sins. He reproves us. He shows us the things of
which He does not approve. He reproves us, He comforts
us, and He draws us to Himself.
Finally, there is also an aspect
of prayer which I’m going to call “recollection,” by
which I mean the frequent recalling of the presence of
God. The phrase, “practicing the presence of God,” was
popularized by the prayers of Brother Lawrence in the 17th
century, but the church has been doing this from the
beginning all the way back in the desert. We practice
the presence of God when we remember that we are always
in His presence. We might memorize a brief prayer or a
short passage of scripture or a verse of a hymn which we
recite in our minds repeatedly throughout the day to
remind us we are in God’s presence.
Someone might say: “You can’t do
that at work; it’d be distracting.” Look, no one is
suggesting that if you’re at work in the middle of a
meeting or a presentation, or you’re a doctor and your
worried patient asks “how bad is it?” you should
immediately close your eyes and start to pray. No one is
saying that. In fact, nobody said anything about closing
your eyes. All I’m saying is that if you’re a human
being I guarantee your mind wanders, even at work. When
our mind wanders we might have pleasant, encouraging,
happy, positive, and loving thoughts. Sometimes when our
mind wanders we might have a sudden flash of insight and
solve some problem. However, it also is true that when
our mind wanders we think up stuff to worry about or
else we focus on some gossip or on some upsetting news.
We’ll think of new things that bother us and of old
resentments. Sometimes we’ll recall conversations and
encounters we’ve had that morning as if we’re at
halftime and we’re reviewing the tape as we ask:
“I wonder if he meant to insult me when he said what he
did; I wonder if she meant to be rude?” When our mind
wanders we might nurse our insecurities, feed our fears,
or dwell on things which allow anger to well up inside
us. When you are aware of this beginning to happen, in
that awareness, just let those thoughts go. Those
thoughts may have come to you unsolicited but you invite
them to stay when you focus on them. Do not focus on
them but let them go and instead recite that verse and
focus on the presence of God. Someone may say: “If
people do that they’ll be walking around with their
heads in the clouds.” Actually, just the opposite is
true. It turns out that those who practice the presence
of God are in fact less distracted, less scattered, and
more attentive, responsive, and balanced. In fact,
because you’re not allowing your mind to dwell on all
those negative things you find you have a lot more
energy to be more productive. Eventually, you begin to
develop a prayerful attitude; a prayerful state of mind.
“Pray without ceasing,” says the Bible, “for this is the
will of God.”
The priest and poet, George
Herbert, called prayer “reversed thunder,” “a kind of
tune which all things hear and fear,” “the soul in
paraphrase, the heart in pilgrimage,” “God’s breath in
man returning to his birth.” Let us ask with the
disciples: Lord, teach us to pray.
Fr. Petley
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