Prayer
January 20, 2008
Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder

I am not good at prayer. That might surprise you. On the one hand my profession is to be a pray-er. You would expect a pastor at my age to be pretty good at it. On the other hand, I am just like a lot of people I know - with a mind schooled in the scientific, materialistic view of the world. It's hard to believe things you can't see.

In college I was a Chemistry and English major. I would first do quantitative transfers of exact compounds in the lab, measuring amounts down to the milligram, recording precisely the outcome of carefully designed unions of this or that, describing them with mathematical equations. Closing my lab notebook, I would go off to the next class to read the English Romantic poets, who were spinning out lines like these:

I lived in two different worlds, academically! An encounter with an advanced Physics course derailed my career in science and I gladly plunged deeper into the realm of the spirit where nothing is measurable, nor even remotely describable - a good choice for one who ended up smack in the middle of faith where we say things like In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and that Word became one of us, the word became flesh . . .

Smack in the middle of this realm of the spirit is the practice of prayer. Which, as I said, I am not very good at. For the scientific world in which I was born and reared still is very much part of me, of how I think, of how I live in the world. What do you mean, words spoken will cure that cancer? What do you mean, lighting a candle for peace, as we did last Sunday, will change the hearts of proud men who lead countries into war? What do you mean, says the skeptic in me, when you pray? Such questions get in my way, when I pray. Maybe they do for you too.

So as we think about prayer today, and do some praying today, know that I'm with you - and I'm sure I can learn from you - when it comes to praying.

There are three parts to this sermon, and after each one Carol and I will be inviting you to pray, each time in a different way. So let's begin: if you have trouble finding the right words to pray, here is good news:  You don't need ?em.  If fact, St. Paul said as much. In the first scripture reading he understands that sometimes you just plain don't know what to say in prayer. Sometimes prayer flows easily - in thanksgiving for a blessing experienced, in praise for a wonder of creation, or sharing a fear for yourself or for one you love. Sometimes the words just roll out.

But there are times when the words don't come. Then, says Paul, don't worry about saying anything at all. For the Spirit, he says intercedes for us "with sighs too deep for words." Let us listen to the first reading.

Romans 8:24-28

The practice of praying without words - meditation - is an ancient one within the Christian church. But most of us have a hard time with silence. With so much to do in our lives, a period of time of quiet, of stillness, of seemingly doing nothing seems a waste of time for us. Stopping the whirlwind is the first challenge of praying without words. Focusing the mind is the second.

In Tidings you may have read about a wonderful new opportunity for spiritual growth that is coming here. A canvas labyrinth - 36 feet in diameter! - is right now in a big box in Carol's office, ready to be painted, and then ready to be used downstairs as a way of focusing prayer. Walking the labyrinth in prayer is an ancient practice, and many today are rediscovering it as a wonderful means of prayer, using body and mind and spirit. You'll be hearing much more about our labyrinth!

The first form of prayer we offer today is praying without words. I would invite us to share some circumstances that call for our prayers - a concern, a need, a joy, and word of thanksgiving. But then let us pray, each in our own hearts, and in our own way, led into silence by the sound of the singing bowl as it fades, ringing into silence. After some silence then Joanne will offer a musical ?Amen.'

One of those people to hold in our wordless prayer today is Sandie's mom who was hospitalized this week with an as-yet unknown blood disorder.

Also, as we speak Kyle Blades is about to arrive in Iraq for his second tour of duty - we need to uphold him and Pat and Howard in these coming months.

And let us remember all who struggle with addictions, and those who are affected so deeply by those struggles.

Are there other prayer needs you would like to voice?

Then let us pray . . . . Singing Bowl . . . . Musical response.

The next reading is full of all kinds of good, practical advice. And in the middle of the list of exhortations is the little phrase, Pray without ceasing. Let's listen.

1 Thessalonians 5:13-17

Pray without ceasing, eh? Like all day, and all night, and every minute of all day and all night? Some really fanatical people down through the ages have tried to do that, literally. They usually ended up in monasteries, and even there they often found themselves out back somewhere in the hermit's hut, praying they said without ceasing. I can easily imagine that the their brother monks couldn't stand to have such wildly religious men around all the time, so they elevated them to hermit status sent them packing.

No one can pray constantly. I'm not sure you can even be in a so-called "attitude of prayer" all the time. I would hope that the driver of that 18-wheeler coming around me on the interstate in a snowstorm is not praying but is rather paying very close attention to my left bumper. Whatever this verse means, it doesn't call for me as an individual to be praying all day long.

I do think that the Body of Christ - the church in this place and the church around the world - can and does "pray without ceasing." If you've ever been to an Eastern Orthodox worship service you know that they go on each Sunday for thee and four hours. And you know that worshipers in those churches don't sit or kneel in their pew for three and four hours. It's perfectly alright - expected, I would think - to take a break, to even leave the room, to disengage from the ritual for a while. But the praying goes on! The Body of Christ there is praying without ceasing, because when I take a break you keep the praying going, and when you need a break I play my part. It is the community of faith that is praying constantly, sometimes you and sometimes me, but always at any point in time the community is praying for one another.

The choir's anthem expresses this idea to "pray without ceasing" in another way. It is a prayer that God be in all that we do, in every part of our being. The words to this anthem that was written just three years ago are in your bulletin. As the choir sings, I invite us to be in prayer with them.

Matthew 6:5-13

Apparently Jesus' first followers had questions about prayer. The celebrity pray-ers of the time - who liked to pray in public with flowing phrases and pious cliches -- they win no points with Jesus. The reason you pray, he says, is not to impress others by your piety; still less is it to impress God with your long prayers. Prayer is to be private - go to your room and shut the door. And prayer is to be short - God knows what you need before you even ask!

So if your prayers are private, and brief - Jesus would like that. And he wants our prayers to be honest as well. Even a brief, private prayer needs to be sincere, and from the heart, Jesus would say. Otherwise we've missed the point. The point of prayer is not so "get" anything from God, after all. The point is to grow in the love and knowledge of God.

Then Jesus offers a pattern for our praying, the very brief prayer that we call The Lord's Prayer. New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says of this prayer, The problem . . . is neither its content nor its historicity, but its familiarity. [The Misunderstood Jew, page 42] And indeed the danger of saying the same words each week, or each day as some of us do, is that the words can become empty phrases - our mouths can say the words, but our minds are somewhere else.

Still this prayer is important in our faith. For in it we hear simple praise of God, dependence upon God, hope for the future, and a commitment to live in the way of Christ.

In it we pray that God's will be done - not ours, not the world's, but God's will be done throughout the earth.

In the Lord's Prayer we dare to link our receiving of forgiveness to our offering of forgiveness to others - a bold, and daring and challenging concept if there ever was.

In the longer form of this prayer we say that God reigns on earth - Thine is the Kingdom . . . Not Herod, not Caesar, and certainly not the President - we follow God, and no mere man on any throne. In Jesus' time people would have referred to Caesar as "our father." Jesus says no: Not Caesar, but only God is the source of our lives.

So the Lord's Prayer is a rich resource for meditation to direct and focus our prayers, prayers that are spoken and prayers that are not.

Pray like this says Jesus. Pray always says the apostle. And sometimes - maybe most of the time - pray without words.