The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 12, 28 July 2013

“Prayer”

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 12

28 July 2013

The Episcopal Church of Our Saviour

Mill Valley, California

Genesis 18:20-32

Psalm 138

Colossians 2:6-19

St. Luke 11:1-13

INI

Images of Prayer

What are your images of prayer?  What comes into your mind when you hear the word prayer?  I’ll give you some of mine.  There are the praying hands by Dürer, and other hands by Maillot and others – hands clasped together almost in a sense of urgency.  Then there is this hymn.  It doesn’t appear in the 1982 hymnal, nor in the 1940.  It is a Methodist hymn that I learned as a child since it was in the Lutheran Hymnal:

Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!

That calls me from a world of care,


And bids me at my Father’s throne


Make all my wants and wishes known.

In seasons of distress and grief,


My soul has often found relief,


And oft escaped the tempter’s snare,

By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!

Nice, but almost saccharine. It reminds me of a Calgon advertisement – “Calgon, take me away!”  But that is not prayer’s job or concern.  The way prayer appears here is in the guise of a quick panacea, a rapid fix.  I do have other images as well: A kneeler, a bedside, a table, a starry night, a rock in Gethsemane.  These all come to mind.  What comes to my preacher mind is that the universe of prayer is much broader than these images of prayer.  So I need to ask again.  What is prayer?  What is prayer for you?

Stories about prayer.

I have a story about prayer that I love.  It is a personal story, one that I have shared often, because it jolted me out of a sentimental view of prayer and praying.  My first parish was a mission parish in Taunton, Massachusetts – a small industrial city south of Boston.  It was home to many churches – a number of Roman Catholic Churches that represented every major immigration to this country, Congregational, Unitarian, two Episcopal Churches – on white collar, the other blue, and then Methodist, Baptist, etc.  Mine was the humble Lutheran one, eking out an existence in a storefront.  We had a mimeograph machine.  Do you remember those?  It had a central drum into which you poured ink and then brushed it around the drum.  I had no secretary, so I did all of that – preparing bulletins by typing a master stencil and then running the bulletin off on the mimeograph.  One day, I mounted the stencil, made five copies when the stencil tore, rendering it useless.  So I sat down, prepared another stencil, mounted it on the machine, ran 6 copies, and the stencil tore.  So I again typed up a new stencil mounted it, and – the stencil tore.  At that moment, in anger, I hit the handle of the machine, causing the drum to rotate wildly, making a great deal of noise, and screamed to the ceiling, “I’m doing this for you, don’t you know!” 

Prayer.

It isn’t anger or torn stencils that motivates Abraham at Sodom.  It is rather his memory of G-d’s graciousness.  We have to remember that this scene in the first reading happens immediately after the vision at Mamre, which we read about last Sunday.  Abraham intercedes for Sodom out of his experience with G-d, having been promised so much, and out of his relationship with Lot, his nephew, who lives in Sodom.  There are two dimensionalities to Abraham’s prayer – family, and his knowledge of G-d.  It is in that intersection that Abraham explores how far he can go with G-d in dealing with the “sins” of Sodom.  We won’t explore the nature of the sin, this morning.  We’re only interested in the nature of prayer.  Here it is prayer that explores all kinds of conditions and situations.

In the book of Job, after Job having lost all of his wealth, and most of his family,

Job explores the nature of his situation with G-d with friends.  He is convinced of the relationship he has with G-d, and struggles to retain his sense of belonging to G-d.  In the midst of this conversation, Job’s wife interjects, “enough with integrity, curse G-d and die!”  Give up, stop the praying, it’s all over – seems to be her message.  In Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the knights are confronted by a very medieval appearing vision of G-d, and as they make suitable obeisance, G-d shouts from on high, “Oh, stop your groveling!”

Abraham approached G-d with a sense of his relationship with G-d.  Job does as well.  It is the standard approach of all of Israel, as they pray to the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Prayer always begins from this sense of relationship, and in that relationship anything can be the subject of the conversation, a sinful city, an errant mimeograph machine, a confused and disillusioned Job.  That is why Jesus begins his template for prayer with the words, “Our Father”.  All is allowed when we speak to our parents – or at least it should be – and all the emotions are appropriate.

There are other examples of this free-wheeling prayer.  Martha complains/prays at the death of her brother Lazarus, “Lord, if you had only been here!”  Hannah weeps her prayer at the Tabernacle – she wants a son, and then sings a wonderful hymn in response to the answer that she receives – a song that serves as a model for the Magnificat.  Jacob wrestles with G-d, and pins him down expecting a promise.  Paul writes in Romans about the difficulty of prayer – that sometimes it’s unutterable, words simply not being sufficient:  

“In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.”

But you, how do you pray?

Jesus and prayer

One thing I’ve found in my life as a priest is the ubiquity of the Lord’s Prayer.  It is not my uncommon experience to have a meeting either opened or closed with the Lord’s Prayer.  That’s OK, I suppose, but I wonder what the prayers are lingering below the surface, just waiting for the Holy Spirit to give them voice.  One gets the sense from both Matthew and Luke, whose prayers differ slightly, that they are not prayers so much as a means to prayer – a technique, a template. 

Using that model then, how does Jesus’ prayer teach us to pray?

1.     Begin with the relationship.  Knowing that G-d is father or mother, that G-d loves you as one of the family; begin your praying at that point.  Bring to mind all that G-d has been in your life, good times and bad times.  Speak as a member of the family.

2.     Honor the relationship (Hallowed be thy name).  And maybe that part doesn’t need to be said aloud so much as remembered and brought to mind.

3.     Expect G-d to answer (Thy kingdom come).  And expect to make your case, as Abraham did.  Argue, and get involved.  The answer may be waiting in your own words and advocacy.

4.     Ask for the basics:  daily life (bread), forgiveness, and deliverance from difficult times.  And take a clue from the forgiveness part.  We ask for forgiveness promising to give it in return.  Should we also do it with bread – give bread to others in return; give solace and comfort in difficult time to others in their time of trial.

Jesus prayer is four simple approaches to prayer that he follows with words of advice and examples.  Be persistent in prayer.  That is something our prayer group here understands.  Almost daily I receive prayer requests from them, as I involve myself in their circle of prayer. 

Then Jesus prescribes three simple actions: Asking (having no fear – like Abraham), Searching (like Hannah who kept searching for an approach to G-d and her request for a son) and Knocking (like the impertinent neighbor).

The final expectation that Jesus give is both profound and utter wisdom itself: Expect good not only from G-d, but also from yourself.  Now that is prayer.

SDG

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 10, 14 July 2013

“Memory”

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 10

14 July 2013

The Episcopal Church of Our Saviour

Mill Valley, California

Deuteronomy 30:9-14

Psalm 25:1-9

Colossians 1:1-14

St. Luke 10:25-37

INI

Memory and Formation

I went looking for this on the Internet after I read the lessons for this Sunday.  It was a small green book, maybe 4 x 6, that dominated my first six years of elementary school.  It was known as the “memory book”, and it contained in a graded order, from the simple to the complex, verses from the Bible that were to be memorized.  It was a parochial school, and each week my classmates and I struggled to memorize the verses assigned to us.  I hated it, but I treasure the resource that was given me and that is kept in my heart (and God knows how many brain cells).

One more instance: It was a diocesan conference for clergy, and we had gathered in the evening for a banquet.  The program said that we were going to say Evening Prayer at the end of the banquet, and when that time came, there was the harsh realization that no one had brought Prayer Books so that Evening Prayer might be said.  There was an uneasy silence, and the leaders attempted to locate Prayer Books – but none were found.  There was a low level of mumbling as time passed.  Finally one of the leaders looked at the assembled people and said, “The Lord be with you” and automatically we responded “And also with you.”  Then she said, “O God, make speed to save us,” and without missing a beat those assembled replied, “O Lord, make haste to help us…Glory be to the Father…” And thus it went, the whole of the prayer office being said from the resources of our hearts. 

This surprises none of you, for it is this memory of liturgical phrases, hymns, bible passages and sayings from grandparents, and parents that buoy us up when times are difficult.  All of this sacred memory exists along side memories of Loony Toons, and Disney cartoons, advertisement jingles and bumper sticker wisdom.  We have the capacity to retain so much.  You may be wondering, “Why is he talking about this today?”

Listen to what the Deuteronomist has to say from this morning’s first reading: “No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe." As Moses observes the prosperity of Israel, he also reminds them of their real wealth, their commonwealth in the Word and Law of God.  However, his real observation of the intimacy of that relationship, of God’s very breath and word to the people is what takes my breath away.  Moses comments that the Word and the Law are as close as the words of our own mouth, and the emotions of our own hearts.  That is what will make us alive in God.

Memory before memory

Listening to the radio one time, I heard a ballerino discuss the recreation of a particular work.  It had not been noted down in notation, but had been recreated from muscle memory.  Muscle memory is how I can play “To A Wild Rose” on the piano – my finger muscles remember the movement, notes, and fingering.  I don’t really read the music. 

Memory allows us to live life in context and to learn from what has gone before.  In his book, England, England, Julian Barnes begins with these words,

“‘What’s your first memory?’ someone would ask. And she would reply, ‘I don’t remember.’ Most people assumed it was a joke, though a few suspected her of being clever. But it was what she believed. ‘I know just what you mean,’ sympathizers would say, preparing to explain and simplify. ‘There’s always a memory just behind your first memory, and you can’t quite get at it.’[1] 

Yes, there is always something within us that always remembers, even if we forget to remember.  It’s tied to our senses.  Smell port wine and I think of my first communion, hear the “Witches’ Sabbath” from Symphonie Fantastique, and I think of my father taking his six year old son to his first symphony.  Earlier peoples had this sense of “memory beyond memory”, and in it centered their spiritual and religious lives.  This is the memory that is not sharpened by old photographs, or television.  This is the approximate memory that guided Abraham and Sarah, and that wrote the Bible.  Fuzzy, sometimes unclear, fleeting – these memories were the gifts of mothers and fathers to succeeding generations.  It is the memory to which Moses alludes in his comments on the Law of God. 

These memories always place in the presence of those who have gone before us, and they most certainly place in a place of wonder before God.  It is true, they all compete for our attention, but they are indeed the potential source of whatever thanksgiving we can make to God.  Peter Menkin puts it well in his poem, “Discovering Christ in Words of Faith”[2]

“A lingo known to me but sadly not a written language,

so I feebly clung to English, which I’d known but now forgot.

No doubt about it, that lingo known is but sadly

Not a written language, and how to cling mightily so

To English which I’ve known but forgot.”

Memories may be a conundrum, but they are a source and foundation of faith – so now what do we do with them.

The Practical Application of Memory

A lawyer comes to Jesus, in today’s Gospel, and wants to know how to be saved – how to attain heavenly life, and Jesus throws the question back to him.  “What does the Law say?”  The lawyer knows his stuff and recites back the passage about God, love, and neighbor.  He proves nothing by this, only proving to those standing with Jesus, that he has done his homework, and knows the Law.  It was not only the Law that comes back to him from his memory, but his creed as well.  He and all of Israel would and did say:

“Hear, O Israel!  The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.

Take to heart these words which I command you today. Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them on your arm as a sign^* and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.”[3]

Remember the part that the lawyer recalls about loving the Lord your God, about loving your neighbor, about loving yourself.  Because of the way it is phrased we often forget to remember that last one – “love your neighbor as you love yourself.  That’s an important part – remembering to love our selves.  It makes the other part – the neighbor part – possible. But then the lawyer goes too far.  The answer he receives in the Parable of the Good Samaritan will enlighten all who are within hearing distance about the real intent and practice of the law, but the lawyer’s true intents will be stripped bare.  “And who is my neighbor?” 

The neighbor is the one who stirs our memory, who brings up into our consciousness what others have taught us about what God would have us do.  Jesus comments on it in the Gospel According to Matthew in his discussion with the disciples about the end time. 

“Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’[4]

Of course they remember none of this.  “Lord, when did we see you hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, in prison?”  Would you remember, and where and when would your memory kick in?  “When you did it to the least of these!”  Then the memory before memory should come to mind, the example of saints, and family, or grandparents, and those known to us or unknown, all of who served Christ in service to others.  In your heart is a memory of what Christ has done, and what you still can do. 

In Germany one Advent, Arthur and I went to hear a concert at St. Nikolaus Kirche in Berlin.  The church had been secularized in the late 50s, and now it served as a museum of what role the church had played in the governing of Berlin, and later in its acquiring freedoms and liberty.  The choir sang Advent hymns that you would remember, and sang some secular songs as well.  At the end, after bows had been taken and applause offered, the conductor went back to the podium in front of the choir and asked the audience to join with him in singing Nun komm der heiden Heiland (Savior of the Nations, Come).  There were no hymnals, or words printed in the program – just the invitation to join in song.  And they did.  Rising from their seats, they sang the hymn from memory, from their hearts, from the memory before memory, all seven verses.  There in that place that had taken faith from the pew out into the streets and byways, they sang and remembered.

Now then, what shall we do?

SDG

---

[1] Barnes, Julian (2009-01-16). England, England (Vintage International) (p. 3). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] Discovering Christ in Words of Faith: Poems, page 40

[3] Deuteronomy 6:4-9

[4] St. Matthew 25: 34-36

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 9, 7 July 2013

“How the other half…”

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9

7 July 2013

The Episcopal Church of Our Savior

Mill Valley, California

Isaiah 66:10-14

Psalm 66:1-8           

Galatians 6:1-16

St. Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

INI

On Being Sent

Two Sundays ago, we heard the story of the Gerasene Demoniac, who having been healed by Jesus urges Jesus to allow him to join him and his disciples.  Jesus sends this man back to his town.  And in that sermon I attempted to emphasize that this was really not a shameful dismissal of this man but rather an sending of the man to an apostolic mission – for in telling the story of his own healing, he would be announcing the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Last Sunday, our good Deacon Annette related the story of Jesus’ “setting his face toward Jerusalem”, in other words, his intentional sending of himself to the place that will hang him on the cross.  Here he is sent and he obeys the command that he go.  Later in the Gospel, someone also wants to go with Jesus, but along with several others makes excuses, “I need to go and bury my father”, or “I need to go say goodbye.”  To these sent ones Jesus says a polite, “Forget it!” and then advises the hearer and reader with: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Today we are in a similar situation; only here Jesus actually does send out a number of people to speak the good news, the Gospel.  There are seventy of them, or if you are reading other ancient manuscripts it might be seventy-two of them.  It really doesn’t matter.  The symbolism of the numbers may relate to the Nations of the Earth to which these representatives are being sent – this would really be in alignment with Luke’s program and agenda, or this might be a symbol of being sent to the totality of Israel (six times 12).  What is apparent is that Jesus wants to encounter those around him and to announce good news.  That is the context of this lesson – and now I would hope that we could begin to learn something about our own mission here.  We are, you know, just as sent as these people were.  It is a mission that we share with them, and with all who would follow Jesus.  Thus it is important for us to hear Jesus’ “sending words” as keenly as those who originally heard them.  We are sent as well.  How, then shall we go?

On Urgency

Just this last week Canadian Anglicans and Canadian Lutherans met jointly in Ottawa to do business for their own ecclesiastical bodies, and to share in resolutions that would affect their common ministries.  In the Lutheran Session the National Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, Susan Johnson shared the results of a financial and demographic study of the denomination commissioned by the ELCIC’s Conference of Bishops.

It shows that 54 congregations have closed since the ELCIC was established in 1986, and that individual membership has dropped from more than 262,000 to about 139,000 during the same time period. Future projections are equally grim. The study suggests a further 64 ELCIC congregations will close by 2020.

This situation is not peculiar to the Lutherans, or to the Canadian Anglicans as well.  It is a situation that threatens most mainline churches in this country, including the Episcopal Church.  To listen to presiding bishops and primates in the Northern Hemisphere is to hear a story of declining membership and participation.  Jesus understands.  His sense of urgency was related to the message that he wished to share, and in his urgent sending out of individuals we can detect not only his urgency but his message of hope as well.  It is a message that we need to learn to deliver, not only to ourselves, but to those who live around us as well.

It’s not going to be easy, Jesus says, “like lambs into the midst of wolves.”  And so we leave like Israel from Egypt with only the necessities, “no purse, no bag, no sandals, no polite greetings on the road.”  Jesus sends us out as mendicants, beggars, who carry only the message, and who rely on the world for food and care.  In our urgency, should we share that sense with Jesus, we need to determine what it is that we really need to have?  What could we give up here for the sake of the message?  What is unnecessary to telling Jesus’ story?  What can be left behind?

On knowing those who need the kingdom

Let’s step back a moment and look at what Jesus is asking us to give up – it gives us a clue as to our audience, those who know their need of God.  Are there any among us who have no purse or bag?  Are there any among us who have no clothes or footwear?  Are there any among us who have no one to greet them, or to honor them? 

This is the other part of Luke’s program and agenda.  Luke knew well the people who were without.  He writes about them constantly, and focuses our attention on them in the structuring of the Gospel.  He focuses on the “little ones”, the ones who have nothing, the poor, the widow and the orphan, the ones without hope.  He falls in line with the prophets of Israel who constantly reminded the Chosen People of God about their responsibility to those that had nothing.

Perhaps Jesus’ sending his missioners out without was a way to accomplish their own identification with those “little ones” for whom the Kingdom of God is intended.  Luke reminds us in his version of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Thus if we are the sent ones, the ones with the message, the ones who can share hope – to whom can we go to do these good works?

Maybe I need to give up my purse, my bag, my shoes, and my social life so that I can understand those who need.  Maybe I need to be clear about my wealth not just of things, but my wealth of hope.  Perhaps I need to share my joy, my hopefulness in life, my relationship with God to others, and look deeply into the lives of those who do not have these advantages. 

"Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."

On Giving and Receiving

Some of you may be thinking out there, “Oh, dear, he’s lurching from a sermon on evangelism to a sermon on stewardship.”  Rest easy – that’s not my task this morning.  I think my task is to get us to talk about giving and receiving, and doing this as a focus of our mission as a Christian Church in this community. 

Let me tell you a story.  I had a colleague who was very earnest, and whose views on just about anything, I tended to disregard.  She was very earnest.  One day she came into the sacristy to talk with me.  “Michael, you know how you receive communion at the end of the Communion?”  “Yes,” I responded, “I have a very good reason for that.  Bishop Swing…” She cut me off short.  “I’m not talking about that,” she said.  “I’m talking about how you commune yourself.”  “Yes,” I said, that is my practice.  “Michael,” she said with a motherly look in her eye, “You need to learn to receive.”

“Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, `The kingdom of God has come near to you.'”

“The Kingdom of God has come near to you!”  Receive it.  Perhaps we’re not good in our mission efforts because we haven’t learned how to receive, how to take it in.  For many of us it has been given to us since we were children, or since we came to an understanding about our faith and ourselves.  And here we are now, being sent out – sent out to give.  Perhaps before we go we need to take it all in, understand, and do as Paul says, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the good news that has been given us.  Receive it.

Once you have received it – in the Eucharist, in the Word of God, in the remembrance of your baptism, in the forgiveness and peace given to you by others, in the love of those around you, in the love of God – once you have received that – then think on the ways that you can share, taking nothing with you but the message.

SDG