Pray
for me, that when I speak a message may be given to me to make known
with boldness the mystery of the gospel...
Lord
– in your mercy hear my prayer.
That
process of prayer before preaching is something we take for granted,
I'm sure...and I know, if I'm honest, that more often than not, if I'm in the congregation, my
involvement in the preacher's prayer is limited to a formulaic
“Amen”...though the view is rather different when I'm standing here, as I am right now, hugely conscious of the sheer presumptuousness of ascending these
steps to speak about God and expecting others - you - to listen!
Just
who do I think I am??
Preaching
the word can surely only be possible if we hand the whole process
over directly to God.
That's
why for me the hope that the words I preach will be in the name of
the Father, Son & Holy Spirit always comes in the form of a petition . “May I speak...” and not a declaration "I speak..."
How
could it be otherwise.?
I'm
overwhelmingly conscious that when those words are simply the
overflow of my own hyper-active thoughts, they remain disturbingly earth-bound. I
need, then, to engage with Paul's exhortation to pray in the
Spirit...for the whole business of prayer is, of course, always about
both communication and relationship.
But
here as we meet for worship it would be easy to take it for granted.
It's pretty much the first thing we do whenever we gather to hear
God's Word, and to support one another in the life of faith. We come
as individuals, carrying all the joys & concerns of our own
lives, and as we pray The Spirit knits us together, and transforms us
into the Body of Christ. Together we hear, see, taste, smell, feel,
and sing God's love. And we respond in prayer.
Prayer
is what most sets a church apart from any other sort of gathering.
It's
our core purpose – and there is something about meeting somewhere
where prayer has “been valid” since the days of Leofric and
Godiva that adds extra impetus to the process.
My
former bishop Michael Perham reminds us that prayer is like a spring
running underground throughout our worship. “We hear the
scriptures read, but in a way we pray them and that is why God is
able to speak to us through them. We listen to the sermon, but in a
way we pray it ...and it the prayer that changes it from dry theology
into good news for our lives. We sing hymns and psalms, chants and
songs, but at another level we pray them...”
Prayer
is the life blood of the Christian community...the means by which we
put down deep roots into God
But
prayer is not, really, about what we do. It is, to quote Rowan
Williams, rather an environment that we inhabit...the environment
that is our relationship with God.
Among
many many books on prayer on my shelves is one called simply “An
Affair of the Heart”.
I
love that reminder.
Prayer
is an affair of the heart...
It
should have nothing to do with duty – with the formulaic business
of “saying our prayers” - though it's true that established habit
and carefully crafted words can hold us steady when our hearts and
minds are in tumult.
Terese
of Liesieux puts it beautifully
“I say very simply to God what I
wish to say, without composing beautiful sentences, and he always
understands me. For me prayer is an aspiration of the heart...”
An
aspiration...
A
longing of our heart to turn towards God...a re-orientation of heart,
mind, spirit as God calls us back to our truest selves.
And
that aspiration is outstripped in every way by God's longing to reach
out to us.
So
prayer is most truly a conversation based on the language of love.
The
love with which God reaches out to us, in myriad ways...through
creation, through the arts, through Scripture, through one another –
and above all through his Son, the living, breathing Jesus, who walked the earth, and the risen Lord who invites us here to meet him in bread and wine
God's endless unconditional love ....and the faltering love that we offer
in return.
Here
is the God whose arms are always open...who waits constantly for us
to turn towards him, whose heart aches in longing for us to come to
know Him...the God who is “always more ready to hear that we are to
pray” and whose boundless generosity outstrips even our egocentric
demands.
But
we are oddly resistant – bafflingly narrow in our view of what God
can do in us and for us.
He
offers us life in all its fulness, “more than we either desire or
deserve” but we ask instead for a win for the Sky Blues, fine
weather for a wedding, or a 4 bedroomed house in Earlsdon.
Perhaps
it is because we are too conscious of our own shortcomings, “guilty
of dust and sin” - but you know, God has already dealt with that.
No
matter how much we may struggle with ourselves, with those recurrent
patterns of thought and behaviour that we have tried and tried and
tried to bury, with the distressing realisations that “That – THAT – is part of
me!!”...God has already dealt with it.
Yes
– even those things we can't bear to mention or acknowledge.
God,
in Christ, has them covered.
“Forgiving
us those things of which our conscience is afraid”...
Perhaps though we're simply too busy to bother. Prayer seems a pointless waste of our
valuable time – for we're trapped in the self-important,
self-reliant habits of contemporary life that leave little sense of
the deepest realities
“People
on sinking ships complain of many things, but never of distraction in
their prayers” said Herbert McCabe...and it's surely true that we
petition with most urgency when we know that we are at the end of our
own resources.
At
that place where human capabilities are exhausted, and material
distractions lose their power, prayer takes off as never before - for at that point we know that what we most need are words of eternal life.
“To
whom shall we go...?” indeed.
But
in the meantime, perhaps it is simply that we don't believe prayer
will change anything.
Sometimes
we may not recognise God's gifts...
We pray for healing and perhaps God's gift to our loved one is the healing that comes as he gathers them safely into his arms.
Was
our prayer answered?
Not
as we chose...but surely the answer came.
If
we imagine that prayer is all about changing God's mind, about
bringing him round to our way of thinking – our hopes will often be
disappointed, and so we decide to give up.
Transformation
will happen right enough....but it's most likely to be a
transformation of US as we pray, as we spend time with God, as we
honestly struggle to mean those well-worn words “thy will be done”.
Sometimes,
of course, we shy away from the recognition that God invites us to
become the answer to our own prayers...that, having prayed for the poor
and hungry to be relieved, it falls to us to go and feed them...but
that is part of a continuing conversation as well.
I know that when
I'm tempted to let fly at God about refugees, global warming, child
poverty, I can expect to hear God challenging me to BE an active part
of the Body of Christ...to back up my words with radical action.
Prayer
will change me, if I let it...and it is certainly futile to pray if
you have no intention of doing anything different when you rise from
your knees – for in every relationship we can expect to be changed
by the one with whom we're engaged.
In
this relationship we place ourselves, trembling, in the hands of the
living God....and as we place ourselves where God can touch us, and
try to let go of the protective layers of assumptions about
ourselves, and about God which so often disrupt our conversation, we
become more truly, fully ourselves...
There
in the stillness, where words cease, is God.
And
you.
And
I.
And
all the needs of the broken, hurting world.
Rowan
Williams again.
“When
you're lying on the beach, something is happening that has nothing to
do with how you feel or how hard you're trying. You're not going to
get a better tan by screwing up your eyes and concentrating. You give
the time, and that's it. All you have to do is turn up. And then
things change...You simply have to be there where the light can get
at you”
So,
in the end, there is nothing really to understand...nothing to “get
right”...no props required, no special words - not even "hands together and eyes closed".
Prayer
is all about love, God's love reaching out to us and helping us to
respond little by little, as we are brought into alignment with the
One who calls us to know him, leads us to trust him and speaks to us
the words of eternal life...to Him be glory both now and forever.
Almighty and everlasting God,
you are always more ready to hear than we to pray
and to give more than either we desire or deserve:
pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid
and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask
but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
