In April Dr Harkness ran a workshop for cell-leaders on conducting prayer sessions in small groups. After the session, Susan asked for feedback on how the session went. Peter commented that Dr Harkness did not make a strong case for prayer, something much more difficult to do. It will be good to know more about what prayer is, what it does to a person and what effects it has on faith. Gary continued that it is good to address this in a sermon series, and again from different theological persuasions and experiences.
So in this message, I will try to open this exploration with a theological perspective into the practice of prayer. The speakers that follow, I think, will move towards the praxis, or practice of prayer. If you try to browse through any book shops you will find plenty of books about the practice of prayer, much less about theories. You will read about the ‘Prayer of Jabez’ on ‘enlarging your territory’ or about Merton’s inward journey into the self to meet God, but not much about the theory of prayer, which is rightly so. Prayer is something that we do, not talk about. But to set an entry point in exploring prayer by reflecting theology is something that I will try to do.
Let’s start off simple. What is prayer? This reflection will be an exploration of three basic statements about what prayer is; the first two are taken from the catechism from the Book of Common Prayer and the last one is one that I have summarized from experience.
Q1 What is prayer?
A1 Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.
Q2 What is Christian Prayer?
A2 Christian prayer is response of God the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Q3 How do we pray?
A3 We recognize our illusions, and journey through it towards God.
What is Prayer?
Q What is prayer?
A Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.
Some stories to illustrate the point of prayer being a response to God:
Jacob, like many heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures, is really morally dubious. Jacob in a sibling rivalry upped the ante by deceiving his father and thereby inheriting the birthright that is rightfully his brother’s. His brother Esau is mad about it. Jacob runs away for his life. After years of wandering comes the time for reckoning. He reconciles with his brother, and settles for a life with less excitement. But a life of less excitement is not in God’s agenda. He is about to move his entire family to Egypt. In the middle of the night, God speaks to him in a vision; remember what he says in response, “Here I am.”
The second story.
Young precocious Samuel lives with his much older mentor and guardian Eli in the precincts of the temple. Young Samuel, like Jacob hears the voice of God at night. Each night God calls out ‘Samuel, Samuel.’ Each time Samuel thinks Eli calls for him; notice what he says to Eli each time he is called, “Here I am.”
The third story, read from Eugene Peterson’s translation of the book of Isaiah.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Master sitting on a throne--high, exalted!-and the train of his robes filled the Temple. Angel-seraphs hovered above him, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew." And they called back and forth one to the other,
Holy, Holy, Holy is GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies.
His bright glory fills the whole earth.
And then I heard the voice of the Master:
"Whom shall I send?
Who will go for us?"
Notice how Isaiah responded, “Here I am, send me.”
Weaving through the three stories is the formula that signifies the relationship of the servant to his master, the servant to his God. I hope you will find this formula familiar: We have been repeating it for the last few months in the Communion Liturgy.
From Isaiah 58:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say,
Here I am.
Notice how Isaiah reverses the meaning of the formula ‘Here I am’. God the master takes the language of the attending servant. With a right attitude, one that is willing to be compassionate towards others need not chase persistently after a distant God. God is not a dangling carrot, never attainable. Rather God is present and waiting for us to respond. Then prayer is responding to this God who says ‘Here I am’ to you. “Behold I stand at the door and knock”. What will you do? How will you respond? How you will respond is how you pray.
What is Christian Prayer?
Q. What is Christian Prayer?
A. Christian prayer is response of God the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
A longtime Internet defender of Eastern Orthodoxy has announced that he will no longer engage in online debates, his continuing discussions with other Christians have left him exhausted, because they all seem to speak a different language from him.
"Schismatics are always talking about things like 'justiverication' and 'sanctimonification,'" Kaloupolis complained.
"I'm a simple man," he said. "Just give me simple concepts like theosis and homouoisous and pericherosis.
Remember the word ‘pericherosis’.
There are different types of prayer and there are Christian prayers. I’ll move on to explore the specifically Christian discipline of prayer with is rooted in the relationships of the Trinity. It is good to be grounded in a deeper knowledge of our prayer tradition before we enlarge and enrich it by learning from others.
From John 15:
"I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love. That's what I've done--kept my Father's commands and made myself at home in his love.
"When the Friend I plan to send you from the Father comes--the Spirit of Truth issuing from the Father--he will confirm everything about me. You, too, from your side must give your confirming evidence, since you are in this with me from the start.
Many of us have heard of this analogy for the Trinity: Ice is water; liquid water is water; water vapour too is water – thus we have the same thing existing in three forms. This is a bad analogy, though entertaining it is to imagine the Father melting into the Son and then evaporating into the Spirit; the main Christian tradition is to image the Trinity involved in a relationship makes three distinct persons one. The early Greek theologians understood the passage in John to explain the persons of the Trinity as present in each other: The Father loves the Son; the Son abides in his love; the Father sends the Spirit; The Son sends the Spirit; The Spirit witnesses to the Son. The Persons of the Trinity are related in a circle of mutual loving.
We have prayed using the icon of the Trinity painted by Andre Rublev. You have noticed how the figures of the Trinity form a perfect circle. If you follow the eyes of each of the figure you will notice a movement that encircles the gazes of each of the figures. If you follow the directions in the gestures of the hands, you will lead to a circular movement around the beings of the figures. This encircling movement is known as pericherosis; a round-dance.
In the Christian imagination, the persons of the Trinity are engaged in a round dance. At creation, the Father spoke the Word; the Word was the life-giving Son; the Spirit breathed life to creation. At the crucifixion, the Son gave his life; the Father withdraws in grief; the Spirit expressed that grief in a cosmic darkness. At the Resurrection, the Father raises the Son; the Son raises new life in all; the Spirit pours out herself into the renewed world. At the end of time, the Son unites all things to himself; the Father receives the gift of this new world; the Spirit makes this gift holy. This round dance encircles the whole of time and space.
Brian McLaren expresses the pericherosis better than I can and I borrow his words:
The dance of God. In the early church, one of the most powerful images used for the Trinity was the image of a dance of mutual indwelling. The Father, Son, and Spirit live in an eternal, joyful, vibrant dance of love and honor, rhythm and harmony, grace and beauty, giving and receiving. The universe was created to be an expression and extension of the dance of God—so all creatures share in the dynamic joy of movement, love, vitality, harmony, and celebration. But we humans broke with the dance. We stamped on the toes of other dancers, ignored the rhythm, rejected the grace, and generally made a mess of things. But God sent Jesus into the world to model for us a way of living in the rhythm of God’s music of love, and ever since, people have been attracted to the beauty of his steps and have begun rejoining the dance.
Christian prayer is the joining in of this dance and it begins with an awareness of the being of the Trinity and participating in the mutual loving of the Trinity.
When we wake up at the beginning of day: The Father raises the Sun; the Son gives life to us; the Spirit infuses our waking life with energy. Upon the labours of the day: The Father calls us to build the holy city; the Son inspires with model of justice; the Spirit consecrates our acts and work. Upon home-coming: The Father calls us to loving relationships; the Son grieves us through our brokenness; the Spirit gives life through our reconciliation. Upon resting: The Father calls us to rest and repentance, the Son guarantees forgiveness; the Spirit gives us rest and assurance of being beloved.
St Patrick models for us the praying that is a participating in the life of the Trinity in the ordinariness of the mundane:
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.
In praying and sharing in the round dance of the Trinity, we find the smallness of our lives and work part of a grand overture of God’s creating and re-creating; our meanings and meaningless-ness becomes part of God’s meaningful-ness; the little that we can do becomes part of the great things that God can do. In praying, our sins and failings becomes the dissonance that makes up God’s symphony. In the Easter Liturgy we sang the proclamation that said,
O happy fault,
O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!
Likewise in praying, we find forgiveness in perceiving our sins as gateway to grace. The words of English mystic Julian of Norwich: Sin is behovely (necessary), but all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manners of things shall be well.
In prayer, we actualize our life as part of this round dance. Russian theologian Alexander Schememann described all of life as Eucharistic. In the communion, the Son gives us his body and blood; we offer them as our sacrifice of praise to the Father; the Spirit makes the gifts of ourselves holy. Likewise when we pray in Christ, we offer our bodies and work as a sacrifice to the Father; the Spirit makes our gift and gifting holy; the Father says to us: This is my Son, my sons and my daughters, in whom I am well-pleased.
The reason why we pray for each other is because we recognize each other as co-dancers in this round dance of God and that each of us are as intimately connected to each other and each dancer matters.
The reason why we pray for each other is because when we pray, we are expressing a relationship of loving to and for those whom we pray. In doing so, we are reflecting the mutual loving of the Trinity and we live out our true identity as reflection of our Trinitarian God. The Zen teachers call meditation ‘light reflecting Light’; analogously we become light reflecting God’s light of mutual indwelling love.
How do we pray?
Q. How do we pray?
A. We recognize our illusions, and journey through it towards God.
Some of us in this congregation hangs pretty much around club cultures and club communes. I am sure some of us have friends who are regular substance-users. One of the appeal of substance abuse is the feelings that drugs bring. One pill of ecstasy gives us a sense of empathy, compassion and lovingness; a snort of ketamine gives a feel of transcendence; the whole night gives festival of camaraderie. These are feelings that the human spirit aspires to, but the problem with substance abuse is that it substitutes an illusion of compassion, love and companionship for the depth of genuine relationship and this illusion lasts but before the night is over. Yet in our chasing for the depth of life, we happily cling on to this illusion that keeps us from a genuine pursuit and leave ourselves addicted in a cycle of illusions.
Lest we take on the moral high ground and judge substance- abusers, are we any better? Do we not chase for affirmations from people and substitute this illusion of feeling good enough for the character development of self awareness and self-acceptance? Do we not chase after accomplishments and act as if these accomplishments make us fully good-enough humans?
Prayer is a discipline in which we recognize illusions of ourselves and more so, of God, and a striving beyond these illusions towards the God of life.
I began grounding my first point of prayer as responding to God with the passage from Isaiah 58 and I come back to it for my concluding point.
"Shout! A full-throated shout!
Hold nothing back--a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what's wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins!
They're busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they're a nation of right-living people--
law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, "What's the right thing to do?'
and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
"Why do we fast and you don't look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?'
"Well, here's why:
"The bottom line on your "fast days' is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
won't get your prayers off the ground.
To be fair, the prophet’s audience is not one that is impious, irreligious, nor particularly evil. Notice they are busy at worship – they give God priority, they want God on their side, they look for the right things to do, and they desire to chase after God.
When you trace the messages of the Hebrew prophets you will find this persistent complaint – that the people are always turning from God to a god that gives them comfort, safety and immediate gratification. They have turned from God to their own comfortable illusion that satisfies their needs, a fairy godmother. And because their illusion of God is a projection of their egos, a creating in their image of God by their needs, they missed out on the God of life. Therefore, they cannot recognize that God is beyond their ego, a God that demands service to others and not a God that serves them.
To pray, we too have to begin a process of waking up to our illusions of God that is created by our needs and desires. Some of these illusions can be destructive. I am sure we know of people who keep praying to a God that terrifies as a judge. Some of these illusions pander to our neurosis: We are generally uncomfortable with our shadows and imperfections. We create a picture of God that legitimizes our self-hatred. Such behaviours lend itself to spiritual self-abuse. God does not abuse.
In prayer, we have to begin with a spirit of openness that allows God to be larger than our fairy godmothers. We begin by naming God as the writers of Genesis had it given to Moses – ‘I am who I am’. God is not whom I determine to be, and in case I have an illusion that I have a claim on the knowledge of God, that same name is also translated ‘I am whom I will be’.
In prayer, we cannot demand God to be our fairy godmother, to provide us immediate answers and fulfill our desires. Psychoanalysis is a practice that has close connection to the practice of prayer and perhaps we can learn something from it. At a therapy, a relationship is formed between a therapist and the client where the client expects the therapist to give answers and be the answer to his problems. The therapist must refuse to give these answers in order for the client to come to some form of healing. It is only in distancing herself that the therapist can provide space for the client to arrive at self-awareness. Similarly God does not provide us with answers so that we can enter a deeper realization of ourselves and of God.
Even among experienced practitioners of prayers there are seasons of unanswered and unfulfilled desires. St John of the cross calls it the dark night of the soul. It is one night of uncertainty and unfulfilled desiring. Yet St John of the Cross recognizes that it is in this night that the ‘streams of mercy flows, though it be night’.
God is not an immediate answer to our prayers, but God is an immediate presence, a ‘Here I am’. God does guarantee to go with us, but go we must through the valleys of darkness and the shadows of death. But we are not alone.
Let us pray.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you
and I hope that
I have that desire in all that I am doing.
And I know that if I do this,
you will lead me by the right road
although I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death, I will not fear,
for you are ever with me
and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.
