Tag: prayer

Laughing at Ourselves

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 25, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings

As I was coming up with an opening illustration for this week’s sermon, it occurred to me that the one thing you’re probably learning about your new rector this year is that he watches way too much TV. But then again, maybe that’s just something I’m learning about myself. Anyway, what came to my mind this week was a scene from an episode of the famous sitcom The Office.

And in this scene, the boss was on his way to a very important meeting when he slipped and fell into a koi pond. When he got back to the office, soaking wet, he tried making up all kinds of stories to hide his embarrassment about what really happened. But the thing is that all his rationalizations and excuses just made people laugh at him more.

Later on, when he finally admitted the truth about what happened and started poking fun at himself, people’s laughter started turning into compassion. Instead of making up jokes at his expense, they said, “You know, Michael, that’s really the kind of thing that could have happened to anybody.”

I find that moment in the scene very fascinating. It’s like the situation itself was calling for laughter, no matter where it came from. If Michael couldn’t laugh at himself, then the universe was going to make sure that somebody was laughing about it. But when Michael finally did learn how to laugh at himself, the laughter became a gateway to mercy and understanding. It’s as if laughter had this secret power to unlock the doors of compassion in our hearts.

How like life! When we as human beings stand on the firm bedrock of safe and supportive relationships, we gain the ability to laugh at ourselves. And that kind of laughter, rather than tearing us down or pushing us farther apart, has the ability to build us up and pull us closer together — provided that our relationships do, in fact, stand on that solid ground of safe and supportive love.

As a Christian, I do believe that the entire universe stands on just such a solid ground. When we say each week in the Nicene Creed that we believe that Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead, I imagine that judgment not as a verdict in a courtroom, but more like a funny story told around the Thanksgiving table. The embarrassment is there, but so is the love. And that love gives us the power to laugh at ourselves.

That’s how I imagine the final judgment of the living and the dead — not as a sentence to hellfire and damnation, but as a side-splitting laugh at ourselves. Because we learn from Scripture that God is both just and merciful. The one who judges us is also the one who knows and loves us best.

In today’s gospel, we get a glimpse of that justice and mercy in action. Jesus tells a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector. Pharisees, as we know, were very educated and religious people — upstanding citizens and pillars of their community. Tax collectors, on the other hand, were the scum of the earth: bottom feeders, liars, and traitors to their own people.

The Pharisee in this story is doing exactly what we would expect an upstanding citizen to do — holding his head up high in church, listing his accomplishments, and thanking God that he is not like other people, especially this tax collector here. The tax collector, meanwhile, is standing at the back of the church, looking down at his shoes, and the only prayer he can manage to get out is, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

It’s the tax collector, according to Jesus, who went down to his home justified that day, despite his lack of religious or moral qualifications.

Now, what I find interesting about this passage is that at no point does Jesus say that the Pharisee is not justified. Our English translation says that the tax collector went down to his home justified instead of the Pharisee. But the Greek word translated as instead of in our English Bibles is actually the word para, which literally means alongside. So another way that we might translate this verse from the Greek is to say that the tax collector went down to his home justified alongside the Pharisee, not instead of.

And I really like that. Because if I’m really honest with myself, then I have to admit that there is both a Pharisee and a tax collector within me. Like the Pharisee, I too have the capacity to act like a self-righteous windbag. And like the tax collector, I too have the ability to act like a selfish dirtbag. And if I’m being really, really honest, I’m often doing both at the exact same time.

So it’s very comforting for me to be able to read this story as one where both the Pharisee and the tax collector go down to their home justified alongside each other — because most days, both of those guys are coming home with me.

Several years ago, I had a job interview at the hospice agency where I ended up working for several years before I came here. The interview went really well. I came home all excited and ready to talk about it. But then I walked through the door, and my wife Sarah had just had a disaster of a day. Things were stressful at her job, the kids were acting out, and she needed to unload about all of it.

At the end of the night, we went to bed, and she had forgotten to ask me how my interview went. One part of me was seething — this is the Pharisee part of my brain. Except I was imagining him as more like a tough guy from New Jersey. And he said, “Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna get that job, and you’re gonna work there for like six months, until one day she asks you, ‘Hi, honey, how was the hospital today?’ And you’re going to be like, ‘Lady, I ain’t worked there in six months! But what do you care?’ And then she’s gonna feel real bad about it. Forget about it.”

So that was one voice in my head — the Pharisee from New Jersey. I decided I should name him Carl. So that’s Carl.

The other part of me was not from New Jersey, but rather from the Midwest. So obviously, he was a nice guy, because we Midwesterners are nice people. And this part of me was saying, “Oh, don’t you know, Sarah’s really busy, and she’s worried about a lot of really important things. You’re not that important, so you should just keep your yapper shut. Remember that you love each other and just get back to your darn life.”

I didn’t give that voice a name, but it was more like the tax collector side of me. That’s the part that just wants to stand in the back, look down at my shoes, and make myself small and invisible.

But let’s be honest: if I was to listen to either of these voices by itself and do what it says, would either one lead me toward having a more honest and loving relationship with my wife? No, it wouldn’t.

So instead, I took a deep breath and imagined myself sitting at a table with both of these guys. I let each one have their say, and even wrote out what they said in a journal. Because the thing is, each part of me was actually trying to help me — they just weren’t being very helpful in the way that I needed at that moment.

So I heard them out, listened with compassion, and tried to understand where each one was coming from. And what I ended up doing was sitting down with Sarah the next day and saying, “Hey, I’m sorry you had such a rough day yesterday, but I had that really big job interview with hospice, and it hurt my feelings when you didn’t ask me about it.”

And Sarah, my wonderful wife, said, “Oh my gosh, you’re right. I’m sorry. Please tell me — how did it go?” And I did tell her about it, against the advice of the Midwest nice guy, because I am important to her, even though she does have a lot of other really important things to worry about.

And I also went against the advice of Carl from New Jersey and his elaborate ruse about working a job for six months without telling my wife, because obviously that plan would not have worked — but mostly because I didn’t actually want her to feel bad. I just wanted my wife to take an interest in my life and the things that are important to me and to our family. Which, of course, she does. We all just have bad days sometimes.

I tell this story as a personal illustration of the Pharisee and the tax collector that exist within each of us — because they both do. That’s why I’m glad that the text of Jesus’ parable can be translated as, “The tax collector went down to his home justified alongside the Pharisee.”

At the end of the day, it was neither the religious and moral observance of the Pharisee nor the humility of the tax collector that justified each of them in the eyes of God. It was God’s own mercy that supported them both. The only difference between them is that one of them recognized that truth and the other did not. But they both needed it, and they both got it — whether they realized it or not, whether they deserved it or not.

Kindred in Christ, the same thing is true for each and every one of us today. We stand in right relationship with God not because we deserve it by virtue of our righteous deeds or our honest confession, but simply because we need it, and it is there. We stand in right relationship with God because God loves us, whether we realize it or not, whether we believe in God or not.

We receive love because God is love. And that is the central truth not only of our faith but of our entire existence. And that love is what gives us the ability to laugh at ourselves — when we trip over our own shoelaces, or when we strut around like a bunch of pompous and self-righteous Pharisees, or when we betray our moral values and closest relationships like the tax collector did. Beneath all of that, the central truth holds firm: you are loved, whether or not you realize it, whether or not you deserve it, whether or not you believe in it. It’s still true — for you and for everyone else in this hurting world.

My prayer for you today is that you would come to know this truth more fully for yourself, and that knowing it will make it easier for you to reflect that same love onto the faces and into the lives of the people around you.

Living Prayer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

Sermon for Proper 24, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings

For several years, my family and I enjoyed watching a TV show based on the classic comic book character The Flash. For those who may not be familiar, The Flash is a superhero, real name Barry Allen, whose special power is that he can run very fast. 

Early on in the series, Barry figures out that, if he runs fast enough, he can actually go back in time and change the past. So, being a hero with his heart in the right place, he goes back in time to prevent his mother’s untimely death. He succeeds at this task, but then returns to the present day to discover that his good deed has created unintended consequences. Much of the rest of the series involves Barry repeatedly going back in time to correct past mistakes, against the advice of his friends and mentors. Each time, he creates a new set of unintended consequences, which he then feels compelled to go back and fix.

If this sounds frustrating and repetitive, that’s because it is. I don’t actually recommend the show. Not for moral reasons, but simply because it gets too annoying to watch. During the opening credits, the hero introduces himself, saying, “My name is Barry Allen and I am the fastest man alive,” but the kids and I took to shouting in unison over that line. When he said, “My name is Barry Allen,” we would all shout back, “and I make poor life choices!” Eventually, it got so bad that our family decided to give up on watching the show.

Barry Allen’s main problem in The Flash is that he tries to control things that he cannot, in fact, control. Some people call this kind of behavior codependent and some call it neurotic (and they’re both partially right, even though codependency and neurosis are both much bigger than that one thing, but that’s a topic for another day). 

We all know what it’s like to live in a world where things, as they are, are not things as they should be. Trying to control things we can’t control is one possible response to this situation. As we can see with The Flash, this approach often leads to unintended consequences. Other responses include sticking our heads in the sand denying that there’s a problem at all, lashing out in anger and becoming the mirror-image of the evil we resist (like the Soviets did when they replaced the oppression of the Tzars with an even more oppressive regime in 20th century Russia), or giving into the demon of despair, thus giving up on any possibility of making life even marginally better for ourselves and our neighbors.Understandably, none of these sounds like a particularly appealing option.

In today’s gospel, Jesus offers us another way to respond when we come face-to-face with a world that is not as it should be. He does so, as he often does, by telling a parable about a scene that would have been all-too-familiar to his audience.

The story begins with a judge, “who neither feared God nor had respect for people,” and a widow. Widows, in that time, were among the most vulnerable members of society because they lacked a male voice to speak up for them in public affairs. Such was the sexism of that society.

Biblical scholars have pointed out several details, based on context clues, that would have stood out to the people who heard Jesus tell this parable the first time. First of all, as we already noted, she has no male representation in court. This would mean that she has no living father, brothers, or adult sons. 

Second, we know from the legal practices of the time that women were entitled to keep whatever property they brought into the marriage, whenever that marriage ended by death or divorce. If she had a lot of money, this would make her an appealing target for her late-husband’s relatives, who may have wanted to keep the dead man’s estate for themselves. 

Third, we also know, based on legal practices of the time, that a quorum of three to seven judges was supposed to rule on cases of inheritance law, like this one. So, the fact that there was only one judge in this case would have been a major red flag to Jesus’ audience. It would seem most likely to them that the judge was taking bribes in order to cover up a backroom deal to cheat the widow out of what was rightfully hers. That kind of corruption was not uncommon in Jesus’ day. 

So, what was the widow supposed to do about it? According to Jesus, she had to keep showing up and speaking up for what she believed was right.

The author of Luke’s gospel tells us, in the editorial note at the beginning of the parable, that this is a story about prayer. God, the author says, is not like the unjust judge, but “will quickly grant justice” to those who cry out for it.

This, admittedly, is a tough phrase to hear. After all, people in pain have been fervently crying out to God for thousands of years, but still the world is not as it should be. Was Jesus wrong?

Well, that depends on what we mean by the word prayer.

If we define prayer as, “getting what we ask for from the all-powerful Man in the Sky,” then the unavoidable answer is Yes, Jesus was wrong. After two millennia of waiting and praying, God has still not set right the wrongs we see in the world around us, despite our frequent crying out. If however, we define prayer as, “the foundational act of reorienting our lives around the central fact of Love,” then the answer is a resounding No, Jesus was not wrong. Prayer works.

My favorite teaching on the subject of prayer comes from the 20th century saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She says, “I used to believe that prayer changes things; now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.” 

Mother Teresa, as we know, spent her days living out the truth of these words. She worked tirelessly in the slums of India to bring relief to those who suffer and encouraged people around the world to find their own Calcutta in their own backyards. She is a saint, not because she said a few pious words, but because she lived out the words she prayed. Her life itself was an act of prayer, continually seeking and serving Christ in all people, just as we have promised to do in our Baptismal Covenant. Mother Teresa showed us the way.

This, I believe, is the answer that Christ calls for in response to the injustice of this world. It is neither denial, nor control, nor anger, nor despair. It is an acceptance of the fact that things in this world are not as they should be, and that the way things are is unacceptable.

Therefore, kindred in Christ, we are called to keep showing up: for ourselves, for each other, for what is true, and for what is right. Whether we are raking leaves for an elderly neighbor or marching in a protest, we keep showing up. Whether we are kneeling in church or going to therapy to repair our broken relationships, we keep showing up. Consistently, persistently, and even obnoxiously showing up is the way of prayer, as Jesus described it in today’s parable. 

At the end of the Prayers of the People in our weekly liturgy, the priest prays a short Collect. The Book of Common Prayer gives several options. My favorite is the one we are using today. Listen for it when we come to that section of the service in a few minutes. It says, “Almighty and eternal God, ruler of all things in heaven and on earth: Mercifully accept the prayers of your people, and strengthen us to do your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

What I like about that prayer is that it connects the idea of God accepting our prayers with the idea of us doing God’s will. In my mind, that connection is key. I cannot, in good conscience, pray for God to change the world if I am unwilling to do anything about it. By the same token, I cannot successfully change the world if I don’t ask for help, because the task is far too big for any one person to accomplish alone. We need God and God needs us, if this world is to be any different from the way it has been for all of human history.

Prayer is the lifeline that keeps us connected to each other and the Source of Life. It works slowly and gently, like the water of the Colorado River eroding the walls of the Grand Canyon. It may not make a visible difference overnight, but in time, it will create a geological spectacle that is a wonder to behold. 

All we need to do, as the author of Luke’s gospel said, is to “pray always,” and in all ways, and “not to lose heart.”

Amen.

A Prayer for Universal Oneness

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the seventh Sunday of Easter.

Click here for the biblical readings.

Today’s sermon is going to be a little bit different.

Rather than teach you about the spiritual principles that connect to our gospel reading, I am going to guide you into a meditative experience of those principles in action. If all goes well, you won’t have to have anyone explain these truths for you because you will know them yourself, in the very fiber of your being.

First, a little bit of setup:

Today’s gospel reading forms a kind of climax to the gospel according to St. John. The whole book has been building to this point. It begins with a series of poignant hints that Jesus drops about his true identity. The words he says, the things he does, and the people he meets all gesture toward some mysterious truth that will be revealed later on.

In the next section, Jesus starts to speak more openly about what this truth might be. Most people still don’t get it, but enough of them are scratching their heads enough to stick around and find out.

After that, Jesus begins a very confusing speech on the night before he dies. He seems to be talking in circles about metaphysical ideas that make no sense, even to his closest disciples.

Finally, he stops talking to his disciples altogether and speaks only to God, while the disciples listen in on the conversation.

That is the part of the story where our gospel reading picks up today. Jesus is talking to God and the disciples are listening in. What he says seems to go in circles and makes little sense to the rational mind.

In many ways, this is intentional. The story of John’s gospel starts with a wide view of Jesus and the people who knew him, but then gradually zooms in to Jesus and his disciples, Jesus himself, and finally inside the mind of Jesus to his personal relationship with God, like Father and Son.

Jesus’ words in this passage are mysterious and circular. If you feel dizzy when reading them, that’s good! It means you are paying attention. The mind of Jesus is a baffling place.

What we see, inside the mind of Jesus, is the interconnected web of all existence, going back to the beginning of time itself. He prays, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,” and then, “the glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.”

It’s meant to be confusing stuff. It’s supposed to leave us reaching for the bottle of Advil because we can’t fit the vastness of divine truth inside our tiny human brains. Any God that we could fully comprehend would not be worthy of name “God” and certainly not worthy of our worship.

So, instead of explaining himself to us, Jesus gives us the briefest of glimpses into his mind, so that we can experience the reality of sacred interconnectedness for ourselves.

The concept of sacred interconnectedness is not unique to Christianity or even to the subject of religion. Our neighbors who practice in the Hindu spiritual tradition believe that the Atman, the individual soul, is essentially one with Brahman, the ultimate reality. In the scientific field of quantum physics, subatomic particles are not separate bits of matter, but fluctuations of energy in a common field. What Jesus realized, along with spiritual masters and brilliant scientists of every time and place, is the truth that separateness is an illusion. What lies at heart of reality is an inexplicable and inexpressible unity. This is why he prays to his Father, in today’s gospel, “that they may be one, as we are one.”

The most fundamental spiritual truth of all reality is not that there is a God up in heaven, but that God can be found here and now, in the space between you and me. That is the truth that we get to glimpse in today’s gospel, and that is the truth that I hope you take away from today’s sermon.

If you are willing, I would like to invite you to join me on this journey into awareness of our fundamental oneness. This is a very personal journey that no one must undertake. The reality of it will remain true, whether you choose to join me or not, whether you choose to use the word “God” or not. This will be a journey of facts, not beliefs, so even those who do not identify as Christian can undertake it.

I invite you to begin by closing your eyes or letting them gently drop to a space right in front of you, if that is more comfortable to you…

Pay attention to the rhythm of your breathing. In and out, in and out…

Feel the weight of your body, sitting in the pew or chair where you are…

Notice the feeling of your feet on the floor, your back on the pew, and any other sensations that appear in your body…

If there are any little twitches or pains, just let them be for now…

Notice any thoughts that pop into your mind and then let them go…

Even if your thought is, “This is stupid,” that’s okay. Just let them come and go…

The goal is not to stop your mind from thinking, but to not be attached to these thoughts, as they come and go…

If you have a thought, just notice it and let it go, like a helium balloon floating off into the sky, and then gently return your attention to the rhythm of your breathing…

Recall the sum total of the events of your life that led you to this moment, where you are sitting in a pew…

Maybe you came here out of longstanding tradition or habit, or maybe you came because you are searching for something deeper in your life and are wondering whether this worship service might contain the answer to what you are searching for…

Consider the processes taking place within your own body at the cellular level…

Consider the millions of micro-organisms that exist in your gut and on the surface of your skin…

Consider the fact that there are more bacterial cells in your body than human cells…

Consider the words of the poet Walt Whitman: “I contain multitudes”…

Without opening your eyes or looking around, imagine the people around you in this room, all of them your fellow worshippers, on a common human journey to understand who we are, where we came from, and where we are going…

Each person’s journey is as unique as your own; no two are alike…

If you are comfortable with it, expand your awareness to the people who are not in this room…

Their life journeys, like ours, are utterly unique, but they share many of the same hopes, fears, and questions…

Now, if you are comfortable with it, consider the ground beneath the floor of this church…

Consider the many life forms that live there…

Imagine their connection to the trees, roots, and grass of the plants outside…

Think about the bodies of those plants absorbing moisture and nutrients from the soil and light energy from the sun…

Think about the flowers and fruits that grow from those plants…

Consider the animals that feed off those flowers and fruits…

Bees, squirrels, and other creatures…

Think about the carnivorous animals that feed on those animals, distributing the sun’s energy into the never-ending circle of life…

Consider what happens when those animals die, how their bodies return to the earth and fertilize the plants, thus beginning the cycle of life again…

Now, if you are comfortable, remember that all life on earth is carbon-based…

In all the universe, there is only one place where a carbon atom can be made: In the heart of a star…

All the carbon in your body once resided inside a star that went supernova, scattering the elements of life into the universe, where they were gathered again on the surface of this planet, and now take the shape that bears your name. This is why we can say, without exaggeration, that you are literally made of stardust…

Some worry that evolution means we are related to monkeys, but I say, “Don’t worry; evolution means that your ancestors are the stars themselves…”

Feel the truth of this scientific fact deep down in your bones, where it is literally true…

Feel the vast network of stars and galaxies that stretches out beyond the bounds of your imagination, reaching light years to the edge of the observable universe (and perhaps beyond), encompassing all of creation at distances that you could not begin to fathom…

Imagine each of those subatomic particles bursting into existence at the moment of the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago…

There are parts of your body that are as old as the universe itself…

When time itself began, you were there…

When the atoms of your body were formed in the heart of a star, you were there…

When the asteroid fell that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you were there…

The very same air molecules that you are currently breathing in may have also been inhaled by Abraham Lincoln, the Buddha, or Jesus of Nazareth…

As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “We are all caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality; what affects one directly, affects all indirectly…”

Keeping the cosmic scope of this meditation exercise in mind, I invite you to reconsider the words that Jesus prayed to his Father in today’s gospel:

“[I ask] that they may be one, as we are one.”

Out of the Ashes

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Click here for the biblical readings

On Labor Day 1973, my mom and dad, then newly married, were in an apartment fire. Dad was the first in the building to wake up and smell smoke. He ran down the hall, banging on doors to alert the neighbors. Mom, meanwhile, took a quick glance around the room for anything essential. Thinking to herself, “The only thing I can’t replace is my wedding pictures,” she grabbed the album and ran. When I called Mom this week to ask permission to share this story, she recounted the story to me again: “So, there was your mother, without wallet or car keys, standing outside in nothing but her checkered nightgown, clutching a photo album!”

Sudden brushes with mortality have a way of reminding us about what really matters. The crisis itself wakes us up to what is most important. Too often, we humans have a tendency to get overly attached to our creature comforts, bad habits, and pet projects. We often miss the forest for the trees, when it comes to evaluating our priorities in life. Sudden crises can sometimes be useful in helping us clear out the junk and rediscover who we truly are.

In the penitential season of Lent, the Church provides us with a way to consciously engage in this kind of self-reflection without going through the inconvenience of a sudden crisis. During these forty days, we can intentionally choose to recognize and let go of the extra clutter in our souls and refocus our attention on what really matters.

Spiritual writer Richard Rohr, calls this, “the spirituality of subtraction.” He says that, often, the true task of our spiritual practices is not to add something that we need in our lives, but to help us let go of what we don’t need. The season of Lent is a good time to practice “the spirituality of subtraction.”

Lent is about getting underneath the cluttered surface of life and rediscovering the “the treasure hidden in the field” of our lives. Today’s Scripture readings give us a few hints about how to do that.

In the first reading, from the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophet Joel tells the people, “Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13). In ancient Hebrew culture, the tearing of one’s clothes was an outward sign of grief or penitence. Joel is encouraging the people to go deeper than the outward gesture and focus instead on the inner meaning of sorrow.

Jesus, in a similar fashion, warns the people in today’s gospel, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). The point of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer, according to Jesus, is not to make us look good and pious in front of our neighbors, but to help us reorient our hearts toward God.

Almsgiving, fasting, and prayer are all traditional practices associated with the season of Lent. In a world economy based on greed, self-indulgence, and power, the practices of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer are like cloths that we use to wipe away the extra grime on the surface of a mirror, so that we can then see our true reflection smiling back at us once more. In order for these cleaning tools to be effective, we have to stop caring what others think about us and face the honest truth about who we are.

Many of us live with an unspoken fear that, underneath our collected junk of ego-centric debris, there is no true self. We think, “Who am I without this job/degree/car/house/status/money/relationship?” Sometimes, it can even be a negative thing that we have nevertheless come to identify with: “Who am I without this trauma/rage/illness?” We worry that, if we let go of these things, there will be nothing left of us.

The hardest spiritual truth to believe, the biggest leap of faith to take, is to let ourselves become skeptical of our delusion there will be nothing left of us when the debris of our egos has been swept away.

Lent is, traditionally, the time when new converts to the faith prepare themselves to receive the Sacrament of Baptism. For those who have already been baptized, it is a time when Christians prepare themselves to renew that covenant at Easter Vigil. In Baptism, each of us hears again the message that was proclaimed by God over Jesus, at his baptism: “You are my [Child], the beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). Beloved children of God is who we truly are, whether we realize it or not, whether we believe it or not. The spiritual exercises of Lent are tools given to help us return to this most central truth of our lives.

The message of Jesus, in today’s gospel, is that there is something there, waiting to be rediscovered. In fact, Jesus says, what you find underneath all that junk is who you authentically are, as the beloved child of God. St. Paul writes, in the New Testament, “Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Colossians 3:2-4).

Christ is our life. Christ is our true self, fully present, though hidden under the clutter of our fragile egos.

Kindred in Christ, Lent is a time when we can return to awareness of this central truth. Lent is a time for letting go of those things that no longer serve us, or our true purpose in life. Lent is a time when we can rediscover what really matters and who we truly are as beloved children of God.

I encourage you, during these forty days of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer, to do what my mother did on the night of that apartment fire: Take a glance around the room of your life, to think about what really matters and what cannot be replaced, so that you can then let go of what matters less. Like my mom, you may find yourself standing outside on a cold night, without wallet or car keys, but safe, alive, and holding on to what really matters.

May it be so, and may you rediscover who you truly are as the beloved child of God.

There is a Vastness…

On By J. Barrett LeeIn poetry, Uncategorized2 Comments

Paternoster

There is a vastness,
beauty,
and logic
in the cosmos
that defies imagination.
I stand in awe
before it
and within it.

Something inside me
yearns
for the same greatness,
beauty,
and logic
to be made real
and observable
in my short life
on this tiny planet.

All I have,
and all I am,
is a product
of this vastness,
and beauty,
and logic.

It sustains me,
even when I forget
and take it for granted.
Perhaps then,
I can find the strength
to let go
of resentment
when others forget
and take me for granted
as well.

I remember this
in moments of peace,
that I might remember it
in days of stress,
and thus be freed
from anxiety:

This vastness,
beauty,
and logic
does not come from me,
did not begin with me,
and will not end with me.

It never has,
and never will.

By Waoceanu (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

God Is Not A Vending Machine

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized2 Comments

Preaching this week at First Presbyterian Church in Niles, Michigan.

The biblical text is Philippians 4:1-9. Click here to read it.

Every now and then, I come across an article online that describes a “scientific experiment” on the effects of prayer. Typically, these are conducted in a medical setting, where one group of patients has a group fervently praying for their recovery, while another group (called the “control group” in scientific circles) does not.

The “results” of these experiments tend to vary widely, depending on who is conducting or sponsoring the survey, but the central idea remains the same: if the recipients of prayer have a significantly higher rate or speed of recovery than those who were not prayed for, then religious people get excited that they have finally disproved the denouncements of atheists. If, on the other hand, there is no significant difference in recovery between the groups, secular humanists get excited that they have finally disproved the superstitious practices of people of faith.

One might think that I, as a member of the Christian clergy, would be rooting hard for the first result, but the truth is that I find both of these reactions equally unsatisfying. In fact, I find the entire idea behind this kind of experiment to be utterly absurd. I say this because I think experiments like this miss the whole point of what prayer actually is and what it is for.

This kind of test treats prayer as if it is a form of magic: effecting a favorable outcome of natural events through supernatural means. Even worse, it treats God like a cosmic vending machine: I put my money in the slot, press a button, and get the treat I want. I never even think about the vending machine unless I want something from it. Even then, I don’t think about the machine itself very much unless it breaks down, and fails to give me what I asked for. It’s fairly obvious that my relationship to a vending machine is inherently self-centered. And it’s not hard to see that a relationship to God in prayer, based on the same principle, is an inherently self-centered spirituality.

St. Paul talks about the subject of prayer quite a bit in today’s reading from his letter to the Philippians. But first, a little bit of back story…

The passage begins with a reference to an interpersonal conflict that is going on in the Church in Philippi. The major players are Euodia and Syntyche, two prominent members of the Church. They have reached an impasse in an argument. We, the readers, know nothing of what this argument was about. It might have been a difference of opinion on some important theological or moral issue, or it might have been as petty as a spat over the next potluck. Pastoral experience has taught me repeatedly that church conflicts often run the gamut between these two extremes, though typically, the loudest fights tend to happen over the most trivial of issues.

We don’t know what the issue was in this particular case, but things had gotten bad enough that Paul had to get involved. What I find most interesting about his response is that he does not address the issue itself at all, but scoots past it to care for the souls of the people involved in the conflict.

Paul says to them, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.”

This is an interesting turn of phrase. On the surface, it looks like a general call for two people to find a way to agree with one another, but there is a deeper reference here as well. The words “same mind” should remind the readers of this letter of the same phrase, which appeared two chapters earlier:

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

What St. Paul is trying to do here is coax these Church members to think outside the box of their self-centered conflict and re-orient their lives around the Gospel. This is the central point of all Christian spirituality: to move us from a self-centered way of living to a God-centered way of living; to see ourselves and our lives through the lens of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul says it again in the passage we heard from today, urging the members of the Church to “help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel”. He sees these sisters, Euodia and Syntyche, not as opposing parties in a debate, but as co-laborers for the Gospel of Christ. The question, for Paul, is not “Who is wrong?” or “Who is right?” in this situation, but “Who are we in Christ?” Paul is encouraging his readers to look at their situation, not from a self-centered point of view, but from a God-centered point of view.

So, how do we do this? How do we shift from our usual, self-centered way of living to the God-centered way of living? How do we begin to look at ourselves, our lives, and each other through the all-encompassing lens of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

St. Paul tells us how, and this is where prayer comes in:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Here we can see Paul’s understanding of the purpose of prayer. Prayer, for St. Paul, is not about getting the things we want from the cosmic vending machine. Prayer takes the joys and concerns of our life and reorients our lives around the story of God’s creation, redemption, and sanctification of the world in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus.

When we pray, our circumstances might very well change for the better, but that is not the ultimate purpose of prayer. Prayer changes us. Prayer leads us to look at our lives from a different point of view. Prayer leads us from a self-centered way of living to a God-centered way of living.

We practice this kind of prayer every Sunday in the liturgy. We are fed on a steady diet of Scripture and Sacrament, we name before God the various joys and concerns of our lives, we confess our failings and shortcomings, and we offer ourselves to the service of God in the world. But this is not just an activity for worship on Sunday. We need to be doing this every day in our own lives.

If you don’t have a regular spiritual practice outside of Sunday worship, I encourage you to start one. Take time every day to talk to God in prayer and listen to God in Scripture and silence.

There are many ways to do this. Devotional books and pamphlets abound, and they can be found online or in any bookstore. Personally, I use a more formal pattern of prayer called the Daily Office, which comes to us from the Benedictine monastic tradition. A form of the Daily Office can be found in The Book of Common Worship: Daily Prayer, which is published by the Presbyterian Church (USA). For those who are technologically inclined, there is an inexpensive app available for iPhones that follows this pattern. Just do a search for “PCUSA Daily Prayer” in the App Store. How you do it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you do it in some way that makes sense to you.

And I can tell you from firsthand experience that it works. Prayer works. It certainly has worked for me. It may or may not change my circumstances in the way that I want, but I know for a fact that prayer changes me, and I believe that prayer has the power to change you too.

My prayer for each and every one of you this morning is that you will find in this practice a new perspective on life, and that you will begin to view yourselves, your lives, and your world through the lens of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

“As the Waters Cover the Sea”

On By J. Barrett LeeIn lectio divina, UncategorizedLeave a comment

This is an odd turn of phrase that appears in today’s first reading from the Daily Lectionary.

The full sentence is:

But the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

It strikes me as odd because it is the very nature of the sea to be covered with water. Without water, the sea would simply be a valley or a large hole in the ground.

In the same way, God is the very nature of the universe itself. Theologian Paul Tillich referred to God as “the Ground of Being”. St. Thomas Aquinas similarly wrote that it is more appropriate to say that God is “existence” than that God is an object that “exists”.

As a self-described panentheist (not to be confused with pantheism), I would agree with Tillich and Aquinas. Here is how I would say it: God is in all things because, more accurately, all things exist in God.

One of my favorite images of God is the pregnant mother. God creates the universe, distinct but not entirely separate from God. The universe is growing within the divine womb.

When a baby grows inside of her mother, it would not be inaccurate to say that her mother is her whole world. Ask a fetus, “Where is Mom?” And the child would answer (if she could), “Mom is everywhere.”

Does this mean that the mother only exists within the child or the womb that carries her? No, that would be an incomplete statement (although it is certainly reflective of the child’s limited experience). It would be more accurate to say the opposite: That the child exists within her mother, who loves her and sustains her growth.

I believe the same to be true of our relationship to God.

We are not wrong to say that “God is everywhere.” In a sense, we are also justified, based on our limited experience, in saying that “God is in all things.” But I tend to believe the opposite, that “All things exist in God,” just as a fetus grows in her mother’s womb.

This, I think, is at the root of Habakkuk’s vision that the divine shekhinah covers the earth “as the waters cover the sea.” This is the fetus waxing eloquent about the mother.

Even more interesting is the context in which this revelation arises.

If the universe exists within the Divine womb, then it must certainly be a troubled pregnancy. The prophet describes a world gone awry, rife with social stratification where the rich have isolated themselves from the poverty they create by their indulgence:

Alas for you who get evil gain for your houses, setting your nest on high to be safe from the reach of harm! You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples; you have forfeited your life.

The entire economic system is founded on violence and indulgence:

Alas for you who build a town by bloodshed, and found a city on iniquity!

He describes it as an act of rape:

Alas for you who make your neighbors drink, pouring out your wrath until they are drunk, in order to gaze on their nakedness!

The destruction extends even to the earth itself. The prophet warns of mass extinction emerging from human exploitation of the environment:

For the violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you; the destruction of the animals will terrify you– because of human bloodshed and violence to the earth, to cities and all who live in them.

Yet, the central truth remains: That the universe exists within the Divine womb.

We have only forgotten it. Unable to see the mother’s face directly, we have decided that we homo sapiens are the be-all, end-all of existence. We have decided that this womb, the amniotic fluid, the umbilical cord, and our magnificent selves are the product of some unknown, random accident.

Believing ourselves to be the only intelligence in the cosmos, we try to set ourselves in the place of God, and quickly discover that we are bad at the job. Destruction ensues.

Habakkuk invites us to return to our roots by way of contemplation. He writes:

I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.

Again:

For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.

And finally:

But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!

The prophet interrupts his descriptions of violence with repeated calls to “watch” and “wait” in silence. The dual-practice of prayer and meditation empowers us to disconnect from the mindless flow of chaos around us and see reality more clearly.

A fighting couple stop their arguing momentarily to take a deep breath, and suddenly the situation becomes clearer.

Gandhi famously said that, if only one percent of the world’s population would meditate, there would be peace on earth.

The practice of contemplative spirituality might not change the world directly, but it does change those who practice it. It changes our perspective and relationship to the world. It frees us from the endless cycles of violence so that we (as Gandhi also said) can “be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Contemplation reconnects us to the Ground of Being. It increases our conscious awareness of the Divine presence, which “covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.”

This deepened relationship with God is the fruit of contemplative prayer. It is what the prophet refers to as “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.”

“The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!”

There are no words

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Came across this video on Facebook, shared by the Society for Eastern Rite Anglicanism (SERA).

This is Psalm 51 (50 in the Septuagint), chanted in Aramaic, which is the language that Jesus Christ himself spoke. Words are inadequate to describe the power of this moment. My hair stood on end, I gasped twice, I got chills in my spine, and had tears in my eyes.

Best to let the video speak for itself:

Translation:

Have mercy upon me O God, according to thy great mercy, according to the multitude of thy compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash Me thoroughly from my iniquities and cleanse me from my sins…

This was recorded at the Chaldean Catholic Church of St. Simon in Tblisi, Georgia. Vatican Radio has published a story on the meeting.

Click here to read the full article.

Pope Francis offered a prayer for peace. Here is the translation of that prayer, excerpted from the original article:

Lord Jesus, we adore your cross which frees us from sin, the origin of every division and evil; we proclaim your resurrection, which ransoms man from the slavery of failure and death; we await your coming in glory, which will bring to fulfilment your kingdom of justice, joy and peace.

Lord Jesus, by your glorious passion, conquer the hardness of our hearts, imprisoned by hatred and selfishness; by the power of your resurrection, save the victims of injustice and maltreatment from their suffering; by the fidelity of your coming, confound the culture of death and make the triumph of life shine forth.

Lord Jesus, unite to your cross the sufferings of the many innocent victims: the children, the elderly, and the persecuted Christians; envelop in paschal light those who are deeply wounded: abused persons, deprived of freedom and dignity; let those who live in uncertainty experience the enduring constancy of your kingdom: the exiles, refugees, and those who have lost the joy of living.

Lord Jesus, cast forth the shadow of your cross over peoples at war; may they learn the way of reconciliation, dialogue and forgiveness; let the peoples so wearied by bombing experience the joy of your resurrection: raise up Iraq and Syria from devastation; reunite your dispersed children under your gentle kingship: sustain Christians in the Diaspora and grant them the unity of faith and love.

O Virgin Mary, Queen of peace, you who stood at the foot of the cross, obtain from your Son pardon for our sins; you who never doubted the victory of his resurrection, sustain our faith and our hope; you who are enthroned as Queen in glory, teach us the royal road of service and the glory of love.

Amen.

Singing the Hours: Musical Resources for Benedictine Daily Prayer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments

For many years since college, the staple of my private devotional life has been the Daily Office in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (BCP). I’ve sampled other prayer books and breviaries over the years, but nothing has come close to the BCP. Nothing, that is, until I discovered Benedictine Daily Prayer (BDP).

I fell in love with this particular breviary because of its close similarity to the Office as it recited at my home monastery, St. Gregory’s Abbey, Three Rivers. It offers seven offices daily, with a robust cycle of longer biblical readings at Vigils. Of all the prayer books currently on the market, this is the one that most closely resembles the Liturgy of the Hours as prescribed in the Rule of St. Benedict and the Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae. The editor of BDP, the Rev. Dr. Maxwell Johnson of the University of Notre Dame, has done an amazing job with this project. With the recent release of a revised edition, Dr. Johnson has even managed to improve on excellence. This volume is great for Benedictine oblates, monastic enthusiasts, or anyone else who is passionate about the Divine Office. Choosing between BDP and my long-beloved BCP has been a difficult challenge.

You can order a copy of BDP from the publisher by clicking here.

The biggest challenge with BDP is the lack of musical resources available for those, like me, who prefer to chant the Office. I have managed to piece together several helpful resources in this regard and would like to share them here. I would be remiss if I did not give credit to Dr. Johnson for recommending several of these resources to me.

The Mundelein Psalter <— Click here for link

This is a fantastic resource for chanting the Office. It was designed for chanting the Liturgy of the Hours for the Roman Catholic Church. There is a selection of lovely, simple psalm tones that are easily learned. There are hymn tunes from the Liber Usualis for most of the major office hymns. These could be easily adapted for the psalms and hymns in the BDP. Frankly, some of the hymn translations in the Mundelein Psalter are better than the ones in BDP. Additionally, there are tones for chanting the other parts of the office, like the opening versicle and doxology, the litany, and the Lord’s Prayer. I also really like that the editors printed the full text of the General Instruction for the Liturgy of the Hours in the front of the book. The website (linked above) has several useful resources for learning the chants. It should be noted that the music in the Mundelein Psalter is printed in Gregorian notation. This system is different from the modern, five-line staff, but can be easily learned and is actually more adaptable than modern notation. The learning curve for Gregorian notation is steep at first, but well worth the effort, especially for those who are serious about chanting the Divine Office in the monastic style.

There are two significant downsides to the Mundelein Psalter. First, it is quite expensive (about $50). Second, it is almost a full breviary in itself (for the Roman LOTH), so you get a lot of material you don’t need and will likely never use. That being said, if it fits your budget, the Mundelein Psalter is an excellent resource for music and instruction.

The Lumen Christi Hymnal

This smaller, less expensive volume is great for the hymns. Like the Mundelein Psalter, many of these hymn translations are superior to the ones printed in BDP. The tunes are straight out of the Liber Usualis and are printed in modern notation (unlike the Mundelein Psalter). Also, I particularly appreciate that the Lumen Christi Hymnal includes tones for the Marian Antiphons in Latin. These are a beautiful way to end Compline just before bed.

[On a personal note, my very Presbyterian wife has come to love the Marian Antiphons by osmosis. She is usually settling into bed as I sing Compline in our room. One of the highlights of her day is when I “sing her to sleep” in Latin.]

St. Meinrad Psalm Tones

Click here for the tones in Gregorian notation

Click here to see them in modern notation

The first, best thing about these tones is that they are available for free. You can’t beat that on a budget. For those who don’t want to shell out the money for the Mundelein Psalter, these can be printed and used easily with the hymn tunes from the Lumen Christi Hymnal. St. Meinrad’s Archabbey is one of the largest and best-known Benedictine communities in the United States. Their tones are simple and elegant. Unlike the traditional Gregorian psalm tones, the St. Meinrad tones have more than two lines. This may be off-putting to strict traditionalists, but I am finding they have an elegance of their own that blends well with Gregorian chant. In many ways, I prefer them to the traditional tones for use with BDP because the multi-syllabic intonations and cadences of the Gregorian tones often don’t fit into the shorter psalm lines of the adapted Grail Psalms used by BDP.

Theses are the musical resources I am most familiar with. All of them have worked well for me in chanting the Divine Office as laid out in Benedictine Daily Prayer. I sincerely hope this is useful for others on the path.

By Albertus teolog - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17310761

God Says Yes

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized2 Comments

Today’s sermon from North Presbyterian Church.

My wife shared this poem with me several years ago and I would like to share it with you today:

Click here to read ‘God Says Yes To Me’ by Kaylin Haught.

What I love about this poem is its whimsical nature and almost cavalier approach to prayer.

Prayer is a major theme that appears in today’s readings.

We see it first in Abraham’s conversation with God about the fate of the city of Sodom. God declares that the city must be destroyed, on account of the wickedness of the people who live there. But Abraham, in an act of haggling worthy of a used car salesperson, manages to talk God down from total destruction to sparing the city if even ten righteous people could be found in it.

There are plenty of theological issues I could raise from this passage: What was so bad about Sodom that made God want to destroy it? What kind of God goes around destroying cities, anyway? These are great questions that deserve answers, but I’m not going to address them in this sermon today.

What I want to focus on is the conversation that takes place between God and Abraham. That’s all that prayer is, really: a conversation between God and people. And in this conversation, the main thing we observe is that God says Yes to Abraham, without fail, every time he asks. God says Yes.

I put it to you this morning that God says the same thing to you in prayer. God says Yes to you. Always.

I admit that this is a pretty bold claim to make, especially since there is no one among us who cannot remember an instance when we prayed fervently for something or someone, only to be disappointed as the situation did not turn out as we had hoped.

And we ask ourselves, “What happened? Did I not pray correctly? Why did God say No? Does God simply not exist?” All of these are perfectly legitimate questions to ask in the wake of disappointment, especially when it feels like God let us down at a time when we really, desperately needed help.

For me, that kind of deep disappointment with God came early in early 2010, when my wife and I co-officiated at a funeral for a three-week-old baby named Madalyn. Her parents were good friends and dedicated church members. She was born several months too early, weighing a little over two pounds. Despite an extended stay in the NICU, her prognosis was good. My wife and I were visiting the hospital and checking in with the parents regularly. The whole church was praying fervently and Madalyn showed steady improvement. Then, in the middle of night, the hospital called the parents, saying that Madalyn wasn’t doing very well and they should get there immediately. They rushed over as fast as they could, and ran in to discover that their baby had died mere moments before they arrived.

Madalyn’s death got me asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions about God, faith, and prayer. I had to go back and rethink much of the theology I had learned in seminary. Specifically, I had to ask myself, “What is the purpose of prayer?”

It occurs to me that many people these days have one of two misconceptions about prayer.

On the one hand, there are many devout people of faith who regard prayer as a form of magic. They think that if we pray long enough, hard enough, or in the right way, we will receive the results we want. In the Christian tradition, we see this idea most commonly among the adherents of the so-called “Prosperity Gospel.” I commend these believers for their conviction that faith can make a tangible difference in this world. However, there are not a few of them who resort to “blaming the victim” when situations don’t pan out as hoped. They say that the victims of tragedy must not have sufficient faith, or that they have some kind of hidden sin in their lives that calls for divine judgment in the form of ill-fortune. Adherents of the Prosperity Gospel are quick to cite numerous Bible verses in support of their ideology, but they often ignore the broader narrative of Scripture, in which God is working in Christ to reconcile the whole cosmos to Godself, even in the midst of adverse circumstances. Moreover, they fail to notice that there is not one instance in the four gospels when Jesus turns away from a sick person in need because they are a “sinner” or “don’t have enough faith.” To the contrary, Jesus regularly enters into relationship with sinners and even heals the epileptic son of a father who openly admits his struggle with faith.

On the other hand, there are many secular people who assume that prayer is simply a psychological trick that religious people use to help themselves feel better in moments of crisis. I find this reductionist view equally unsatisfying. First of all, prayer often doesn’t work as a psychological placebo. There are times when I pray about a situation and don’t feel any better for it. Inner peace, it seems, is just as fleeting as circumstantial happiness. A cursory reading of the book of Psalms reveals a prayer life that is intimately familiar with suffering. Sometimes, the psalmist praises God for deliverance from the problems of life, but sometimes, they cry out from the midst of the storm. Sometimes, the very act of crying out leads the psalmist to greater peace and faith, but sometimes, as in Psalm 88, the psalmist ends with the words, “Darkness is my only companion.” If prayer is nothing more than a psychological trick to conjure up inner tranquility, it is a lousy one. Why then have people the world over continued to offer prayer in good times and bad?

The purpose of prayer, as I have come to understand it, is this: Prayer brings us into a deeper relationship with God.

People, religious and secular alike, naturally share their joys and concerns with each other. This is how friendships are made. Intimacy requires trust, vulnerability, and non-judgmental love between friends.

In the Church, we do this sharing in the context of worship because we believe there is a third party present in the conversation, beyond the one who speaks and those who listen, and that is God. We share our lives with God, not to obtain any specific results or special favors, but so that our relationship with God might grow over time. Conversely, there is also a time in our service when God gets to share God’s joys and concerns with us: in the reading of the Scriptures and the proclamation of the Word. In this part of the liturgy, we stop talking and listen to what God has to say. In this way, our worship becomes a kind of back-and-forth conversation in which our relationship with God can grow.

The purpose of prayer is to deepen our relationship with God. And it is this kind of prayer that God always answers with a resounding YES.

In today’s gospel, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. After teaching them the now-famous words of the Lord’s prayer, Jesus says to them, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

There is an interesting detail in what Jesus says here, but it is lost to those of us who read the passage in English. In Greek, the language in which this gospel was written, the grammatical form of the verbs Ask, Search, and Knock is not that of a one-time event, but of a continual process. It would be more accurate to translate these words as “keep asking,” “keep searching,” and “keep knocking.” And the end-result of this process is that God will “give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

In other words, Jesus invites his followers, through prayer, to enter into an ongoing relationship with God, the end of which is the gift of the Holy Spirit: God’s own self, dwelling within us. This, my friends, is why we pray.

God is eager to be in a relationship with each of us. The act of prayer is nothing more or less than us reciprocating God’s desire. We bring to God the joys and concerns of our lives because they matter to us, and we matter to God. We bring to God the bigger problems of the world because the world matters to God, therefore it should matter to us as well. We pray because we want to grow closer in our relationship with God.

For those who would like to pray, but have trouble getting started, I can think of no better place to begin than with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples in this passage. Sandy Lipsey and I noticed a couple of years ago that the Lord’s Prayer is one of the most universal elements of Christian worship. Not every church accepts the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed, nor do they celebrate Baptism or the Eucharist in the same way. Not every church likes the same hymns or translations of the Bible, but every church looks at the Lord’s Prayer and says, “Yep. That’s a good one.”

If you want to start praying, start with that, at least once a day. You can also take a minute to name your personal joys and concerns of that day. For an expanded spiritual diet, try reading a psalm and a passage from the Bible. And, when all else is said and done, don’t be afraid to just sit in silence. One of the true marks of close friends is when they can just be together, enjoying each other’s company without a word being said. It is no different in the friendship between us and God.