The Mystery of Prayer

Let us do some theology, some deep thinking now, regarding prayer. And, let us begin with a short reflection upon the nature of God and the mystery of prayer in community. God is united in an infinite exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the very simplest way of understanding the divine union we call the Trinity. So prayer is not, in its very nature, simply a conversation with God. When we pray we participate in the divine life of love, the divine community.



As God's creatures we become entangled in the embrace of God. Through prayer we are lifted first into the community of God. And, it is in this embrace that the idea of praying or worshiping a foreign or "distant" God begins to disappear. We realize the grace of being created in such a manner as to participate in the divine union of God and it is from this realization of grace that we then truly offer our own adoration and thanksgiving.



We are able to give thanks and worship the Holy Spirit which moves over the waters of our soul and the warms our hearts with peace, grace, and love. We are able to give thanks and worship Christ who claims the world as his own, and rises so that we would be freed to hear and act out of God's acceptance rather than our own humanity. We are able to give thanks and worship the Father for we are able to see that it is God in whom we live, and move and have our very being (SSJE, Rule 21). The mystery of prayer is sacramental, and in its daily work we discover, again and again that we are members of the family of God, tied to both the community which at once is the Trinity and is also the community of the faithful.



Prayer and Life

I believe that God intends for us, through the Holy Spirit, to pray throughout our life. It is easy to find a place of prayer, a time for prayer, an organized, comfortable and perfectly reasonable way of accomplishing our prayer work. However, prayer is for life. It takes courage to bring prayer into our lives. It is a challenge to feel free to pray in the car, in our office, at our dinner table, with our children, with others, before a meeting, after a meeting, before Eucharist…however, the Holy Spirit which seeks to unify us to God also opens our hearts and eyes to discover God out in our world, at work in the world.



By praying throughout our life we discover that God is there, and we see how God "permeates our life." (SSJE, Rule 22). We are in some very real way, when we choose to follow Jesus, choosing not to simply learn how to pray, but we are choosing to learn to pray our lives. Karl Rahner, one of the major 20^th century theologians and architect of the Second Vatican Council, wrote, "…I now see clearly that, if there is any path at all on which I can approach You, it must lead through the very middle of my ordinary daily life. If I should try to flee to You by any other way, I'd actually be leaving myself behind, and that, aside from being quite impossible, would accomplish nothing at all." (From Encounter With Silence, Scriptural Classics, 219)

A Daily Prayer Shaping Our Daily Work

Our Father

We name him "Our Father," because we are to seek to have as intimate a relationship with God as Jesus did. We are to seek out this love.



Who art in heaven

We are to be reminded of our creaturely-ness and that our created nature is a gift from Heaven.



Hallowed be thy name

In response to the tremendous grace of God's community and to our sense of humility and our created nature, we are able to recognize the holiness of God. Jesus teaches us to proclaim that recognition.



Thy kingdom come

We are to ask for and seek God's kingdom. We are to be reminded in our prayer that, like the disciples own misguided desires to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus, this is not our kingdom. The reign of God is not what you and I have in mind. We pray for God to help us to see His Kingdom. God help us, we pray, to be a part of bringing His kingdom to reality.



Thy will be done

We are called by our dear God to bend our wills according to your living example in Jesus Christ. We are to constantly seek placing aside our own desires and take on the desires of God's reign. We are to join as partners of God in the restoration of creation, not in the way we imagine it to be, but in the way God imagines it.



On earth as it is in heaven

Throughout our lifetime, we pray to God to help us to make heaven a reality in this world.



Give us this day our daily bread

We acknowledge before God that we are consumers. We need and desire and want many things. We ask for help to remember that all we need is our daily bread. Through the sacrifice of our wants, God help us to provide daily bread for those who go without today.



Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

We ask God to forgive us. We ask that God forgive us as we forgive others. We ask for help to realize the grace and love that God gave to us in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord who was obedient to God even to death on the cross for our sake so that we might see and welcome His mercy and forgiveness. We ask for moments of clarity to understand His call to us to give that same sacrificial forgiveness to all those who we feel have wronged us. To help us to see our own fault in those relationships that are broken. To help us to be a healing force for those friendships and situations that seems so very hopeless. To help us to be the sacrament of God's grace and forgiveness to others. This is what Jesus meant when he invited us to sacrificially offer our own desires at the foot of the cross. Take up your cross and follow me, he teaches. Forgive others as your merciful Father forgives you.



Lead us not into temptation

We acknowledge how tempted we are to go the easy way. How tempted we are to believe God's desires are our desires. We are so tempted to believe that we know the mind of God. We are like Adam and Eve who ate from the tree of knowledge and replaced God with their own thoughts of reality. So we pray to understand the wisdom of God in Christ Jesus to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and not our own earthly and political desires that promise comfort, security, and hope in worldly things.



And deliver us from evil

Deliver us from evil, we pray, for we know there is a darkness in the world around us. There is a darkness that feeds our inner desire to be God ourselves. There is a darkness that promises to support everything we do and justify our actions at the expense of others' dignity. There is a darkness that tells us we possess God's Truth and no one else does. We ask for deliverance from the evil which inhabits this darkness, the darkness of our hearts, and the darkness of our lives that we might follow God's way by the light of His Son.



For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

And finally, we acknowledge that we can only do this with God. We are powerless, and only God can restore us, and we turn our lives over to you. Let this day be the work of our prayer to You, devoted to God's reign and kingdom. In our daily work resulting from this prayer, we trust to rest upon His power of deliverance, opening our hearts to see God's glory and beauty in the world, and with the assurance that our days will be numbered as sons and daughters of Abraham.

Coming up next: The Mystery of Prayer

A Survey of Scriptural Posts tagged #Prayer and #Jesus

Scripture is the first place for us to begin our journey of reflection on this topic of work that is prayer and flows from prayer. Jesus teaches those who follow him about prayer. One can almost understand that Jesus believes that we have, as God's creatures, a need to pray (Luke 18.1). Those who follow Jesus are to pray for others, and pray for those for who are your enemies (Matt 5.44). The Gospel of Luke records Jesus instructing that his followers are to pray for those who abuse you (Luke 6.28). And we are to pray for deliverance (Lk 22.40).



He instructs those who follow him to pray privately (Matt 6). He instructs his followers to pray in desert places (Luke 5.16). We are not to pray out in the open for fear of being like those who lord and show off their prayer in front of others.


Perhaps one of the greatest human sins is the sin of pride. And we like to take pride in our prayers, especially those spoken aloud. This is the beauty of the Book of Common Prayer which keeps our egos out of the work of prayer by praying ancient and holy prayers. It is the beauty of solitude and prayer through meditation, which humbles us before the throne and community of God. We are to seek out deserted places and private places in which we are to have intimate prayer with God.


In these intimate moments we are, as Jesus prescribes in the Gospel of Matthew, to pray out of our faith for what we need of God (Matt 21.22). In Luke's Gospel, Jesus connects fasting and prayer (Luke l5.33). I believe Jesus told us to fast and pray in order to help us understand his sacred solidarity with the poor and our overdependence upon the things of this world. He goes away to pray himself. He goes to the mountain and prays (Matt 19.13). He prays in the garden before he is arrested. And, he invites his followers to pray with him (Matt 26.36). He prayed in his anguish (Lk 22.44). We also know that Jesus prayed the psalms.


Over all, what we see is that Jesus prayed and instructed us to pray for what was needed. He thought it best to pray privately as if in conversation with our Father. If we looked at each of these passages in context we would find that they are connected with action. 


Jesus teaches the need of persistent prayer, the widow and unjust judge just before the healing of children in Luke 18. After Jesus teaches prayer for those who abuse you, he heals the beloved slave of the Centurion (Luke 7). Throughout the Gospel of Mark we see repeatedly prayer followed by healings and teachings. Jesus also seems to instruct his disciples that prayer was a daily need for those who followed him, a type of daily spiritual food. Moreover, Jesus seems to understand the importance of prayer in one's life, especially in times of trial or trouble.


Perhaps these themes and passages are not new to you, but they somewhat shape and form my beginning place in this conversation. These are the pieces that got me going and thinking, drawing myself deeper into a conversation with God about Prayer, the work that is prayer, and the work that originates in prayer. Jesus modeled a life of prayer and offers it to us as part of our Christian journey and vocation. Indeed we reflect and acknowledge its centrality in our own commitment to God when we say, "I will with God's help continue in the Apostle's prayers" (BCP 304).


Coming up next: A Daily Prayer Shaping Our Daily Work

We Have Testamints To Make and a Sacred Heart Auto Club to Join

Consuming the World

The world in which we live has changed and is changing at a remarkable rate. Our culture--what we might call the Western Way--has spread touching and impacting every culture and society. Many people are no longer isolated and "indigenous societies" are in deplorable circumstances. If not in "terminal phases" of acculturation; many have in fact died out and are lost to future generations.3 Indigenous peoples and the known third world countries exist in detrimental poverty compared to their American and Western counterparts. Transnational corporations hold or employ many of their natural or human resources. The entire world has been undergoing rapid, dramatic culture change over the last century. We have a global economy knit together and forever (using the metaphor of Thomas L. Friedman) "flattened." Regional economic independence and self-determination no longer exist. 

In the year 2000, 51 of the 100 biggest economies in the world were corporations. More than 20 million Americans now work for major transnational corporations, often in other countries.5 The rate of globalization has been accelerating over the last decade. Contributing factors in making the world a smaller place have been the spread of Internet and e-mail access as well as massive levels of international travel. Meanwhile most people in underdeveloped nations do not travel and only 1% of people in the Middle East and Africa have internet. I once wrote in my diary these words from Murray Sheard, whose essay is now lost to me but whose words are perhaps profoundly important to us today, "Religion has declined whenever consumerism gets hold of a nation. Religion is also seen as a barrier to consumption. It's something people are committed to above their own appetites."

American Pop Culture 

Americans have appetites. We hunger to eat, drink and own. As many of you know Americans consume 25% of the global resources and are 5% of the population. If everyone on the planet consumed as we do, we would need four other planets for the waste.6 We twitter and tweet. We Facebook and MySpace. We EBay and Craig's list. We blog and epublish. We Ifun, ITune, IPod and IPhone. We Wii and XBox. One million, thirty-nine thousand and thirty one people subscribe to the New York Times, while TV Guide has 9,072,609 subscribers and battles it out with Better Homes and Gardens who has 7,602,575 subscribers.7

Some of our cultural core values according to George Barna in his book Boiling Point are: 

convenience, options for expression, time maximization, belonging, comfort, experiences, happiness, independence, flexibility, authenticity, education options, entertainment, diversity, customization, participation, gender equality, technology, instant gratification, meaning, skepticism, image, control, relevance, impact/influence, personal empowerment, relationships, self-image, simplicity, compassion, teamwork, integrity, youth care, family cohesion, humor tolerance, volunteerism, reciprocity, generosity, networking, spiritual depth, risk taking, change, wealth, physical health, and achievement.

I can take my whole music collection, the first season of the television show the "Big Bang Theory," a selection of my favorite movies, and the latest news from my top podcasts from NPR to Wall Street Journal everywhere I go on my telephone, which I can use to update my social networks, figure out my global position, level a picture or call a friend.

As Jack in "Fight Club" wondered in 1996:

"The Klipske personal office unit, the Hovertrekke home exer-bike. Or the Johannshamnh sofa with the Strinne green stripe pattern...Even the Rislampa wire lamps of environmentally-friendly unbleached paper. I would flip through catalogs and wonder 'what kind of dining set defines me as a person?' I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard working people of...wherever. We used to read pornography. Now it was the Horchow Collection. 

 Video clip: Who do you say that I am? 

Jesus Talk: Having Testamints in your Pocket or Rediscovering the Art of Discipleship

 

Dan Kimball, author and pastor at Vintage Faith church in Santa Cruz, California, wrote:

Jesus is everywhere. I recently walked into a gas station to pay for some gas and saw some Jesus bobble-heads for sale on a shelf. I was kind of surprised to see Jesus in the gas station, but there he was, three or four of him standing in a row. As I waited to pay for the fifteen gallons I had pumped into my rusty 1966 Ford Mustang, the Jesus bobble-heads silently stared at me, all politely smiling and nodding in unison.

Not too long afterward, I visited a major clothing chain store. Near the entry was a display for the Jesus Action Figure. Probably a dozen or more Jesuses hung in nice plastic packaging that declared, “With pose-able arms and gliding action!” While I stood there looking at them, a woman in her early twenties grabbed one from the rack. She enthusiastically said to her companion, “I love these!” and off she ran to the cash register with Jesus under her arm.”

I love Jesus and I love all things Jesus. But it really is amazing how many people love Jesus but don’t love the church. If we are going to reclaim the art of discipleship we are going to have to reclaim it in the midst of our world and our culture in America. We are going to have to reclaim discipleship from a dying Protestant Christianity as it exists today. We are going to have to reclaim discipleship from the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. We are going to have reclaim discipleship even though there are theological and practical stumbling blocks.

I am a missionary and I want to work within a missionary church alive within a growing missionary field, in relationship with disciples who wish to follow the way of Jesus. I believe that Christianity, particularly Anglicanism through the lens of the Episcopal Church, has something fundamentally unique to offer those who are seeking to follow Jesus. I believe and am committed to an Episcopal Church and an Episcopal Diocese in Texas that is actively making the world a better place tomorrow than it is today. I believe that our church and our people, you and I, are called to be partners with Jesus Christ restoring the world around us.

I have invited several friends to visit with us about their views and their experience and so we will hear stories from the mission front about God, Jesus, Christians and communities. We will look to the past through the lens of our Gospel (Mark, Luke, and John specifically). And, we will think about methods and models for our future. Tonight I want us to begin to reclaim the art of discipleship, by: understanding the world and culture in which we are living; understanding the challenge organized religion faces in this culture; and, understanding the stumbling blocks that lie before us as Episcopalians. Many of us here have been having these conversations about emerging topics of interest. We have been listening and engaging in a conversation of “generous orthodoxy,” “off road disciplines” and the “renewing of our heart.” But it is time to bring it home to the Episcopal Church.

(intro to “The Art and Method of Discipleship,”The Blandy Lectures, SSW, 2009)

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