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SERMONS

Proper 12C
July 29, 2007

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

The English evangelist Leonard Ravenhill once mentioned that three kinds of folks often have difficulty with prayer. “The self sufficient do not pray. The self-satisfied will not pray. The self-righteous cannot pray.”

It is hard to imagine that each of us might not find ourselves in one of these places in life; times when perhaps we would like to pray, or talk to God, and our mouths move, but nothing comes out of our hearts.

When Jesus’ friends ask him about prayer, He gives them a great gift, perhaps the greatest gift; he gives them a doorway that is simple, that can be seen.

With Jesus, knowledge and experience of God is not about knowing the secret handshake, knowing the password, passing the initiation and the hidden test, it is about being drawn closer to God. Perhaps this is a bit more frightening to us; perhaps we would like the secret handshake a bit more. Talking to God with the heart and the soul is first about becoming like a child.

“Teach us to pray . . .,” they say.

“Become like a child . . .,” he replies. “No titles, no grand pronouncements, only trust, only close the distance, only surrender, and call Him Father.”

There was a time when I worked as a chaplain at Sewanee-St. Andrew’s Episcopal School as a summer chaplain. The summer program hosted students from Theodore Roosevelt High School in New York, Lakota Sioux students from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, and other students from around the South.

We tried to make Chapel fun - church in the “Now” - by singing Christian pop music, doing skits, telling jokes, and doing sort of a B-grade Christian version of Saturday Night Live. It was always a bit raucous, a bit unpredictable, and most of the kids seemed to enjoy it. The Chaplain and the counselors did not want to be guilty of not being relevant, of not “getting through” to the students.

One week we asked the Lakota Sioux students to lead the Chapel services. We sat in silence for a long period of time - long enough for the giggling, the laughing, and the cutting up, to subside - long enough for the Chaplain to wonder a bit about what was going on - but long enough for us to quit listening to our own voices. They slowly walked to the front of the Chapel and said an opening prayer to the Father Sky, to Mother Earth, and to the four directions we might travel in life. And with great reverence and silence they knelt and confessed their sins against God and their neighbors. This had been their practice for generations. Some of their great-grandfathers had been the first Christians and priests of their tribe.

The lesson in prayer for me that morning was not so much in their words, as in their countenance, their bearing, their reverence. And that no matter how much noise and confusion was thrust upon these young folks, at the start of the day, they knew how to find themselves on the great map that lies between heaven and earth. They had been taught how to speak words with the souls; so that they would never be lost, where ever they might find themselves in life.

It seems that this is what our Lord is trying to teach his friends - how to draw the map of the world between heaven and earth, and how to find themselves on it. From above and below we are to be like children speaking to our beloved Father, in the best sense of that word. Vertically we are bound in love, we are watched over, we are cherished. Vertically, between heaven and earth, though we feel forsaken, forgotten, and small, we remain the light in someone’s heavenly eyes. Horizontally, on either side, we are bound in love to one another. And where this love does not exist, where this love and forgiveness are absent, we are to spend ourselves in making it real. “. . . and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation . . .” A lifetime in one sentence.

Jesus is giving us the corners of our world. Jesus is telling us that when we pray that we do not get to have God without also having one another; and we do not get to have one another without also having God. Whether we look above or below, whether we look to the North, South, East, and West, we always move with a companion, we cannot draw the circle of meaning in this life in complete and utter solitude.

When Jesus’ friends ask him to teach them to pray, he does not create sophisticated spiritual gymnastics for them to perform. Rather He gives them a cup of cold water in the desert.

Because we will all become lost in this life. We will all know what it is for our hearts to cry out to heaven and earth, and not have any words with which to call. We will feel empty, small, and forgotten; and that is precisely when our Lord reaches into our silence to give us a cup of water in a dry and barren land. Self-sufficient, self-satisfied, self-righteous though we may often be in our deserts and our oceans, our Lord never forsakes us in the trackless wastes of our own devices; he is always reaching in to give us rain, to give us a compass so we might find Him.

St. Theresa of Avila was once asked, “How, sister, how do I truly find God in my life? How might I live so that God is real for me?”

Theresa sat for a moment, and then said, “You must simply say the Lord’s Prayer. But you must learn to say ALL of it, very . . . very . . . very . . . slowly.”