Paradise and Prayer

1 Thessalonians 5: 12 -22 Mark 6: 41 -47 Sept. 28, 2008

The poet George Herbert called prayer the "churches banquet." Prayer is the food that creates and sustains the community dedicated to living out Paradise in this world. Paul suggests that we pray unceasingly. Our living is prayer.

The community of faith begins in prayer. It is not a last resort, as it is for many, but that which forms us. It is a way of bringing to our attention that God is present in this moment and that this ground we stand on is holy ground, sacred space. In prayer our minds are quieted and focused; it clarifies intention; it awakes the imagination. As a communal practice it creates the community for we become one voice even as we pray in silence, for our attention is always directed. In that moment we have one voice and one hope.

Every Sunday we pray through different modes of the liturgy. In fact, all of the liturgy could be seen as a prayer, for it focuses first on the experience of God, on our own situation and then the prayer of reflection on the meaning of the texts we have prayed. We begin in the prayer of calling us into sacred reflection. It is to open ourselves to presence of God, it is be aware of that presence in a more conscious way. We listen to the psalms which are prayers. Then we pray you kingdom come and we end formed by that sense of paradise - to live it.

The Psalms are a good way to begin for they invite us to conversation with the infinite out of our different experiences. There is praise and thanksgiving. There is a cry for justice. And like the psalm we read this morning a time of lamentation And finally there is a sense of being cared for, that we do despite our fears we dwell in safety.

Richard Rohr suggests that prayer can be lament, "˜complaining to God' "Lamentation prayer is when we sit and speak out to God and to one another- without even knowing what to pray for - stunned, sad, and silence by the tragedy and absurdity of events. It might even be the honest form of prayer. It takes great trust and patience to remain in this state. ... Without this we do not suffer the necessary pain of this world, the necessary sadness of being human." We know that this world is created as a good paradise and yet within is the incompleteness - there is still the snake there. - of our broken reality. Prayer is a yearning that calls us forward to risk love.

Prayer is found fully in the sacrament of communion. For there we seek God, give thanks and create community to form us as those who will feed the world. There are different forms of praying, there is no one correct way. Sometimes we come forward to receive and by the coming forward make a commitment to the sharing of the abundance of God. There there are times we serve one another, to remind us that to pray ceasing is to serve the world, in word and deed.

Prayer is done in many ways, from prayer wheels, to dancing, to saying the rosary, to chewing a peyote button, to a zen koan, to the crossing of the fingers as we watch our team, pleading for one more chance., to thanks over a meal, to the serenity prayer, to a last word at night of thanks and reflection. We do with eyes open and eyes shut. We kneel and we stand. We walk and we sing. We love and are loved. We create and think. We work in the garden and we sit in the sun. All forms of prayer. All visible signs of our encounter with the divine in our daily experience of praying unceasingly.

Part of our problem is we often pray perfunctorily. Our hearts are not in the faith and we go through the convention of worship and action without it touching us. Prayer that works leads to action. It leads to clarity or insight. For when we pray deeply we bring to consciousness what is at issue and what is the course of action needed. At the same time, it can make us more accepting of uncertainty. It can open our hearts despite ourselves. In deep prayer we see the world from a new point of view.

Now in our world we often ask the "˜show me the money.' question. In in our world the idea of prayer is one that is debated. Many, even those who pray, wonder whether prayer is efficacious. Some suggest it is a way of talking to oneself. Others see prayer as a gimmie function - very egocentric, giving us prosperity. Others view prayer as magic, asking God to break natural law and is only for very special circumstances - like the request I had last Sat. night at an outside party - pray that the rain would hold off. These approaches have attractions for some. But it is a misuse of prayer

Yet a prayer life is central to the faith. When we pray when we pray for others, that all might have a part of abundance, we expand our vision to others reminding us that not all share. Prayer reminds us that abundance means the love of God which energizes our living. In the praying we become conscious of others and aware that we part of a web of relationships that connects all of us. In such a web there are others who cannot pray for themselves and in doing so we make their reality our reality.

Our sense of prayer is tied up with our sense of God. Prayer begins in the trust in God which leads to the question of our sense of God. It is to move to understand God as receptive-creative-love whose power is only that of persuasion. It is to understand that while God has aims of love for each moment, what we do influences how those aims become, are actualized. This means God works with the world as it is in order to bring it to where it can be. Our sense of God must always be humble, for in an inter subjective world our sense of God is mingled with our own feelings. It is the idea of the web of life that opens us to know God as relational, filling each moment with divine love, flowing through each strand of web, being felt. In such a web our energy is also being felt by God, touched by our reality and through this relationality we effect others, directly and indirectly, through others and through God who feels all the impulses that flow through the web. This means God effects the world as the world effects God. God, though, is the eternal source of the aims of love, creativity, novelty, compassion and justice.

In this world of pluralism and diversity, shifting, scattered and shattered reality prayer connects. and heals. In communion, which is the central prayer of the church, we are reminded us that we are one in God. It vividly reminds us that we hold our very bodies in common. And it forms us to connect prayer as active care of the world. Prayer reminds that praying unceasingly is to be concerned with the concrete particulars of life. It focuses us on events, political and economic realities. It reminds us that feeding others, recycling are also acts of prayer.

Prayer is wild in its unpredictability. It leads us to the depths of reality, to understanding our very breathing is a breathing in and out of God. It opens the heart. It is the music of the soul. It focuses the community. It is a wail in the night. It is a cry. It is a shout of joy. It is what we do deep in our solitude that drives us to solidarity with the world. It is an address to the creative responsive love that is in every nanosecond of experience. We are formed in prayer, for it is an experiment that brings us into intimate encounter with the God who is love; binds us together to lead us to world care.
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Thanks to Power Line in the Christian Century Sept. 9, 2008 and Marjorie Suchocki - God's Presence -Chalice Press.