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Sermon by Rev. Elizabeth Wrightman
May 8th 2022
“He Had Been With the One Who Came to Give Us Joy”
Recently a friend of mine, who does not believe in my ‘religion’ was updating me on her beloved and seriously ill family member. I gave her a prayer form I have loved for many years, and about which I will speak more next week. Her question was, “Will it work?” It is natural for us to use words like “work” about prayer. We sometimes think of prayer as if we were trying to turn on the car engine, with our keys, and hoping, if we are concerned, that it will please “work”. This language comes straight from the industrial revolution; the age when machines began to be a major issue in our consciousness; our thoughts, what our ancestors began to see around them every day, and what began to actually dwell in their homes, on their farms, and in their streets.
It also is language one easily might find in the realm of magic and/or superstition. If one casts a spell on something, the spell “works” or does not work. (We call it superstition, when it is found on the level of folklore….and may be taken with a grain of salt. We call it magic when it is more serious and studied and refers to using one’s own actions to “change the mind of the ‘universe’”). A magician (not a stage magician employing sleight of hand, but a practitioner of magic) acts to ‘make’ the universe, or reality obey him or her. Many cultures in many eons of history have been very familiar with this topic, and separating the real meanings of prayer and magic would easily take a whole book.
But folks quite often do ask, usually with a doubtful, and more than that, a very unsatisfied expression on their faces, “Does my prayer ‘change God’s mind?’”
Best we return our attention instead to that scene in ‘Bethany, beyond the Jordan’, back to that original question, thus placing it in the hands of one we can trust to guide us and protect us here………………….. the question Andrew and a friend ask of Jesus that day. “Rabbi, where do you live?” Isn’t that the same question, in a way, as “What is prayer?”
Because otherwise we also might think of prayer, even though it embarrasses us, as sort of like a candy machine. A vending machine…….You put in a slightly wrinkled dollar…..you get out peanut M&M’s. It is a straightforward contract. Dollar…M&Ms. So my friend quite naturally asked me, “Will it work?” In other words, can I do something that will make something ‘happen’? Is the universe mechanical? And even worse, am I, or should I be ‘a mechanic’?
One might reply……………prayer is not about ‘does it work?’ But do I follow Jesus, like Andrew ---and ask “Master, where are you staying? And then prayer continues as Jesus invites up to his house and says, “Come and see.”
But like all beginners, or achievement and goal-related folks may well do, I easily fall into another work-related feeling about prayer. Did I do it right? Does it count, if I was maybe even silent the whole time? Is it really praying if I am passive and resting in the Lord’s presence….or is that lazy? Have I recalled the people I am praying for by name, and put into words what I am talking about?
Recently we watched again the feature film made about Mr. Rodgers. He and I graduated from the same seminary, In Pittsburgh, PA, which is also my hometown, so he has an even additional sense of meaning for me. In the Hollywood version, where Mr. Rodgers is played by Tom Hanks, he kneels by his bed every night and goes down a written prayer list of people, naming their names. Does that mean everyone should do the same? Did I pray today or not, if I just loved God and felt close to God, or is that just pretending to do the work, that one feels one may be called to do……………called prayer. These questions are natural for us to wonder about. Let’s look at some folks who have had prayer practices quite unlike one another……
Edward Hicks is a Quaker artist who painted the well-known painting Peaceable Kingdom in the years 1820-1849. He painted 64 known versions of the painting; a painting of peace and order among people and animals, settlers and indigenous Americans……………….Would any of us sitting here say that this is not prayer? Did he “go and visit at Jesus’s house” would you say? Did he stay until “4:00 in the afternoon?” (As one translation tells us…….)
Recently, and for the first time I painted a painting, specifically as a prayer for one grandson. (I paint a painting a month and have done so for 12 years.) But I have never connected it formally with prayer. The subject matter of this small painting had nothing to do with our grandson. And I had no intention of telling him this, or giving him the painting. It was just that I did it as prayer for Jack. It was a small act, and non-verbal and private, and I have no words to package the experience up and define it……………….just sharing the experience here with you in our time together.
In the First Nations Version, a translation of the New Testament, we read in Matthew 7:7, “Let your prayers rise like smoke to the Great Spirit, for he will see and answer you. Every step is a prayer, and as you dance upon the earth for the things you seek, the way will open before you. In the same way, as you search for the true ancient pathways, you will find them. Answers will come to the one who asks, good things will be found by the ones who search for them, and the way will open before the ones who keep dancing their prayers”.
~ (This translation is newly submitted by the First Nations Council and places scripture in the idiom of the Native Americans. It is now available in print.)
When I walk at night in Carmel I consider it my particular time for prayer. But in my works-related mentality, I ask myself repeatedly if it is enough. (I often use a repeated prayer I memorized long ago as a Catholic, unintentionally, from hearing it so often at Mass. It would be like what we would call a mantra. A centering word or phrase…… Pastor Paul makes a reference to this form of prayer when he asks us in the services here to be silent, but allow a small phrase like “Abba I belong to you” or whatever we might wish, to be repeated, in what we call centering prayer or contemplative prayer). Some folks will sit in silence for a whole hour in such contemplative practice. Does this count? The Desert Fathers and Mothers, of whom we should speak more, would sure say it counts! But of course they would never use such language about prayer! And what does that mean?! Must we talk to the Lord or could we be listening? Is reading the scriptures prayer?
Some people find it helpful to simply quiet down all the voices here and remind oneself of the verse, Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.”
Next week I will talk about three prayers, which I must say I do consider hard to do. And I think that you will recognize why I say that immediately. But today I want to speak of two masters of prayer who influence me, and many pray-ers. These two people have definitely asked Jesus “Where are you staying?” And they, it surely appears, have heard the words, “Come and see.”
You could say, as our As We Gather reading this morning says, they have ‘been with the One who came to give us joy’.
The first is Henri Nouwen. Nouwen was a priest of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, the Netherlands. He taught at Notre Dame and at the Divinity schools of Yale and Harvard. He is memorably connected with L’Arche Community near Toronto, Canada, where folks lived in a community of worship and solidarity with residents who had profound disabilities. His extensive writings have been a huge influence in the lives of many people. I introduce him to you in a few of his own words…….
“Joy is contagious, just as sorrow is. I have a friend who radiates joy, not because his life is easy, but because he habitually recognized God’s presence in the midst of all human suffering, his own as well as others. Wherever he goes, whomever he meets, he is able to see and hear something beautiful, something for which to be grateful. He doesn’t deny the great sorrow that surrounds him nor is he blind or deaf to the agonizing sights and sounds of his fellow human beings, but his spirit gravitates toward the light in the darkness and the prayers in the midst of the cries of despair.
His eyes are gentle; his voice is soft. There is nothing sentimental about him. He is a realist, but his deep faith allows him to know that hope is more real than despair, faith more real than distrust, and love more real than fear.
Whenever I meet him, I am tempted to draw his attention to the wars between nations, the starvation among children, the corruption in politics, and the deceit among people, thus trying to impress him with the ultimate brokenness of the human race. But every time I try something like this, he looks at me with his gentle and compassionate eyes and says: “I saw two children sharing their bread with one another, and I heard a woman say ‘thank you’ and smile when someone covered her with a blanket. These simple poor people give me new courage to live my life.”
My friend’s joy is contagious. The more I am with him, the more I catch glimpses of the sun shining through the clouds. While my friend always spoke about the sun, I kept speaking about the clouds………………………
Nouwen’s friend uses his language as a spiritual practice. His way of expressing himself is a sign; a counter sign to despair. And he uses it even in the act of directly pushing back against a person trying to undo what that truth is for him. It is not passive, exactly at all with the friend but an act of will and intentionality.
I spoke of two people, and the second is someone of whom you may have heard, or whose words you may have read. But you would not know him as Nicholas Herman. He was born in France, in the Lorraine district in 1614. He had only a grade school education and his health was poor due to a serious wound received in the Thirty Years War. He had been a soldier, and was captured and nearly executed as a spy. But his writings have become a small book on prayer known as Practicing the Presence of God, and if he is known to you it is probably by his name as a Benedictine brother, Brother Lawrence. He worked in the kitchen of the monastery washing pots and pans and dishes; a task which he disliked. He also claims to emphatically downplay, and get little spiritual help from, the formal prayers, which as a monk he had a duty to pray at all the regular ‘hours’ of the day and night; Matins at night, Lauds, early morning, Prime (the first hour of the day), Terce, the third hour; then Sext (noon), Nones, the ninth hour…Vespers at sunset and Compline at day’s end. (I am speaking for him here, not making a generalization about the ancient practice which constitutes praying the Liturgy of the Hours!)
What his friend Father de Beaufort collected and preserved, from his words and a few letters he wrote, has become spiritual guidance for countless Protestants and Catholics alike. He became widely and notably recognized for a special warmth, honesty, humor and deep peace. Using several ways to describe it, he says to practice being in the presence of God at all times and in all of one’s actions. Although it sounds simple, he does not refer to the practice as being thereby easy. He admits that it took sustained, practiced, and disciplined effort.
“A few days ago”, said Brother Lawrence, “a well-grounded Christian explained to me what she believed were three stages to a genuine spiritual life. I haven’t followed these three stages at all. My gut feeling was that following them like some kind of road map would only discourage me. So, instead, when I became a monk, I figured out my only option was to give myself totally to God. How’s that for simple.” (This particular writer of one version of the book has, as you may notice, tried to re-create his words in a contemporary form for us, the readers).
For Brother Lawrence, no matter what he was doing or who he was with, constantly calling himself back to realizing that he is in the presence of the loving God is what ‘the two disciples’ in our gospel reading today find when Jesus invites them to come to his house, and they stay there ‘until late in the afternoon’.
So he begins to wash each and every pan for the joy of doing it for God. Eventually he says that his life became so filled with overflowing joy that he was concerned people would find him silly or childish. Instead they came to him to experience his peace and rest. He had “been with the One who came to give us his joy”. Around him people found rest for their souls.
When I was 19, and my brother and sister were twins who were nearly 17, our mother died suddenly of a brain aneurism. The family returned stunned, at night, a warm and humid late summer night…..from the Birmingham, Alabama hospital and I remember sleeping in my clothes all night in the Livingroom. It was because there was a big couch with a pull out hide-away bed, and so us three could all lie on it and sleep together. In the morning there was a tiny trace of normalcy and a strangely, and unexpected growing comfort when neighbors began to hear, and to arrive with food, and a little chit chat and wanting to hear the story. The quiet hum, off and on of voices, in the kitchen…………………….
I was just finishing getting dressed in my bedroom when a woman arrived for whom I always did child care, having even vacationed with the family at the beach once, to do so. She really knew me. She came straight up to me and stood looking into my eyes, nearly face to face. She had on a nice perfume. That was just the way she was. She was on her way to work and she did indeed have on a black dress. But she was smiling.
It was inexplicable to me. I did not believe in God in those days. And thankfully she did not put her ‘smile’ into platitudes, or scriptural references either. She did not offer to pray; she was just smiling. The two things together; the black dress, but with the smile is the most memorable moment of the shocking time of loss and disorientation. I did know her beliefs (and had been raised in them myself to be sure) and somehow I knew that the smile was connected to them.
Henri Nouwen speaks of a time when he as a young theologian went to visit Mother Theresa in Calcutta, busy at her work with the outcast poor and dying in India. He asked her for her spiritual direction and counsel, and about how to pray. She said to him, “Just spend an hour a day in adoration of the Lord and do not do anything you know is wrong.” Nouwen was so surprised at the simplicity that he ended his questions at once. Now you and I might not use the word ‘adoration’ much. But that does not mean we are unable to understand the saints advice. What are a few words or experiences you might substitute for ‘adoring’ God? I doubt if there are many of us who have not been many times to the spiritual place of which she is speaking. An hour each day? That is the question……………………
I had an interesting prayer experience in the early 80’s. I was a Catholic and convening a bible study weekly with women in the jail near our home in Oregon. Two women who were part of our group were evangelical Protestants and they were deeply involved in what was called often the Charismatic Movement. A newfound revival of awareness of the Holy Spirit, with many prayer dimensions was sweeping the country, and brought much depth and imagination, and study of the early church………………. to the life of many followers of Christianity.
One day I was standing up with them for some reason, and we were saying a prayer about someone. The memory is indistinct. What I recall most is the two women would softly and continually be speaking, as it were directly to Jesus in praise and thanks. Affection also. Their soft whispered voices continued to speak, “thank you Jesus”, “yes, Lord”, “yes, we love you, Jesus”, and so on. Their style was definitely not my own, and I could not have adopted it if I had even tried. But it was like listening to a soft patter of rainfall on a roof. Their gentle and constant unaffected calling on the Name and speaking so lovingly to God, was like enveloping weather, or a cloak of peace around us. Again it was an unforgettable reminder of how different prayer might show up. It did not seem forced, or to be for the purpose of a public show, (of which Jesus notably warns us away). They wore modest clothes in pastel colors. Here I am speaking for the second time about clothing! Although we are accustomed to clerical garb, habits or stoles being present in all cultures where liturgical happenings occur. So I am not surprised or embarrassed to remember that I am again remembering details of someone’s clothes as forming part of the mood, which hovered around us like encircling wings.
As Brother Lawrence said, “Today I’ve quit those formal, set prayers, except those that go with being a monk. My priority is to be in God’s presence---and stay there. That’s where I focus on devotion to Him, a real presence of God. In other words, this devotion is my soul’s regular, quiet, private conversation with God. This is where I find joy and how I stay content.” Amen
Reverend Elizabeth Wrightman
May 8, 2022