5th Sunday after Epiphany - Candlemas
Today we are bringing together two themes: we are celebrate
Candlemas, an ancient festival of light that has been part of the
church’s calendar since the fifth century and we are in our fifth week
of our sermon series and the focus is on prayer. So today we will be
bringing together light and prayer.
Let’s start with prayer. I am going to ask you to dig into your
memories and recall the last time you prayed. What were the
circumstances? Where were you? What did you say?
Most of the time when I ask this question people recall a time when
they were under some distress and worry about someone’s health or job or
family member and they asked God to fix it. Do you know what form of
prayer this is? This form of prayer is called petition prayers.
Petition prayers are where we ask God for things we need. We pray
petition prayers during the Prayers of the People. We will pray a
Petition Prayer with a candle in a few minutes during our service. Jesus
said: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock
and the door will be opened to you." Luke 11:9 And in our Lord’s Prayer,
we were instructed to ask, "Give us this day our daily bread" Luke 11:
3. So Petition Prayer is an important form of prayer but if this is all
that is happening in our prayer life then we are going to be very
dissatisfied because it is as if we are only eating the crumbs that fall
from the master’s table, not realizing that there is a sumptuous feast
on the table and a place set just for you.
Last week Stephen said that the bible is the widest distributed but
is the least read book. In today’s modern life, prayer has a similar
track record. As a spiritual resource, prayer has the broadest appeal
but is the least understood and accessed.
So let’s shed a bit more light into the power of prayer.
If we compare our relationship with God to relationships we have with
each other, then a steady diet of the petition prayer is a lot like the
whiny child, at the supermarket, at the end of the day. You know, "can I
have that?, pleeeease, can I have….? I really need it!"
Now think about it, when we meet up with our friends is that how we
greet them? "Joe, I know I haven’t talked to you in a long time, but I
really, really need to get that job, can you help me? And can you put a
good word in at the golf club, things would really come together in my
life if you could do that. Well, until next time." Replace Joe’s name
for God and we probably are not far off.
When good friends meet, they drop their personal concern and
emotionally reach out to the other person. They engage in dialogue and
listen to each other. That is more of what a healthy prayer life looks
like. If you look at the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus doesn’t start with a list
of wants and needs. He starts with thoughts about God. "Our Father, who
art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name." All that front bit of the prayer
is a natural, mature process of letting go of the immediate, personal
issue and turning the mind to the other. Instead of beginning with
petition, our prayers must begin with a process of acknowledgement and
listening. A simple way to do this, begin your prayer with praise,
thanksgiving or silence.
So for example, just imagine you have just learned that a friend has
been diagnosed with cancer. How could you begin your prayer? "Thank you
God for being here with me in this time of great worry and anguish."
Then go on to the petition: "I ask you to be there for my friend as a
strong and compassionate presence in this difficult hour. I ask you to
be with me so that I can be a good friend. And in the great mystery of
life, I boldly ask for her healing. Through Christ our Lord. Amen." Or
you could start with, "I praise you for power of technology and our
intelligence which goes into our healing professions," and then the
petition. Starting with praise, thanksgiving or silence lifts us away
from our direct need helps us refocus and gain balance and perspective.
It helps us be open to God.
Now about silence. If starting prayers with an attitude of
thankfulness or praise helps us spiritually grow and move along the
spiritual journey then silence takes us a step or two even further along
the journey. God does not just call us to be friends but invites us into
an even more intimate relationship than friend. God invites us into a
closeness like what we experience with someone we love deeply and for a
long time. You know, those relationships where you can sit in each
other’s company and not say a word and to be utterly content.
This form of prayer is known as contemplative or meditative prayer.
And for our very task oriented, productive, efficient, tangible result
driven culture this is head bender. For example, in your bulletin we
have printed the words of the beautiful psalm 139 which was interpreted
through dance, yet another form of prayer. If I said to you, I want you
to meditate for 5 minutes each day on that psalm I would expect that, if
you did it, most of you would come back with the whole psalm finished.
Very few, I expect would feel like staying on one verse for the whole week.
When it comes to the spiritual journey it is not about how much, it is
all about how deep. Sometimes we experience this in nature as we stand
before the crashing waves as they pound on the shore or take in all the colour of a vibrant sunset on the lake or stare into a glittering
starlit night. You don’t have to accomplish anything, you just have to
be in that moment.
So, one ditch on the spiritual journey is to stay infantile in our
prayer life by only using the petition prayer. So you might want to
strength by beginning with thanksgiving, praise or silence.
The other significant ditch is the one we fall into because we don’t
have a map. We don’t have a clue what we are doing and don’t even know
how to begin. And shame on us, the church, for allowing that to happen.
So I am going to give you a short lesson on the mechanics of prayer.
This is a fast, How to pray 101.
- Set aside 5 – 10 minutes a day.
- Find quiet; at your desk, on the train. I go into my dining
room.
- Begin with 3-5 deep breaths, in your nose and out your mouth.
Relax the muscles of the face and let your shoulders fall.
- Start with thanksgiving, praise or silence. Consciously connect
with God.
- State your petitions.
- Listen.
- End with the Lord’s Prayer.
On Trinity’s web site there is a side tab called Spiritual
Resources. You will find there an MP3 which will guide you through a
spoken meditation. You will also find the Intentional Living preaching
series which had a number of prayer resources. Stephen and I will be
adding more and more resources to this page to help you with your
journey.
Now in a few minutes you will come forward for communion. As you
return you will be giving a candle and you will have the opportunity to
light and place that candle for someone or some situation in prayer. It
could be for a person in Haiti, a loved one in difficulty, our own needs
or situation we are concerned about.
Finally, to quote Patricia Hampl, a wonderful American memoir writer,
prayer is "praise, gratitude, begging, pleading, cutting deals,
fruitless whining, puling and focus. …fundamentally, it is a position, a
placement of oneself".
A position of oneself within a deeply loving relationship with God.
More…
What is prayer?
I make a list:
Praise
Gratitude
Begging/pleading/cutting deals
Fruitless whining and puling
Focus
There the list breaks off; I had found my word. Prayer only looks
like an act of language; fundamentally it is a position, a placement of
oneself. Focus. Get there, and all that's left to say is the words. They
come: from ancient times … from the surprisingly eloquent heart … from
the gush and chatter of the day's detail longing to be rendered.
So what is silence?
Silence speaks, the contemplatives say. But really, I think, silence
sorts. An ordering instinct sends people into the hush where the voice
can be heard. This is the sorting intelligence of poetry, marked by the
unbroken certainty of rhythm, perfect pitch, the placing of things in
right order as in metrical form. Not rigid categories, but the
recognition of a shape always there but ordinarily obscured by — by
what? By noise, which is ourselves trying to do the sorting in an order
that may be a heroic effort but is bound to be a fantasy.
— Patricia Hampl
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean.
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last,
and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
— Mary Oliver
- We want God to change our circumstances, but God wants to use our
circumstances to change us.
- Christians are supposed to be the light of the world, but you
can't be a light if you're not plugged in.
–From Christ Notes,
www.christnotes.org
"May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to."
–C.S. Lewis
The Spirit of God has made me;the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Job 33:4
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