prayer – Mind Journeys

The heart of God

Read Wisdom 6:1-11

“He will search out your works and inquire into your plans.” (Wisdom 6:3b NRSV)

Deep under Duke University in a series of fluorescent-lit rooms, lies a whole different world. If you enter from the Divinity School library and take the elevator down to these “stacks”, you wander from room to room. Eventually, you leave the Divinity School library and meet the subterranean rooms of the main University library. In total, the Duke libraries contain 6 million volumes.

On a few occasions, I spent an afternoon searching for books and journals in this lower world. Because it is so vast, I found myself losing my orientation. I was drawn more and more deeply into the search: from this book, to this author, to this journal, to this Dewey number. It was a totally immersive experience: I felt pleasantly swallowed by the library.

As Christians, we seek the same immersive relationship with God, not necessarily through books, but through our lives, reflection on Scripture and conversations with fellow believers. We are drawn more deeply into who God is, experiencing more fully God’s love, God’s joy and God’s compassion for ourselves and others. We even experience a sense of dislocation, like wandering in the underground parts of Duke Library, never quite sure of the God who is ultimately beyond our understanding.

The writer of Wisdom reminds us of the surprising truth that this deep searching is reciprocated. Not only do we have the opportunity to search into the depths of God, but God searches us out and “inquires into our plans”. God loves us so dearly that he wants to know us through and through, intimately and passionately. God immerses Godself in us, roaming in our lives and tenderly exploring each part as he finds it. And as God discovers more and more who we are, so God’s searching love transforms this, then that, aspect of our lives.

As we search the depths of God, and God searches our depths, so we become more like God, forgiven and free to be loving, joyful and compassionate.

God is open to our searching. God invites our immersion

in God’s life. God rejoices in our deepening understanding of his nature. We too must decide to open ourselves to God’s searching, knowing that there is no part of us that God cannot redeem, and knowing too that God is determined to know as and to transform us.

Thought: God seeks to know us so he can love us more deeply. We seek to know God so we can love God and all God’s creatures more deeply.

Prayer: Open our hearts, God of Wisdom, and come into our lives and change us into your glory. Amen.

The edited post as published in the Upper Room is at https://www.upperroom.org/devotionals/en-2022-03-26t

Prayer in Time of War

Can you breathe through spreading pain?
Can you bear the suffering again?
Can you bleach the blood-red stain?
Can you stop the rape of Ukraine?

Can you dull the loins of those on heat for war?
Can you block their guns as you’ve done before?
Can the hope of peace-talks cry, ‘No More!’?
Can fiery minds change their very core?

God, so implement the love of Calvary,
Your eirenic Spirit blast the fighters free,
Caress the world with mastery,
Your love that heals painstakingly.

Never war

Make love, not war.

This is the first and great commandment – at least, as it applies to nation-states and other tribal entities.

We have been so quick to fall victim to the narrative of Ukraine the victim and Russia the aggressor. We prayed this morning at church only for Ukraine. Even if it is the simplest case of Ukraine: victim and Russia: aggressor, Russia still needs praying for. We pray for its leaders that they stay their hand, that they make love, not war.

But we know the situation is more complex than Ukraine: victim and Russia: aggressor. That may be a summary of the politics, but there appear to be some in Ukraine wanting war, wanting to show how great the Ukrainian resistance will be. There are Ukrainians hiding trembling in the Metro and there are Ukrainians actively hunting Russians as ‘the enemy’.

And in Russia, think of those braving the Kremlin and protesting in the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg against their leaders. Think of the Russian legislators compromised by their allegiance to Russia and their reluctance to be the aggressors. Think of those in Putin’s inner circle who he has bullied into support for the war. And Putin himself: He is a brutal dictator, but does he not need prayer too? He is a human being.

It’s complex, as all human relationships are complex.

So, I protest. I protest about praying for Ukraine as if the ‘blame’ is all on Russia’s side and not on both. I protest that our support for Ukraine is so easily subverted into supporting Ukraine’s war effort.

War can never be the answer. Even the great prosecutor of war Winston Churchill said, ‘Jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.’

We need to pray. We do. So, let us pray for all caught up in this conflict. And above all, let us pray for peace.

Teeter-totter

Matthew 11:28-30

When we moved our young family to the United States, we couldn’t find a ‘see-saw’ anywhere. When eventually we found a playground with a see-saw, we were told it was called a ‘teeter-totter’. On reflection, the American name is more descriptive than ‘see-saw’: ‘teeter-totter’ describes the way two children play on the equipment.

Each child sits at her end of the long plank and balances up and down. Two ends, a plank, and an elevated pivot are all that it takes to make a see-saw.

Jesus describes a spiritual see-saw at the end of this Sunday’s Gospel reading. There are two ends to the see-saw: one end is ‘Come unto me … and rest’. The other end is ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me’ (Matthew 11:28-30).

These are two poles of Christian life. At one end is the delightful world of prayer, of resting in God, of basking in a relationship with the One who utterly accepts us. At the other end, is the world of ministry, of efforts for the Gospel, of actively caring for others.

Spirituality and pastoral care, being loved by God and loving others. The see-saw reminds us that, though there may be two ends, it is one plank. In the end you cannot separate prayer and ministry.

In the Franciscan tradition, we say we Christians serve God in the Three Ways of ‘Prayer, Study and Work’. These are the three activities into which all Christians are invited. ‘Study’ is like the vertical beam of the see-saw which enables us to pivot between Prayer and Ministry. ‘Study’ is learning from Jesus (Matthew 11:29), considering mindfully both our prayer and our work for the Kingdom.

What we learn is that prayer and ministry cannot be separated. They are the same plank, the same life. Some Christians are tempted to spend ‘sweet hours of prayer’, retreating to the safety of spirituality, and never venturing out to practise on others the love which God lavishes on us.

Some find it easy to ignore the pesky questions about God and prayer and put all their effort into social activism, caring for the refugee, standing up against racism, feeding the hungry – and forget that it is not sustainable. We need also to be fed ourselves, and nurtured and healed.

The wisdom of Jesus is that both are needed: ‘Come unto me…’ and ‘Take my yoke upon you.’ The challenge of the end of this Sunday’s Gospel reading is this: how is your balance on the teeter-totter? Do you move ‘up and down’ between prayer and ministry, or are you stuck at one end or the other? What ‘study’ do you need to help integrate spirituality and ministry?

Non-violence for Christians

Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Baker Academic, 2016.

Paperback 336 pages.
Available through the public library system.
Online: from $26. E-book: $16.

Reviewed by Ted Witham

How did the church grow so quickly in the first three centuries – from 120 on the day of Pentecost to up to 10% of the six million-strong Roman Empire by A.D 300?

The late Alan Kreider, who was Professor of Church History and Mission at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Indiana, disputes this number. He doubts that it was ever that high but affirms that the improbable but real growth in numbers of the early church has not been really explained. The Patient Ferment of the Early Church is Kreider’s attempt to clear up that mystery.

Professor Kreider shows that the early church concentrated on encouraging a cluster of Christ-like behaviours, especially those that demonstrated the virtue of patience. This cluster of habitual actions Kreider calls their habitus.

These Christians who were in business were patient. They resisted taking others to court to settle affairs. Following Matthew 5:37 (‘Simply let your yes be yes and your no no’) they refused to take oaths in a society were oaths were central. They refrained from taking life, and any soldiers who wished to be admitted to the years-long training before baptism, the catechumenate, had to convince the bishop that they would not kill. Usually, they had to leave the army before they would be admitted as catechumens.

Kreider writes,

‘Habitually, Christians will share economically and care for the poor and the sick, widows and orphans; habitually, they will engage in business with truthfulness, without usury, and without pursuing profit to the extent of going before pagan judges; habitually, they will be a community of contentment and sexual restraint; habitually, they will behave with the multifaceted nonviolence of patience.’ (169)

The catechumens were not permitted to stay for worship. Three aspects of worship marked the early Christians as counter-cultural.

Firstly, the kiss of peace. Only equals in Roman society could kiss, and usually only in the family. For slaves and highborn, family and strangers to all kiss each other was shocking, and cemented the solidarity of the church.

Secondly, the prayers. Praying for one’s needs and the needs of others was a noisy and exuberant time. A poor man might pray for the day’s food and happen to be standing next to a rich man who could answer that prayer. Praying for those with the plague led Christians outside their own community to nurse the sick. Praying for the dying led Christians to offer burial to those who could not afford it.

‘Because they believed God answers prayers, they could take risks, live lives that were eventful and imprudent, and be faithful to a superstitio that could get them into hot water. There was power here, and outsiders got a whiff of it and wanted in.'(211)

Thirdly, they shared food. In early years, the food was a meal, and following Paul’s instructions, the rich were mandated to share with those with less. By the third century, the main worship had shifted from Saturday evening to early Sunday morning, and the food shared was symbolic, the bread and wine of communion.

(I was pleased to see Kreider reference my friend and former colleague Andrew McGowan’s academic work on the subject of food and the Eucharist in the early church.)

Kreider calls this way of being church a ‘ferment’. Like yeast, the secret activity at the heart of the Christian family changes the whole society, subtly, slowly, patiently, but thoroughly.

The emphasis in the first three centuries on patience and on habitus, behaviour, changed with Emperor Constantine and Bishop Augustine of Hippo. Constantine, who put off the catechumenate until shortly before his death, constantly intervened in the life of the church to make it grow.

Under Constantine, two ‘classes’ of Christian evolved. The serious ones continued to refrain from taking life. Others, less rigid in their interpretation of the sixth commandment, could continue to serve in the army and kill if they had to. Some Christians continued to avoid oath-taking. Others, who wanted to get along in the new administration, relaxed this rule and took oaths when asked.

Augustine re-defined the virtue of patience as a sub-set of love, changing the emphasis from behaviour to intention, and creating situational ethics rather than an agreed habitus.

Alan Kreider credits both Constantine and Augustine with good intentions but regrets the outcomes of their actions.

This raised for me some questions.

Is it idealistic to imagine we could return to a time where forming Christians is the church’s main activity, and allowing God to do God’s work of increase?
Can we go back to a time where Christians are genuine in avoiding killing and oath-taking?
Can we re-invest the liturgical kiss of peace with the intimacy and equality known by the early church?

I think, that as a Mennonite, Professor Kreider would have approved these questions!

What is Prayer? (II)

WHAT IS PRAYER?

for the Pastoral Care Group at St George’s, Dunsborough

23 April, 2015

On February 13 in 2008, I was on my way to a meeting south of Melbourne. I remember because I caught a taxi at 9 a.m. and heard on the taxi radio the Prime Minister’s apology to Australia’s indigenous people, and I was very moved.

Our meeting was at the Community of the Holy Name, a community of Anglican nuns, and lasted three days. Mother offered me a lift to the airport coach to save the cost of a taxi on the way back. Sister Jenny, who I hadn’t met, jumped at the chance to volunteer to drive me to the coach stop. She talked non-stop. She wanted to know about my back, why my mobility was limited, and why I was putting up with pain.

Surely I should be able to fix it by prayer. I told Sister I had prayed, and as far I was concerned, I had been completely healed. I could walk – which was in doubt before my operation in 1969, and I had had 30 years of rich living as a husband and father, a school chaplain, a parish priest, head of an inter-church organisation (YouthCARE). In fact, I rather resented what Sister was saying, and in my mind, I christened her Sister Grinch.

She insisted that I should go to a healing service with Margaret Court when I got home. We parted, not very happily, because everything she said to me about prayer was rubbing me up the wrong way.

I know the theory: we are God’s children. God wants the best for us. There is nothing good that we cannot ask from God, and God will give it. Simply have faith. The implication of Sister Grinch’s sermonising was that I didn’t have enough faith. That may be true, but it was certainly not for her to judge me. If God doesn’t give what we ask, then there must be a reason: God must be teaching us something. Again, that may be true, but I experience life as more random than that. I believe God is in control of the big picture, but I don’t expect to work out the reason for everything. I’d go mad as a pastor trying that approach on the kids I buried who had committed suicide; or the boy in Special Ed. whose body simply gave up living on his 14^th birthday.

God is not like Santa Claus, granting our wishes simply because we ask. Rae and I prayed hard that our son would be OK, that he wouldn’t have a problem, but he’s still struggling with mental and physical illness at 33 years old.

So our personal experience has coloured our ideas of prayer. In a nutshell, prayer for me is not about curing people from problems, prayer is a way of drawing closer to God and to the people prayed for. Of course, I’ve seen some extraordinary healings, and I celebrate those. But they don’t seem to be God’s usual way of working with people.

So I see prayer a bit differently:

Firstly, it is not primarily about asking God for things. We pray because Jesus prayed. We pray because, as we follow Jesus, prayer keeps us close to Father, Son and Spirit. Prayer keeps us, as St Paul says, in Christ.

Secondly, prayer is recognising that we live in a broken world, as Jesus did. Jesus had the courage both to face the crowds of the sick and lame in Capernaum, and to move on to other villages and towns, leaving behind many not healed. He forgave those who betrayed him, and those who nailed him to the cross. He gazed on the world with love. That gaze can be our prayer too.

Thirdly, prayer is offering ourselves in love and service to that broken world, as Jesus did. Prayer is often only holding out our heart – but our heart is powerful. The gift of our solidarity with the suffering can be transformative. There is nothing I can say to someone dying of liver cancer. It is painful and quick, often only a few weeks from diagnosis to death. But I can gaze with love on the person – not look away – and stand with the person in prayer, and that can be the gift that truly heals, that opens up for that person a new wholeness in their last pilgrimage on earth.

Sometimes the prayer of solidarity turns into something practical that only I can do. Instead of telling God to do something, the prayer empowers me to act. A word, a card, a recommendation, an insight, a hug. But these practical prayers are only the tip of the iceberg. The invisible heart of prayer, the 90% that is mystery, is the solidarity, the standing with the suffering person.

Of course, there’s much more to prayer than that. When teaching kids or adults new to the faith, I use a mnemonic:

A.C.T.S.

A for Adoration. All prayer starts in praise and worship.

C for Confession. We can only pray when we acknowledge the distance between us and God.

T for Thanksgiving. Our whole life should be Eucharistic, one big Thank You to God; and

S – and note it’s last – for Supplication. We ask God to help those who suffer. This is the portion of prayer we’ve been discussing today, and only really scratching the surface of intercessory prayer or Supplication.

We can’t help praying as Christians, because we can’t help loving. Prayer is a way of loving a person or people in need, and meaning it, and discovering the living Christ in that space also loving you and the one in need. What transformation can come from that!

* * * *

Handout : Click here: What is prayer

What is Prayer (I)?

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent 2015 St George’s, Dunsborough Gospel: John 12:20-33 ⊕ Some weeks ago, a friend emailed to say that his dear friend had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I could tell this story dishonestly and say that I prayed for his friend and the tumour turned out to be benign, and we gave thanks to God. Those facts happen to be true; but actually what he asked me was not to pray from him and his friend, but, “What is prayer?” That’s a much harder question. Especially as we know that many times, most times, we pray for someone to be healed, and it doesn’t happen, or it doesn’t happen the way we expect. We don’t need much experience in prayer to learn that God is not some kind of cosmic Santa Claus granting our wishes just because we ask. In fact, it would be a little scary if our prayers caused anything to happen. If there was any cause behind the fact that our friend’s tumour was not life-threatening, apart from random cell growth, that cause is God, not our prayers. God heals, not our prayers. We don’t begin to know what to ask. We do learn that sometimes we batter on heaven’s door for a healing and God does not seem to answer. We also learn that sometimes God surprises with a healing that is unexpected and even un-prayed for. Jean Vanier is the founder of l’Arche communities where the mentally disabled live in community with the able. He tells the story of the parents of Vincent, a mentally disabled boy in Bangladesh. The parents felt great pain because of their son’s disability. They prayed and prayed that God would heal him. They were surprised when God answered their prayer – but not in the way they expected. They changed, not Vincent. They discovered they were more compassionate. They discovered that God had given them more strength to care for Vincent. They saw Vincent in a new light, as a loving son. They had buried his delightful personality by thinking of him as a problem, as a disability, and not a person. But we do want prayer to fix things. People with too much time on their hands have set up scientific experiments trying to show whether prayer works. In one experiment, they prayed anonymously for some patients recovering from heart surgery and not others to see whether their healing was fast-tracked. The results were inconclusive. Other scenarios have been tried, but prayer remains stubbornly inaccessible to science. You can’t prove one way or the other. The data is too vague. We Christians persist in praying. And this morning’s Gospel reading gives five indications why we pray and what prayer is.

In prayer we follow Jesus.
In prayer we recognise with Jesus that we live in a broken world.
In prayer we offer ourselves in solidarity and love, as Jesus did.
With Jesus we lose ourselves in the situations of others, hoping that our self-giving will bring transformation and life.
Prayer is an intention to serve the need of others.

Jesus does not see the world with rose-coloured glasses. He invites us, like him, to see the world as it is, a broken place. He gives us the strength to look steadily at its reality: not to look away from the friend with cancer, or the child with a mental disability, or the world at war, or the greed of corporations making the homeless hungry and Africans in the Congo desperate. We do live in a world where our children leave us for the Eastern States or overseas, and where the friends who we thought loved us the most betray us – like Judas. We can look at it all. Not to be overwhelmed by it, but to see it as Christ does, and still love it. The key word for me is solidarity. We give away our selves. In other words, we stop worrying about our needs. We stop putting ourselves at the top of the list of people to be served. We offer our own time and energy and strength in solidarity with the one in need. Often we cannot do more than hold out our heart in solidarity. Because of distance, or other practicality, there may be nothing more we can do. But our heart is powerful. When we when we hold out our heart to the one in need, when that is our prayer, we find Christ also standing there in solidarity with the one in need. That mutual solidarity can transform even the most hopeless of situations, even though, like Vincent’s parents, we cannot tell in advance what form that transformation will take.

Ghislaine Howard (1953 – ) The Methodist Collection of Modern Christian Art No. 40

There will be times when, in the strength of Christ, we offer not only our heart, but our practical help. So when I pray, I should be looking not to get God to do something, but looking for something I, and often only I, can do. My prayers often turn into cards and words. Sometimes they become phone calls, conversations in which I may have some particular knowledge or insight, or just share the load over a cup of tea. Sometimes they turn into Betadine on a scratched knee, or a letter to a politician, or a referral to a physiotherapist who has soothed the pain in my back and might do the same for the one in need. But in reality, those practical things are a small part of prayer. They are the tip of an iceberg. The main part of prayer – the nine-tenths that is mystery, that is hard to see – is the offer of solidarity, the sharing of love. We pray because, as Christ’s people, we can’t help expressing love. Real love involves letting go of our ego – losing our life for Christ’s sake, and standing in solidarity with Christ and the one in need. The end result of dying and rising with Christ is service, a life of service, and prayer means letting our selfish needs go so we can be transformed to serve. Prayer is a way of loving the one in need, and meaning it, and discovering the living Christ in that space also loving you and the one in need. What transformation can come from that! Books have been filled trying to answer the question my friends asked, ‘What is Prayer?’ I would encourage you: keep praying. Keep gazing on this broken world. Keep looking for ways to love it. Keep sharing your heart. You will continue to be surprised by Christ loving the world alongside you, and turning your tiny seed of love into a flowering of sharing and solidarity.

Confession Worth Reading

William Peak, The Oblate’s Confession, Secant Publishing 2014.
416 pages.

$US18.54 (pre-order on-line)

«««««

A novel set in a monastery in 7^th Century Northumbria? Certainly the promise of the historical religious setting drew me to it. I was pre-disposed to enjoy the tale of Winwæd, given to the monastery at Redestone as a boy – the oblate of the title – and living through changes brought to that enclosed world by disease and by impinging politics.

William Peak’s first novel is beautifully told. Winwæd luxuriates in language, in seeing things aright. His tale is both textured and layered. The details, both of daily life in 7^th Century England and in the shifting power of kings and warriors – all lovingly researched and presented – create Winwæd’s world convincingly. The guilt Winwæd carries, and which he expresses in his confession, creates the tension in the story as his understanding of his actions grows, and ours with it.

We experience the changes as he grows in the different friendships Winwæd establishes, from Prior Dagan, who takes him on as a very young boy, to the friendship with the hermit living in the mountain, and to the Brother who runs the furnace, are well drawn.

As Winwæd learns to pray from the hermit, so we too learn mystical prayer from him. The hermit’s story of the young child lost in the forest who runs here, there and everywhere, looking to find his way, is pertinent. The child eventually exhausts himself just at the moment of spying a light coming from a cleared field. He collapses before a thick hedge, unable to find a way or to move forward. At the bottom of the hedge is a small space, just big enough to wriggle through, and thus he finds his way home: such is prayer.

Redestone monastery stands for a Christianity not quite settled in its environment, just as Roman Christianity was returning to Britain, but still remembering its Celtic roots. It may be this sense of being at odds with its society that makes this work of fiction speak so clearly to the reader.

I thoroughly enjoyed Winwæd’s confession. He kept me wondering until the end.

Psalm 108 for Noongar country

My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed:
I will sing and make melody.

Awake, my soul, and awake, sticks and didj:
for I will awake the morning.

I will play the didj, O Lord, among the peoples:
its circle buzzing breathes our gratitude.

I will chip your clapping sticks among the nations:
its clicking claims your eternal praise.

For the dawn in the east rises in gold and scarlet:
robes of Easter and Pentecost overwhelm the sky.

Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds:
and the land is a body painted with white and ochre dreamings.

Be exalted, O God, above the southern skies:
and let your glory shine over Noongar country;

That all whom you love may be delivered:
Noongars and wedulahs, O save us by your right hand, and answer us.

***

(Acknowledging Professor David Frost’s version of Psalm 108 in A Prayer Book for Australia)

The ‘didj’ (didgeridoo) was technically not a part of Noongar culture before the arrival of Europeans, but they have adopted it since contact with ‘wedulahs’ (white fellas) has brought them into contact with other Indigenous groups.

My country of origin is Koreng country. I now live in Wardandi country.

Orationes matutinae – rusty Latin

I have been scraping the rust off my Latin this morning, translating parts of APBA Morning Prayer. My efforts are in bold. If you can suggest any improvements or corrections, I would be grateful.

OPENING PRAYER

The night has passed and the day lies open before us.
Let us pray with one heart and mind.

Silence may be kept.

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day,
so may the light of your presence
set our hearts on fire with love for you
now and for ever.

ORATIO ORDIENS

Nox fugata est diesque patet pro nobis.
Oremus unitate cordis mentisque.

Silentium potuit sequi

Cum jubilo nostro in dono huius dieis novi,
lux praesentiae tuae amore corda nostra incendat
Et nunc et semper.

***

AFTER THE READING(S)

May Your Word live in us
And bear much fruit to your glory.

SECUNDUS LECTIONES

Verbum Tuum vivet in nobis.
Ferat multum fructum ad gloriam Tuam.