Sunday Homily - September 30, 2018 - What is Prayer?
St. Theophan the Recluse
(1815-1894)
I.
What exactly is prayer?
Well, perhaps this may not be the greatest time to ask,
especially since we’ve been praying for the past 15 minutes.
I mean, goodness sake, our service is in that red book
called the Book of Common Prayer.
You would hope that we know
what prayer actually is, right?
Or, do we actually know what it is?
For example:
What parts of the service so far do you think was prayer?
Which parts were not?
Have we all been praying thus far?
Have we not yet begun to pray?
Are you praying right now that the preacher
would get on with the point?
Even though we might joke about it a little,
the nature of prayer is of vital importance for us Christians.
And, I find, when I’m stumped about something,
I need to go to the experts.
And the nice thing is that we in the Christian tradition
have a lot of incredibly insightful expertise to be found
about the nature of prayer.
And I would like to share one particular insight
with y’all this morning.
One that changed my life.
And sometimes the best way to illustrate this insight
is to tell a story,
an old story,
that also shaped the life of one of the great
contemporary experts of prayer:
Metropolitan (Bishop) Kallistos Ware.
And Kallistos Ware, an Eastern Orthodox bishop and monk,
tells a great story!
---
There was once an old Russian man
who lived far away from the larger cities and towns
in a remote village.
His beard was long;
He was quite thin, even underneath his fur-lined jacket.
And this man used to sit in the local church for hours during the day.
He would strap on his leather boots and wrap himself in his coat
and walk to the golden-domed Russian Orthodox Church
next to the market square.
Some of his friends around town came and asked him one day,
“What are you doing in there all the time?”
The man replied,
“I’m praying.”
“Praying?” they say, “Well, you must have a great many things to ask God for.”
With some warmth, the old man answered,
“I’m not asking God for anything.”
“Well,” they said, “then what are you doing?”
The old man replied,
“Well, I just sit there and look at God.
And God sits there and looks at me.”
---
II.
talks so much about prayer,
that in just 7 verses of the NRSV translation,
the word “pray” or “prayer” shows up
7 times!
[James 5:13-20 NRSV]
7 times is the subject of prayer referenced
in just this small bit of James that we get this morning.
Prayer is so important!
But why is prayer important in our Holy Scripture of James?
Well, James tells us:
Prayer, with Unction, actually heals the sick.
Prayer, with the confession of sin, actually heals the soul!
The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective,
such as when Elijah prayed fervently that it may not rain,
and it did not rain for 3 and ½ years!
Elijah prayed again, and rain came!
Prayer, according to St. James, DOES stuff!
But we still are left wondering, pondering, thinking:
what exactly IS PRAYER?
III.
The old man who sat at church for hours at a time,
by his own confession,
really didn’t ask for anything,
which may seem at its face
to be contrary to James’s notion
of prayer.
However, Bishop Ware tells this story to illustrate a point,
and ancient teaching,
a 3-fold way that reveals the nature of prayer.
And to get at this point, we need to hear from another Russian dude.
One much more widely known in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
A saint of the 19th century that I’m sure very few of us
in the Western Church may even recognize.
His name is St. Theophan the Recluse,
A Russian Orthodox bishop, monk, and a spiritual master.
And St. Theophan has this to say
about the true nature of prayer:
“The principal thing about prayer is this:
prayer is to stand before God
with the mind in the heart.
And to go on standing before him
unceasingly, day and night,
until the end of life.”
[Igumen Chariton of Valamo. The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology. Pg 63]
There is a lot packed into this short quote,
but there are three things that I think help us understand
what St. Theophan is getting at.
First, we are to stand before God.
And notice that there are not necessarily any words being spoken.
Because the fundamental thing about prayer is simple,
but sometimes lost:
Prayer is not a monologue.
Prayer is a dialogue between us and God!
Prayer may indeed sometimes involve us
requesting something of God.
But, at its deepest, prayer is a relationship with God who loves us.
And as we stand before God,
we are to remember this second thing:
we must have our minds IN our hearts.
Now, this may make no sense,
unless we understand the ancient description
of the distinct stages of prayer,
of which there are three.
Prayer always begins as prayer of the lips, our words we speak.
The second stage of prayer is prayer of the mind,
or the intellect, when prayer enters us.
Mental prayer is what some call this stage.
But then there is the third stage: prayer of the heart.
And when prayer becomes prayer of the heart,
the heart referring to the center of our being,
the seat of the soul,
the place where Christ and the Holy Spirit
dwell within us,
that is when it becomes prayer
of the whole person.
And this is what makes the Letter of James make more sense.
When we talk about prayer that actually does stuff,
it is because true prayer of the righteous comes from
such union with God,
such inward fellowship with Christ
such attention to the movements of the Spirit
that we and God are of a single will.
When James speaks about Elijah’s fervent prayer to withhold rain,
and then to bring rain,
it is because Elijah’s prayer emanated from the union
he had with God, asking in union with God’s will.
And if prayer is standing before God with the mind in the heart,
with all our being in union with God,
then the things God desires become what we desire!
And with our desires and wills in union with God,
standing ever before God in relationship,
then, as St. Theophan says,
prayer is to continue like this for the rest of your life.
And the third part of St. Theophan’s description then echoes
what St. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17:
“Pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks,
for this is the will of the God in Christ Jesus for you.”
IV.
has everything to do with our worship here
in the Episcopal Church.
Because the great strength of our liturgy
is that it is NOT primarily about smart things I say to you [...thank God...];
it is NOT primarily about didactic teaching.
It is ALL about the active relationship that we have with God
who is present even as we speak
and who is ever speaking to YOU
as you are present!
God is not far away,
nor has the Eternal Word, Jesus Christ,
stopped speaking just because we haven’t stopped to listen.
For all who have been baptized into Christ’s body,
who have received the gift of God’s Holy Spirit:
that same Spirit is CONSTANTLY praying
within you unto God without ceasing!
Our joyful practice, then,
is to join in concert, in union with Christ and the Holy Spirit
and to continue in that union until the day we see God
face to face.
And in the power of that union of prayer before God,
that is when our prayers begin to change the world
because we have allowed God to transform US
from the inside out!
As another important saint of the 4th century once said,
“Remember God more often than you breathe.”
[Gregory of Nazianzus]
Prayer is not meant to be a mere activity that you do on Sundays,
Or that thing that you do when you pray Morning Prayer
or Evening Prayer in our prayer book.
Rather, for us as Christians,
prayer is to be THE activity that enlivens all our life,
the ever present dimension of our life that encompasses
EVERYTHING that we do...
...remembering God,
praying with our mind in our heart
standing before God night and day,
until the day our earthly life ends.
What would our life be like,
if we devoted ourselves
to that kind of prayer...
...the prayer of the mind in the heart?
In the Name of the + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
-----
The inspiration for this sermon was prompted by Robert Benson’s book Living Prayer and also a lecture given by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware on the subject of prayer.
See the following link for the video of Kallistos Ware’s lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqTLTUxMGbQ.
Comments
Post a Comment