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For the Tigers, there is always another
season. But for the Rockies….what a year! An article in the
Denver Post entitled “Faith on the Field”
reports that a fourth grader at a Catholic school asked the
priest to pray for the Rockies, convinced they were jinxed
because they were on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
The priest assured him the Rockies would be fine, and guess
what?
The author acknowledges that in American
society, baseball and faith go hand in hand. But he says it
is nowhere more evident than Coors Field, where players tend
to wear their beliefs on their pinstripes. He writes:
It’s perfectly understandable that
players are believers. They live so intensely. The margin of
victory and failure is so thin. They look for anything to
give them an edge. Their zone is a religious experience.
(By Electa Draper, Denver Post,
10/14/07)
And if we are honest, there is something of that in all of
us, isn’t there?
When we desire to be a winner and the
margin of victory is thin, when we are looking for anything
that will help us, we all tend to become believers. And
prayer? Prayer becomes little more than one more
superstition, one more attempt to find something that will
give us the edge.
Maybe we think of prayer a little bit
like Harry Potter’s magical wand and mystical charms. When
we get in a real jam, we want to shoot off a prayer from the
end of our magic wand and suddenly “disappear” to a more
pleasant place. We use it like a protective charm to keep
the Death Eaters and Dementors at bay; like Harry’s
invisibility cloak to shroud us from troubles. And of
course, there is an element of that to be found in the
scriptures. Actually, Psalm 140 sounds like Harry Potter’s
cloak, doesn’t it?
Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of
the wicked.
O Lord, my strong deliverer, thou hast
covered my head in the day of battle.
Sure enough, there is a time for such
prayer. And sure enough, God has promised to hold us in the
very palm of his hand, and cover us with his wings in the
day of troubles. But all of us are all too well aware that
all the charms in all the world don’t always work. The magic
doesn’t always mask us. The cloak doesn’t always hide us.
The Rockies don’t always win. And from time to time, even
Harry Potter experiences suffering and sorrow, doubt and
maybe even death. (I haven’t quite finished the book, so
don’t spoil it for me.)
If you are looking for that kind of
magic, the truth is that prayer doesn’t always work. And in
the end, no matter how hard you pray, none of us is going to
get out of this life alive. Life itself is a terminal
illness, and one day all the prayers in the world won’t stop
the certain experience of death. Don’t get me wrong. I
believe in the power of prayer for healing, and I never
hesitate to ask for God’s protection for our sons and
daughters. But if your belief in prayer is based on whether
or not it “works,” if your faith is dependant on getting
what you want, I have to say you are going to be sadly
disappointed.
So…what about prayer?
This brings me to hymn #500, “Spirit of
God, Descend Upon My Heart.” I invite you to follow along in
the text. It was written by Irishman George Croly in 1867.
Croly graduated from Trinity College in Dublin and served a
small parish in Ireland, then moved to London. There he was
asked to reopen St. Stephen’s Church in one of the worst
slums of London—a church which had been closed for nearly a
century. He labored there in desperate conditions, and
through his preaching and ministry the church grew and
blessed the community. This hymn was written for that
congregation in the midst of their difficult ministry. It is
a model for prayer.
1. Begin with an openness to the spirit of God.
Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
wean it from earth; through all its
pulses move;
stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou
art,
and make me love thee as I ought to
love.
Prayer begins with a welcome receptivity,
a willingness to receive, a ready invitation, an openness to
the spirit of God. The first approach to prayer is not
requesting or cajoling, not pleading or petitioning, not
even repenting or confessing. The first movement of prayer
is a simple invitation and openness to the spirit of God.
Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite authors, writes:
…if you have your eyes open, every once
in awhile in some word in even the most unpromising sermon,
in some scrap of prayer or anthem, in some moment of silence
even; in the sudden glimpse of someone you love, or in some
stranger whose face touches your heart—these moments, in the
depths of whatever our dimness or sadness or lostness, give
us an echo of a voice which calls us from deeper still. It
calls us by name, and we know that the ground on which we
stand really is holy ground.
(A Room Called Remember, page 28)
If you have your eyes open, if you have
your ears open…prayer begins with openness to the spirit of
God.
2. And prayer accepts simplicity as the gift of God.
I love
the second verse of this hymn:
I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
no sudden rending of the veil of clay,
no angel visitant, no opening skies;
but take the dimness of my soul away.
I love it because it describes my
experience as well as my petition. I’ve seldom had prophet
ecstasies or angel visitations, seldom seen opening skies
and heavenly visions, but the prayer of my heart is: “Lord,
give me just the simple touch of God’s spirit breaking
through the darkness and dimness of my own stubborn soul.”
Last month, the world was stunned by the
disclosures of Mother Teresa’s own spiritual journey,
letters which reveal the darkness of doubt and the dimness
of her own soul. The New York Times review of the
book of her prayer diary was entitled “A Saint of Darkness,”
and Time magazine titled its article simply “Her
Agony.” And as painful as it is to read, I take some comfort
in knowing that even the saints among us experience doubt
and darkness, the dimness of the soul.
Oh, I’ve had a few of those high and holy
moments on the sawdust trail, times when the heavens seem to
open and when angels descending bring from above, echoes of
mercy, whispers of love. I’ve experienced from time to time
those splashy spiritual highs and moments of miracle and
wonder. But like most of us most of the time, I would settle
for the simple gift of just enough courage to make it
through the day,
-
just enough
understanding to guide our decisions,
-
just enough grace,
grace sufficient to the need,
-
just enough light to
take the dimness of our souls away.
Openness to the spirit of God.
Simplicity as the gift of God.
3. And prayer is about patience in the promises of God.
Ah,
patience. That’s the gift I want…and I want it NOW!!!!
I can’t
help but wonder what experiences brought Croley to write:
Teach me to feel that thou art always
nigh;
teach me the struggles of the soul to
bear.
To check the rising doubt, the rebel
sigh,
teach me the patience of unanswered
prayer.
I wonder what was the turmoil in his
sprawling slum? Perhaps the death of a family by gunfire
(like this week, just within reach of Cass Center where my
wife works). Perhaps it was the curse of crime and the agony
of poverty, perhaps the struggles of his parish or the
darkness of his own heart. We don’t know what prompted the
prayer, but we can certainly understand the content of the
prayer—struggles of the soul, rising doubt, rebel sighs. And
how does one honestly pray for “the patience of unanswered
prayer”?
What kind of prayer is that, anyway?
I mean, I can turn on my TV every night
and see all those folks who called in for that little “green
prosperity prayer hankie”…and within days they were healed,
they got a new car, they got their new house, their debts
were forgiven and they ended up healthy, wealthy and wise.
That’s the kind of prayer I want. Don’t talk to me
about “unanswered prayer”!
But
then, what happens if the Rockies don’t win?
What happens if the healing doesn’t come?
What happens when the magic charm fades
and the invisibility cloak fails?
What happens when the bills pile up and
there are no lucky lottery numbers?
Then,
in those moments, teach me the patience of unanswered
prayer.
Which brings us to the center of I Corinthians 13.
It’s a paragraph we often skip at
weddings when we are describing the characteristics of
perfect love. It seems out of place in all of Paul’s
eloquence about love. It calls us to a maturity of faith, a
grown-up understanding of faith prayer:
When I was a child, I spoke like a child,
I thought as a child, I reasoned like a child; but when I
became an adult, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in
a mirror dimly, but then, we shall see face to face. Now, we
know in part, but one day, we will understand fully, even as
we have been understood.
Here’s
the Harnish translation of that paragraph:
Back when I was a child in the ministry,
when I was a young buck preacher straight out of seminary, I
thought I had to have all the answers. And frankly, I
thought I had all the answers, but then life taught
me its lessons. When I became an adult, I gave up childish
ways. I realize that no matter what we know, we only know in
part and we only understand in part. I learned that more
often than not we see as if in a dusty mirror or through a
foggy window, but one day, one day it will all make sense.
One day we will know as we are known and we will understand
even as we are understood. Until that day, teach me the
patience of unanswered prayer.
Lord,
teach me patience in the promises of God.
4. And finally, prayer is an act of love in response to
God.
Openness, simplicity and patience. Then,
prayer is all about love in response to this God who meets
us in prayer.
Hast thou not bid me love thee, God
and King?
All, all thine own, soul, heart and
strength and mind.
I see thy cross; there teach my heart
to cling.
O let me seek thee, and O let me
find!
I suggested that the paragraph about
“growing up” doesn’t really seem to fit Paul’s chapter on
love. But on the other hand, maybe it is right where it
belongs. Growing up in the faith, maturing in our walk with
Christ, learning to pray is not about getting what we want.
It is all about loving as we are loved. Prayer is about
offering ourselves to God in response to all God has already
given for us. It is, above all else, an act of love.
I told the Ad Council a couple of weeks
ago that the reason I tithe isn’t in order to meet the
church budget or pay the bills. I hope we do both and I hope
my tithe helps, but that’s not the reason I tithe. I tithe
as an act of spiritual discipline, as a way of living out my
discipleship, as an expression of love in response to God
who has already given me so much. “We love,” says John,
“because he first loved us.” We give, because God has
already given the best he had. We offer ourselves in
prayers, presence, gifts and service as a response of love
to this loving God who has loved us with an unending love.
Teach me to love thee as thine angels
love,
one holy passion filling all my frame;
the kindling of the heaven-descended
Dove,
my heart an altar, and thy love the
flame.
An
openness to the spirit of God.
Simplicity as the gift of God.
Patience in the promises of God.
Love in
response to God.
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