A space for the holy in a busy life
Ordinary Sunday 17: 29th July, 2007
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
One of the great renewing wisdoms of this last generation has been the renewed emphasis on the truth that the basis of the spiritual life is the whole of life. There is not just a little spiritual corner that requires our attention. There are not parts of our living and loving that are outside the care of God. Above all, the way to spiritual wholeness is not by way of compartmentalisation. Rather, the task is one of integration.
So there is a potentially dynamic relationship between all that makes us up: there is all of our human activity — work, leisure, responsibilities, and tasks. Prayer is in there and so are the various moral choices we must make each day, our choices too in growth in faith and in the exercising of some of those gifts. All this is part of the integration; the growing in the life that has a shaping place in it for God.
All of this is part of the journeying we do.
What about the place of prayer in our journey?
"Let us pray". If we hear that invitation in any sort of religious context, we have an idea at once of what is about to happen. We are at once invited into a space that is somehow closer to the holy. So we will adjust our body language: we may sit up and uncross our legs, we may put our hands together, we may stand or we may kneel — but one way or another we will indicate difference and specialness. It often means in common prayer in public that some words are to be spoken, addressed to God.
But whether there are words or whether there is silence, this prayer is a space for the holy in a busy life. The space may have a particular shape that is considering the wonder that is God — it may therefore be characterised by thanksgiving or praise. It may too be holding up the needs of others in intercession, speaking on their behalf. It may be asking for help or confessing a fault. It may be joining together with many others in a common and growing connection with each other and with the God we worship.
So prayer is these many things and more. It is an opportunity to speak and to listen. It is a communication that is both intimate and corporate. It may be reflective and focussed on word or idea or image. It may the type of contemplation that is beyond any image or special focus and certainly beyond words. There is a way of prayer for each one of us that will reflect our personality and our life experience. It is an absolute basic of a life of faith, different from one person to another. Prayer is at the heart of things — communication with God, finding oneself in the presence of God, spiritual connecting.
It is worth saying though that for some; prayer is hard work — more of a duty than a joy. Perhaps an obligation often unfulfilled or perhaps a discouragement when all the bells just do not ring. Concern about this is healthy and a desire to pray is healthy, but always remember that there are many different paths of prayer and some of us may have been struggling for years of spiritual dryness on a way that is not for us. We need not feel guilty because our way differs from that of others.
Many of us find that our prayer life is helped by having structures of time or place. Just before bed, just as we are going to sleep, just as we wake up, just before we eat, as we go past a particular shrine like our wayside cross, when we first come into church, when we light a candle, when we read the Bible, when we say morning prayer — but maybe also as we watch the evening news. It works best with time and with intention.
All of us will find that praying together in the public worship of the Church is something that can be encouraging and strengthening and supportive, beyond our expectation. The bridge between the public prayer and private prayer is very often the prayer that we are given today in the gospel reading by the Lord himself.
The Lord's Prayer has such a universality of application that it can be offered in almost any circumstance. That is why it is such a great prayer and is so loved. From the beginning, from the Lord himself, for us all — the answer to the question "Teach us to pray". It is a prayer of the community, giving due honour to God, and presenting before God the needs of the community. It acknowledges our obligations to each other and the potential danger we are in. It concludes with praise and thanksgiving. We will of course offer it this morning in the context of liturgical worship together.
We noted above routine prayers, like grace before meals or just as the jet moves down the runway. I can remember once years ago seeing an old Italian grandmother making a vigorous sign of the cross, just as the plane was about to take off. I remember thinking "What a good idea!". And in a more discreet way I have myself been doing that ever since — a small cross on the forehead.
But we also can experience prayer at the time of great spiritual ferment and awakening, or prayer in emergency and crisis. Each one of the petitions in the Lord's Prayer has more than one sermon in it, but the line "Thy will be done" is a phrase to choke over, often. So is the line about forgiving others as we have ourselves been forgiven.
In the context of prayer we are urged to ask, to seek and to knock at the spiritual door that is in front of us. The implication is indeed that there is a listener and a hearer. We are urged to be patient and to persevere. We will be given, to use the phrase of the old prayer at the end of the daily office, "as is expedient for us".
To pray is not to impose our own will on God. It is rather the way that however tentatively we — who we are, where we are, what we are — are in a space that is very close to God.
In coming closer to our acknowledgement of something, someone greater than ourselves, we change the context of our own awareness of life. So our hopes, our fears, our worries, our requests are then to be seen in the context of a God who, as we have seen him in Jesus Christ, is compassionate and loving and of great and gentle care, especially for the very vulnerable. And when you yourself are feeling very vulnerable, that understanding is indeed a great comfort.
And when we pray together, when we reach out together to and for each other and to God, we are all the more strengthened. We are not alone.
We may not get the answers we think we should; our lives and our world may not be as we hope they might be, but the teaching of the Lord is that we will never ask, seek or knock in vain.
The Lord be with you.
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