Prayer II
In the summer of 2008 I went on a 36 day silent retreat in North Wales. I wrote 95 pages of notes from that time; reflections on prayer, rather than the quality of the canteen, which was actually rather good. At the end, to my surprise, I felt I could just as easily have stayed for another 36 days, as return. Giving up busy-ness, the constant distractions, the throng of people – is a relief that challenges the pile-up of activity that takes over our lives. Looking back, I’d also say being 29 and child-free again presents certain attractions.
I was asked last week, how we hear from God. The answer will be different for different people. What I would say is that there’s no compensation for time. Today’s Gospel calls us to dogged persistence in prayer. On this retreat I spent 5 hours a day kneeling, unmoving in silence, but also prayed while running and going about the day. Now there’s always a little hand pulling me away. ‘can I show you something…’ But the truth is that if you don’t make time for God, you won’t find the stillness to hear God.
I’d also say that after prayer it’s always worth making notes. When you read back through them, you can see patterns and arcs emerging which speak of the journey of the soul. I quite often go back to my notes from these days. When prayer is difficult, reconnecting and revisiting a formative time can help recover our ability to listen.
But today our Gospel gives us the Lord’s Prayer. the definitive form of Christian prayer, the example of how we should pray in the words of Christ himself. The first thing to note, which is easily overlooked, is that Jesus calling God “father” is a new move. God is referred to as Father only eleven times in the Old Testament. And what is more, never in prayer. Jesus, on the other hand refers to God as Father 170 times and when he prays, he always prays to the Father. In this condensed new testament there is a 12500% God-as-Father-inflation. Not only this but Jesus goes so far as to call God “Abba!”, the Aramaic word for “Daddy!” – a word never before used of God.
For the Jewish people the name of God was a serious business. So serious that it was never spoken and even in the most solemn worship God’s name was never used. In the Hebrew Bible it was always written without vowels, which is why all through the Old Testament we have the LORD as in: ‘And you will know that my name is the LORD when I lay my vengeance upon you’.
The point is that the Hebrew God was almighty, transcendent, unapproachable, deadly to meet, “no man shall look upon thy face and live”. He is a warrior to be feared, the judge of all things; the Arnold Swartzenegger of the ancient near East. And Jesus calls him Daddy. In one fell swoop Jesus redefined Jewish theology, replacing the Terminator with Kindergarden Cop. Gone is the machismo, the jealous Lord of Hosts and suddenly we are seeing God’s sensitive side. So what is it that makes Jesus redefine the Jewish idea of God and bring him so close to us as to call him ‘Our Father’, even ‘Daddy’?
Well, the key to it lies in the Lord’s prayer – that in that first line, we move from greeting God as our Father to praying for his kingdom to arrive on earth. Jesus’ message from the very beginning is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand and this prayer is an invoking of God here with us.
And that’s the tone of the whole prayer. Even the most earthly sounding request – give us our daily bread – is about something else. “Daily” here is a longstanding poor translation. The greek word is epiousios - a very rare word that does not mean daily but something like “supersubstantial”, or perhaps “of tomorrow”. Epi – is a prefix meaning ‘upon’ or ‘over’, ousia – means ‘substance’. Epi, of course you’ll have come across before – Epi-demic is from epi and demos (as in democracy) – ‘Upon the people’ This over-substantial bread is not about material sustenance but it is the bread of the kingdom. Spiritual food for the new age. The bread of heaven.
Jesus in this prophetic role is ushering in the new kingdom, defined by its proximity to God. The Word has come near. God is suddenly familiar, a closeness that is capable of transforming God’s people and the world – As the Christian faith in the first centuries did exactly that converting and transforming the Middle East, Europe and North Africa.
People often think of God mainly as a distant, disapproving father. Doling out rewards and punishments or simply an absentee landlord of a wayward allotment. Perhaps a benevolent old pensioner but equally an impassive hard-faced judge. All these images make God far off, removed, hovering above.
The Lord’s prayer puts it differently. It describes God as being very near and very personal. It describes the immediacy of a new age, calling for a new sustenance, peaceable relationships, and a God who nurtures, comforts and protects rather than judging and going to war.
Christian prayer should be an effort to move through that far-off God, to discover a kindness and a meaning that is closer to us than we are to ourselves. It’s a kind of therapy to find love within ourselves. But even if God is very near he is still discovered in time. So prayer can also be thought of as a bridge between time and eternity: The attempt through stillness to reach beyond the slow moving seconds: To perceive the discontinuity between the world as it is and the world as it should be, and to find in that hope.
That’s why we shouldn’t get too worried about praying for the right thing – Thinking up worthy prayers. It’s better to pray for what we truly desire, whether it’s an hour more with the baby asleep, a little more cash to come in by the end of the week, that John will not forget our birthday and Susan will call; for James to get well; However self-motivated, this prayer is useful: Useful because it can often lead us to action in being part of God’s work. Useful in understanding ourselves in our limitations; And Godly in perceiving that gap between time and eternity. Sometimes as we are praying we will be able to let go of a foolish desire because we understand that it’s not God’s will. Sometimes as our Old Testament tells us, by our persistent bargaining with God we are let to perceive the mercy of God in a new way, Sometimes, the prayer will be answered in ways we might not expect.
But even when it seems futile and we’re praying for something far away and terrible, like famine in East Africa, peace in Ukraine, or even an honest prime minister, we are in our small ways finding a path to align our will with the will of God, which is the first steps on the path to the beatific vision. In finishing, I thought we might hear George Herbert’s famous poem. It’s more condense than 95 pages of notes and in a litany of pithy phrases brings up different aspects of prayer – some which are quite surprising, but point to that meeting of time and eternity: or in Herbert’s phrase: ‘Heaven in ordinary’:
Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.
Amen.