St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +
Jer 31: 27-34; Ps 119: 97-104; II Tim 3:14-4:5; Luke 18: 1-8
The answer to prayer – at least “from” the God I have over many decades come to know and understand, and yes, I’ll even say love, though that’s a topic for several other sermons! - is instantaneous. [Look around.] Do I see some of you look dubious? But I now see, and I am saying, that every prayer I have ever offered, every insight I have sought, has been instantly answered.
I can equally say that this has been the consequence of “faith”. The Evangelist Luke asks today at the conclusion of the Gospel reading, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find such persistent faith on earth?” ”Faith” is the issue we are being asked to address first, because what we understand by “faith” is critical. Friedrich Nietzsche allegedly said: “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”. What I hear in his comment is contempt for a certain understanding of faith, an understanding which believes, for example, that if sufficiently loved, adored and praised, God will prevent suffering. In my experience, delusional thinking. What God will do is, at the least, suffer with us.
My comment on Nietzsche’s words was, “Faith” is not about trading slave-like submission for a Deity’s condescending favour. Faith, from the Latin “fides – trust”, means diligently adhering, often with difficulty, to a path which gives birth to the Mystery of God Within. The meaning of everything: Life, Death, Wholeness, Love, Joy is at stake. Discerning the authentic Path is the life-work of every person. And I might add that there are many paths that need to be discerned throughout our lives. “Having faith” is always a process of liberation; it is never a process of escaping being human.
I believe, based on experience, that both “faith” and “prayer” are two way-streets: between us and God. To what end? To the end of knowing, of sensing, that God lives at the core of our being, and we live at the core of God’s Being, at least at some level of experience and knowing. Or, as Paul the Apostle puts it, coming to know the “Christ in us” which makes us fully human.
This is the point of the instantaneous answer to Prayer of which I spoke: it is the moment at which we experience, even haltingly, our Unity with God. Prayer, for me, is never “God actively gives, I passively receive” - though the answer to Prayer can sometimes feel like that, especially when we are in the midst of struggle and pain. I believe that the answer to Prayer is always a transformative moment, in which, consciously or unconsciously, our humanity has become more whole – which is to say more God-like.
Jesus makes it clear in the Gospel reading that what is essential in being both a prayerful and a faithful person is Persistence, or Perseverance. And here is the bottom line as I see it: God is unchanging, as I understand God. What changes is our perception of God. It is expressed in that classic hymn – which always makes me laugh because of its rather overdone humility – “We blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree / and wither and perish but nought changeth Thee”. The God I know always seeks to give us what we need for abundant, whole Life, and this includes our understanding of what it means to be mortal, subject to decay and death. It is indeed, in some sense, in the Puritan preacher John Edwards’ rather silly sermon title, a “dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God”.
The work of faith requires perseverance and dogged persistence. NOT so that we can wear God down, until God gives up, or changes Her mind, and gives us what we demand – though it would be easy to misinterpret the parable about the widow and the impious judge in this way. Those who were spiritually unprepared to understand Jesus’ parable would not have gotten the message. But those who are open– and this openness to the message is critical for any transformation – understand that we must persist until everything we have put in the way of hearing the Message is removed. Only then will that moment occur when instantaneously Prayer is answered. The answer to Prayer is instantaneous at the moment when our Self and our Desire begins to merge with God’s Self and Desire.
Two personal examples: One: When I was a Novice in the Order of the Holy Cross, age 21, I had a headache during all waking hours for 7 months. No aspirin or anything else took it away – though a couple of glasses of wine would distract me, or a long walk along the railway tracks along the Hudson River. I assumed it had something to do with my vocation. I prayed a lot, everything from asking that the headache go away (shades of St. Paul!) to understanding why I had it. I persisted for 7 months – discomfort will do that for you! Finally one day, I said to God/the Universe/the Mystery – they all merge for me - “OK, I have no idea why I’m here; You deal with it.” That second, the headache was gone. Yes, it was about that old devil Control, and it’s counterpart Trust. But the “answer” I got was NOT “You aren’t in control, I am, so submit”. I don’t believe in a God who demands “submission”, and I won’t say that horrible line in Eucharistic Prayer B that says, “put all things in subjection under Your Christ”. Rather, the message was, “We’re in this together; trust me and yourself; relax.” I learned a critical lesson about Life – and God.
Second: In 1995, after 9 years of a little congregation in Providence that went from 12 to over a hundred and had a vital ministry to the AIDS community, I took a job I thought would be wonderful: Director of The Oasis, the ministry to the Gay community in the diocese of Newark. Seven months into it, I started having anxiety attacks for the first (and only) time in my life. I prayed about that mightily. One morning I awoke after a bad night, and an inner voice said clearly, “Brian, this job is just not for you. Forget about what others will think; just resign. It’s OK. Not every decision we make is the right one. This setting is not where your gifts are best used. Trust yourself.” Instantaneously, I felt better, and I’ve never had another anxiety attack – though if I do I will know what the message is! I learned that I don’t have to succeed at everything, and to appreciate what gifts I do have, and I’m still learning not to beat myself up.
The answer to Prayer is always, I believe, that we are offered the opportunity to grow and change – and that often is a wrenching process – but it gets easier too! As we take the opportunities, our comprehension of the great Mystery of Life, of God, of Meaning, changes and grows. We set out on the road of isolation at our birth into this Earthly life, and we move towards a sense of unity in our self and with each other and with all Creation and with the infinitely beautiful Power that enlivens it all.
The Message today is: Keep at it! As Winston Churchill once said, “Never, never, never give up”. The great saints are those who first set their hearts on “union with God” - those who like Jacob wrestled with the angel God, until the break of day, and would NOT let go until the angel blessed him. Some of the blessings we receive may seem like a curse – until we recognize we have been freed of things we thought we had to have but which only stood in our way to Freedom.
So in praise of Persistence I leave us with these verses of a very long hymn called Wrestling Jacob, by the great hymnologist Charles Wesley [1742]: [Tune: St. Petersburg, attributed to Dimitri S. Bortniansky 1825]
Come, O thou Traveler unknown / Whom still I hold, but cannot see! / My company before is gone, / And I am left alone with Thee; / With Thee all night I mean to stay, / And wrestle till the break of day.
Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal / Thy new, unutterable Name? / Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell; / To know it now resolved I am; / Wrestling, I will not let Thee go, / Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.
Jer 31: 27-34; Ps 119: 97-104; II Tim 3:14-4:5; Luke 18: 1-8
The answer to prayer – at least “from” the God I have over many decades come to know and understand, and yes, I’ll even say love, though that’s a topic for several other sermons! - is instantaneous. [Look around.] Do I see some of you look dubious? But I now see, and I am saying, that every prayer I have ever offered, every insight I have sought, has been instantly answered.
I can equally say that this has been the consequence of “faith”. The Evangelist Luke asks today at the conclusion of the Gospel reading, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find such persistent faith on earth?” ”Faith” is the issue we are being asked to address first, because what we understand by “faith” is critical. Friedrich Nietzsche allegedly said: “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”. What I hear in his comment is contempt for a certain understanding of faith, an understanding which believes, for example, that if sufficiently loved, adored and praised, God will prevent suffering. In my experience, delusional thinking. What God will do is, at the least, suffer with us.
My comment on Nietzsche’s words was, “Faith” is not about trading slave-like submission for a Deity’s condescending favour. Faith, from the Latin “fides – trust”, means diligently adhering, often with difficulty, to a path which gives birth to the Mystery of God Within. The meaning of everything: Life, Death, Wholeness, Love, Joy is at stake. Discerning the authentic Path is the life-work of every person. And I might add that there are many paths that need to be discerned throughout our lives. “Having faith” is always a process of liberation; it is never a process of escaping being human.
I believe, based on experience, that both “faith” and “prayer” are two way-streets: between us and God. To what end? To the end of knowing, of sensing, that God lives at the core of our being, and we live at the core of God’s Being, at least at some level of experience and knowing. Or, as Paul the Apostle puts it, coming to know the “Christ in us” which makes us fully human.
This is the point of the instantaneous answer to Prayer of which I spoke: it is the moment at which we experience, even haltingly, our Unity with God. Prayer, for me, is never “God actively gives, I passively receive” - though the answer to Prayer can sometimes feel like that, especially when we are in the midst of struggle and pain. I believe that the answer to Prayer is always a transformative moment, in which, consciously or unconsciously, our humanity has become more whole – which is to say more God-like.
Jesus makes it clear in the Gospel reading that what is essential in being both a prayerful and a faithful person is Persistence, or Perseverance. And here is the bottom line as I see it: God is unchanging, as I understand God. What changes is our perception of God. It is expressed in that classic hymn – which always makes me laugh because of its rather overdone humility – “We blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree / and wither and perish but nought changeth Thee”. The God I know always seeks to give us what we need for abundant, whole Life, and this includes our understanding of what it means to be mortal, subject to decay and death. It is indeed, in some sense, in the Puritan preacher John Edwards’ rather silly sermon title, a “dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God”.
The work of faith requires perseverance and dogged persistence. NOT so that we can wear God down, until God gives up, or changes Her mind, and gives us what we demand – though it would be easy to misinterpret the parable about the widow and the impious judge in this way. Those who were spiritually unprepared to understand Jesus’ parable would not have gotten the message. But those who are open– and this openness to the message is critical for any transformation – understand that we must persist until everything we have put in the way of hearing the Message is removed. Only then will that moment occur when instantaneously Prayer is answered. The answer to Prayer is instantaneous at the moment when our Self and our Desire begins to merge with God’s Self and Desire.
Two personal examples: One: When I was a Novice in the Order of the Holy Cross, age 21, I had a headache during all waking hours for 7 months. No aspirin or anything else took it away – though a couple of glasses of wine would distract me, or a long walk along the railway tracks along the Hudson River. I assumed it had something to do with my vocation. I prayed a lot, everything from asking that the headache go away (shades of St. Paul!) to understanding why I had it. I persisted for 7 months – discomfort will do that for you! Finally one day, I said to God/the Universe/the Mystery – they all merge for me - “OK, I have no idea why I’m here; You deal with it.” That second, the headache was gone. Yes, it was about that old devil Control, and it’s counterpart Trust. But the “answer” I got was NOT “You aren’t in control, I am, so submit”. I don’t believe in a God who demands “submission”, and I won’t say that horrible line in Eucharistic Prayer B that says, “put all things in subjection under Your Christ”. Rather, the message was, “We’re in this together; trust me and yourself; relax.” I learned a critical lesson about Life – and God.
Second: In 1995, after 9 years of a little congregation in Providence that went from 12 to over a hundred and had a vital ministry to the AIDS community, I took a job I thought would be wonderful: Director of The Oasis, the ministry to the Gay community in the diocese of Newark. Seven months into it, I started having anxiety attacks for the first (and only) time in my life. I prayed about that mightily. One morning I awoke after a bad night, and an inner voice said clearly, “Brian, this job is just not for you. Forget about what others will think; just resign. It’s OK. Not every decision we make is the right one. This setting is not where your gifts are best used. Trust yourself.” Instantaneously, I felt better, and I’ve never had another anxiety attack – though if I do I will know what the message is! I learned that I don’t have to succeed at everything, and to appreciate what gifts I do have, and I’m still learning not to beat myself up.
The answer to Prayer is always, I believe, that we are offered the opportunity to grow and change – and that often is a wrenching process – but it gets easier too! As we take the opportunities, our comprehension of the great Mystery of Life, of God, of Meaning, changes and grows. We set out on the road of isolation at our birth into this Earthly life, and we move towards a sense of unity in our self and with each other and with all Creation and with the infinitely beautiful Power that enlivens it all.
The Message today is: Keep at it! As Winston Churchill once said, “Never, never, never give up”. The great saints are those who first set their hearts on “union with God” - those who like Jacob wrestled with the angel God, until the break of day, and would NOT let go until the angel blessed him. Some of the blessings we receive may seem like a curse – until we recognize we have been freed of things we thought we had to have but which only stood in our way to Freedom.
So in praise of Persistence I leave us with these verses of a very long hymn called Wrestling Jacob, by the great hymnologist Charles Wesley [1742]: [Tune: St. Petersburg, attributed to Dimitri S. Bortniansky 1825]
Come, O thou Traveler unknown / Whom still I hold, but cannot see! / My company before is gone, / And I am left alone with Thee; / With Thee all night I mean to stay, / And wrestle till the break of day.
Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal / Thy new, unutterable Name? / Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell; / To know it now resolved I am; / Wrestling, I will not let Thee go, / Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.
[Sing last verse]
Contented now upon my thigh / I halt, till life’s short journey end; / All helplessness, all weakness I / On Thee alone for strength depend; / Nor have I power from Thee to move: / Thy nature, and Thy name is Love.
Contented now upon my thigh / I halt, till life’s short journey end; / All helplessness, all weakness I / On Thee alone for strength depend; / Nor have I power from Thee to move: / Thy nature, and Thy name is Love.
