July 25, 2010
St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +
Genesis 18:20-32; Ps 138; Col 2: 6-19; Luke 11: 1-13
I’ve been doing a lot of reading these past months. The history of ideas. Mysticism, including ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern. Pagan, both Greek and Roman, particularly Plato and Celsus. Christian Gnosticism, particularly Valentinus and Basilides. Early Christian writers, particularly Origen – brilliant man who, of course, strayed too far from the 6th C Roman hierarchy and got condemned as a “heretic” and excommunicated. “Literalist” Christianity, which may be a new term for you, used by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy in “The Jesus Mysteries” ….. but I won’t get off on that tangent today! I’ve come away with, among a lot of things, a strong sense of how many people think it’s really hard to be and to become a fully human person. One of my favourite cards has a picture of the former Tammy Faye Baker, on the front saying, “Lord, I’m sorry about the money”; inside she says, “Being pretty ain’t cheap.” To paraphrase her, Being a fully human person ain’t easy - and is hard work!
One measure, it struck me, of how hard it is to reach maturity as a human being is the number of persons, philosophies, and religions throughout the millennia that believe in reincarnation ….. including many of the early Christian so-called “Church Fathers” – and a surprisingly large percentage of American Christians, according to a recent poll. Several of those “church fathers”, by the way, of the first two centuries, were Gnostics. Gnostics were exterminated by the Roman Church by the 6th C., but a few have revived; there’s even a Gnostic bishop in – of course! – California/San Francisco.
What I am segueing to is Prayer – and to the fact that Prayer is “hard”, or perhaps better, requires hard work and stamina and persistence. I was going to say, hard until one gets to the point of “becoming Prayer” – which is what I think St. Paul was pointing to when he said, Pray always”. But on second thought, I won’t say that. I suspect that Prayer requires persistence and stamina forever – given my own experience. Why? Essentially because Prayer is about becoming One with the Soul of the Universe. For some of us, getting to that place and holding there may come more easily than for others. Some people are just more inclined to be what mystics call “Awake” or “Awakened” than others. It’s one of the reasons that relatively few people were fully initiated into the ancient Mystery Religions of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Syria, Persia, and other places; you had to be both highly committed and intellectually agile.
Prayer is essentially a context for living one’s Life. The context is Mystery, and the core “posture” of Prayer is Openness. This is reflected by the ancient “orans” position taken by the priest (or any others for that matter) at the Eucharist, the “Holy Mysteries” – arms open to receive or embrace, recalling Jesus on the Cross, and the Egyptian godman Osiris, who was “hung on a tree”. Our mouths are saying formulas, words, with which we do our best to express what we think we understand about the Mystery of Christ’s self-giving, death and resurrection. But the bottom line is, we “see through a glass darkly”. At the heart of Prayer is Openness and Listening with the Inner Ear. When I was young, I was taught an acronym for Prayer: ACTIP. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Intercession, Petition. But adoration – standing open to the Mystery and wonder of the infinite and Unknowable God – was and is always first. “Adoration” is the setting, into and out of which, all the other activities of Prayer flow. We catch it in the Psalm for today:
I kneel in worship facing your holy temple and say it again: "Thank you!"
Thank you for your love, thank you for your faithfulness;
Most holy is your name, most holy is your Word.
A friend of mine, in an email last week, went on a rant about how boring the Prayers of the People were at his church’s worship. Just rote – a pile of names and issues and causes raced through in order to get through the service in an hour. I opined to him that the Prayers of the People – and the Eucharist itself – are a Sunday morning metaphor, reminding us that the rest of the week is to be spent open to and acting upon what the Mysteries we celebrate together call us to in daily life: ACTIP.
So, when He is asked by his followers to teach them how to pray, Jesus simply reminds them of the context for a Life that is Prayer (This is in the words of The Message):
Father, Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you, and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil."
Jesus doesn’t say Pray for others, or Ask God to do something. He says: rest in, become One with, the Holy One; know that God’s will and yours are the same; tend to your whole being, material and spirit; stay One with God and others; keep centered in the Inner Christ in times of trail and evil. Then we act out of your own compassionate, loving, divine Being.
The story of Abraham we hear today reveals what I think is the most exciting dimension of Prayer. We all know the reputation of Sodom and Gomorrah! Wicked, wicked, wicked; rebellious against God; the rich and powerful victimizing the poor and helpless. So God decides to go and see what's going on, and God does not seem pleased. But Abraham - who seems to have assumed that God is going to destroy everyone, stands right up to him, blocks God’s way from leaving, confronts Him. “You’re the judge of the whole World”, he says; “You can’t act unjustly!” Abraham starts at 50 righteous people and works down: 40? 30? 20? 10? He is persistent, acting out of the context of his life of prayer. Finally God agrees; God won’t destroy the city if there are just 10 righteous people.
Most people think that this is a story about God. About God changing Her mind. It isn’t. It’s a story about us. It’s about our Journey into the depth of Mystery of God and the Mystery of our true Selves - which ultimately, so the mystics tell us, are the same thing. It’s about us changing our minds, our perceptions, our understanding. It’s Abraham who sees, step by step, deeper into the Mystery of God’s Justice and Compassion, deeper into the Mystery of what it means to be Human. To put it in Christian terms, what it means “to be as Christ”, to discover , as Paul says, “Christ in us, the hope of glory”. I have no doubt that Abraham would have worked God down to 1, maybe even none!. Perhaps that he only got to 10 is a sign to us that the Journey into God and Self never ends. There is always a deeper layer. Step by step, Abraham was challenging himself, opening himself to a fuller and deeper understanding and experience of God. Asking the Question: “How extravagant, how generous is God’s love and compassion for us?” This story asks us to contemplate the Mystery of both God’s and our infinite capacity for Compassion. It asks us to forge ahead on the Journey of becoming fully Human.
In the Hebrew Bible stories, God “changes”. But the hidden meaning – when we can hear it - is that we change. I have said this before and say it again: No prayer changes God or God’s “mind”. God is perfect Love, and God desires and offers us all we need to grow in truth and love - "will not God give you the Holy Spirit ...?". It is always we who must learn and change, adapt or make choices that reflect the Christ in us. When we make intercession for or petition for others, it is always the first step in taking loving action as we are able.
We have only begun to speak of the Mystery of Prayer. The conversation will continue. Let us remember these empowering words of Joseph Campbell, which I think call us to prayer: “The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness”. In other words, rhe intent of Prayer is to become One with God and Others and our Self. There is, in the end, no Other. No separation between you and me, others, and God.
Genesis 18:20-32; Ps 138; Col 2: 6-19; Luke 11: 1-13
I’ve been doing a lot of reading these past months. The history of ideas. Mysticism, including ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern. Pagan, both Greek and Roman, particularly Plato and Celsus. Christian Gnosticism, particularly Valentinus and Basilides. Early Christian writers, particularly Origen – brilliant man who, of course, strayed too far from the 6th C Roman hierarchy and got condemned as a “heretic” and excommunicated. “Literalist” Christianity, which may be a new term for you, used by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy in “The Jesus Mysteries” ….. but I won’t get off on that tangent today! I’ve come away with, among a lot of things, a strong sense of how many people think it’s really hard to be and to become a fully human person. One of my favourite cards has a picture of the former Tammy Faye Baker, on the front saying, “Lord, I’m sorry about the money”; inside she says, “Being pretty ain’t cheap.” To paraphrase her, Being a fully human person ain’t easy - and is hard work!
One measure, it struck me, of how hard it is to reach maturity as a human being is the number of persons, philosophies, and religions throughout the millennia that believe in reincarnation ….. including many of the early Christian so-called “Church Fathers” – and a surprisingly large percentage of American Christians, according to a recent poll. Several of those “church fathers”, by the way, of the first two centuries, were Gnostics. Gnostics were exterminated by the Roman Church by the 6th C., but a few have revived; there’s even a Gnostic bishop in – of course! – California/San Francisco.
What I am segueing to is Prayer – and to the fact that Prayer is “hard”, or perhaps better, requires hard work and stamina and persistence. I was going to say, hard until one gets to the point of “becoming Prayer” – which is what I think St. Paul was pointing to when he said, Pray always”. But on second thought, I won’t say that. I suspect that Prayer requires persistence and stamina forever – given my own experience. Why? Essentially because Prayer is about becoming One with the Soul of the Universe. For some of us, getting to that place and holding there may come more easily than for others. Some people are just more inclined to be what mystics call “Awake” or “Awakened” than others. It’s one of the reasons that relatively few people were fully initiated into the ancient Mystery Religions of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Syria, Persia, and other places; you had to be both highly committed and intellectually agile.
Prayer is essentially a context for living one’s Life. The context is Mystery, and the core “posture” of Prayer is Openness. This is reflected by the ancient “orans” position taken by the priest (or any others for that matter) at the Eucharist, the “Holy Mysteries” – arms open to receive or embrace, recalling Jesus on the Cross, and the Egyptian godman Osiris, who was “hung on a tree”. Our mouths are saying formulas, words, with which we do our best to express what we think we understand about the Mystery of Christ’s self-giving, death and resurrection. But the bottom line is, we “see through a glass darkly”. At the heart of Prayer is Openness and Listening with the Inner Ear. When I was young, I was taught an acronym for Prayer: ACTIP. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Intercession, Petition. But adoration – standing open to the Mystery and wonder of the infinite and Unknowable God – was and is always first. “Adoration” is the setting, into and out of which, all the other activities of Prayer flow. We catch it in the Psalm for today:
I kneel in worship facing your holy temple and say it again: "Thank you!"
Thank you for your love, thank you for your faithfulness;
Most holy is your name, most holy is your Word.
A friend of mine, in an email last week, went on a rant about how boring the Prayers of the People were at his church’s worship. Just rote – a pile of names and issues and causes raced through in order to get through the service in an hour. I opined to him that the Prayers of the People – and the Eucharist itself – are a Sunday morning metaphor, reminding us that the rest of the week is to be spent open to and acting upon what the Mysteries we celebrate together call us to in daily life: ACTIP.
So, when He is asked by his followers to teach them how to pray, Jesus simply reminds them of the context for a Life that is Prayer (This is in the words of The Message):
Father, Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you, and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil."
Jesus doesn’t say Pray for others, or Ask God to do something. He says: rest in, become One with, the Holy One; know that God’s will and yours are the same; tend to your whole being, material and spirit; stay One with God and others; keep centered in the Inner Christ in times of trail and evil. Then we act out of your own compassionate, loving, divine Being.
The story of Abraham we hear today reveals what I think is the most exciting dimension of Prayer. We all know the reputation of Sodom and Gomorrah! Wicked, wicked, wicked; rebellious against God; the rich and powerful victimizing the poor and helpless. So God decides to go and see what's going on, and God does not seem pleased. But Abraham - who seems to have assumed that God is going to destroy everyone, stands right up to him, blocks God’s way from leaving, confronts Him. “You’re the judge of the whole World”, he says; “You can’t act unjustly!” Abraham starts at 50 righteous people and works down: 40? 30? 20? 10? He is persistent, acting out of the context of his life of prayer. Finally God agrees; God won’t destroy the city if there are just 10 righteous people.
Most people think that this is a story about God. About God changing Her mind. It isn’t. It’s a story about us. It’s about our Journey into the depth of Mystery of God and the Mystery of our true Selves - which ultimately, so the mystics tell us, are the same thing. It’s about us changing our minds, our perceptions, our understanding. It’s Abraham who sees, step by step, deeper into the Mystery of God’s Justice and Compassion, deeper into the Mystery of what it means to be Human. To put it in Christian terms, what it means “to be as Christ”, to discover , as Paul says, “Christ in us, the hope of glory”. I have no doubt that Abraham would have worked God down to 1, maybe even none!. Perhaps that he only got to 10 is a sign to us that the Journey into God and Self never ends. There is always a deeper layer. Step by step, Abraham was challenging himself, opening himself to a fuller and deeper understanding and experience of God. Asking the Question: “How extravagant, how generous is God’s love and compassion for us?” This story asks us to contemplate the Mystery of both God’s and our infinite capacity for Compassion. It asks us to forge ahead on the Journey of becoming fully Human.
In the Hebrew Bible stories, God “changes”. But the hidden meaning – when we can hear it - is that we change. I have said this before and say it again: No prayer changes God or God’s “mind”. God is perfect Love, and God desires and offers us all we need to grow in truth and love - "will not God give you the Holy Spirit ...?". It is always we who must learn and change, adapt or make choices that reflect the Christ in us. When we make intercession for or petition for others, it is always the first step in taking loving action as we are able.
We have only begun to speak of the Mystery of Prayer. The conversation will continue. Let us remember these empowering words of Joseph Campbell, which I think call us to prayer: “The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness”. In other words, rhe intent of Prayer is to become One with God and Others and our Self. There is, in the end, no Other. No separation between you and me, others, and God.
1 comment:
This is a wonderful sermon. I found the insights to be extraordinarily engaging. The ACTIP was both a nice personal touch and a useful acronym.
I'm wondering about prayer. I recall the story of the woman insisting upon Jesus giving attention and healing her. At first he resists and then he acts. Doesn't this suggest that our entreaties might not only change us but also change God?
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