HOW DO WE PRAY?
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Texts: Psalm 25:1-21
A couple of weeks ago we followed Jesus through the empty, narrow streets of a small lakeside fishing village, sometime between midnight and dawn, as he sought a secluded place to pray. Given the pressing demand for exorcisms and healings, for wisdom and miracles, we wondered if he wouldn’t have felt drained and exhausted. Perhaps it was one of those nights he was just too tired to sleep. The pressure of the ubiquitous crowds was so great that he had to steal away in the dead of night to find time and a place alone. Here he could turn his attention to God in search of replenishment, guidance and sustenance. Here he could open his heart to the one who had sent him. The gospel writer says that in this deserted place “he prayed” (Mark 1:35.)
But what did he pray and how did he pray? Mark’s text doesn’t really tell us, but I can’t help but wonder if part of his prayer ritual might not have been to recall a Psalm. Surely he would have known many, if not all, the Psalms from memory. Surely in all those years leading to his active ministry he would have spent time learning the great literature of his tradition. We know he had no Ipod or laptop to carry with him; we know that there were not yet books and, since he traveled light, he was not likely to have carried a pouch filled with ancient scrolls. He must have known in his tradition by heart; he must have held in his memory the law and the prophets, the wisdom and history, the songs and prayers of his people.
So we might very well imagine him centering his time alone with God by reciting the familiar and beloved words, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me. Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long. Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.”
You will note that I have stopped short of the verses that deal with sin. I am not sure how this one, whom scripture and tradition teach knew no sin, would have dealt with these lines. But I feel certain that Jesus turned to God for guidance and sustenance for the journey he was on. Though he may have used a Psalm to center himself and focus his prayer time, I imagine that he was soon in deep conversation with God, opening his heart and mind, emptying himself before God, trusting that God would hear him and understand him, that God would love and care for him, that God would finish the work begun in him. Perhaps the disciples interrupted him before he could finish his prayer, saying, “O guard my life, and deliver me; do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you.”
I know that at different times in my own prayer life, I have turned to the words of familiar hymns to help me focus. Among my favorites are “For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies, [God] of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.” This comes out when thanksgiving and praise are needed – and aren’t they always needed? Perhaps every prayer should begin with some such word of wonder and gratitude. Another is “Lead me, Lord, lead me in thy righteousness, make thy way plain before my face. For it is thou, Lord, thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in safety.” This when I am feeling uncertain and am searching for guidance, wisdom and the way of right-living. Then there is “Dear [Mother-Father] of us all, forgive our foolish [feverish, sinful] ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind [and help us in your way to go.]” Here I try to acknowledge my potentiality to be foolish, or feverishly busy, or downright sinful – any of those things that come between me, God and God’s righteous way - and I need to ask for forgiveness. You see that sometimes I use the original text exactly and sometimes I shape it to speak to and for me more personally and idiosyncratically. What are some of the texts you turn to when you find yourself at prayer? What songs or proverbs, poems or adages, images or stories, help you to focus and center yourself to come intimately into the presence of the holy?
The point of this speculation and sharing is an attempt to answer the question, “How do we pray?” Most of us have been around long enough to have developed our own prayer lives. Perhaps you answered this question to your satisfaction long ago. Still, there may be a little something left to learn as we enter in to this Lenten season when we will spend some time focused on the Psalms. What of the Psalms? I told the Bible study group on Tuesday that I have not been especially drawn to the Psalms as a body of work. Perhaps it is because they are not as dependent on narrative as so much other scripture is. You have to work to find or create the story when dealing with Psalms. Still, I’m sure we each have some favorites we turn to, especially when we are looking for comfort or when we want to express praise – Psalm 23, 24, 90, 100, 150 – all make my list. But there is so much in these ancient prayer poems and songs that seems dark and vengeful, terrifying and bloody. It is not surprising that in our use of the Psalms, in lectionary and liturgy, we have largely taken either to using only the nice ones or to sanitizing them by skipping over the parts we don’t like. Just give us the Psalms or their parts that go down easy.
Lent asks us to embark on a journey inward; it asks us to take stock; it asks to tell the truth about ourselves and how we are living in the world; it asks us to consider seriously the movement through crucifixion and death that, of a necessity, precedes Easter. Perhaps the Psalms might be useful prayer partners for this journey. We do not want to experience disorientation in our lives, if we can avoid it. We would really rather not talk about suffering, pain and death. We don’t want to have to pray, “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart, and bring me out of my distress. Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. Consider how many are my foes, and with what violent hatred they hate me.” Still, this is part of the journey.
In our current Adult Forum series, Betsy has been leading us through a study of the significance of confession in our Christian tradition. There is something cleansing, healing, renewing, empowering about getting “things off our chest,” in unburdening our hearts of the cries and whispers, questions and struggles that can figuratively and literally attack our hearts and take our lives. Wednesday night, at the Ash Wednesday service, we read from Psalm 51, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.” Not easy words of acknowledgement of limitation and failure. There is still truth in the old adage that “Confession is good for the soul” for the Psalm goes on to show us something about how to pray to God: “You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.”
As prayer partners the Psalms show us ways to open up and share honestly, at least with God, the secret places of our own lives. We live in a culture where appearances are important. It seems too often that our images of achievement, prestige and privilege must be maintained at all costs. We must show ourselves busy and productive at all times. We are enjoined to smile, to put on our happy faces. So what become of the cries of our hearts? When are they heard? Where are they shared? The Psalms show us that the cries of our hearts are important to our religious tradition, to our faith practice, to our relationship with God. One answer to the question, “How do we pray?” is with the cries of our hearts.
Kate Huey, who also penned today’s Words of Preparation, suggests that, for many of us, “…we're tempted, or trained, to keep our prayer life ‘proper,’ that is, polite to the point of being dry, sterile, and at times, even obsequious.” She goes on, “Feelings are things that we handle with exercise, therapy, medication, acquiring things, any number of distractions. But prayer is for proper thoughts and acceptable feelings, just praise, just thanks, just certainty. It's no wonder then that we don't always emerge from prayer strengthened and renewed and that we're often not drawn back, again and again, to regular times of prayer” (Kate Huey, Weekly Seeds, iucc.org, 2009.) What’s really on your mind, in your heart? Can you take THAT to the Lord in prayer?
Praise, gratitude, wonder, supplication, lamentation, intercession, grief, shaking the fist in anger – these represent some of the many cries of the heart. They are all appropriate for our prayer life. God is big enough to take whatever we may bring and there is nothing we have to share that she has not heard before. “How do we pray?” On our knees, in our closets, in the sanctuary, on the beach or on the bus, at work or play or in the middle of a sleepless night, in joy and pain, in hope and despair, in life and death. All that is required for our prayers to be real and meaningful is that we make an effort to open ourselves to God and share what is on our hearts and minds in any given moment. Our prayers may be eloquent or mumbled, written or spontaneous, crude or elegant; if they are honest cries of the heart, they will bring us to the very heart of God.