HOMILY ON PRAYER
I just came back from a fantastic weekend in Oslo at Nordic Fest! I want to express my deepest thanks to the Lord for the festival and everyone that showed up. And of course a special thanks to Pål, Oddmund and the Crew. On the friday we went on a small trip to a medieval Church, just outside the city. I got the privilige to give a homily on prayer there. I share it with all of you here below.
May Christ be with you all!
Your prayer reveals who you are
Introduction
"Lex orandi, Lex credendi - As they prayed so they believed …”
This quotation is taken from the patristic treasury, that is, the writings of the Church fathers, and summarize by the Swedish mystic Peter Halldorf.
"Your prayer reveals who you are ..." That is the title of today's homily.
The scripture of today is as we just heard about prayer. We heard about when Jesus taught his disciples to pray.
With the purpose of introducing the bands message an American metal musician cried the words: "Do you believe in God? I believe in myself! "
Without reflecting significantly in the matter, it demonstrates a clear pendulum motion of the human relationship to the divine. Attributes of the philosophy of life such as religion, faith and prayer has for many people in Western society been deported to the periphery or even to the junk yard. People imagines that the faith has given way to knowledge, the religion to science and prayer for self-realization.
Or, as Magnus Malm so clearly describes it in one of his books: The conscience has been replaced by the consciousness in this sophisticated age of knowledge and reason. Despite this, humans in our part of the world has never been so divided, unhappy and even suicidal. Modern man do not worship God, she worship herself. She tries to become god, but instead becomes a beast.
Context:
We find ourselves in the gospel of Luke - a dynamic and historical well oriented eyewitness account to the life and work of Christ here on Earth. The gospel according to Luke differ in several ways with the other evangelists, especially in that his main circle of readers is pagans, not jews as it were for the other evangelists. Other important lukian characteristics is the emphasis on prophetism and on the poor and outcast people. The preaching of the kingdom of God is thus obvious, and it continues in the author's second major work in the NT, Acts of the Apostles. In addition, just as today's text indicates, there is a large space for prayer and teaching on prayer in Luke´s gospel.
The surrounding context is very educational in its character. In the tenth chapter we read about Jesus meeting with a lawyer who was considering the criteria for eternal life, then Jesus makes a very well-known parable, the one about the Good Samaritan. And just before today's text we find the pericope of the Lord's visit to Martha and Mary, a story which as a whole is about to leave the troubles to the Lord, and showing what in our lives and in our relationship to the Giver of all life that is primary and what is secondary. That issue, I feel is there also in today's Gospel, where Jesus teaches about prayer.
So, what is prayer? Are there any suggestions to that?
I was actually going to start by mentioning three things that prayer is not, and this according to the following statements:
"I sit here and pray in my loneliness ... ...."
"Shall we pray a little prayer ...
"Let´s have a short prayer ..."
1. First of all: The praying person is never alone.
Prayer is a relational act. Of course it's about the conversation between the individual and of the Holy Trinity, but those who pray are never alone in their worship of God. In the Orthodox tradition, that I belong to we notice this in several parts in our liturgy: For example: "Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, we unite our voices with all creation, visible and invisible, when we praise Your great goodness, mercy and love .... And later, in the same liturgy:
"We thank You also for this Liturgy which You are pleased to accept from our hands, though there stand before You thousands of archangels, a myriad of angels, Cherubim and Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, soaring on their pinions, singing, proclaiming, and shouting the Hymn of Victory…"
Taste this properly. Do you understand what you do when you pray?
How many of you people in here has been fans to the Christian death metal pioneers Mortification? - You even have seen the video Grind planets? In any case: They had a quotation from a Catholic mystic in the beginning of a song that said: "And Satan Trembles-when he See's the weakest saint upon his knees ..." As a young Christian I didn´t really understood the magnitude of a saying in that caliber. Since I have started to open the door to the Orthodox spirituality understand a little bit more of it:
Anyone who worships Christ never do so alone. He or she worships along with the entire heavenly host and the Church of God of all times. And the more ecumenical vision you have of who belongs to the Church, the more warriors it is in that gathering before the Almighty Lord of the universe! Jesus told his disciples how to pray and the apostels in turn taught the first bishops and priests of the Church and so has the prayers and the essence of the liturgy been preserved through the history of the Church.
2. Second: Prayer is not small
Given what I just said it felt somewhat paradoxical to refer to prayer as small. Go on and call any other act for small, just not prayer! To worship the Holy Trinity, indeed, are among the greatest thing you can do. I mean you can attend to a huge metal concert together with 60 000 crazy metalheadz (Wacken!) or why not a football game with perhaps 200 000 people in the audience.
That is great indeed! And believe me, there is nothing wrong with either Metal festivals, or Football, but in relation to prayer they´re both very marginal phenomenon.
The Church in every age reaches numbers upwards 4-5 billion people, which in turn seems to be a modest crowd next to the angelic army and all the heavenly beings. So, "shall we pray a small prayer," no, but we shall unite our voices with the heavenly host and the church of all times in reverent worship of the Holy Trinity.
3. Thirdly, prayer is not a short ...
The saying "we take a short prayer" is a probably the best candidate for the bronze medal in the battle for the misconceptions about prayer. To put short as an epithet on prayer is just as wrong as to exclaim. "... Now it is the oxygen in the air" or "... now the sun is shining" Prayer is neither short or long, it is ongoing. It is more life than happening, more than status then event.
The apostle John sees this as the angel is showing him a glimpse of heaven in the book of Revelation:
And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands…. Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, [be] unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.
This is why it is said in one of our Liturgy of the Hours: "O Christ our God, who constantly worshiped and glorified both in heaven and on earth ..."
These statement on the essence of prayer shows that prayer is always going on in heaven before the throne of God and the Church of all times, even in our own time. That is one side of why prayer from a theological point of view can not or should not be designated as short.
The second has to do with the individual's perception on prayer and the essence of Paul's words, to pray without ceasing.
In regard to that I want to remind you about the Stone Age. You know; animal skin clothing, flint knives and internet access in the form of modems that you have to dial up each time. I used such a modem for long time and I hung out occasionally on a swedish community for punks and metalheadz called helgon.net. Anyone know what that was? Anyhow if you were logged in on that community your name was green lighted.
I remember being amazed over how a few names in my contact list is almost always were green lighted. They were always connected, always online. And how did it happen? Well of course they had broadband so they never logged off internet. But did that mean that they always sat at the computer? No! They were at the job, they slept, ate, went on vacation, etc.. But they were still always there.
It's the same with prayer. One can look at it as short and temporary as a dial-up modem, or as constant as a pulse in our lives which never disconnect, as a divine broadband.
The prayer of the hours that is common in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions is not meant to be isolated occurrences in separate moments of the day, but rather to be regarded as the beginning of the conversation with the Almighty God. A conversation that is relationship and life, and sometimes - words…
Our Father:
I have now been speaking in negations for a while and thus been rather busy with proclaiming what prayer is not. Instead, let us see what prayer actually is!
1. Relationship
When Jesus in today's text refers to God as Father, he does something very unique. And He does not say "my Father" but "our Father" and it clearly ties in with what I just mentioned. Prayer is a relationship.
In addition, the Our Father together with the surrounding lukian context possesses a Trinitarian character. To speak of the Father presupposes that there is an inheritor - a Son. In chapter 10, Jesus says:
“No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
And before the beginning of that quote Luke writes that Jesus was filled with great joy in the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit which, in the end of the current text should be given to those who call upon the Father in the name of the Son.
2. Praise
The second part of Our Father says: Hallowed be Thy name. That is about another fundamental attribute of prayer: The Praising and worshipping of the God who is. God is God, we are humans. The Swedish author and religious historian Owe Wikström once said that a bit cruel but not totally implausible distinction between some of the Free Church and the Orthodox Church is that the former says cozy, cozy, cozy while in the latter saying Holy, Holy, Holy ... Prayer as worship is not about to find a kind of pleasant entertainment and a search for self confirmation in the form of a spiritual kick. No, it is a reverent worship of the Triune God, where He and not we are the center.
3. Humility and confession
The next part of the Our Father prayer is about humbling and confession: Thy will be done (is not found in Luke, but in Matthew) and it also include your kingdom come. A few years ago I was in the U.S. on tour with Crimson Moonlight. When we arrived at the Cornerstone Festival, IL, (we had a great time there I can tell) among a lot of interesting things, I was privileged to get to know the Orthodox Underground Ministry called Death to the World. (Have anyone heard about them?) One of them was a brother from a monastery in California - Monk Nicodemus.
He and I had many good conversations. Before one of our shows, I went to him and asked if he wanted to pray with me. He was about to start when I said: Yeah, let´s pray for my throat, it has been a little bit rouge, we can also pray for the equipment on stage and for all the people who come there and for the new songs, and .... Monk Nicodemus looked up at me and said: You know what? I think we pray that God's will shall be done!
I've thought about that sometimes. Are we ourselves or God the most important in the act of prayer? I realize that such a question can be misleading. Scripture says that we can pray about our desires and needs. But in my meeting with this monk, it became clear to me how my Protestant environment has affected my view of prayer and how his Orthodox tradition had shaped his. For me, prayer perhaps first and foremost was a wish list, while for him was more about subordination and relation.
Of course both elements belong to the nature of prayer. But when Jesus teaches His disciples to pray, it is obvious which one that has priority. The first three parts of the prayer is about God and our relationship with Him. Then follow the appeal and intercede from our part.
4. Plea and Repentance
That brings us to the last part of the Our Father, which is about prayer as both appeal and repentance. The first is expressed in the words “Give us day by day our daily bread.” According to Luther, and many later exegetes these words are about our physical needs for each day. Food, clothing, a safe home and so on. But in view of the Greek verb forms one can also, find another dimension to it.
The words have eschatological overtones. Especially in the formulation: our daily bread. We need to constantly be part of the heavenly bread of Christ himself. His true body and blood that we receive in the Holy Eucharist.
This is also close tied up with the words, "forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” In the Mosaic covenant, the priests were offering for the people's behalf morning and evening sacrifices. In many ways that seems very distant, Christ has once and for all replaced all animal sacrifices. Yes and Amen! But, it still teaches us something very important about the seriousness of sin and also our need for daily repentance, to every day ask the Lord for forgiveness and so to speak, put on or connect to his sacrifice.
The part of the Lord's Prayer which deals with appeals is related to the Jesus' parable about the man who asks his friend for three loaves. The words for ask, seek and knock, stands in an ongoing form in the Greek language and expresses a call from Jesus to be steadfast in prayer. Yet we need to remember that it is the sovereign will of God that will be happen in the end.
Epilogue
So for summarizing: In the homily of today we have been reflecting on a few things that prayer is not: It is not alone, not small nor short.
In order to instead see that it is:
Relationship, worship, humility, confession, repentance and plea ...
Your prayer and your perception of prayer reveals who you are ...
To the greater glory of God.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
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PRAYER:
O, Christ our God, who at all times and in every hour, in heaven and on earth, art worshipped and glorified; who art long-suffering, merciful and compassionate; who lovest the just and showest mercy upon the sinner; who callest all to salvation through the promise of blessings to come; O Lord, in this hour receive our supplications, and direct our lives according to thy commandments. Sanctify our souls, hallow our bodies, correct our thoughts, cleanse our minds; deliver us from all tribulation, evil and distress. Surround us with thy holy Angels, that guided and guarded by them, we may attain to the unity of the faith and to the knowledge of thine unapproachable glory, for thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.
It is fitting and right to sing to You, to praise You, to give thanks to You, to worship You in every place of Your dominion; for You are God, beyond description, beyond understanding, invisible, incomprehensible, always existing, always the same; You and Your only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit!
Out of nothing You brought us into being, and when we had fallen, You raised us up again. And You did not cease doing everything until You brought us to heaven and graciously gave us Your future Kingdom. For all these things we thank You, and Your only-begotten Son, and Your Holy Spirit; for all these blessings, both known and unknown, those bestowed openly and those given in secret, that were lavished upon us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
The blog of Pilgrim Bestiarius XII -Theology - patristics - exegesis - liturgy.
