“At Work In You”

“At Work In You”

Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37    1 Thessalonians 2:9-13 Matthew 23:1-12

Year A, Thirty Third Sunday after Pentecost

November 5, 2023

Pastor Andy Kennaly, Sandpoint, Idaho

          The Psalmist tells of the people wandering in the desert, not finding their way, so they cry out to God and seek deliverance. After they are delivered, they give thanks to God. In Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul also talks about this, about constantly giving thanks to God, in this case that the people received their message as the word of God.

This is how we often view prayer. Something happens and we ask God for help. Or after something happens, especially if what we asked help for is resolved, we give God thanks. We say it every week during our Prayers of Intercession, we call them prayers of concern, prayers of praise. Lord, In You mercy, here our prayer, or, hear our praise. But what if prayer is more than this? More than petition, or asking, even more than praising.

In a book on the importance of Prayer, Joan Chittister writes a brief section on trust.  Prayer and trust go together.  She says, that "the purpose of prayer is the process of falling into God."  When we "begin to take life for granted," this is when "we most need to learn to pray."  But "the truth is that all the while we are making plans for what we will do next and how we will go about doing it, life happens.  The stock market falls, the job disappears, the plane doesn't leave on time, the project fails.  Everything we mapped out for our lives, for our future, for the moment, simply goes awry.  Then, the God-problem raises it's ugly head.  Why did God do this to me?  What did I do to deserve this?  Why doesn't God fix it?  How is it that God ignores our prayer?"

She says, "As George Bernard Shaw writes, 'Most people do not pray; they only beg.'  Then she goes on to say, "But somewhere along the line, if we are ever to grow up spiritually, the whole notion that prayer is about learning how to make life what I want it to be, dissolves.  Obviously it doesn't work.

"Depression sets in.  We stop praying completely.  We stop going to church.  We begin to toy with the notion that the whole prayer thing has been some kind of hoax.  In these early stages of prayer, prayer itself is the question.  Worse: God is the question, too."

Remember, she says, "The purpose of prayer is the process of falling into God."  This is a process, meaning it does not happen overnight.  Like the people, Israel, wandering in the wilderness before crossing over the Jordan.  This, after generations of serving as slaves in Egypt.  If God is this patient with the Hebrew people, maybe God is patient with us as we learn more and more to trust God, to pray more deeply as we fall into God.

I think of God’s patience when I try and comprehend the geologic history of the planet Earth. We hear a lot about carbon in the atmosphere and rising greenhouse gas levels, such as carbon or methane. Industrial society has a fast way of changing things, conditions that took a long time to get to what we assume is a normal level. Oxygen, for example, is the air we need in the mix, the important element that sustains life and balances our breathing. But oxygen at the current level in the atmosphere was not always the case. Oxygen was produced, as it is to this day, by other species.

Along the shores of primordial seas, clumps and columns of bacteria grew and these colonies of simple organisms produced oxygen. It took hundreds of millions of years, perhaps a billion years for the sky to turn blue, for the level of oxygen to get to a point where life could flourish.

This is reflected in Israel’s early cosmology, in Genesis 1, on the second day as God creates the dome of the sky and separates the waters of the sky from the waters of the sea. Interesting that on this second day when separation is introduced, it is not called “good.” It’s not called bad either. But the other days, at the conclusion of those day, God sees that it is good. It seems, the perception of differentiation, the idea of separation, is not exactly healthy, for us, or the Earth.

Humanity that assumes separation, in this case from the sky, objectifies the other, and if the sky is seen as an object, then humanity may at will pump into that sky whatever it wants without thought of spoiling essential unity and wholeness of relationship. Our minds only accept what they are willing or able to grasp. What is unknown or feared gets rejected. In that sense, prayer is a tool that can either help us face our fears or be used to manipulate what it is we reject. Prayer in its pure form can easily become clouded and corrupted, even as we use it to maintain a sense of control over the chaos of the deep, over everything we assume is separate, including God.

So often in life we think we know where we're going, that our plans are set, and if we just live a certain way, then we're in the truth and we're secure.  Joan Chittister reminds us that "The truth is that none of us really knows where we are going and must never take it for granted that we do. We can plan our lives but we cannot guarantee them. When our prayers are not answered, we know only one thing for sure: The challenge of life now is to live it differently. And it will be through prayer that we discover how to do that. Seeing Jesus being driven out of town, we come to understand that we cannot expect more. Seeing Jesus depressed in the Garden of Olives, we understand that depression is not the lack of faith, it is the moment of faith. Seeing Jesus lose favor with the authorities, we learn that authorities are not the final measure of our lives. Then we come to prayer free of the desires that bind us, free to live life in God, free to choose trust over certainty - which really means free to choose God over self."  (Joan Chittister, The breath of the soul, Reflections On Prayer, Twenty Third Publications, New London, CT, 2011, pp. 118-120).

As we gather around the table to which we’ve been invited, a table of communion, we offer prayers. The prayers recount God’s deeds, recall the promises given to the people, and proclaim our trust in God’s ongoing action and activity in life through the work of the Holy Spirit that blows where it will. The prayers ask God to change us into, or rather, remind us of who we are in Christ as we “re-member” in following Jesus. The bread and the juice merge with our bodies and we, with these as gifts of creation, are co-mingled in the humble act of opening ourselves to deeper truths. These truths shed the baggage, exhale that which needs let go of, and inspire awareness within us as to our True Essence of divine Love. This supper shared in the Spirit becomes a tangible expression of those who are exalted becoming humble, and those who humble themselves being exalted.

Paul pleads with the early church to “lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.” We can lead a life worthy of God because God lives as our life. With humility, in our nothingness without God, we prayerfully discover that God alone is enough. Our fears do not define us, our traumas don’t have the final say in who we are, and even our own notions and thoughts about who we are and how life should be, are limited.

In this meal of sacred unity, we are awakened and invited to larger realities grounded in Love’s righteousness, which is life unfolding as intended. As we partake, as we are gifted, as prayer is answered. Loving presence is God at work in you. As we partake in Loving Presence, God is glorified, now, even as forever. Amen.