Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Certainly
the encounter between Moses and God detailed in the book of Exodus would be
considered by many the ideal for which every religious seeker longs: to stand
unshod – physically and spiritually – in the unmediated presence of the divine. Here God speaks to Moses in the simplicity of
his essence – I AM who I AM – and makes unmistakably clear the divine will and
purposes. Yet, such experiences, such
epiphanies, are rare among those who seek God.
The twentieth century Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, was once
asked how long each day he spent in prayer.
In his inimitable way, he responded, “One minute. It just takes me an hour to get there.” Certainly, the aim – for lack of a better
word – of prayer is union with God.
However, those moments when we find ourselves truly aware of being in
God’s presence are rare, sometimes occurring years apart, if at all. While we may long for that face-to-face
encounter described in Exodus, we find that our experience is more often that
of the psalmist: “O God, you are my God;
eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.”
(Psalm 63:1) It is the longing for God
in the midst of the very ordinary which most marks our prayer life.
The
bulk of our prayer life is not comprised of “mountain-top” experiences, rather
it is the intentional process of making ourselves available to the reality of
God by placing ourselves before the presence of God, felt or unfelt. And it is a discipline – there is really no
other word for it; a regular and disciplined round of availability and
presence. For this reason, all the
world’s great religions teach the importance of fixed-hour prayer. They each call their adherents to punctuate,
even interrupt, their day with prayer – often prescribed prayers – so as to
bring themselves consciously into the presence of God, to acknowledge God’s
sovereignty over themselves and the world.
The Christian tradition of fixed hour prayer naturally finds its
origins in that of Judaism and in a the 64th verse of the 119th
psalm: “Seven times a day do I praise you, because of your righteous
ordinances.” (Psalm 119:64) These “seven
times” were referring to the ancient Jewish regimen of fixed-hour prayer,
although we are uncertain what were the hours appointed at the time the psalm
was written. However, Phyllis Tickle, a
writer and one of the leading religious thinkers in the country (she’s an
Episcopalian, of course) notes that by the time of Jesus’s birth
…the
devout had come to punctuate their work day with prayers on a regimen that
followed the flow of Roman commercial life.
Forum bells began the work day at six in the morning (prime, or first
hour), sounded mid-morning break at nine (terce, or third hour), the noon meal
and siesta or break at twelve (sext, or sixth hour), the re-commencing of trade
at three (none, or ninth hour), and the close of business at six (vespers).
With the addition of [late night] prayers and early prayers upon arising, the
structure of fixed-hour prayer was established in a form that is very close to
that which Christians still use today.
It
is this pattern which would shape the monastic prayer of western Europe, but
which would also become unwieldy and impractical for the vast majority of the
laity.
For most of the Middle Ages the Daily Office – the
daily work of the Church’s prayer – was the domain of monks and clergy. In the reformation of the English liturgy,
Archbishop Cranmer condensed all the monastic offices into two, morning and evening
prayer, in the hopes of returning the prayer of the Church to the entire Church. Ever since then, Anglicans have had a
particular and distinctive relationship with fixed hour prayer in the form of
the Daily Office; and while the 16th century lamentably saw the end
of the monasteries and the dissolution of monastic life in the Church of
England, the regular round of daily prayer as outlined in the Book of Common
Prayer continued and continues in her great cathedral and abbey churches, as
well as in parish churches, up and down the country. It continues and is well represented also in
our own Episcopal Church. More recently,
the practice has gained some profile, with many re-discovering its importance
as well as its centrality to Christian spirituality.
The Daily Office is sometimes called the Liturgy of
Hours, because its recitation works to sanctify time, to place our hours, days,
months and years in the context of God’s eternity, acknowledging that all times
and seasons are God’s. It makes us to
see the ordinary daily routines of life within the framework of God and our
relationship with God. On waking we pray
in order to thank God he has brought us to a new day. We recall God has made us and redeemed us, we
praise him for the rising sun, the beauty and renewal of creation. At noon we stop in the midst of our work to
remind ourselves that all talents, abilities and all that proceeds from them
are really God’s, that “unless the Lord builds the house their labor is in vain
who build it.” (Psalm 127:1) In the
evening, as the busy-ness of the day begins to wane, we come again before God
to acknowledge consciously the sun’s setting and praise the true light, “the
pure brightness of the everliving Father.”
As nature itself returns to itself, so we return to God, our deepest
self, and there lay down the day and its cares.
The labors of the day are over.
It is the sixth hour, and we are entering into the Sabbath of the day. Finally, at day’s close, before lying down to
sleep, we bring to mind the end of all things including ourselves. “The Lord Almighty grant a peaceful night and
a perfect end”, we pray; and we review the day as we confess our sins “in
thought, and word, and deed, and in what we have left undone.” In this four-fold office of morning prayer,
noonday prayer, evening prayer and compline, the pattern laid out for us in our
own Book of Common Prayer, we place our day – waking, working, repose, sleeping
– within the greater context of our life – birth, labor, rest, death – and all
within the greatest context of all, the divine economy – creation, sustainment,
sabbath, judgement. At these key points
of the day and in the midst of its ordinary functions, fixed-hour prayer calls
us to come regularly and purposefully into the presence of the one who created
us, sustains us, refreshes us and who is our end.
Without fixed-hour prayer – whether the Daily Office
or some other discipline – our prayer life can slowly but very surely degrade
into an exercise about ourselves. We
come to God in prayer at our convenience, on our timetable, and most usually in
distress or particular need. We do not
walk with God; we only meet God occasionally for coffee, as it were, when we
need to talk something over. Fixed-hour
prayer makes for our prayer to be woven into the ordinary of our lives –
waking, working, eating, resting. As I
mentioned at the start, it takes practice, it is a discipline, but it needn’t
be daunting. The Prayer Book itself
makes provision for a full four-fold office, but also for a much shorter
one. This latter, Daily Devotions for Families and Individuals, is found on pages
136-140. Here, each office is a short
one page devotion. Is noonday prayer too
inconvenient? Then perhaps punctuate the
day only with morning and evening prayer.
Is the busy-ness in your home too overwhelming in the morning? Get up just ten minutes earlier, and give
that time to come into awareness of God’s presence, before others get up and
the day begins. Whatever you do, make it
intentional and make it disciplined.
Most
of us will never be granted an extraordinary vision, an extraordinary
experience, like that of Moses. But, I
am not sure that is such a bad thing.
Its absence allows us to look for, discover and encounter God in the
ordinary, in the ordinary cycles of our hours, days, weeks months and years, in
the ordinary cycles of our life; and for centuries Christians have used the
Daily Office, in many of its varied forms, as the vehicle for that discovery,
to facilitate that encounter. It has
provided for them a sanctification of their lives and of time itself. It has helped and enabled them little by
little – as it can you – to approach more closely the presence of the God whose
“is the day…[and] also the night” (Psalm 17:15), who is our labor and our sure
repose. Amen.
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