Third Sunday in Lent: The Hours of our Prayer, the Hours of our Lives

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 64^th verse of the 119^th 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 16^th 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.         

Second Sunday in Lent: Pilgrims, Walkers and Wanderers

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Psalm 27

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Luke 13:31-35

The practice of pilgrimage features in all of the world’s great religion.  Charles Foster in his book, Sacred Journey, notes that the desire for pilgrimage among human beings is unstoppable. “Each year,” he writes, “about 3 million Muslims make the Hajj [to Mecca and the birthplace of Mohammed], 5 million Christians go to Lourdes [in France], 20 million Hindus visit the 1,800 sacred sites in India.”  Jews too, before the destruction of the Temple, were expected to visit Jerusalem at least once in their lives.  Today many still travel to Israel to inform and affirm their Jewish identity.  Every faith, seems to have its sacred sites, its places of veneration, its places where extraordinary events have taken place and which over the years have gained the status of “holy” among believers.  Every faith has it places where through years of welcoming pilgrims’ feet and pilgrims’ prayers, prayer itself, in the words of T.S Eliot, “has been made valid”.  Every faith seems to have its own – what the Celtic Christians called – “thin places”, “locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent.”  And through the ages, the drive has been for the faithful to make their way to them. 

This unstoppable urge for pilgrimage, however seems more basic than simply a desire to visit holy sites.  It seems grounded in the very nature of our humanity.  Human beings are walkers.  The writers of  the Encyclopedia Britannica – of all things – make this observation: “Whereas most other mammalian bipeds hop or waddle, we stride.  Homo sapiens is the only mammal that is adapted exclusively to bipedal striding.”  But more than “walkers’ or “striders”, we are wanderers.  As a species, we wandered out of the African continent “down the Nile and across the Sinai land bridge into Europe and Asia”, and eventually via the Bering Strait into the American continent.  It is human wandering that populated the earth; and for Jews and Christians particularly it is also human wandering that populated our religious landscape, charted our religious geography. 

Wandering seems inextricably linked to our religious identity and origins.  Last week in the Hebrew Scriptures the Jews were enjoined to remind themselves before God that “a wandering Aramean was my ancestor” (Deuteronomy 26:5), and today in the same we meet that “wandering Aramean”, Abraham, whom God called to wander into a journey – a pilgrimage, if you will – the destination of which he would never see.  And the fact the he would not see it, never move into the promised land, highlights one of the unique aspects of the Judeao-Christian tradition when it comes to pilgrimage and wandering:  the journey matters.  It’s not so much about the destination, but about how we are transformed on the way, as we travel, as we wander.  If we think about Abraham, we come to understand that it is the wandering that made him.  And if we think about the Hebrew slaves who left Egypt, we can see how it was their forty years wandering in Sinai that formed them into a nation.  Conversely, we can see how many of their troubles began when they settled down.  Settling down bred in them complacency and self-satisfaction, the very antithesis of the dependence on God which they had to live day by day in the desert wilderness.

Jesus too was a wanderer.  Even from the time before his birth we are told how he traveled in Mary’s womb from Nazareth to a “Judean town in the hill country” (Luke 1:39)  as she made her way to the home of her cousin Elizabeth, and how later she carried him within her to Bethlehem.  In fact, he was born “on the go”.  Soon afterwards, political conditions forced him and his parents to journey to Egypt; and the only story we have of him as a child, is one of pilgrimage – when he traveled with his parents to Jerusalem to keep the Passover.  Jesus was a traveler.  His entire ministry is comprised of his traveling, traveling here and there, traveling through the Judean countryside and cities; sometimes to teach and sometimes to avoid persecution.  “Today, tomorrow, and the next day”, he says, “I must be on my way.” (Luke 13:33a)  When he begins to gather disciples around him he calls them to travel – to wander – bidding them with these words “Come, follow me.”  He enjoins them,  “Leave behind your nets, leave behind your counting house, leave behind who you think you are and what you thought you would or should be, and come, wander with me.”  Jesus’ wandering afforded him no established placed to live: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20)  Jesus was a walker.  His journey took him to walk the way of the cross, and when we encounter him after his resurrection he is walking still; his first post-resurrection appearance away from the tomb is on a journey, walking unrecognized with two of his disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and it is on the journey that these two come to see this “stranger” for who he is, the Lord himself.  With all this, it is hardly surprising that the earliest name for this new movement of Jesus-followers was simply, “the Way” and the first Christians were not called Christians at all, but the “People of the Way”.  They were people who followed Jesus, and lived as he did on the edges of life, the edges of society.  By any conventional standards, they lived transiently, but also purposefully and meaningfully.  They lived the reality presented by the writer of Hebrews when she or he wrote: “For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” (Hebrews 13:12-14)  In the Judeao-Christian tradition, settling down means settling, compromising; and it can hardly be argued that when we stop, a particular kind of atrophy can set in.  We find that it becomes much more difficult to do the work of a God who always on the move, when we are keen to set down roots.

For all these reasons the image of pilgrimage and journey are important ones to keep in the forefront of our communal life and also of our personal lives, particularly during Lent when so many resonances of journey come our way in the Church’s lectionary and liturgies.  One of the effects that pilgrimage and journey have on us is that they keep us permeable, they keep us open and able to respond to situations in potentially new ways.  Like the “thin places” of Celtic Christianity, our conscious journeying transforms us into “thin places” ourselves, so that in our lives the world may witness the meeting of the human and the divine, the breaking down of the boundary between the heavenly and the earthly.  Equally, responding to journey’s call allows us also to appreciate that so many things which appear or feel very permanent, including ourselves, are only “passing through.”  As we journey, we come to trust less in this seeming permanence, because what we grasp is the transience at the heart of all things, and that there are really only two realities, two choices – movement and atrophy.  Movement affirms we are alive, and as we move we are transformed into new creations.  Journeying is the way God shapes us into his people, in the same way he shaped Abraham, the freed Hebrew slaves, and so many others.  Moreover, when one travels the pilgrim’s way, the practice of journey, we become more at home with incompleteness, with the provisional, and so we are more able to accept the extent to which we only ever see in part.  And knowing this, we can sit more lightly to things like “truth”, aware that we only “move” into it step by step, and that the moment we think we have arrived at its home, it slips away from us, in fact we become less grounded in it.

By nature (it would seem) and by confession we are creatures on the move, wanderers, walkers.  This Lent, at least, make some provision to walk – physically and spiritually – and to travel lightly.  Be faithful to the Lenten journey and thus allow it, like all well-walked journeys do, to work its effective transforming power.  May each step ground you more firmly in who are, but also in who God is calling you to become.  May each step free you more surely from the need for simple certainty, from the temptation to settle.  We are made for walking and we are called to walk.  May our steps lead us ever towards the wandering traveler whom we seek to follow.

First Sunday in Lent: Facing Ourselves in the Wilderness

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Romans 10:8b-13

Luke 4:1-13

           

As always on the First Sunday in Lent we are given by the Church the mystery of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness to contemplate and on which to meditate.  It is a story we all know, but which, in my experience, never seems to feature highly in people’s self-understanding or spirituality.  Instead we are often left with Jesus cast in the role of a classical hero conquering the forces of evil.  He is cast as victor able to withstand the temptations thrust upon him from without, from Satan – the complete opposite, the anti-thesis of God.  However, psychologically speaking, what Jesus actually encounters in the desert is himself.  His own inner and very human inclinations to sin, his own inordinate desires for power, control, and comfort.  And while for some it may feel odd to see him in this light, it is certainly in this light that some strains of the early Christian tradition understood him; take for example the letter to the Hebrews: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested [or tempted] as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)  Jesus understood that the only way to overcome the temptations that human flesh is heir to is to own them, face them and speak the truth to them and about them.

We are during Lent thinking about various spiritual disciplines or practices.  Today we are thinking about, reflecting on self-examination and confession.  It is a good place to begin, because unless we are engaged in this practice, nothing else will really fall into place.  Unless we have of ourselves a realistic image and understanding of our weaknesses and of our inclinations to sin, nothing else will really fall into place.  We will perform works of charity, but they will quickly become badges we use to bolster our fragile self-worth or social standing.  We will love and “care” for those around us, but often as a way to control them so that the view we have of ourselves and of them will not be disturbed, so that they will fit into our picture of things.  Our industriousness will breed at best an unhealthy self-reliance, at worst prideful infatuation with the work of our hands, idolatry.  That same industriousness and its by-product, wealth, will tap into our inbred fear of scarcity and our preponderance to hoard; the more we have the more afraid we become of losing it.  It will inflame our envy and greed.  Even our prayer and worship, our church involvement, can quickly deteriorate into sources of pride and an inflated sense of superiority.  Remember the Pharisee in Jesus pararble.  Standing in the midst of Temple, and with upraised hands no doubt, he declared, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” (Luke 18:11b-12)  He did all the right things, but not the really hard and most important work of self-examination, which is the beginning of the journey towards conversion and transformation.

On account of all this, the Church has always understood this journey of self-examination as the beginning of any real commitment to the spiritual life and to spiritual development.  The Eastern Churches use the Greek word katharsis to decribe it, and the Western Tradition terms it the via purgativa – the way of purgation.  Whatever term we use, at its heart is a stripping away of the trash and rubbish of our lives, the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, as well as the little ways we avoid the truths around us.  It demands we see our lives in the light of God, in the divine light of truth.  In his book, Finding the Way Again, Brian McLaren describes the beginning of this process like opening the boarded-up windows of an abandoned and neglected house so as to let in light, “because without light you won’t be able to see what’s dirty and what needs to be cleaned and repaired.”  When we are serious about this work, we enter alone into the wilderness of ourselves to face ourselves.  For those unaccustomed to it, it can be a frightening even terrifying process.  Indeed, more frightening than facing some external Satan-figure, because there we must come face to the face with the far more immediate and personal demons that rage within us.  While this can be done in company with others – a soul friend or spiritual director – the work, the hard work is our own.  It is for this reason that Jesus goes into the wilderness alone.  Certainly, he is equipped for the encounter by the Tradition – his ability to summon up Scripture in confronting temptation is proof enough of that.  Nevertheless, the work is his, and for him as for us there is no other who can step in and do that work for us.  It is up to us to move into the blinding light of truth and see ourselves for what we are, our lives for what they are, our actions for what they produce.

The via purgativa, the purgative way, is exactly that, a way.  It is, like so much of the spiritual life not a once of all event, but a way on which we walk, a way in which we live.  Again, Brian McLaren writes: “[Purgation] has nothing to do with penance in the sense of paying for one’s sins.  [It] has everything to do with practice…: practicing humility and service rather than pride and power, practicing generosity and simplicity rather than greed, practicing self-control and a willingness to suffer pain for a good cause rather than lust for pleasure or comfort.”  It begins with the willingness – the real willingness to see the truth about ourselves and our lives.  For this reason the practice of self-examination and even regular confession is so important if are serious about embarking on the via purgativa.

And yet how do we begin on this journey?  Jesus began by entering into the wilderness, as did so many before him – Abraham, Moses, the children of Israel, John the Baptist.  They all began by entering into the desert, into a place away from the distractions of praise – the voices we have come to crave as they applaud our constructed personae; away from luxuries – those wants we have turned into needs; away from unnecesary activity we have come to accommodate and accept as ordinary, even vital to our existence.  They each entered into a barren, arid desert, and thus symbolically into the dark places of themselves and allowed God’s probing light, but also God’s merciful grace to shine into those dark places.  If we are to be serious about entering into the via purgativa then we must do no less.  Set time aside to be with ourselves, by ourselves, and to allow the truth of ourselves to come into the light.  One very good and practical way to do is to use during Lent as a center of reflection the Litany of Penitence from the Ash Wednesday liturgy.  It can serve as a very good, incisive examination of conscience.  It’s on pages 267-269 of the Book of Common Prayer.   Another, is to take regular time each day to sit or walk in silent reflection; perhaps at the end of each day, and play back the days events: What were the priorities of my day?  Did the decisions reflect what I claim to believe, or were they conditioned by expedience or by standing in the eyes of others?  Did I collude in with my own self-deception, or did I unmask the lies I tell myself about myself?

Being used to darkness, it may uncomfortable and unpleasant to stand in the light, but we can trust that when we do, it the saving light of God’s own self in which we stand.  And while painful, probing and uncomfortable we have nothing to fear and everything to gain, among them self-knowledge and compassion for the weaknesses of the others.  We can enter into the darkness of ourselves and say with the psalmist “the LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)

Ash Wednesday: Practicing Spiritual Disciplines

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17


Psalm 103

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10


Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

The context of the book of Joel is a plague of locusts, one of the many which periodically struck the Ancient Near East, and which strikes the area occasionally even today.  There was little that could be done when such strikes occurred, and like many of his contemporaries Joel is inclined to understand them as divine punishment, beyond human control.  Moreover, he sees the crisis in the context of a greater one – the day of the Lord’s coming, “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!” (Joel 2:2), and his call to the people is the age old call of the prophets:  “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart….Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful.” (cf. Joel 2:12,13)  How often is this pattern evidenced in the Scriptures, when the call for holiness and right living is actually a last ditch attempt to save ourselves;  that pattern which shows people self-reliant, even cocky, when the affairs of life are going their way, but crying to God – seemingly attempting to bribe God with all sorts of self-disciplines – when they meet crisis or disaster? 

However, the spiritual life must be something more than merely a simplistic response to crisis, merely more than acts to appease the “wrath” of God or to change the course of a impending tragedy.  No, the best in our tradition have always known and lived the truth that the spiritual life is a disciplined journey towards God, a journey of self-awareness and of relationship, regardless of the crises we may encounter and certainly not to be set aside in times of ease.  Its purpose is relationship with God and transformation of self, in order to make ourselves transforming agents in the world.  We can sometimes forget that is the true aim of religion – certainly of Christianity: relationship and transformation. 

In speaking of the three classical spiritual disciplines – fasting, prayer and almsgiving – Jesus certainly understood them as disciplines we practice for the “long haul”, as it were.  He does not call us to them in response to  crisis or disaster, neither does he allow us to use them for anything other than relationship with God and transformation of self.  Indeed he specifically points out how useless they become when we make their practice into self-congratulatory badges or marks of social standing, the opposite of self-knowledge.  In this case they have no eternal or lasting benefit at all.  No, the practice of spiritual disciplines are for building a way of life, they for are discerning and directing the heart, our inner desires.  They are for figuring out what it is we really value, and for helping us to make those values the priority of our lives.  They are for stripping away the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, and coming to face to face with the reality of who we are or have become, regardless of the unpleasantness we may see.  They are for helping us to see ourselves, the world and others as God does.  In his book, Finding our Way Again, Brian McLaren writes that “Spiritual practices [disciplines] are about life, about training ourselves to become the people who have eyes and actually see, and who have ears and actually hear, and so experience…not just survival but life [sic].  He then adds, “Spiritual practices are ways of becoming awake and staying awake to God….[T]hey can help reshape us for a more intentional, and perceptive way of living.”

Spiritual disciplines are just that – disciplines, ways that make us better disciples.  They are not occasional activities into which we dip, but deliberate practices in which we engage so as to go deeper; deliberate and interior attitudes we develop by doing certain acts, performing certain actions.  Dabbling will not do, if we are serious about practicing spiritual disciplines they must become for us the stuff of life, everyday life, gently but intentionally shaping those lives in a God-ward direction, purposefully molding our hearts along the paths of gentleness, humility and compassion.  Throughout Lent, we will be focusing on various of the traditional spiritual disciplines or practices, and perhaps encountering and engaging with new ways of entering more deeply, walking more intentionally, in the way of discipleship.

Re-visiting now the words from Joel, we can see hear them in a new light, far removed from the context of fear and appeasement: “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart….Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful.” (cf. Joel 2:12,13)  Engaging in the intentional and careful practices of spiritual disciplines, we find ourselves not just returning to God, but being transformed slowly, yet deliberately, by a God-ward posture.  Our coming to God ought not to be in episodes or on account of fear or crises, but the on-going journey of our lives, a constant turning and returning, as we direct our whole selves towards the divine.  Equally, Lent ought not to be a season when we alter our behavior for a time, but instead the opportunity to discern consciously how our behavior determines the direction of our lives, how it reveals our values and priorities; and to commit ourselves to practices and disciplines that will help mold and shape our lives in the ways we want them to go, in ways consistent with what we profess, in order that where are treasure is, there our hearts will be also. (cf. Matthew 6:21)