Contemplative Prayer

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church

For Sabbath, February 1, 2014

Scripture Readings for the service:  

1 Kings 19:9b – 13.

Revelation 1:4-6.

Visual:  On the stage I will have my prayer stool and the large black plastic flower pot I use as a table. On the “table” are my thermos and cup and a bowl with two cookies. 

Sermon

Thursday morning at six o'clock the sky was thick with fog. I sat on my stool out behind our house, poured myself a cup of mint tea, then settled back to spend some special time with God.

Except for the weather, it's pretty much the same every morning. I sit with God for awhile, savoring his presence and favor. I am not begging. I am not asking for anything. I simply sit and direct my mind toward God.

To help focus my mind I recite a couple of words that featured prominently in our scripture reading,

“Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and ruler of the kings of the earth. Revelation 1:4.

Grace and peace. Grace to you and peace. From God.

Some years ago as I was reading through the book of Revelation, these words at the beginning of the book triggered my memory. Where else had I read those words? I checked and discovered that the Apostle Paul uses these words as a prayer of blessing at the beginning of every one of his epistles. The prayer also appears at the beginning of both epistles of Peter and in the second epistle of John.

It is a quintessential Christian prayer. An expression of confidence and desire.

The central conviction of the Christian Church is that when God looks our direction, he regards us with favor and affection. He is working for our well-being. The deepest desire of the Christian Church is that every person would taste the sweetness of this truth. The conviction that God is kindly and competent forms the foundation of Christian teaching about prayer. We pray because God cares about our situation, and he is eager to act on our behalf.

One way to understand prayer is to imagine it as the natural asking of kids in a healthy family. This is the picture Jesus used when he gave his disciples a model prayer.

Our Father which art in heaven.

Daddy, I'm thirsty. I'm hungry. I'm tired. In a healthy, happy domestic setting, this kind of requesting is the most natural thing imaginable. Kids ask. Dads respond. Of course. Dad, can I borrow the car? Dad can you help me out with tuition this next quarter?

This natural asking by kids extends to aunts and uncles and teachers. When I was a kid, if I was at my cousin's house and I needed something, it would have never occurred to me to be reticent about asking. I knew instinctively that my aunts cared for me. I did not spend time pondering what my aunts thought of me. I simply knew that when I was with them I was in good hands. I would be taken care of. And if I needed something, I asked.

This is the picture Jesus painted for us in his teaching about prayer here in Matthew.

The entire prayer as Jesus gave it:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. (Matthew 6:9-13 KJV).

It's a list of simple, straightforward requests. Elsewhere in the chapter, Jesus adds details to the picture of “Father” he uses to begin the prayer. “Our Father.” What kind of father is this? It's a good father. A competent father. A responsive father.

According to Jesus:

There is no need to make a show of your prayers because your Father is always paying attention. He observes your most secret prayers and will respond.

Your heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask and he will respond compassionately to your need.

It doesn't make sense to fret about clothes or food. Why? Well, just look at how your Father in heaven provides for the birds and flowers. If he takes good care of the birds and flowers, certainly he will take care of you, because you matter MORE to him than they do.

In all of these passages, Jesus invites his listeners to imagine themselves as beloved children. When you're a kid, if you have a good father, you have confidence in the ability and willingness of your father to provide. So pray with confidence. God is a good father.

But what if your father was not perfect? What if your father or mother or aunt or uncle was abusive? How then are we to imagine God? Or what if your parents are/were good people but you never felt you quite measured up, you never knew quite where you stood?

What then? What image can talk to your heart about the grace of God? How are you to imagine God's favor, God's affection, God's happiness in responding to you?

In the next chapter of Matthew (chapter 7), Jesus comes back to the topic of prayer and switches metaphors. All through chapter 6, Jesus has his listeners imagining themselves as children. Jesus invites them as dearly loved children to have confidence in God, their heavenly Father.

Here in chapter 7, Jesus has his listeners look at themselves as parents.

Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. Everyone who asks receives. The person who seeks finds. And to him who knocks the door will be opened. Consider: who in this whole crowd, if his son asked his for bread would give him a stone? If that is how it is with you sinful people, if even you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him (Matthew 7:11 NLT).

No matter how complicated your relationship with your parents is, when it comes to what you feel for your own kids, it becomes powerfully simple: You would do anything for them. You love them. When they are sick. When they make horrible mistakes. When they ignore you. When they disappoint you. Still, there are yours. And, in a way they can never fully know, you are theirs. They own a piece of your heart they cannot give back even if they tried to.

Jesus invited his listeners to contemplate their own instincts and commitments as parents. “Look into your own hearts as parents. What do you expect of yourself? Now, let me ask you a question, 'Do you really think you are more generous than God? Are you more merciful, more gracious than God?”

Asking this question invites into the practice of contemplative prayer.

Contemplative prayer is prayer that deliberately nourishes our awareness of the generosity and goodness of God.

When I sit on my stool in the morning and recite the prayer, “grace and peace,” I am basking in the sunshine of God's presence and favor. (In preparing this sermon I read these words in a comment by Debbonnaire Kovaks.) I am savoring God's goodness. I am not asking for God's grace in the sense of a thirsty person asking for a drink. I am not asking for grace in the sense that a person in pain asks for medicine. I recite these words as an affirmation of the favor I have already received.

I live in God's grace. I live in God's peace. In the morning when I sit on my stool in God's presence, I am enjoying God's smile. God is pleased with me.

I don't imagine that I have accomplished something and “earned” God's favor. I don't tell myself, “God is lucky to have a kid like me.” Rather, I simply enjoy the fact: God is pleased with me.

After I've spent ten to twenty minutes God's grace and peace, I then begin to think of others. And I welcome God's grace and peace into their lives as well. In this part of prayer, there is more asking, longing, hunger.

I pray for my family, bringing each one to mind, and asking God to touch their lives with his grace and peace.

I think of specific individuals in this congregation. Whoever God brings to my mind.

I pray for clergy who have prominent positions in the denomination.

I pray for media figures, especially the angry ones, inviting God's grace and peace into their lives.

I pray for politicians, wrapping them in the beautiful light of heaven's peace.

My prayers are not usually very specific. Most of the time I don't ask God to do exactly that or this. Rather, most of the time, I simply invite God's grace and peace into their lives.

After doing this for years, I think differently about people. I don't get angry as readily. Of course, I am aware that people misbehave. People make mistakes. People do bad things and harm others. But when these people come to mind in prayer, I find myself sitting with God grieving over the brokenness of his children – my brothers and sisters. Both the wounded ones and those who are doing the wounding are precious to him. And to me.

When I consider people who live with severe limitations, I try to enter the Mother-heart of God, and know God's special affection for the vulnerable and disabled.

And when I consider people with great minds, and ambition and drive, I dream with God of what they could do make the world a more beautiful place. I ask God to befriend them and make them instruments of his peace.

In the youth class, Andreas and Troy and Brian are leading a study of the kingdom of God as described in the Gospel of Mark. What would the world look like if God had his way without interference? What if grace and peace moved beyond the words of our prayer and became a description of our world? How fantastic would that be? What can we do to cooperate with God in pursuit of that vision? How can we serve as agents of grace and peace?

As we move through this year, I invite you to consider again the practice of prayer. Not all of us can sit on stools in the backyard. The demands of children and the care of parents can make quiet time nearly impossible to find. Paying the rent and earning money for groceries can take more than all of our time. Even the needs of our bodies and or the limitations of our minds may interfere with the regular practice of prayer.

Still I invite you to consider prayer, especially prayer rooted in the contemplation of the grace of God. My dream for us as a congregation is that we will be ever fuller of God's grace. And that God's grace would overflow and touch those around us with peace.