If there is a common human language it could be argued that prayer is that language. Though people in our world certainly pray differently or understand themselves to be praying to a different god or praying with different intents; nevertheless they pray. Even people who are not particularly religious in a formal sense pray. Prayer it would seem is a fairly universal act.
Still, many people find prayer difficult. Even those that pray sense that they don’t really pray well and will often admit that they don’t really know what they are doing in prayer. Ask people why we pray or what really constitutes prayer and the answers are littered with mystery and uncertainty. Still, almost everyone acknowledges that we ought to pray and we are most often grateful when we are kept in the prayers of others.
The opening 14 verses of Paul’s letter to the Colossians seems a good place to start with a conversation about prayer. His introduction within the letter is full of acknowledgements about how much he has prayed for them. In Paul’s mind these prayers are both part of the substance as well as the vehicle for their relationship. Prayer is a part of the union they have together and it is key to what holds them together.
The first thing that is striking about Paul’s understanding of prayer is that prayers of thanksgiving are the proper foundation of prayer for the church because our life and being rests in God’s work of salvation. By communicating and reminding ourselves of the certainty and faithfulness of God’s love and grace we are freed. We are free because we have a hope that cannot be shaken and that hope leads us towards effervescent acts of Christ’s love towards the world. For Paul prayer starts with the acknowledgement of the certainty and faithfulness of God’s grace for us. The illustration that comes to me is that of someone with a memory problem. If we don’t remind ourselves of the truth then we forget. If we move out to do anything in this world without this truth of our God's grace than everything we do gets warped. We forget this truth and must remind ourselves everyday. Thus, this is the foundation for prayer.
Another word that comes to mind when I read Paul’s introduction to his letter to the Colossians is the word intimacy.
First, intimacy in the sense of the intimate connection forged mysteriously between those who pray with and for one another. Paul most likely did not know these Colossians all that well. His actual time spent with them was short in all likelihood and yet he speaks to a kind of connection that goes beyond time spent. This idea that Paul seems to gravitate towards points to a longstanding way of understanding prayer particularly cultivated within the ancient church and particular within monastic life.
When we think about monks we think about a retreat from the world. Yet the monastics themselves have never understood it as such. They retreat in particular ways for the sake of being present in more radical and important ways to the rest of the world. They would say that prayer is one of those ways that they are radically present. For monastics the life of prayer produces a kind of intimate relationship with others. Their prayer is a dialogue and a union with God and with other people that they actually believes has the effect of holding the world together.
This kind of understanding of prayer can also be found in the writings and practices of the Catholic priest Henri Nouwen. In his book The Way of the Heart. Nouwen understands the intimacy produced by prayer in relational terms. While prayer involves the head he argues that prayer is not primarily a cerebral enterprise. Without Nouwen I wouldn’t know how to understand Paul’s statement in this letter that “we have not ceased praying for you”. Surely, he doesn’t mean that they pray all day and everyday? That sounds impractical and horribly boring. Still we are admonished elsewhere in scripture to “pray without ceasing”. Again, it is Nouwen’s prayer of the heart that helps me understand what is meant by this.
The prayer of the heart is simply acknowledgment of the active presence of God’s spirit at work in one’s life. Prayer is not located out there. God is not located out there but God resides within us in some mysterious way. When we understand that the place of prayer is within our own hearts then we simply allow ourselves to not so much pray more but to recognize the prayer that is already taking place within us. The prayer of the heart is the active acknowledgement of all of who or what has entered our lives and bringing all of that into God’s presence at the center of our being. Now what does that mean? I’m not totally sure but I think the basic invitation is no so much to pray more but to live prayerfully and their is a difference between those two things.
The second way the word intimacy comes to mind in regards to Paul’s thoughts about prayer are related to Paul’s keen awareness of the intimate relationships between knowledge and practice. To know God has everything to do with how we practice that knowing. Paul has no time for claims of esoteric wisdom; for true knowledge of God is always the practical love of one’s neighbor. This brings us to the gospel text I wish to speak of with is Luke's parable known as The Good Samaritan.
The parable of the good Samaritan is probably the most familiar of all parables. In fact it has become so well known that the meaning of the parable can be minimized in all its familiarity quite easily. It is also quite easy to begin moralizing when we use this parable.
I think the first thing this parable invites us to do is to acknowledge that we cannot know good and evil. We often think and are taught that one of the things that is given to us as Christians is the ability to discern good from evil but that is not biblical. When Adam and Eve were in the garden in what we believe was perfect relationship with God and one another they did not have knowledge of good and evil. The ability to discern good and evil perfectly is something that only God can do. In fact it is the main attribute that separates God from us. The tree of our downfall is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To be human by its nature is to NOT have the ability to discern good and evil perfectly. To be able to do so assumes that we can see all of any particular situation but of course we cannot because we are not God. Our knowledge is limited and finite and so we cannot handle such a burden.
So the life of discipleship is not a life primarily marked by knowing the good from the evil but rather a life meant and purposed to know only God and God’s mercy. Part of how we know God and God’s mercy is this prayer of the heart that Nouwen describes. This prayer helps us move past the black and white of good and evil and invites us to identify, humanize, and embrace the most unlikely of neighbors. Prayer can move us from the natural condition of self-preoccupation and preservation (which is why we so quickly want to name good and evil to protect our own self interests) to one of profound concern for others.
Too often we simply make the point of this parable as “we should all be like the Samaritan” and that is certainly one reading of the parable. But, I’d also invite us to put ourselves in the ditch rather than as the passer bye. The question then comes to us who is the person we’d least like to be walking by when we needed help? Who is the person we’d be most scandalized to receive assistance from? This is the profound truth of this story. I’ve heard of a preacher who had the courage to preach this sermon in New York after 9/11 and in her account the Samaritan was a Muslim terrorist; this woman a Jew herself said for her it was Ha-mas. What this parable screams to us is that we mustn't dehumanize even what we perceive as our greatest enemy. We cannot possibly see or understand the whole story.
The lawyer in the parable of Jesus’ telling so despises the Samaritan that he can’t even use his name. When asked who was the neighbor he says “the one that showed him kindness”. It is the scandalizing truth of “who helps” that carries the power of this parable. We are not primarily the “helper” but the one lying in the ditch if we want to hear this parable clearly. This parable invites us to identify, humanize, and embrace the most unlikely of neighbors.
While the lawyer can’t say the word Samaritan another word that he uses in response to Jesus is quite powerful. It is the word kindness (sometimes translated to mercy). I’d like to offer that the true mark of neighborliness is kindness. I think even those of us who are the most ethically minded have forgotten this important truth at times. Sometimes I’m reminded that even the people who I agree with I don’t end up liking very much because they have ceased to be kind. I find myself backing away from them not because of their ideas but the way they pro-port those ideas. It seems these days we are more concerned with rights than forgiveness, more concerned with justice then mercy, and more concerned with equality then compassion. Now I believe in individual rights, justice, and equality but not without forgiveness, mercy, and compassion. Where is the kindness? When we simply work for rights, justice and equality without kindness we perpetuate the very thing we seek to combat.
When I think of the prayers our world is most in need of I think of a prayer for kindness. Perhaps true human kindness is the greatest fruit of God’s spirit. When we are kind we acknowledge what God is always trying to restore and remind us of and that is our humanity.
I think part of how we come to know our most hated enemies as neighbors is through the deep way of prayer. Something changes in us and between us when we bring people into God’s presence at the center of our being. We don’t bring them in with the form of chastising prayers of "oh, God help this horrible person realize how horrible they are do they stop inconveniencing or hurting me” but rather “God help me understand, love, and see this person as human”.
Still, many people find prayer difficult. Even those that pray sense that they don’t really pray well and will often admit that they don’t really know what they are doing in prayer. Ask people why we pray or what really constitutes prayer and the answers are littered with mystery and uncertainty. Still, almost everyone acknowledges that we ought to pray and we are most often grateful when we are kept in the prayers of others.
The opening 14 verses of Paul’s letter to the Colossians seems a good place to start with a conversation about prayer. His introduction within the letter is full of acknowledgements about how much he has prayed for them. In Paul’s mind these prayers are both part of the substance as well as the vehicle for their relationship. Prayer is a part of the union they have together and it is key to what holds them together.
The first thing that is striking about Paul’s understanding of prayer is that prayers of thanksgiving are the proper foundation of prayer for the church because our life and being rests in God’s work of salvation. By communicating and reminding ourselves of the certainty and faithfulness of God’s love and grace we are freed. We are free because we have a hope that cannot be shaken and that hope leads us towards effervescent acts of Christ’s love towards the world. For Paul prayer starts with the acknowledgement of the certainty and faithfulness of God’s grace for us. The illustration that comes to me is that of someone with a memory problem. If we don’t remind ourselves of the truth then we forget. If we move out to do anything in this world without this truth of our God's grace than everything we do gets warped. We forget this truth and must remind ourselves everyday. Thus, this is the foundation for prayer.
Another word that comes to mind when I read Paul’s introduction to his letter to the Colossians is the word intimacy.
First, intimacy in the sense of the intimate connection forged mysteriously between those who pray with and for one another. Paul most likely did not know these Colossians all that well. His actual time spent with them was short in all likelihood and yet he speaks to a kind of connection that goes beyond time spent. This idea that Paul seems to gravitate towards points to a longstanding way of understanding prayer particularly cultivated within the ancient church and particular within monastic life.
When we think about monks we think about a retreat from the world. Yet the monastics themselves have never understood it as such. They retreat in particular ways for the sake of being present in more radical and important ways to the rest of the world. They would say that prayer is one of those ways that they are radically present. For monastics the life of prayer produces a kind of intimate relationship with others. Their prayer is a dialogue and a union with God and with other people that they actually believes has the effect of holding the world together.
This kind of understanding of prayer can also be found in the writings and practices of the Catholic priest Henri Nouwen. In his book The Way of the Heart. Nouwen understands the intimacy produced by prayer in relational terms. While prayer involves the head he argues that prayer is not primarily a cerebral enterprise. Without Nouwen I wouldn’t know how to understand Paul’s statement in this letter that “we have not ceased praying for you”. Surely, he doesn’t mean that they pray all day and everyday? That sounds impractical and horribly boring. Still we are admonished elsewhere in scripture to “pray without ceasing”. Again, it is Nouwen’s prayer of the heart that helps me understand what is meant by this.
The prayer of the heart is simply acknowledgment of the active presence of God’s spirit at work in one’s life. Prayer is not located out there. God is not located out there but God resides within us in some mysterious way. When we understand that the place of prayer is within our own hearts then we simply allow ourselves to not so much pray more but to recognize the prayer that is already taking place within us. The prayer of the heart is the active acknowledgement of all of who or what has entered our lives and bringing all of that into God’s presence at the center of our being. Now what does that mean? I’m not totally sure but I think the basic invitation is no so much to pray more but to live prayerfully and their is a difference between those two things.
The second way the word intimacy comes to mind in regards to Paul’s thoughts about prayer are related to Paul’s keen awareness of the intimate relationships between knowledge and practice. To know God has everything to do with how we practice that knowing. Paul has no time for claims of esoteric wisdom; for true knowledge of God is always the practical love of one’s neighbor. This brings us to the gospel text I wish to speak of with is Luke's parable known as The Good Samaritan.
The parable of the good Samaritan is probably the most familiar of all parables. In fact it has become so well known that the meaning of the parable can be minimized in all its familiarity quite easily. It is also quite easy to begin moralizing when we use this parable.
I think the first thing this parable invites us to do is to acknowledge that we cannot know good and evil. We often think and are taught that one of the things that is given to us as Christians is the ability to discern good from evil but that is not biblical. When Adam and Eve were in the garden in what we believe was perfect relationship with God and one another they did not have knowledge of good and evil. The ability to discern good and evil perfectly is something that only God can do. In fact it is the main attribute that separates God from us. The tree of our downfall is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To be human by its nature is to NOT have the ability to discern good and evil perfectly. To be able to do so assumes that we can see all of any particular situation but of course we cannot because we are not God. Our knowledge is limited and finite and so we cannot handle such a burden.
So the life of discipleship is not a life primarily marked by knowing the good from the evil but rather a life meant and purposed to know only God and God’s mercy. Part of how we know God and God’s mercy is this prayer of the heart that Nouwen describes. This prayer helps us move past the black and white of good and evil and invites us to identify, humanize, and embrace the most unlikely of neighbors. Prayer can move us from the natural condition of self-preoccupation and preservation (which is why we so quickly want to name good and evil to protect our own self interests) to one of profound concern for others.
Too often we simply make the point of this parable as “we should all be like the Samaritan” and that is certainly one reading of the parable. But, I’d also invite us to put ourselves in the ditch rather than as the passer bye. The question then comes to us who is the person we’d least like to be walking by when we needed help? Who is the person we’d be most scandalized to receive assistance from? This is the profound truth of this story. I’ve heard of a preacher who had the courage to preach this sermon in New York after 9/11 and in her account the Samaritan was a Muslim terrorist; this woman a Jew herself said for her it was Ha-mas. What this parable screams to us is that we mustn't dehumanize even what we perceive as our greatest enemy. We cannot possibly see or understand the whole story.
The lawyer in the parable of Jesus’ telling so despises the Samaritan that he can’t even use his name. When asked who was the neighbor he says “the one that showed him kindness”. It is the scandalizing truth of “who helps” that carries the power of this parable. We are not primarily the “helper” but the one lying in the ditch if we want to hear this parable clearly. This parable invites us to identify, humanize, and embrace the most unlikely of neighbors.
While the lawyer can’t say the word Samaritan another word that he uses in response to Jesus is quite powerful. It is the word kindness (sometimes translated to mercy). I’d like to offer that the true mark of neighborliness is kindness. I think even those of us who are the most ethically minded have forgotten this important truth at times. Sometimes I’m reminded that even the people who I agree with I don’t end up liking very much because they have ceased to be kind. I find myself backing away from them not because of their ideas but the way they pro-port those ideas. It seems these days we are more concerned with rights than forgiveness, more concerned with justice then mercy, and more concerned with equality then compassion. Now I believe in individual rights, justice, and equality but not without forgiveness, mercy, and compassion. Where is the kindness? When we simply work for rights, justice and equality without kindness we perpetuate the very thing we seek to combat.
When I think of the prayers our world is most in need of I think of a prayer for kindness. Perhaps true human kindness is the greatest fruit of God’s spirit. When we are kind we acknowledge what God is always trying to restore and remind us of and that is our humanity.
I think part of how we come to know our most hated enemies as neighbors is through the deep way of prayer. Something changes in us and between us when we bring people into God’s presence at the center of our being. We don’t bring them in with the form of chastising prayers of "oh, God help this horrible person realize how horrible they are do they stop inconveniencing or hurting me” but rather “God help me understand, love, and see this person as human”.
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