Tuesday 18 November 2014

Living a simpler Christian life (1) 16th November 2014 A four part sermon series looking at the Jesus Prayer

Words from the end of today’s second reading from 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5v11: God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

How can I live a simpler Christian life?

Is there a summary of faith that’s clear, memorable and portable?  A biblical aid to praying at all times?  A means of Holy Spirit empowerment to bypass a distracted mind? Is there an instrument of Jesus Christ useful to carrying his worship into life and vice versa?

The Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ is such an instrument. Thoroughly biblical, carried forward by the faith of the church through the centuries, it stands as unique gift and task.

Over the next six weeks I will be sharing four sermons on the Jesus Prayer, it’s simple good news and capacity to empower with practical guidance on how to welcome and use it along with encouragement to attain the simplicity of life it offers.

I have come to believe there’s nothing new in Christianity, just the need to enter the day by day newness of Jesus. In this sermon series I’ll look at how that newness has refreshed me through reciting ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ so as to realise in my life the biblical injunction to pray at all times.

The Jesus Prayer is inhabited by Jesus who is an effective reminder that God is love and has mercy on us frail mortals.  It is a prayer discipline that states the simple good news of Christianity, provides Holy Spirit empowerment to bypass distracted minds, links worship and life and resonates with the faith and prayer of the church through the ages.

I want to think with you about the good news basic to the Jesus Prayer and show how the spiritual discipline of continuously saying it, which is found in Orthodox Christianity, builds from its biblical base. We’ll then change gear to look at how the simplification to anxiety and mental distraction that many people seek in Buddhist type mindfulness exercises can be found in the Jesus Prayer as a ‘God-given mantra’. We’ll end with practical advice about saying the Jesus Prayer, how it helps in relating worship to life and in building up the integrity of Christian believers.

I had known of the Jesus Prayer for thirty years before I welcomed it as the gift and task it is to help us ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  As a priest leading worship, attending to people’s joys and sorrows and the stresses and strains of church administration  I have found the Jesus Prayer an invaluable aid and this is because of the simple message it holds before me that God loves me and all that is, minute by minute, day by day and for all eternity. 

In the early years of the Church, when there was heavy persecution, if a Christian met a stranger in the road, he sometimes drew one arc of a simple fish outline in the dirt. If the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in safe company. The early Christians used the secret sign of the fish because the Greek word for fish ‘icthus’ was   an acronym for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour’, the earliest creed and the shortest statement of Christian faith. The Jesus Prayer is a short expansion of that personal creed which is expressed by St Paul, for example, when he says: ‘I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’(Galatians 2:20b).

‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ implies the historical figure of Jesus is universal Lord and Son of God. Behind that statement is the implication that the invisible God has in one human life at one time and place made himself visible, supremely upon the Cross, showing us his love to be witnessed to every generation.

God who made all and loves all desires to claim all - starting with the human race made in his image.  The first clause of the Jesus Prayer affirms the good news Jesus brings to our lives, news that we come from God, we belong to God and we go to God. ‘The eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms’ (Deuteronomy 33:27 NIV)

It’s that faith I expressed when, for example the other day I was in the gym.  ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ I repeated on the rowing machine. Time in the gym helps get me out of my mind into my body and that was especially welcome as I’d lacked exercise that day. I’d been sitting around at prayer, with the family or the computer, the school head, a bereaved family, home communicants and a troubled parent as well as putting my mind to celebrating the eucharist, burying cremated remains and finishing the weekly news sheet. 

Gym time helps our bodily well being. It can also be deep thinking time, though this can turn into anxious mental preoccupation, which is why I think many people wear headphones to engage their minds as they exercise their bodies. No headphones today, I thought, but a conscious coming back into the Lord’s presence.  As I recovered the Jesus Prayer again it flowed with the rowing movement just as its pace fits to the natural rhythm of breathing in and out.

As the prayer centred me I became aware again of God’s love present alongside me in Jesus, of a dispelling of negative preoccupation and an outward focussing upon all those exercising around me.  The Lord used my recovered discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours which was expressed later on in some friendly greetings and one conversation with a young man intrigued about why some of his friends had started attending a neighbouring church that was full of young people. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ I repeat the Jesus Prayer under my breath, and find myself emphasising the second phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’.

The phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’ in the Jesus Prayer echoes both heartfelt prayers to Jesus in the Gospels and a phrase that recurs in Christian worship: kyrie eleison, literally ‘O Lord take pity on me’

The Greek verb eleeo used in many prayers to Jesus in the Gospels and in the kyrie eleison of Christian worship ‘signifies, in general, to feel sympathy with the misery of another, and especially sympathy manifested in action’. The New Testament revelation in Jesus Christ is of ‘God who is rich in mercy’. (Ephesians 2:4) who in the words of today’s epistle has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

To show mercy is to treat others as better than they are. In the Jesus Prayer we are not so much asking the Lord repeatedly to demonstrate mercy to us but affirming and celebrating that quality and allowing it to brush off on us and make us more fully his instruments of forbearance.

The great thinker Simone Weil writes ‘that two great forces rule the universe: gravity and grace. Gravity causes one body to attract other bodies so that it continually enlarges by absorbing more and more of the universe into itself. Something like this same force operates in human beings. We too want to expand, to acquire, to swell in significance. …Emotionally, Weil concluded, we humans operate by laws as fixed as Newton’s. “All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.” Most of us remain trapped in the gravitational field of self-love, and thus we “fill up the fissures through which grace might pass.”’ 

The choice to live for God is a choice to live under grace and mercy and not under compulsion. It is an ongoing choice which the Jesus Prayer can facilitate. The beauty of the age old Jesus Prayer is its being a continual reminder both of God’s mercy towards me and of my call to imitate it in my dealings towards others and towards myself. It is a reminder true to the action we are part of this morning in the eucharist as we see that mercy before us in Christ’s body broken and his blood poured forth.

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