St Peter & St John, Wivelsfield Trinity 6 (17C) on prayer 24 July 2022

 

Lord, teach us to pray they asked Jesus. I want to look this morning at four aspects of prayer, of looking to Jesus: listening, friendship, recollection, and lastly empowerment. [ask children about what’s best and worst about school eg listening - we’re all being schooled]

Prayer, looking unto Jesus, is listening.  You can’t look to Jesus unless you give ear to him, unless you attend to him.  Our whole life depends on right listening – to other people and to ourselves at times – but chiefly to Jesus.Through prayer we hear from God.  We catch his inspirations for our life and for the world.

How do we look to Jesus in listening? A discipline of time offered to attend directly to God. 

Michael Ramsey’s quote – he prayed for 2 minutes but took 30 minutes to get there.

Scripture (show) is a means of looking to Jesus through listening to his Word. There is great power in imaginative listening to scripture. One way you can do this is to make the words of scripture more personal by changing the case of the pronoun in the passage. Take that Colossians passage. You could make it into a This is the Word of the Lord about John or whoever you are. It could read: When I John was buried with Christ in baptism, I was also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when I was dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of my flesh, God made me alive together with Christ, when he forgave me all my trespasses. As I read the passage like this it reminds me how God sees me and how I should see myself, as one dead to sin and alive to him. There are times when such an observation can be very powerful. This sort of exercise is about experiencing what we already possess as Christians, seeing ourselves as God sees us in his word. You read through prayerfully until God touches your Spirit and then hold yourself at that point once such a prayerful impulse has been given to you.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is secondly about friendship.  We seek our friends’ attention and he seeks ours. [children - are you looking forward to seeing more of your friends in the holidays?]

When friends meet they light up and so it is with Jesus and ourselves as we come before him in contemplation. When did you last sit in quiet before the Lord?  What is it that keeps you from doing so? Could you imagine Jesus, your friend, doing you any harm?

Contemplative prayer has been described as ‘spiritual radiotherapy’. St Augustine once said that the whole purpose of life is the healing of the heart’s eye through which God is seen. Heart surgery of the Holy Spirit: the melting of coldness within cf heavenly microwave. A major barrier to contemplation is the way our minds get so distracted which hinders our hearts from contemplation. This is where the repeating of short words that engage and focus the mind can be helpful as in the Orthodox Jesus prayer. This involves repeating again and again the gospel prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. The value of the Jesus Prayer mentioned on is commended all through the Christian tradition.  

Please don’t hesitate to talk to me afterwards if you want guidance on the Jesus Prayer as I’ve written a book about it (show). Not that I’m expert - any expertise I possess is to know that when it comes to prayer we’re all on the bottom rung of the ladder!

Looking to Jesus in prayer though, to summarise the second heading, is about building friendship, about lighting one another up so that in the words of Nehemiah (8v10) the joy of the Lord [becomes] our strength. 

Looking to Jesus is thirdly recollection, prayer that takes stock of your life and celebrates what God has done and is doing and looks forward to what God is going to do in us and through us.

The value of prayer journaling (show). Tis grace both led me safe thus far … and grace will lead me home. A good exercise is to look back over your life and recollect with Jesus the five biggest spiritual milestones along the way, your five most powerful desires, your five worst fears. Recollection is about such reminiscing or calling to mind.  It is also about ‘collecting again’ or recovering control of oneself. Through looking to God we gain self-possession. 

Attention to God, mindfulness of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian life.The recollected woman or man inhabits her or his words, is able to be present to Jesus at all times so that Jesus can be in them and show through them.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is lastly empowerment. As we heard in the Gospel: If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13).

Well we did ask for the Spirit - or others asked, at baptism and confirmation, the birth of our Christian commitment and in the receiving of Holy Communion - but we need to keep inviting him by asking regularly for the Holy Spirit.  Prayer is an empowerment especially by the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we pray we can at times feel God’s touch upon our heart, see some sort of vision or be led to some particular scripture verse as we look to Jesus. This is charismatic prayer, literally graced or given prayer in which our looking to Jesus and waiting before him is answered by a heavenly gift.

Looking to Jesus in prayer then is listening, friendship, recollection and empowerment. It's also as today’s Gospel reminds us about intercession which could provide another sermon!

For now though, may the Lord turn our eyes more and more upon himself so that our earthly pursuits may lose some of their enticement as we see more of him through seeking him in prayer. 

So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

St Richard, Haywards Heath Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary 8.12.21

 

As Christmas approaches the sombreness of Advent season breaks today to honour the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Feast of her sinless Conception. 

December 8th is a day of joy marking the choice of Mary to be worthy Mother of the eternal Son of God. In the ancient Greek title given her by the Church Council of Ephesus in 431 AD she is theotokos, the God-bearer. In the Western Church this was translated Mother of God, a source of confusion to some. 

How much we owe to Mary! We owe the formation of the Saviour, no less, and not just in his nine month dwelling within her. With Joseph her spouse Mary brought Jesus up. It is an astonishing thought that she would teach him, the Son of God, to pray – Mary a mortal being inviting God’s Son to pray to his true Father!

I like to think of Mary as a woman of great devotion. This devotion is hinted at in her greeting from the Archangel Gabriel in today’s Gospel from the start of St. Luke’s Gospel: Mary, do not be afraid, you have won God’s favour. Listen, you are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus.

You have indeed won God’s favour, Blessed Mother – and through you we have all won that favour, the favour of Jesus.

We best serve God and others with a loving discernment that starts from a determination to listen to God with you. By listening to God and then secondly to ourselves with you at hand. You, Blessed Mother, encourage us towards a positive self-regard. The Almighty has done great things for me. Take stock of all that Jesus is doing in your life and rejoice is your invitation! Take stock also of the ingrained selfishness so you can give it to God in confession. Take stock, Mary invites, of how you and I at times put the work of the Lord before the Lord of the work. It’s when we get too busy in the Lord’s work that thoughtlessness can subtract from our good deeds.

Listen to God, listen to yourself, Mary invites, sift and purify your agenda, then listen to those God puts your way who need your ears! As we listen to others in these coming days with our outer ears, let’s keep two inner ears listening to God and to our own reaction to what we hear lest it get in the way.  Like Mary let’s be there for people without getting in their way. Being surrendered ourselves, as at this Mass, to whatever God wants of us, being made a Christ-bearer under the watchful care of the Mother of believers. Jesus who was first carried by Mary at Bethlehem, who is carried to us in Bread this evening, waits to be carried by you and I under the patronage of Mary to a waiting world!

St Richard, Haywards Heath Listening to God 12.5.19

The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice. John 10:27

We hear three voices - those from God, our neighbourhood and our self. Even when we’re speaking, those voices engage with us. We have two ears - I often need reminding - and one mouth! But we also have inner ears gifted by the Holy Spirit to listen from the heart and see our hearts touched, melted and enthused towards others. Building capacity to listen is about building awareness of those three voices.

We might not have ears like rabbits but our inner ears can grow !

As I look back on my life I think it's the people who’ve listened to me who’ve changed me most. I think of my mum and dad, my friends and teachers, my wife, my children and people who’ve lent an ear to my desire to follow God in the best way. As you’re listening to me now I also spend time listening in Church where I gain inspiration. I listen to God, to his word in the Bible, to the words of the Eucharist, sermons, to people who cross my path day by day and of course to myself. By listening to others I serve them and others serve me as they listen to my aspirations.

Priests do a lot of listening and bishops more so. I remember a conversation with Archbishop Rowan Williams who’d just come back from going round classes in a school. ‘I felt great sympathy with the children in their struggle to listen’ he said as one used to listening to the woes of priests. It’s one of the big challenges we have, the shorter attention spans of our children and grandchildren, which affects the classroom and among other things impacts church attendance. Children expect excitement in church. Wise children expect to be awed and intrigued - we have to cater for both!

This reminds me - I have a butterfly mind easily distracted - of a story about paying attention. It's about a shocked visitor to Crete who tackled a farmer she saw bashing his donkey on the side of his head with some sort of mallet. ‘How can you treat your donkey like that’ shouted the lady. ‘Simple’ the peasant replied. ‘I’ve got to get his attention’.

We should have sympathy. Life can feel donkey-like at times, like being on a treadmill, somewhat thankless. It's the same with the spiritual life at times. How many memorable sermons can I recall, let alone sermons that have really changed my life! One I must mention was on Jeremiah 31:17 ‘There is hope in thine end’. It was by a holy monk called Cedma Mack in the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield where I trained as a priest. ‘There is hope in thine end’ Fr Cedma announced as his text and dropped dead! Never forget it - you couldn’t lay on something like that! They carried him out.

The Creed was said not sung that day but otherwise the Community Mass proceeded as normal! Cedma was a much loved man - I held the holy water bucket at the grave and can tell you more tears flowed than holy water at his funeral!

The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice.

I found God speaking to me as I read St Richard’s annual report last week. To read the description of the seven core areas of our life was very stimulating. More of us are leading so more is being achieved. I was pleased to do my bit in the Churchyard and through the Week of Guided Prayer. I’m aware of more God talk among us which might evidence more listening to God. It’s good we feel able to share with our peers and our priests about our journey of faith because that’s our Christian distinctive.

Listening to God and to one another is packaged with the costly virtue of self-forgetfulness. I try to remember that ultimately I will be with God and people in the communion of saints so my longing for him and for my neighbour is pivotal. My life - my eternal life - depends upon it.

A few weeks back I had a really difficult phone call from someone so full of emotional pain they were hardly able to let me get a word in to say I had a train to catch! In this experience I was trying to listen to her, to myself - an impatient inner voice saying ‘end this call asap’ - and to God saying ‘be kind’. By the grace of God I got my train! Reflecting back on the conversation I was fast to judge the poorly lady’s demanding tone as it rattled my own self-will. None of us can be in two places at once but the capacity to listen to others in or out of a crisis is a servant gift I keep seeking - and with it the gift of self-forgetfulness.

A practical suggestion. Pray for two gifts - to forget yourself and never to forget God. Ask the Lord first to steer you from self-love in every guise or disguise since that above all else blocks your capacity to listen to others. Then, secondly, offer God the aspirations of your soul and the health and ability of your body and open your heart to his love, maybe in a prayer like this.

A prayer of Eric MIlner-White: ‘Let your love, O Lord, pass into the depth of my heart, into the heart of my prayer, into the prayer of my whole being; so that I desert myself and dwell more and more in you, in peace, now and evermore’

May Christ dwell in our hearts St. Swithun, East Grinstead Sunday 15th November 2009

Let us let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer of our faith. Hebrews 12:1

Our whole life as Christians is a looking to Jesus. Our life is this prayer and this prayer, this looking to Jesus is our life.

The Lord wants a deeper place in our life and that of our church because Christianity is always about getting more of Jesus Christ into our lives and shedding self-interest.

Our individual prayer time is foundational to this along with our gathering Sunday by Sunday on the Lord's Day, in the Lord's House, with the Lord's People. This is why we’ve all got an invitation to join our School of Prayer this week at St Swithun’s.

One of the most important things about our daily prayer is the time we give. Whatever we feel or don't feel at prayer it is the offering of 5, 10, 15 minutes daily that is pivotal. Time matters. It is also important to offer Our Lord what we might call ‘prime time’.

Time, and then secondly, place. There’s church of course, suitable for some of us. Most of us though have to find a prayer space at home. We need then to be quiet, but perhaps not too quiet so we keep our feet on the ground. We need perhaps to be comfortable, not so much that we fall asleep. Prayer invites attentiveness. Some people say a hard backed chair gives you that business like feeling. Myself I use a comfy chair, but try to kneel as well for some of the time.

Then what – as one definition puts it ‘prayer is a lifting of heart and mind to God’ and there are many different ‘airports’ for lift off. The aim of our course is to open some of these airports or ways of prayer up to you.

Wherever you lift off from you have to be ‘there’ to get a lift. Confession of sin before you pray is important – you want God to see the real you and nothing pretentious! The bottom line for prayer, for getting to a place of lift off, is honesty. To be there is also about getting down from your mind into your heart as well.

Tom Smail's baldness 'caused by the Lord banging on his head to get his religion from head to heart'- a vital 14".

I want this morning to address briefly six aspects of prayer, of looking to Jesus: listening, friendship, warfare, benevolence, recollection, and lastly empowerment.

1. Listening
Prayer, looking unto Jesus, is listening. You can’t look to Jesus unless you give ear to him, unless you attend to him.

Our whole life depends on right listening – to other people and to ourselves at times – but chiefly to Jesus. Through prayer we hear from God. We catch his inspirations for our life and for the world.

How do we look to Jesus in listening? A discipline of time offered to attend directly to God.

Michael Ramsey’s quote – he jokingly said he prayed only for 2 minutes but went on to admit it took him 30 minutes to get there.

Scripture is a means of looking to Jesus through listening to his Word. We read in Hebrews 4:12 that the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

We’ll be looking during the week at the power of imaginative listening to scripture. A basic piece of advice on praying from scripture is to read through prayerfully until God touches your Spirit and then hold yourself at that point once such a prayerful impulse has been given to you.

2. Friendship
Looking to Jesus is about friendship. We seek our friends’ attention and he seeks ours. When friends meet they light up and so it is with Jesus and ourselves as we come before him in contemplation.

When did you last sit in quiet before the Lord? What is it that keeps you from doing so? Could you imagine Jesus your friend doing you any harm?

Contemplative prayer has been described as ‘spiritual radiotherapy’. St Augustine once said that the whole purpose of life is the healing of the heart’s eye through which God is seen.

Heart surgery of the Holy Spirit: the melting of coldness within is like a defrosting by the heavenly microwave!

One aid to contemplation is to read a set prayer slowly, open for God to speak to you as your friend.

A major barrier to contemplation is the way our minds get so distracted which hinders our hearts from contemplation. This is where the repeating of short phrases that engage and focus the mind can be helpful as in the Orthodox Jesus prayer. This involves repeating again and again the gospel prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. The value of the Jesus Prayer is commended all through the Christian tradition as in the writings of St. John Chrysostom: Abide constantly with the name of our Lord Jesus, so that the heart swallows the Lord and the Lord the heart and the two become one. Please don’t hesitate to talk to the prayer guides, to myself or your clergy if you want guidance on the Jesus Prayer or any other of the forms of prayer suggested in this booklet.

Looking to Jesus in prayer is about listening and building friendship, about lighting one another up so that in the words of Nehemiah (8v10) the joy of the Lord [becomes] our strength.

3. Warfare
Prayer, looking to Jesus, is thirdly warfare against the deadening spiritual impact of the world, the flesh and the devil. Prayer is warfare because Jesus calls us to a fullness of humanity that involves our shedding constraints, shaking off what Hebrews calls the weight and the sin that clings so closely (12:1b). He who is in you, St John says, is greater than he that is in the world. 1 John 5:4

In prayer we see ourselves in a true light and take action in the name of Jesus against the dark forces that impel us. Hesychius of Jerusalem writes: As it is impossible for the sun to shine without light, so it is impossible for the heart to be cleansed of the filth of wicked thoughts without prayer in the Name of Jesus…let us utter this Name as often as we breathe.

The battle that is prayer comes much into its own when we attempt self-examination. This has been described as like going under water. You experience an up thrust, an opposition. There is a power at work totally opposed to self-knowledge. Satan is fearful of both our knowing God and our knowing ourselves. He wants us to live in ignorance so that we can comply with his schemes! So we battle on – in the spiritual warfare that is prayer!

4. Benevolence
Looking to Jesus fourthly is benevolence, the capacity to enter the good will of God for all people, especially in intercessory prayer. This is a feature of prayer that the St Swithun’s exploration will major on in the coming week.

Christianity is not merely a doctrine or a system of beliefs Thomas Merton wrote, it is Christ living in us and uniting people to one another in His own life and unity. For Merton a hermit monk there is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish and suffering, but … flight from disunity and separation to unity and peace in the love of other [people]. This benevolent spirit of intercession is captured in St. Paul’s invitation in Galatians 6:2 to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.

We look to Jesus to be with us as we intercede. He lifts us up into his perfect Offering, most especially in the Holy Eucharist. In intercession we come before the Lord with people and needs on our heart to entrust them to him with confidence.

My wife Anne’s prayer for Catherine that bore fruit after 11 years

Through intercessory prayer, in the words of Professor Hallesly we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness…the powers which can awaken those who sleep in sin and raise up the dead … that can capture strongholds and make the impossible possible.

5. Recollection
Looking to Jesus is prayer of recollection, prayer that takes stock of your life and celebrates what God has done and is doing and, looks forwards to what God is going to do in us and through us.

Another feature we will be majoring on in the fortnight ahead is the value of prayer journaling. This is the discipline of keeping a sort of written conversation with the Lord so that we can trace his working in our lives. 'Tis grace both led me safe thus far … and grace will lead me home.

Just an idea, even if you can’t make the sessions. Why not in the coming week attempt a review of your life? Look back over your years and recollect with Jesus the five biggest spiritual milestones along the way, your five most powerful desires, your five worst fears. Recollection is about such reminiscing or calling to mind. It is also about ‘collecting again’ or recovering control of oneself. Through looking to God we gain self-possession.

Attention to God, mindfulness of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian life. The recollected woman or man inhabits her or his words, is able to be present to Jesus at all times so that Jesus can be in them and show through them. As the orthodox spiritual writer Fr. Bulgakov puts it The Name of Jesus present in human heart, communicates to it the power of deification … shining through the heart, the light of the Name of Jesus illuminates all the universe.

6. Empowerment
Looking to Jesus lastly is empowerment. You will receive power he said, when the Holy Spirit comes Acts 1v8. Well he has come, at baptism and confirmation, the birth of our Christian commitment - and in the receiving of Holy Communion - but we need to invite him deeper into our lives by praying regularly for the Holy Spirit. Earlier in Luke 11 Jesus says with a great emphasis ask, and it will be given to you. If you being evil know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Looking to Jesus is an empowerment especially by the word of God and the gifting of the Holy Spirit. You do not have James warns in his letter (4:2) because you do not ask.

When we persist in asking we can from time to time feel God’s touch upon our heart, see some sort of vision or be led to some particular scripture verse as we look to Jesus. This is charismatic prayer, literally graced or given prayer in which our looking to Jesus and waiting before him is answered by a heavenly gift.

To summarise, prayer, looking to Jesus, brings some wonderful experiences. It’s also a matter of perseverance, as Michael Ramsey reminds us with his 2 minutes prayer within half an hour’s devotional time. We need spiritual determination if we’re going to get anywhere in prayer though prayer itself kindles such enthusiasm and determination. Let us run with perseverance then the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus through listening, friendship, warfare, benevolence, recollection and empowerment. May the Lord turn our eyes more and more upon himself in the coming week!