August 5, 2007

Hannah Sherrod

We were sitting around the kitchen table one night last week when someone asked me how my sermon was coming along. I replied that my sermon wasn’t exactly “coming along” anywhere; however, my procrastination skills were in great shape. My parents then offered me some very helpful yet very different advice that really reflects their personalities. Dad talked for like 20 minutes about the different directions I could take with my topic of prayer: his advice was of course very scholarly and very intellectually provocative. Mom’s advice, on the other hand, was very practical and very resourceful: she suggested that after I talked for about a page or so, we should have an incredibly long silent prayer—thus avoiding my dilemma of coming up with something to say. So if you would all like to get comfortable, and bow your heads now……just kidding.

I’m not exactly sure why I was so drawn to the idea of prayer for my topic this morning. I wanted to somehow share with you a bit of my story, a piece of my spiritual journey. It is only by looking back and reflecting on my journey that has allowed me to recognize that prayer has been a central character in the drama of my life. Prayer is a concept I find particularly difficult to define. On a general level, I think prayer can be described as honest communication with oneself and with God. But prayer is energy and action that communicates between the mortal and the divine. I think it’s interesting that the act of prayer uses your heart, your mind, and your gut all at the same time. I really like how Philip and Carol Zaleski put it in their book Prayer: A History. They said, “The story of prayer is the story of the impossible: of how we creatures of flesh and blood lay siege to heaven, speak to the Maker of all things, and await, with confidence or hopeful skepticism, a response.” Prayer can be described as lots of things. In some ways, I think prayer is just allowing our souls to take God’s hand and dance till we are exhausted, exhilarated, and gasping for breath. The tricky thing about this dance is that it occurs on a level beyond human perception. Prayer is something that varies across traditions, but is as universal and ancient as language. My experience with prayer is unique to me and has certainly shaped my understanding of God.

I can remember my first prayer lesson. It was in fourth grade Sunday school class; I can’t remember what my teacher’s name was, but she was a dinosaur-ish woman who absolutely terrified me. Just to give you a taste of her personality, I’ll tell you about her Halloween theory. According to my fourth grade Sunday school teacher, dressing up like a ghost, goblin, or devil and going Trick-or-Treating literally caused Satan to enter your body. But mind, you would somehow be okay if you dressed up like an angel. I guess the sparking halo gave you special protection. Anyway, her prayer instructions came in three easy “How-To” steps. First, you have to bow your head. This shows God that you are focused. Second, you must close your eyes so that you aren’t distracted by anything. And last but not least, you have to clasp you hands together and hold them in your lap so that you won’t fidget. Sounds easy enough, right? Prayer is just sitting still long enough to ask God to fix whatever is broken.

I think it was soon after this fourth grade prayer lesson that I wrote my own prayer. I remember taking an index card and writing out a prayer for all of the things I thought were broken in this world. I prayed for peace, I prayed for the hungry to be fed, for the sick to be healed, and for the sad to be happy. I kept it under my pillow and prayed this prayer every night, as hard as I possibly could, hoping that God would hear me and fix the broken world. I don’t remember how long I kept that index card under my pillow. I remember I eventually got frustrated that there was no drastic change in the state of world peace. But I still prayed for God to fix all of the brokenness in the different ways. I also grew up believing that whenever you lose an eyelash, you get to make a wish and blow it off your finger. Most of the time I wished that world hunger would magically disappear. Somehow, I knew that it wasn’t fair for me to have so much when others had nothing. My eyelashes were prayers of hope, prayers for healing, prayers for God to make things right.

We often focus on the things that are broken in this world; especially when it’s our loved ones who are falling apart. The time I felt the most spiritually fractured was when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer. His body was broken, and I wanted God to fix it. My whole world was shattered, nothing was right anymore. Each day I felt like the thin thread of hope I was grasping onto so tightly was threatening to snap. Honestly, sometimes I resented the many people who where able to easily and fluidly offer prayers of healing for Dad. It seemed to me like it was a business or self-help technique—that health by right belongs to us and prayer is the simple process of restoring it to its proper owner. And if you ask correctly and persistently enough, your health will be restored to you. I couldn’t pray like that. I wanted to desperately because it just seemed easier that way. But my mind couldn’t grasp the concepts and my mouth couldn’t form the words. Like John Chapman said, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” So I would cry instead, utterly seized by prayer that at the time I didn’t understand was prayer at all. Like the psalmist, I found myself crying out from the depths of the chaotic waters of life. I had lost my foothold. I remember all too well those times I would collapse on the floor of my dorm room and sob, scream, pound and kick the floor until I fell asleep. These were always messy cries; my salty tears got everywhere, especially in my ears, up my nose, and in my mouth; they always tasted bitter and felt hot. I was furious with the circumstances of life; I was furious with God for letting bad things happen to good people.

I don’t question whether or not God heard my prayer of tears, but I feel certain that a divine presence held me through that time and slowly stitched back together the pieces of my broken heart and wounded soul. It was a mysterious process that baffles me with its strangeness. Did my prayers change the circumstances of my Dad’s life? I’m not sure, but I know they certainly changed me.

The more I think about God and how God works, the less and less I seem to understand. I think that the more perceptive a person is, (not necessarily how intelligent a person is) the more he or she realizes the extent of God’s mystery. God’s role in our creation and our existence is truly and utterly wondrous. Sometimes I feel frustrated, angry, and a little scared that I cannot understand everything; the unsolved puzzle, the veiled truth of understanding who and how God is. Lately, however, I have felt mostly wonder. I am filled with an overwhelming feeling of awe at the fact that I am alive and somehow a part of this great miracle. This sense of wonder points to the meaning within the mystery that is God. And prayer is the instrument that we use to express our sorrow and our joy, our offerings and our sacrifices. Prayer is the way we approach the source of all mystery, and therefore should never be underestimated in its importance.

The movement of my soul in prayer comes and goes like the ebb and flow of the tides. Sometimes I feel like prayer attacks me with the power of a storm; the passions of my emotions of injustice, sorrow, happiness, or joy are simply overwhelming in magnitude. Sometimes I just feel like my relationship with God is best honored with a laugh or a grin, a simple offering of thanks for yet another day that’s not spoken aloud; it’s just felt. Either way, my prayers are always moving, flowing with some invisible force form the very center of my being. Even though I’m not praying like our fourth grade Sunday school teacher taught me, with each breath I take, I’m praying. With every step, I’m moving in prayer. In prayer, however, I do think that there is a point where God’s mystery cannot be breached. The mystery is what makes it holy. I’m never really going to understand what prayer is and how it works.

Today we have come together to celebrate communion around this table. I ask you to celebrate it today as a prayer—a prayer from your heart of yearning and desire to be a part of Christ’s community of faith. Jesus taught us to pray and ask for bread for tomorrow, bread that gives us life and gives us hope, bread that unites us as the body of Christ. By taking part in this ritual of remembrance, I think we lift up our souls to a loving God who responds when we cry out from the depths for help.

My challenge to you this morning is to think about how and why you pray. What do you pray for? What does prayer mean to you? What prayers create your journey? I think our souls are waiting, searching, yearning for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning; prayer is how we commune with God. In closing, I’d like to share a prayer from a Celtic tradition that I stumbled across earlier this summer. It is a prayer for the time before prayer. “Before Prayer—I weave a silence on my lips, I weave a silence into my mind, I weave a silence within my heart. I close my ears to distractions, I close my eyes to attentions, I close my heart to temptations. Calm me O Lord as you stilled the storm, still me O Lord, keep me from harm. Let all the tumult within me cease, enfold me Lord in your peace.” No matter how you pray, why you pray, or what you pray for, my prayer for you is that you may come ever closer to God in your journey. Amen.