Sermon for 8 Pentecost

Proper 12-C (Read lessons here.)

July 25, 2004

Cathleen Basile *

As the storm raged, the captain realized his ship was sinking fast. He called out, "Anyone here know how to pray?" One man stepped forward. "Aye, Captain, I know how to pray." "Good," said the captain, "you pray while the rest of us put on our life jackets - we're one short."

You may have heard some folks referring to the journey to ordination as jumping through hoops. Part of this hoop jumping involves interviews with various committees and persons that determine the course of my journey. I have been asked many thought provoking, reflective questions. I’ve been asked many questions I do not understand. Many of these questions revolve around the theme of prayer. Can you describe your prayer life? Why do you pray? What is prayer to you? Do you believe that prayer has merit or value in your life?

They seem like simple enough questions, but try answering some of these questions in front of people that decide if you are to become a candidate for ordination. Until I was first asked some of these questions, I honestly gave it little thought. I have become more reflective of what prayer means to me. I realized that the most important aspect of prayer for me was the personal bond I had with God and the more I prayed the more I sensed God in my presence and in my everyday activities. Prior to my deaconate journey, my prayer life was incredibly inadequate. I reflected on this in discussions with other youth advisors. We expect our youth to lead prayers and worship at our youth meetings. I realized my inadequacies in praying and my reluctance to set the example.

I read an anonymous anecdote on prayer that gave me some good insight on the nature of prayer. It is called “The Alphabet Prayer”. One night while babysitting, a grandfather passed his granddaughter’s room and overheard her repeating the alphabet in an oddly reverent fashion. “What on earth are you up to?” he asked. “I’m saying my prayers,” explained the little girl. “But I can’t think of exactly the right words tonight, so I’m just saying all the letters. God will put them together for me, because he knows what I’m thinking.”

Many of my friends who are aware of my candidacy perceive me as their personal link to God and suddenly a woman of eloquent speech. That makes me chuckle a bit because I am still the same crazy Cathy I have always been, fumbling to find the right words to say and still feeling inadequate to be one of Christ’s disciples.

Today, I am often asked to lead graces, invocations, and general prayers, sometimes extemporaneously. I can hardly pronounce the word, let alone do it. I have a hard enough time reading from a piece of paper, let alone come up with meaningful words off the top of my head. Sometimes I feel like reciting the alphabet like the little girl in the story. I find myself relating to Moses as he asked to bring his brother Aaron with him on his journey. I want to bring someone with me to speak for me.

In today’s Gospel the disciples’ plead with Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” This has become my cry and focus in my spiritual journey. Prayer gives me the ability to be instantly in touch with God. It creates a bond between my creator and me. Prayer must be practiced as often as possible in order to maximize the spiritualness that comes from praying. The more I pray the more I am able to discern what God wants me to be and do.

I do not practice prayer to become more eloquent and artistic in praying. I need to practice prayer so that my life itself is a prayer for a better world. I want to be the concert violinist not just someone who plays the violin. One of the things that motivated the disciples to ask Jesus was that they saw Him pray all the time. He prayed on everyday occasions. He prayed while ministering to the crowds, while teaching, preaching, and healing. He prayed when he was baptized, before he chose his disciples, and when He instituted the Lord’s Supper. He even prayed on the cross and after his resurrection. Jesus demonstrated closeness to God that the disciples had never seen before and they wanted it for themselves. Jesus has given us the means to be as close to God as He was and is today. Prayer is the means to be one with God.

So the Lord gave them and us the Lord’s Prayer. This was an outline to shape our prayer life around. So, how do we learn to pray? Often we learn by the example of those around us. Some of us can think back to our earliest years of childhood memories and think of the prayers our parents used at the table or the bedside. We didn’t pray much as a family, but I do remember saying at night, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” The words certainly mean more to me now then they did back then. But God was with me in my immaturity as He is with me now. My mother prayed often. I can remember some great moments, just before she died, when I would read prayers to her because she was too weak to read them herself. It was a special time, even though I was not used to praying with her. I felt close to her when we prayed together and I am so thankful that I was able to pray with my mom. Prayer is an extraordinary bonding experience.

It is imperative for Christians to develop a healthy prayer life if they are to fully understand and comprehend the Love of God. We must practice prayer. It should be a prerequisite for every major decision we make in our lives. To get good at it, we have to do it as often as we can. Nevertheless, we must be mindful of the fact that prayer is not a mechanical process. We should not pray because we are Christians we must pray because it makes us Christians. We should not pray just to “get it over with” but as something “to get into”. We must make the time in our busy lives to pray. This is one of my struggles in learning to pray. I pray more today than I have ever done before and yet I do not pray as often as I should. Most of us pray so very little. It isn’t that we don’t want to pray.

Our lives are so full of activities, working, taking care of children, studying at school, serving the Lord, to mention only a few. There just doesn’t seem to be any time left over to pray. We make time for that cup of coffee in the morning. We make time to ski, golf, or play tennis. We make time to watch the most ridiculous movies and shows on television. We even make time to eat and sleep. We realize that our physical bodies need taking care of, well, so do our spiritual bodies. We are the closest to God when we pray and conversely the farthest to God when we do not pray.

Our priorities are different from men like Moses, the apostles, the prophets, Martin Luther and all the people whom God has been able to work through. When you read about their lives, you find they all had this one thing in common. The highest priority in their lives was prayer. They walked with God most of their lives because they prayed most of their lives. No rocket science here, pray a lot have God a lot in your life, pray a little and well you get, in general, your prayer’s worth. To pray well, we must make time to pray, we must devoid our minds of everything except that which is the center of our existence- God- prayer time is Jesus time. Last week, we read the story of Mary and Martha. Jesus came to their home for dinner. Martha was busy rushing around the kitchen trying to get things ready. Mary was simply sitting at the feet of Jesus. Martha complained to Jesus and he gently reminds her that Mary has made the better choice. We need to put Jesus first in our lives.

Prayer transforms us. Prayer changes lives, always for the better. Prayer changes history. It is a way to feel God’s heartbeat. Knowing who God really is makes us want to conform to Jesus Christ and His way of life. God slowly and graciously reveals Himself to us while we pray, and it is during those moments that we can breathe in deeply His love. The wonderful thing about prayer is that God meets us where we are. He comes along side us to lead us into a deeper, more real relationship with Him, not motivated by guilt, but driven by His love. He abides in us. We can become His students in prayer today, and there is no need for anyone to feel they need to understand it all before they can start. Instead, we can look forward to a life long process. A process that inevitably transforms us into a more compassionate, a more generous, a more humble, a more loving, and essentially a more Christ-like person, you know who I am talking about, you got it- Christians.

Today is not like any other Sunday. We are here to witness the birth of a spirit- the baptism of Rylie Claire Francis. Baptism, the Word of God communicated through water, is the event that gives structure to the Christian life. It is in essence, the first prayer that this infant will lead in her life. She will pray not with thoughts, signs or words but with the most profound way to communicate with God –love- she will pray with the love of God embodied in her soul from the moment she was conceived. She will, with our assistance and that of the Holy Spirit, profess her love for Christ and ask for absolution of original sin. She will be the focus of the first public prayer in her life. She may not be able to articulate the love she has for God in ways that we would understand, but I am certain that Jesus does understand and will abide in her when she is added to this Christian community with her baptism. I once read, that prayer is the breath of a newborn soul and there can be no Christian life without it.

Today we have refitted Rylie with a new umbilical cord- a spiritual one, that of prayer. We are committed to assist Rylie in any way we can to nurture her new spiritual link to Jesus by teaching her the ways of Christ and how to use prayer to become as close to God as Jesus intends her to be. She will convey to God the sum total of our love for her and be our prayer to God and God’s blessing to us. Welcome Rylie to the most wonderful spiritual journey a human being can ever take- the Christian road to God. Que Dios te bendiga, which means May God bless you. And may God make your life a magnificent manifestation of the power of prayer and the love of God.

Over the years, I have had a longing, like the disciples, to have a relationship with God. Through my prayer life, I have restored that relationship. I want my prayer life to continue to grow and become a way of life for me. I want it to be as natural as breathing. I want my life to reflect my prayer to God. With God and prayer there are plenty of life jackets.

Amen.

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* Cathy is a member of St. Luke's Church and a Candidate for Holy Orders in the Diocese of Western New York. In addition to studying for the Diaconate, she works as Postmaster in Dewittville, NY. In her spare time she chairs the Chautauqua Deanery Mission Committee, which plans mission trips for youth and adults.