Prayers of the People: 15th Sunday After Pentecost

This is just a prayer I wrote for use as the prayers of the people in Goodson Chapel tomorrow. It's based on Jeremiah 18:1-11 and Philemon 1-21, the lectionary texts on which Dr. Amy Laura Hall will be preaching.
__________

O God of all the nations,
you lead us to the potter’s house
to remind us that we have not made ourselves.
We can take no credit for anything we have
or anything we are,
for all good things come from you and you alone.

Lord, by your son’s death and resurrection,
you freed us from slavery to sin and death.
Open our eyes to the forms of slavery
that are still very much alive today.
Slavery persists explicitly
in the form of sex trafficking and child labor,
and subtly
in the form of our bondage to this world
and to delusions of autonomy.

O God, break these chains,
for the slave is our brother,
and in your name, all oppression shall cease.
Give us your eyes to see the places
where we fail to welcome the other
as a brother or sister.

Lord, we are useless to you
unless you enable us to serve you.
We are worthless as a vessel of your grace
unless you remake us.

Melt us, mold us,
fill us, use us.

In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

You Are a Very Big God

I wrote this reflection while on a house retreat this past weekend.
__________

I am sitting by the pond on a bed of moss. It is a beautiful day out. It's cooler than it has been, I've found a patch of shade, and there's a slight breeze rustling through the trees. This side of the pond has something of a path along the edge. At the far corner of the pond, there's a statue of a woman--maybe Mary, though there aren't any features that would necessarily distinguish her as such.

You don't play in the woods as much as I did growing up without forming an attachment with trees, rocks, earth. I'm not really into natural theology, especially in the super-sentimental form in which see I see it a lot these days. But there's something freeing about walking barefoot through grass, something steadying about lying on stone.

You can't totally romanticize it--the last time I went shoeless in grass for an extended period of time, I got chiggers, and an unidentified bug just bit my foot. But I like that fact. Nature provides nourishment of all kinds, but it isn't safe. Sounds familiar. And I think we become less able to connect to the natural world the more we hide from it in glass and concrete, the more we distract ourselves from it with technology. The less we think we need trees and earth and sky, the less we are able to see, to understand, to learn from them.

The song "Indescribable," made famous by Chris Tomlin, was actually written by Laura Storey. Where he sings, "You are amazing, God," she originally wrote, "You are a very big God." I used to make fun of that, but now I think we use the word "amazing" so much that it has lost some of its import. We need to be able, with childlike wonder, to see and be wowed by God's bigness.

A Prayer for Study (from Doctor Johnson's Prayers)

"Almighty God, in whose hands are all the powers of man; who givest understanding, and takest it away; who, as it seemeth good unto Thee, enlightenest the thoughts of the simple, and darkenest the meditations of the wise, be present with me in my studies and enquiries.

Grant, O Lord, that I may not lavish away the life which Thou hast given me on useless trifles, nor waste it in vain searches after things which Thou hast hidden from me.

Enable me, by thy Holy Spirit, so to shun sloth and negligence, that every day may discharge part of the task which Thou hast allotted me; and so further with thy help that labour which, without thy help, must be ineffectual, that I may obtain, in all my undertakings, such success as will most promote thy glory, and the salvation of my own soul, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen."

—From Doctor Johnson’s Prayers edited by Elton Trueblood

Theology without Faith

My campus ministry group has an annual tradition: students write "affirmation letters" to the graduating seniors. When I graduated from college this spring, I received one that included an important observation: "There's always more to learn about God, but I still believe the best way to do that is through time with him on our knees, not in the classroom."

I'm starting divinity school in the fall, and I'm a little nervous about it. I'm going to the same school where I did my undergrad, and I spent way too much of the past four years in the religion department and divinity school. I know that I thrive on academic pressure. But I'm also aware of the danger that exists when thinking about faith becomes more absorbing than faith itself.

Theology is fundamentally different from other disciplines because it requires not only that you contemplate the logos but also that you know and engage with the theos. While nonbelievers can study the history or sociology of religion, theology outside relationship with God completely misses the point.

So I'm grateful to be attending a school where regular worship, spiritual formation groups, prayer in the classroom, and field education are significant, even mandatory components of my education. My goal is to avoid becoming so fascinated with the eschatological implications of the Eucharist that I forget to spend time in prayer.

This post first appeared on Theolog, the blog of The Christian Century.

A Poem from E. E. Cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

I Am Not What I Own (Prayer)

Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with my empty hands?
Please help me gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.
And what you want to give me is love,
unconditional, everlasting love.

— Henri Nouwen

From What I Am Not (Prayer)

My prayers, God, flow from what I am not;
I think thy answers make me what I am.
Like weary waves thought flows upon thought,
But the still depth beneath is all thine own.
And there thou movest in paths to us unknown.
Out of the strange strife thy peace is strangely wrought;
If the lion in us pray—thou answerest the lamb.
— George MacDonald

The Devil Made Me Do It

This summer, I'm living in a house in Durham with 5 other Duke undergraduates. We're all doing internships at various churches and nonprofits in the community, and we share meals and do spiritual formation together. We all come from different backgrounds—there are 2 guys and 4 girls; 2 black and 4 white; 2 Pentecostal/nondenominational (black), 1 nondenominational (white), 1 Baptist, 1 Catholic, 1 United Methodist. Needless to say, I'm already being challenged in a lot of ways, and I'm learning a lot.

At our morning Bible study today, we looked at Luke 4:31-37. In this passage, Jesus goes to Capernaum and casts out a demon. We talked about authority for most of the time, then someone asked, "Wait, are we saying that demons actually exist?" and that opened a whole new can of worms. Present at the table were 2 people who had seen demon possession, 3 who had not, and me...who is leery but not unbelieving.

Later, I had a conversation with one of my housemates (who had not been present at the Bible study). It's intriguing to me that I have 2 housemates who consistently use language like "child of the Devil" and the like, while the rest of us pseudo-mainliners don't often hear the Devil spoken of, certainly not personified.

Thomas Merton, in Seeds of Contemplation, says that what the Devil likes most is attention, and the best way to make the Devil mad is to ignore him. You don't want to give the Devil credit for everything bad that happens, or blame the Devil for sins you commit yourself. You don't want to have to see demons around every corner and live a life of defensiveness and apprehension.

Then again, my housemates for whom the Devil is a part of their everyday spiritual vocabulary seem to take sin and temptation much more seriously than mainline Christians do. For them, the tempter is very real and very present, and he/she needs to be recognized, met and rebuked. It is important to pray constantly and not to open yourself up to possession or temptation.

I wonder if, by glossing over the Devil and demons and the like, mainline Christians domesticate sin and temptation. Perhaps the best way to piss the Devil off is to ignore him—but if we are fallen and sinful, is that just going to make us more susceptible to falling further?

For the record, I've seen mental illness that was diagnosable but which also was able to be commanded and controlled by prayer. Maybe in Biblical times demon possession was their name for mental illness. Maybe we don't like to acknowledge the face of evil in depression and other disorders. My dad said that twice in his ministerial career, he has prayed over someone to have demons cast out, because they've been such extreme cases that he hasn't known what else to do, and there is Biblical precedent. So...yes. I'm not talking The Exorcist here, but it's still pretty fascinating, not just intellectually, but in how it affects the ways in which people meet and conquer temptation.

I Pray for You, You Pray for Me

Today I had a jarring but bittersweet experience. I met a man named Paul who had come to Asbury Temple to get food. He started talking to me while he was waiting for Julius to bag his groceries. He told me that he was bipolar, that his mother had died two weeks ago, and that he just wanted to die himself. A lot of what he said was incoherent, and honestly I was terrified because I didn't know how to respond, but something calmed my heart and allowed me simply to listen to Paul as he rambled.

I didn't actually find out his name until the end of our conversation because he wouldn't tell me at first because he doesn't trust people. I told him I only wanted to know so that I could pray for him, and he started crying. Finally I learned that his name was Paul, and as I left to go back upstairs, I told him I'd be praying for him, and I asked if he would pray for me. That made him cry again, but by then it seemed that he was in a better place, and as I left I heard him excitedly telling Julius that I had asked him to pray for me and that he was going to do so.

I can't remember where I learned to do that, or if it was even something I learned and not just the Spirit moving, but I somehow doubt Paul has ever been asked to pray for someone. I suspect prayers are often offered for him, but never solicited from him. I also suspect there's something empowering and meaningful about being given the responsibility of praying for someone. So...yeah. It's like in the song "I Need You to Survive": "I pray for you / You pray for me / I love you / I need you to survive." I pray for you, you pray for me. Only in this way can we be made whole.

A Prayer from Susannah Wesley

Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church, or closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in thy presence. So may my every word and action have a moral content. May all the happenings of my life prove useful to me. May all things instruct me and afford me an opportunity of exercising some virtue and daily learning and growing toward thy likeness. Amen.

A Prayer from St. Augustine

O Lord,
the house of my soul is narrow;
enlarge it that you may enter in.
It is ruinous, O repair it!
It displeases your sight.
I confess it, I know.
But who shall cleanse it,
to whom shall I cry but you?
Cleanse me from my secret faults, O Lord,
and spare your servant from strange sins. — Augustine

A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

Christian (Dis)Unity

January 18-25, 2008 marked the 100th anniversary year of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Christians all around the world gathered throughout the week to pray for the unity of the Church. For my part, some of the religious life groups here at Duke organized five consecutive nights of vespers services, each hosted by a different campus ministry. Though the fact that the idea for the services came a little too last-minute to expect large crowds, those of us who did attend were able to meet representatives of other flavors of Christianity at Duke, experience nuances in how each group worships and talk about our own experiences of Christian unity.

The Wesley Fellowship, my campus ministry group, hosted the final service of the week. In lieu of a homily, we chose to split everyone up into small groups with people from different Christian groups for discussion. The questions put to us were simple: first, we were to talk about a time when we experienced disunity in the church; and second, we were to share an example of unity in the church.

Oddly enough, I found that my response to both questions lay in one place: at Eucharist. It was funny too, because in my small group was another Methodist from Wesley and a good friend of mine who is Catholic. So I got to have this conversation with someone with whom I share in the bread and wine on an almost weekly basis, and with another person with whom I most likely will never be able to be in communion.

I'm a Methodist with a very high understanding of the Eucharist (most Methodist call it communion...), so that particular sacrament is extremely important to me. Because of my field of study and my personal interests, I've read an awful lot about the theology of the Eucharist, so I understand the theological underpinnings of the arguments that have resulted in the varying restrictions on who can partake when and where. I'm intrigued by all of this on an intellectual level, but equally so on a personal and liturgical level.

Basically, here's where I see disunity: when, on a Catholic retreat, I sit through Mass and hear most of the very same words uttered in the consecration of the elements, but then must go forward with my arms crossed over my chest, asking for a blessing instead of the physical Host. The closed table has for me a sort of morbid fascination, an abiding sense of sadness but also a deep respect that would lead me never, ever to take a resentful or slighted attitude towards the differences in doctrine that make it so that I cannot receive the Eucharist in a Catholic church. You will never find me whining about why can't we all just get along. The differences are there and they are real. We may say the same words, invoke the same God, but something different happens at that moment of consecration, something that makes my communion and their communion two different things.

But let's not forget that I also named the Eucharist as the point at which I experience Christian unity. It's easy to see how I see it when I'm sharing in communion at my own church, when myself and other Protestants can share in the elements. But I'm not just talking about that—I actually am referring to those times when maybe I can't receive communion. Somehow, even when I've gone up only for a blessing when at Catholic Mass, tied up in the twinge of sadness and separation I feel is a deep sense of connectedness, even with those with whom I cannot sit at the Lord's table. Though the theological specifics may vary, Eucharist is a sharing in the body of Christ, and we, broken and confused, we are the body of Christ.

I know little about the ecumenical movement but I feel more and more called to seek out avenues of reconciliation and unification within the Christian Church. I hope to be able to have more conversations, especially with Catholics, about what keeps us apart at communion, and about what that particular instance implies for the broader body of Christ. I experience sadness when considering the division between Catholics at Protestants at the Eucharist, but it's not personal—it's not about me. In unity and disunity alike, I am not the focal point, but perhaps I can learn to dream of Christ's body made whole, in some form or fashion—if not here and now, then in God's due time.

A Prayer from Martin Luther

Look, Lord,
on an empty vessel that needs to be filled.
In faith I am weak—strengthen me.
In love I am cold—warm me and make me fervent
so that my love may go out to my neighbor.
I doubt and am unable to trust you completely.
Lord, strengthen my faith and trust in you.
You are all the treasure I possess.
I am poor, you are rich,
and you came to have mercy on the poor.
I am a sinner, you are goodness.
From you I can receive goodness,
but I can give you nothing.
Therefore I shall stay with you. Amen. — Martin Luther

A Prayer from Saint Anselm

O Lord my God.
Teach my heart this day
where and how to find you.
You have made me and re-made me,
and you have bestowed on me
all the good things I possess,
and still I do not know you.
I have not yet done
that for which I was made.

Teach me to seek you,
for I cannot seek you
unless you teach me,
or find you
unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire;
let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you;
let me love you when I find you.

Just Out of Habit

The other night, I told a friend over dinner about some difficulties I've been having and about the ways in which God is working in my life right now. Excited about the vocational developments happening lately, I listed for her all the ways in which I'm engaging my spiritual life and discernment process—attending morning prayer daily, being involved in and leading my campus ministry group, going to my adopted local church, singing in two choirs (one leads a weekly, formal Vespers service, the other is a student gospel choir), taking Eucharist at least once a week, reading the Psalms, working on the undergrad Christian magazine here at Duke. At one point she stopped me and asked, "But are you getting anything out of all this? Are you getting anything out of the sermons you hear or the prayers you say?" I paused and gave her a quizzical look. "Well, yes," I replied, "but that's not the point. It's not about me getting something out of church. It's about me being formed by good habits."

The word "habit" has become a swear word in today's American church. If you go to church just out of habit, that's bad. If you pray just out of habit, your prayers are meaningless. If you engage with other Christians just out of habit, your fellowship is not genuine.

I think this view is contrary to the nature of the Christian life. Habits are not the enemies of faith but are the ways in which we are incorporated into its disciplines and practices. To use a pre-Christian example, Aristotle believed that the root of all ethics was couched in habit. The process of acquiring virtue was one of developing good habits.

In Christianity, we repeat certain prayers, formulas, and rituals to the point that they become habits. Many people these days think that if you say the Lord's Prayer or the Apostle's Creed out of habit, you don't really mean it. But what does it mean to mean it? What does it mean for prayer to be genuine? The key seems to lie in oneself, in the person's intentions and understanding of what they are saying or doing. However, I believe that the true purpose and value of worship lies far beyond any one worshiper and his or her intentions. The beauty of worship is that it is not about us. We should thank God that the validity of our worship does not rest on the sanctity of our intent, because what mortal would stand in judgment of such? However, if we allow the habits of the Christian life to pervade our lives, they will become a part of who we are and prayer can become a sort of divine reflex to serve us when we need it most.

I certainly would not advocate the practice of attending church weekly, saying the prayers by rote, and then leaving Monday through Saturday only to return the following week out of habit. It is important that church leaders instruct their parishioners in the importance and meaning of the practices of worship, prayer, service, and all other aspects of the life of the church. However, to condemn the habitual nature of the Christian life is to say that if you're coming to church just out of habit, you might as well not come at all. This is dangerous thinking. If people go to church expecting to get something out of the sermon or the prayers and then for whatever reason don't connect with what is said from the pulpit on that particular day, they leave disappointed because their needs weren't met, when it was never their needs that mattered (don't get me wrong, people's needs certainly matter in the church, but look at my post "Our Desires Are Too Weak" for a mention of the difference between felt needs and Gospel-preached needs). The times when we don't feel like going to church are often the times when we need most to be in church. We believe in a God on whom we can cast our weariness, our doubts, our boredom, and our pain. Worship is when God meets and redeems us, whether we really want to run into him there or not.

All in all, I think that part of my work in the church will be to redeem the concept of habit. The idea of being formed by disciplines that aren't necessarily under our control isn't a comfortable one for many. However, that is what the Christian life is about—being formed by God, not trying to form ourselves to what we think is genuine or meaningful.

A Prayer from St. Augustine

O Lord, our God,
Grant us to trust in your overshadowing wings:
Protect us beneath them and bear us up.
You will carry us as little children,
And even to our grey-headed age you will carry us still.
We need not fear to find no home again
Because we have fallen away from it;
While we were absent our home falls not to ruins,
For our home is your eternity. Amen.

Whose Service is Perfect Freedom

At 8:00 a.m. this morning I stood in Goodson Chapel at Duke Divinity School and read from my pocket-sized Book of Common Prayer as a group of students (graduate students—I was the oddball) went through the daily rite of morning prayer. I went twice to morning prayer last week and every day so far this week; I'm hoping to make it a permanent fixture in my daily routine. As I prayed the Venite, the Nunc Dimitis, and the Psalms, I realized just how odd I am among my peers for actually enjoying—and even desperately needing—such a practice. Where for me a discipline like morning prayer is centering, formative, and vital to my spiritual life, to many Christians today it seems...well, boring. Where is the break? What has the church done to make formal worship "boring"?

I suppose I'm a bit of a weirdo when it comes to worship. I read liturgical theology for fun, for crying out loud. Nobody does that. But even though I know that I occupy a different spiritual and intellectual landscape regarding worship than most other people, I still feel a deep sadness anytime someone tells me that such-and-such a church is too boring or too formal. Has worship really become that dull? Or is our culture forming us with expectations that simply do not fit with what worship is all about? (There's another post hidden in here somewhere about habit, which I will address in full later on.)

Some churches really are boring. Eddie Izzard, a fabulous comedian (he's a British transvestite and is wickedly smart), makes a point in one of his routines about how oftentimes Christian worship sounds just plain painful. "There's something phenomenally dreary about Christian singing," he says as he goes on to provide a particularly dreary rendition of "Oh God Our Help in Ages Past." "They're the only people who can sing 'Hallelujah' without feeling." I've certainly been in churches like that (white churches...Izzard makes the distinction clear and revels in the raucousness of the worship of people of African descent), and it hurts, it really does. But somehow that image of dreariness has been projected onto all formal (or even mildly structured!) worship. People feel restrained, as if they are not free to "really" worship (whatever that means).

I thought about this concept of being "free" to worship during one of the collects we prayed from the BCP this morning. It says, "Oh God...whose service is perfect freedom." In serving God, in being bound to him, we are truly free. The notion of being unrestrained and able to do as you please just doesn't jive with the whole concept of forming one's desires to God's will. Maybe this is a problem uniquely my own, but I struggle with prayer and with focusing on worship, so to have a liturgy sanctioned by hundreds of years of practice is not limiting but rather freeing, and deeply so. I love praying the Psalms because through them I am able to make the supplications, lamentations, thanksgivings, and confessions that sit in my heart with no words to set them free. Sometimes I wonder if people even read the Psalms properly anymore. The Psalms make up a prayer book and, to paraphrase Bonhoeffer, when you pray the Psalms you are praying with the whole church and with Christ himself.

I wonder if some people are so averse to ordered, formal worship because individualism and uniqueness are so stressed in today's culture that the thought of being brought into a unified, disciplined practice with others seems undesirable. We all want to do our own thing. The thought of engaging in practices that put you in communion not only with other Christians today but also with Christians who lived and died hundreds of years before now doesn't invoke the kind of awe it once did (and still does for some of us). Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico is one of my favorite places in the world. What overwhelms me in watching the monks perform the daily office, praying seven times a day, chanting the psalms and taking Mass each morning, is that, aside from incorporating things like running water, solar power, and even internet (the monks have an online gift shop and post the daily martyrology on their webpage), their way of life has remained essentially the same for 1500 years. The monks in the desert outside Abiquiu, NM are walking with Saint Benedict himself, a millennium and a half dead. I wonder if there is a way in our post-Enlightenment world to recapture the minds of Christians today in such a way that the thought of being a part of something bigger than themselves is not oppressive or marginalizing but rather liberating and empowering.

A Prayer from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you.
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness.
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me...
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before me.
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised. Amen.

A Prayer from Teresa of Avila

May nothing move you;
May nothing terrify you;
Everything passes;
God never changes.
Patience be all to you.
Who trusts in God
Shall never be needy.
God alone suffices.