We make space for prayer and meditation in our Sunday worship, but prayer is also an individual spiritual practice for some. Prayers come in many types, and for Unitarian Universalists “praying” has many forms and meanings.
We are talking this Fall about spiritual practices.
We started last month talking about spiritual practices that are done collaboratively within a spiritual community. Spiritual practices that require several people practicing together, each adding their piece to the collective whole. Spiritual practices of this type include practices like communal worship, such as we do every Sunday; singing together, as when we sing hymns in worship. You could also include under this communal practice category religious education when the members of a spiritual community gather together for a class, or scripture study, or a discussion group. You could also include under this category the spiritual practice of prayer in the case where a worship leader says to the congregation, “Let us pray” and then leads the community in a collective prayer. The operative word, there, being, “us.”
But mostly, when we pray, if you pray, it’s a solitary action. You pray silently, alone. During our worship on Sunday there is a time for meditation and prayer. You might pray, then, surrounded by your community, but your prayer is a solitary spiritual practice: you alone, with your own thoughts and feelings.
In the Gospel of Matthew, just before Jesus introduces the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gives this advice about what the spiritual practice of prayer should look like (Matthew 6:6-8). He says:
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
So, outside the digs at street preachers and pagans, Jesus’ advice, according to Matthew is to pray privately, and to keep it short.
Jesus doesn’t say that prayer should be silent, necessarily. He says to pray in your room with the door closed. So alone, but perhaps speaking quietly, or perhaps, just thinking your prayer.
And Jesus says not to “keep on babbling” which may mean to keep your prayer brief, but it could also mean that praying doesn’t require words at all. It may mean that once you’ve expressed in your prayer what you need to articulate in words, that you can then be silent, but continue praying.
Perhaps Jesus means that prayer doesn’t have to be words, spoken out loud, or words articulated silently in your thoughts, but prayer can use the non-language, language of the heart or the spirit. The feeling of prayer. The sense that you know deeply what is moving in your spirit and your inner feelings of care and compassion and love and hope commune directly with the universal spirit of care, compassion, love, and hope, so there is no need to formulate words around those feelings. You don’t need to explain your prayer. Just pray.
Maybe prayer can be “service” to others, as in the Unitarian affirmation statement arranged by L. Griswold Williams that Wendy read as our opening words this morning. Perhaps prayer is not an intentional time of “praying” but prayer is simply an attitude about the way we live our life, appearing constantly in our every thought and deed.
There’s a famous quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi (although there’s no evidence that he ever actually said it) “Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary, use words.” The best testimony for a healthy spiritual life, is the living not the testifying.
St. Paul writes in his letter to the Christian community in Thessalonia (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18), and he did write this, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
Pray continually.
This is a pretty hard commandment for those of us who hardly ever pray at all. Or never pray. But here’s what I want to say about prayer.
Intellectually, prayer makes no sense. The form of prayer that asks God or some spirit of the universe to do something supernatural for us, or for someone we love, makes no sense. It’s “bad theology.”
Imagine, to use an example, a mother whose son is about to go to war, praying, “Please keep my boy safe.”
If there is a universal spirit of divine love, greater even than our human love, then certainly that spirit of love already wants to keep the boy safe, just as much as the mother does. As Jesus says in Matthew, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” The universal spirit of divine love doesn’t need a prayer to be persuaded to love the boy, the universal spirit of love already loves the boy.
And if there is a universal spirit of love with supernatural power to alter events in the natural world, in other words, capable of keeping a boy safe, when otherwise confronted with some danger, then you would have to logically, intellectually, wonder, “how can such a supernatural power exist?” Where is the evidence for such a supernatural power? And upon what evidence would you ever be able to distinguish the action of a supernatural power from the kinds of natural powers (some of which are quite amazing) that we see everyday?
And then the further logical, intellectual question: if such a supernatural power does exist, capable of keeping boys safe in times of danger, and that power is attached to a universal spirit of divine love greater than even a mother’s love for her own child, why doesn’t that supernatural power keep every mother’s child safe, at all times? And certainly, what kind of system would it be, where divine protection is only available to those who pray about it first? Certainly not a divine system, nor a loving one.
So, let’s admit, that there is no intellectual reason to pray.
But.
We are more than intellectual. Unitarian Universalists pride ourselves on being smart, about religion, and other things. We are smart. Good for us. But we are more than smart. We are more than brains. We are also hearts, and spirits, and feelings, and emotions, and inarticulate cares, compassion, love, and hope.
When I stand beside the chalice as you come forward to participate in our ritual of Joys and Sorrows, I pray for each of you as you take your moment at the altar. I don’t know what joy or sorrow is turning in your heart as you hold the stone, but I pray with you. I pray my love for you. I pray for your health and healing. I pray my hope that you might feel my feelings as companionate to your own, that in your joy or sorrow you are not alone. Your spiritual community is with you.
And when I take a final stone and drop it into the bowl of water at the end of the ritual, I say a specific prayer. I pray for my husband. I pray for a friend of mine who is going through a difficult experience with cancer right now. I pray for my mother and father. Sometimes I pray for the country. I pray for folks facing wildfires or other natural disasters. I pray for this church. I pray for every person in the congregation. It isn’t necessary to use words.
How ungenerous it would be to tell that mother praying for the safety of her boy that her prayer is silly. That at that moment of heartbreak, her prayer makes no sense. We are more than sense. Let’s debate our theology in religious education classes and not at the altar, or at the bedside, or on the sidewalk as our loved one steps into a car to be taken away from us toward an uncertain future.
“Please, keep my boy safe.” is the expression of the heart and the soul, not the brain. It’s the heart’s longing, the plea of a mother’s love, who knows the danger of the world. It is not a prayer that asks God to insert God’s presence into a situation where God would otherwise be absent, it is the act of the mother, inserting herself, into the situation, hoping to surround her boy with a protective bubble of mother’s love as he steps away into a situation where she cannot be present.
Ev’ry time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart, I will pray.
Yes, ev’ry time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart, I will pray.
The moment I wake up
Before I put on my makeup
I say a little prayer for you
And while I’m combing my hair now
And wondering what dress to wear now
I say a little prayer for you
What Aretha is really saying, and anyone in love is singing and praying along with her, “Forever and ever, you’ll stay in my heart and I will love you, forever.”
Don’t let you mind stop your heart from praying.