“Who needs prayer?”
Today’s selection ties the ideas from Monday and Wednesday neatly together. Why, in a Unitarian Universalist setting, where people believe in “at most, one god,” is prayer an important part of so many congregations’ liturgy?
What is prayer if it is not talking to a god?
Rev. John Cullinan explored these very questions in this sermon, “Prayer,” preached at the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, New Mexico this November 4th.
For consideration: Do you pray? Why or why not? Do you think prayer has a place in your congregation’s worship life? Why or why not?
Prayer
by Rev. John Cullinan
I.
I have had a rocky relationship with prayer. Even in my early life as a Roman Catholic, prayer was never a large part of my routine, outside of Sunday Mass. When I put aside the church in my early adulthood, I put aside all thought of prayer as well. And when I returned to the church through the doors of Unitarian Universalism, I returned to a congregation that did not, as a rule, pray. I assumed it was not a UU practice, and at the time, I didn’t feel as though I was missing anything.
My reconnection with prayer began during my time as a hospital chaplain. Prayer is, more often than not, the stock in trade of the chaplain. I assumed I was going to have deep theological conversations with the sick and the dying. I can’t begin to tell you why I assumed that. To say it was a false assumption is being kind.
No, what most folks wanted in the hospital, patients and families alike, was prayer. And I was going to have to find a way to be with them in they way they needed me. I didn’t trust myself to do it “right” in those days. I didn’t feel as though I had an authentic Unitarian Universalist vocabulary for prayer, and I was fearful of winging it. And, since most of the patients in the hospital were Catholic, it seemed logical to fall back on the familiar words of my past.
And so, one morning, I entered the room of a gentleman on my ward. He smiled as I approached him, genuinely delighted to have a visitor.“Good morning,” I said. “I’m the chaplain.”
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Would you pray with me?”
And I agreed. I’ll start with the Lord’s Prayer, I thought. Everyone knows the Lord’s Prayer.
Everyone except me, that is.
It started off just fine: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …” and on.
‘Round about “daily bread,” to borrow an actor’s idiom, I went up. I could not remember the words. At all. I had a look on my face that can only be described as one of sheer terror.
What’s next?? I panicked. Daily bread … something about trespassing …
Sensing my distress, and yet still smiling, my patient let me off the hook.
“It’s OK,” he said, “it’s a blessing you’re just here.”
I wasn’t quite sure who was ministering to whom in that moment. Those were certainly the words I needed to hear in that moment. They helped me realize that if my presence in the room was what was most important in that moment, then the words I spoke were just a bonus. I began to step out on a limb and try my own prayer, off the cuff.
But, it was hard and I never felt entirely comfortable doing it. I just did not, I felt, possess the right magic words that would call comfort into the room. By the time I finished my hospital semester, I thought I was done with prayer for good.
Two years later, I was starting my internship at my teaching congregation. I was gung ho for the experience. I had fire in my belly. I was going to get out of the classroom, and write killer sermons, and do what I loved most: preach.
I looove to preach. I don’t know if you’ve figured that out about me yet.
Imagine my dismay, then, when I discovered I’d only be delivering six sermons throughout the entire church year.
I was crushed.
“What will I be doing all the other Sundays?” I asked.
“On the Sundays you don’t preach,” I was told, “you’ll be giving the prayer.”
Prayer?
Me?
Have I shared with you my shaky history with prayer?
And anyway, I thought we’d rejected all that. I certainly had.
Who needs prayer?
II.
It’s another one of those trigger words isn’t it?
Prayer.
It is one of the most commonly recognized and, at the same time, completely misunderstood religious practices.
Everybody knows what prayer is.
Even someone who’s never set foot in a church in their lives knows what prayer is. Images and myths about prayer permeate popular culture.
It’s an unavoidable phenomenon.
In the popular psyche, prayer equals asking some higher power for some material good or personal attribute one doesn’t already have — and maybe shouldn’t have.
Think for a moment, how most chidren’s prayer is presented within the popular understanding:
Dear God, Please make Santa give me a basketball for Christmas. Amen
The wants are simple as children, and as the child grows to adulthood, the idea of prayer doesn’t grow any more sophisticated, and the wants just get bigger and bigger, until we end up with a cottage industry of phenomena like The Secret, or Joel Osteen and his “prosperity gospel,” or any other of a myriad of hucksters masquerading as enlightened teachers telling anyone who’ll listen (and pay for the privilege) that that million dollars and the 10 bedroom mansion and the luxury car they’ve been wanting is just one prayer away.
The entire message of Jesus can be wrapped up for these folks in the words “ask and you shall receive.” And the ask is for something considerably more than “daily bread.”
All the while, the huckster gets richer, and we’re no closer to the million dollars or the house or the car.
And if this is what prayer is in the great national psyche, then of course we reject it.
And we’re right to. Because what most people can be seen praying for in public is selfish or obscene — or both.
And furthermore, why would we want anything to do with a God who’d answer prayers like that in the first place?
Too right, we don’t need prayer.
We’re better off without it.
And yet, every week I stand up here and invite you all to join me in prayer.
So, obviously this is not the end of the sermon.
III.
What do I mean when I say prayer? Who, or what, if anything, am I praying to?
To find my answer, I need to reach far back into time and across an ocean.
In the deserts of Egypt, as early as the third century of the common era, the men who would be known as the Desert Fathers began to gather into community. They were in pursuit of a life of prayer — not prayer as petition or a shopping list, but prayer as a way of life, an intentional practice in which all action, be it contemplative or physical, was directed towards an exploration of the interior of the heart, to discover their untapped gifts so that they could bring them forward into community and join them with their brothers in service of humanity and of their God.
To sing together was prayer, to silently meditate was prayer, to prepare food was prayer — all of that prayer aimed towards naming the values and the purpose of the community. And when they prayed in the name of Jesus, they were not summoning a divine gift-giver, but were instead calling forth an image of how they felt the world should be, bringing into their consciousness an exemplary life as a blueprint for their own.
Prayer, then, defined the community, gave it purpose, and bound it together.
As I began to pray with my teaching congregation each week, this is the purpose I began to see, as well:
To evoke an image of what the community should be.
To remind us of our core values.
To name those values is a powerful act, and a necessary one, in any community.
For almost as long as they have existed, both houses of the United States Congress have employed chaplains, a role which over the years has expanded to one of a full-time counselor and advisor to our elected officials. Every session of congress opens with a prayer from the chaplain or designated guest.
Now, we can debate the necessity or legality of the federal government employing a full time minister to pray for and with our legislators at some other time. I contend this morning that if there ever was a body of people who needed a constant reminder of the values they’re supposed to uphold, it’s the members of the United States Congress.
A few years back, while aimlessly flipping through TV channels, I happened to land on C-SPAN, and saw the formal convening of the second session of the 108th Congress. In the Senate chambers, their new chaplain, Dr. Barry C. Black, former chief of the Navy Chaplain Corps, delivered the invocation. Amidst the usual acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty (another element of questionable appropriateness we can discuss at a later date), I heard Rev. Black speak what was unmistakably a reminder to the Senate of their purpose:
“Lord … May we embrace a humility that seeks first to understand instead of striving to be understood. Deliver us from a false patriotism that would render unto Caesar what belongs to You.”
I had to look back to the text in the Congressional Record to be sure I’d heard what I thought I’d just heard. This was January of 2004, less than a year into the Iraq War and a with presidential election season about to get underway in earnest. If there was any reminder our fractured political body needed to hear in that moment, it was that.
Whether they listened or not is another story. But the model, the paragon of their purpose, still needs to be held before their eyes on a regular basis. Repeated often enough, how long before someone takes it truly to heart? How long before that someone starts to push at the community to become what it should be?
And that is the real purpose of prayer in the public setting, especially in worship. Prayer is not the cosmic shopping list, or the magic words of comfort. It is a public acknowledgment of a process of becoming — the community that is becoming the community that should be.
It is because of this communal focus that I choose the word prayer. I know many who prefer the word “meditation” to “prayer” — but meditation is only one aspect of prayer, a focus on the inner workings of the heart and spirit, an activity that, at its best, leads back into the communal reflection of the broader prayer.
Prayer has become for me, even more than the sermon, the most important part of worship. And that’s saying something, coming from someone who gets so much joy from preaching.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that the two, prayer and worship, are essentially linked. Worship is a wonderful Old English word that means simple “worth-shaping” — giving shape to what we find, ultimately, worthy.
To worship is to give a name to our values and our ultimate concerns. And the intent of the pastoral prayer is just that.
Why do I place the prayer above the sermon?
Think of the work of the congregation as that of building a fire. It is a fire that grows out of our passion for what is right and just and true.
That fire requires a spark, a glowing coal at its heart in order to burn bright enough and hot enough.
The sermon is fuel for the fire. It’s specifics and it’s meat for discussion. The fuel t can only feed the fire if the ember is already there and well cared for.
The prayer within worship is the act of tending to that spark — the values and concerns that sit at the heart of this community. It is a reminder of our most essential needs for being together. To borrow a phrase from the poet, Archibald MacLeish - to pray is to “blow on the coal of the heart” of this community.
You’ve probably noticed that the prayer doesn’t vary much from week to week. Some of the language may change, but the essential sentiments remain much the same. They are the images of this community I wish to invoke:
The gracious and beloved spirit of community
The circle of care and concern
All the milestones of life that connect us and are embraced in that circle
The potential of the circle to sustain us.
The worthiness of each person to a place in that circle
These are just some of the basics of the model of community I wish to build. Before I preach one word, these are the images we need to call to mind.
These are the images I need to call to mind.
We must blow on the coal of the heart, tend to the spark of the community, or the fuel will only smother it before it can grow.
Prayer is the blueprint for community. And in turn, as the community grows, its work and its process becomes the prayer.
But my colleague, L. Annie Foerster, says it best, in this, her opening prayer from an annual worship service of the UUMA several years ago:
“Let us create a prayer together:
At the center of the gathered community dwells the Holy. We are the prayer, each and all.
One by one, we come to this place — whole and broken, commencing and concluding, laughing and weeping. And soul by soul the prayer begins. ‘Spirit of Life and Love …’
Two by two, we greet one another — smiling, nodding, speaking, embracing. And in relationship, the prayer continues. ‘Spirit of Life and Love, where we meet is a sacred space …’
Moment by moment the circle builds, pulsing like four hundred heartbeats. We fill the circle with our breath; we inspire. The circle fills us with wealth; we are inspirited. The prayer rises on our very breathing together. ‘Spirit of Life and Love, where we meet is a sacred space and we are inspired by one another’s presence …’
This circle will not, cannot, go on forever, yet this circle will never die. What each of us finds here is what we are not. It makes us whole. It gives us strength to go out in the world beyond this holy community, beyond this sacred space, to begin yet another prayer: Let us pray:
Spirit of Life and Love, where we meet is sacred space and we are inspired by one another’s presence. At the center of the gathered community dwells the Holy. We are the prayer, each and all. We are the prayer, each and all. Amen.” (Foerster, L. Annie. For Praying Out Loud, Skinner House Books.)
So may it be.
Source: “Prayer,” by Rev. John Cullinan, pastor of the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, New Mexico, delivered November 4, 2007, used with permission (unless he wanted to sleep on the couch, that is …).
Tags: community, connection, covenant, dreaming, John Cullinan, L. Annie Foerster, prayer
