Holy Habits (Part 2): Prayer

Let us pray. Your word, O God, is a lamp to our

feet and a light to our path. By the power of

your Spirit, speak to us, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. Our second reading is from Exodus chapter

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

3. Let us listen together now for God's word

to us. Moses was keeping the flock of his father

-in -law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led

his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount

Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of

the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out

of a bush. He looked and the bush was blazing,

yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, I must

turn aside and look at this great sight and see

why the bush is not burned up. When the Lord

saw that he had turned aside to see, God called

to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. And he

said, Here I am. Then he said, Come no closer.

Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place

on which you are standing is holy ground. He

said further, I am the God of your father, the

God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God

of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was

afraid to look at God. The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Harry Cohn was the head of

Columbia Studios in the first half of the 20th

century, and one day his brother Jack suggested

to him that they produce a biblical epic. What

do you know about the Bible, Harry said. I bet

you 50 bucks you don't even know the Lord's Prayer.

After a moment, Jack began, Now I lay me down

to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Harry

reached into his pocket and pulled out a bill

and said, well, I'll be. I didn't think you knew

it. There is a very broad familiarity with prayer

in our culture. Broad, I said, not deep. But

virtually everyone has a sense of what we're

talking about. When we're talking about prayer,

there's a baseline understanding about prayer,

and that is that it is, in some way, speaking

to God. And very often, we speak to God by making

petitions, asking God for things, asking God

to do things. This is a very common understanding,

and it's not a misunderstanding. It's not wrong.

That is an important aspect of prayer, but of

course, it's limited. It's narrow. It's an incomplete

understanding of prayer. And because of that,

and because of how widespread that understanding

is, when we begin to think about prayer as a

spiritual discipline, we generally have a specific

idea of what that looks like, as in lots of regular,

lengthy, wordy conversations with God, which

maybe to us sounds onerous and time -consuming.

It sounds like it's a unique skill that only

some possess. And if we were to try and get down

on our knees for all that time, day after day,

we would probably find ourselves struggling to

find the words that we need, the right words,

the appropriate words, and maybe at the end of

it all feel frustrated by the outcomes. that

our prayers manage to accomplish. And so we look

at all of that and we say, prayer as a spiritual

discipline is not really for me. Today's stories,

the story of Elijah that we heard and the story

of Moses, they are not about getting down on

your knees and holding forth before God. They

are not about how to pray in order to get what

you ask for. They are not about... Which are

the right words to use when approaching God?

And yet, these stories are about prayer. But

they come at prayer a little bit sideways. But

putting them together helps us develop a better

idea of what prayer is and how we can make it

more a part of our daily lives, how we can embrace

it as a discipline. So the first story we heard

is a story, a brief snippet of a story of Elijah

the prophet. In chapter 18 of 1 Kings, Elijah

has just won a great contest. One prophet of

the Lord against hundreds of prophets of Baal

to see whose God is real, whose God is not. And

of course, it was Elijah's God who won. But fresh

off this victory, Elijah's life is threatened

by Jezebel the queen, so he runs and he hides

in a cave. God says to him there in the cave,

Elijah, what are you doing? And he says, I'm

afraid for my life. And God says, I am about

to pass by. And that's the part of the story

we heard. As Elijah sits there in the cave, there's

a great wind that comes through, ripping the

mountains apart. But God is not in the wind.

And then the earth shakes, and God is not in

the earthquake. And then there's a fire, and

God is not in the fire. And then there is the

sound of sheer silence, which in the King James

Version is a still, small voice. And then Elijah

steps out. and encounters God. When we look for

God, what exactly are we looking for? If God

were to appear among us right now, what sort

of sign would we expect to demonstrate God's

presence? How about a great wind? How about a

shaking of the earth or a great fire? To that

I say, all of the above. Any one of those signs

would be enough to have gotten me out of the

cave. Here comes the wind, strongest wind I've

ever seen. That's got to be God. Out I go. The

earthquake, the fire. I would step out of the

cave each time, and I would walk back in empty

-handed. I would expect to see God in the dramatic

and powerful sign. The Christian writer Henry

Nouwen once spent seven months living in a Benedictine

monastery, and he chronicled his experience there,

and he tells about a kind of fantasy that he

had. A fantasy that if he spent enough time there

in that monastery, if he dug deep enough into

his spiritual life, that God would appear in

some dramatic way. And when God appears in that

way, that now his sins, the ones he's been battling

with and struggling with, they would go away.

They would melt away. And he would be able to

fully commit himself to God. And he told the

abbot of the monastery. about this great hope

of his for his time there. And the abbot responded

to him by saying, you want God to appear to you

in the way your passions desire, but these passions

make you blind to God's presence now. We look

for God to show up like a lightning bolt, right?

When we pray and we ask for God to show up, We

are looking for sickness to be healed. We are

looking for a rupture to be repaired. We are

looking for hurt to be erased. We are looking

for wrongs to be righted. And when lightning

doesn't strike, we're disappointed. Or worse,

we just assume that God isn't listening, that

God doesn't care. We're looking for the wind,

but God is not in the wind. We're looking for

the earthquake, but God is not in the earthquake.

We're looking for the fire, but God is not found

there. The prophet Elijah, he witnesses all of

these things, but he sees through the noise,

he sees through the distraction, through the

appearance of power, through the flashy production,

and he was attuned To the sound of sheer silence,

the still small voice, he encountered God. That's

the first story. Second story takes us to Moses

in the desert. Moses has fled Egypt. He ran for

his life. And now he's living the quiet life.

He got married, had a child, and he's taking

care of his father -in -law's sheep. And in the

midst of his day -to -day work, this is his morning

commute. He's walking along with the sheep. He

sees that bush that's burning. And he hears God's

voice from the burning bush. Where do we look

for God? What places do we go? What places do

we look when we want to see or experience God?

Where do we imagine that we need to go to find

ourselves in God's presence? Is it a mountaintop?

Is it the beach in the early morning for a beautiful

sunrise? Is it a place of worship? The most interesting

thing to me about this story of Moses is that

it all hinges on one simple action of Moses.

And I wonder if you caught it as I read the story.

Moses sees the bush that's burning, but that's

not it. Hard to know how remarkable a thing that

is. Probably a little bit strange. But what catches

his attention is not that the bush is burning,

but that the bush burns. and isn't consumed.

And here's what Moses says, I must turn aside

and look. And then the text says that when the

Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God

called to him out of the bush. That's what God

was waiting for. God was waiting for Moses to

turn aside and look. God is there. God is present.

God is waiting. But Moses had to turn aside,

turn aside from the task at hand, from the planned

path of the morning, from the duties and the

distractions of the moment. Moses had to turn

aside. A few years ago, I was running in the

morning through the streets of our neighborhood.

It was dark out, and the sky was clear, and I

looked up at the sky, and I don't know why I

looked up. Running is boring, and I probably

was just looking around. But I look up, and just

at the moment that I look up, I see the most

astonishing meteor I have ever seen. Bright in

the sky, a long and sparkling tail. It was unforgettable.

It was amazing. And the first thing I thought

after seeing that was how lucky am I that I got

to see this sight. How many people are out right

now in this part of the world? How many people

got to witness what I just witnessed? But as

I kept running and kept thinking, my second thought

was, how many of these have I missed? How many

times has something of great beauty gone on above

me or around me and I haven't noticed, I haven't

looked, I haven't turned aside to see? The Dutch

painter Vincent van Gogh loved to walk. He would

walk for hours at a time, day after day. It was

a favorite habit of his. And as he did, he would

observe. He would absorb his ordinary surroundings.

And this was the nature of his art as well, to

depict ordinary people, ordinary places, but

to use his imagination and his gifts to draw

out what was beautiful about what was so... ordinary.

And he once wrote a letter to his brother. In

this letter, he wrote years before he even started

painting. And in this letter, he says this, find

things beautiful as much as you can. Most people

find too little beautiful. Find things beautiful.

Notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say find

beautiful things. To find beautiful things is

like a treasure hunt. Go out into this world

of boring, ugly things, and if you look hard

enough, you will find beautiful things. That's

not what he is saying. He says, find things beautiful.

For Van Gogh, beauty surrounds us, but we don't

attend to it. We don't turn aside to look. So

where do we look? Do we look to extraordinary

places, extraordinary moments? Do we assume that

God only rarely shows up? And the reason that

we don't see God is because we're just not the

lucky ones who end up in the right place at the

right time? Don't we tend to look for God like

we are on a treasure hunt, thinking that the

conditions have to be just right for God to show

up? that we have to sift through all of the places

where God is not present, all of the times where

God is not present, all of the experiences where

God is not present, hoping that if we're lucky,

we might find God somewhere, sometime, somehow.

God appears to Moses in an ordinary object. At

an ordinary time, but that's not enough. Moses

has to turn aside before he hears God's voice,

before he finds himself standing on holy ground.

But that holy ground is just dirt. It is as ordinary

as it comes. God can be found anywhere, anytime,

anyhow. Most people find too little beautiful.

Most people find too little holy. Elijah teaches

us that prayer reaches through and beneath the

flashy demonstrations, the outrageous distractions,

the obvious and the empty productions. Prayer

finds God in the sound of sheer silence. And

Moses teaches us to turn aside, to find God in

the most ordinary, to discover holy ground on

ordinary paths, and to hear God's call in the

midst of everyday life. One of the things that

I really miss about living in Michigan is the

corn. In August, the corn is amazing. We have

corn here. but it's not the same. And I miss

it. It turns out corn is a really remarkable

plant. You probably know how important it has

been in the Americas. It was domesticated here

thousands of years ago. But there's some mystery

surrounding the domestication of this delicious

grain. And that is that the closest genetic relative

to corn that scientists have found is a grain

called teosinte, and it's very small, and it

doesn't look very much at all like corn. But

that's just the beginning of the mystery. The

really important part of this is that teosinte,

like most grains, when it's ripe, it shatters.

And what that means is that when that head of

grain is ripe, if there is a small disturbance

like a wind or an animal that bumps this grain,

the grain explodes, flies off the head, which

of course is how the seed scatters. And those

seeds then, if they find good soil, they grow

and they produce fruit, right? Not so with corn.

A couple weeks ago, we had bought a bunch of

ears of corn to have with dinner, and I'm standing

over the trash can shucking this corn, and my

kids see what I'm doing, and they think it looks

fun, so they ask if they can help, and I say,

of course you can help. So they come over, and

they start trying to peel that husk off, and

all of them remark. on how difficult it is, layer

after layer, and you have to pull so hard, and

then when you're done, you've got all those strings

that you have to deal with, and they said, this

is not as fun as I thought it was going to be.

Corn requires human intervention in order to

grow. If an ear of corn falls off a stalk, lands

on the ground, as is, I would assume that the

husk decays, and the kernels find their way into

the soil and put down roots and grow again, but

that's not what happens. The ear will simply

rot on the ground. It cannot grow without the

human hand peeling the layers off of that husk

or a farm machine. I'll admit that's not as great

for a sermon. Either way, corn can't do it by

itself, right? It takes that intervention to

open it. so it doesn't waste away, so that it

can be fruitful. And this is what it means to

embrace prayer as a spiritual discipline. It

does not mean that we have to spend hours a day

on our knees, although it is good to be on our

knees from time to time. It does not mean that

we have to speak words upon words upon words,

though of course it is good to address God. What

it means is peeling back the protective layers

that we surround ourselves with, our busyness

and our distractions, our resentments and our

jealousies, our hurts and our grievances, our

insecurities and our inadequacies, all the things

that keep us from fruitfulness, all the things

that limit our growth, all the things that keep

our doors closed, that prevent us from sending

our roots down into the holy ground of life.

The theologian Walter Burghardt says that prayer

is a long, loving look at the real. To pray is

to be sensitive to the subtle and silent movements

of God all around us. To pray is to live with

open eyes and open hearts, ready to turn aside

and set foot on the holy ground of our everyday

lives. And to make prayer a discipline is to

cultivate a habit of attention, attending to

the things that we would otherwise ignore. When

we wait for God to appear like a lightning bolt,

we miss God's presence now. And God is present

now. And if we think that we can only meet God

in special moments and in special places, then

we will never turn aside to find God in the ordinary.

So may prayer be not just something that we do.

May it be how we choose to live. Open to the

living and present God. and ready to live fruitful

lives. Let us pray. God, we open ourselves to

you now and again and again and again, inviting

you to transform us, to tune our hearts so that

we can see the ways that you are moving around

us, the ways that you are at work in this world,

and the ways that you have called us to serve.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.