1 Peter 1:3-17
Mark 14:27-42
“The function of prayer is not to
influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” Soren Kierkegaard
Historical perspective has everything to do with
understanding what brought on the “Dark Ages” and what finally brought western
Europe out of that spiritual decline so many centuries later. For our
purposes, it may be enough to know the Roman Empire under Constantine in the 4th
century legitimized the Church. Consequently, the power of the Church
rose and fell with the Empire itself since the power of the institutional
Church came from the Empire.
Without delving into a lot of historical detail, let
us remember that the real and legitimate and lasting power of the Holy Church comes from the Spirit of the
Living God and our willingness
to embrace the Eternal Word. Imagine, then, the limitations of the Church’s legitimate moral authority when we
grant to the “empire” the power to say “yay” or “nay” in the life of the Church.
It makes me think of the irony between our disdain for
Islam’s very rigid sharia law, the power of which comes from an “empire’s”
authority to control – and our demand for institutionalized moral laws. I’ll grant it is a tension not well
considered by many – including myself - because of the “rightness” of what we
believe to be good and true and moral.
Nevertheless, institutionalized moral, religious laws
were a disaster for the Dark Ages (hence the name) because the emphasis was
(and still is) directed at what one must not
do. The Gospel of our Lord, on the other
hand, emphasizes what the Church must
do in ministry, in service to others in life-changing ways not according to
what the “empire” will allow, not according to what tickles our fancy, but by
faithful devotion to a life of prayer in earnestly seeking The Father’s will.
It
must never be our declaration that “the empire (rather than the Kingdom of
Heaven) has come near”.
Yet this is the awkward position the Church finds
itself in today, but it is not because the “empire” has done anything (though many
are suspicious, and opinions vary regarding the overreach of the “empire” in
the life of the Church). Rather, we are
finding ourselves appealing to the “empire” in every election to … what? Give us back what we think we’ve lost? Protect our rights and privileges? Ask the “empire” to use its power to protect
the Church from … the “empire” itself?
The Benedict
Option, then, (named for the 4th-century monastic, not the former
pope) challenges us, the Church, the Body of Christ, the community of
believers, to return to our roots, to look into ourselves and to the ordered –
and ORDAINED - life of the Church to determine exactly who it is we are
appealing to for answers, for authority, for guidance, for protection, and even
for permission to live into the Covenant into which we are baptized. If we are clamoring for judges and senators
and presidents to be the guardians of the Holy Church, the Church is no longer
holy and no longer guarded.
So we turn to prayer – not as a “last resort” but as
recovery of the necessary, fundamental discipline; the order of the Church’s life
AND the disciple’s necessary service and contribution to that life. I know many, perhaps most, Christians would impatiently prefer “action” to “contemplation”,
but our actions must be informed by and bathed in prayer. It is what keeps us grounded in The Lord’s
Presence and Will. “Life as a Christian requires both contemplation and action [because
each] depends on the other. There is a reason Jesus retired to the desert
after teaching the crowds.” Rod Dreher, The
American Conservative, “The Benedict Option”
What this means is, first, we understand the nature of
prayer; and that nature cannot be understood or even appreciated without acknowledging
the contemplative nature of
prayer. This means we do not merely
recite a prayer, call it good, and then go about our business. Rather we take the time to fully engage in
and immerse ourselves into the very Presence of The Lord. This requires no distractions.
In Jesus’ devotion to His prayer time, it was
necessary for Him to disengage from the culture, from the crowds, and even from
His friends so He could be completely
with the Father without distraction. So
in order to fully connect with the Father, Jesus was following His own advice: “When
you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your
Father …” (Matthew 6:6).
Jesus’ life, His very being was entirely wrapped up in
His intimate connection to the Holy Father.
His prayer life was not incidental to His social life; rather His social
life was dependent on His devotion to prayer.
Jesus was not impulsive, it seems, because
He was undivided and uncompromised in His prayer time. If you or I were to recite a simple prayer “on
the fly”, it is likely we are already
on a particular mission, our minds are already
made up as to what we desire, and our prayer is not inclined to Divine Will as
much as it seeks Divine Endorsement of our own desires.
It is a form of the false narrative of the so-called “prosperity
gospel” we claim to reject. If not this,
then perhaps the obligatory, perfunctory prayer just to say we prayed –
rendering the undisciplined practice as empty as receiving Communion without
understanding what it means or being baptized but only getting wet, lacking
real resolve to follow Jesus. In each
instance, then, we are reminded of Jesus’ affirmation of The Lord’s words to
the prophet Isaiah: “They honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me”.
In every instance in which anything less than our
whole self is engaged in prayer, we come away empty and perhaps eventually
decide prayer doesn’t work; that we are better off simply operating for
conscience’ sake, just “being good”, doing feel-good “programs”, living into that
other false narrative of the “New Age” doctrine that we ourselves are our own “gods”.
Yet simply “being good” or living into our own
self-proclaimed doctrine will never be good enough because we are acting on our
own impulses, according to our own desires, and primarily for our own
sakes. A question was posed at Annual
Conference as to why things and persons are sometimes so nasty in the Church. It is because we are completely disengaged
from the very Presence that feeds us and sustains us and informs us.
Compare Jesus’ actions with Peter’s actions within
those last hours of Jesus’ life. Jesus
devoted Himself to prayer – ALONE - before His arrest maybe because He knew
there was the danger of His human impulse
to survive overtaking His spiritual need to stay on The Father’s
course. Peter, on the other hand, rather
than being connected to The Lord except by physical proximity, lied when
questioned, and then fled when he felt threatened.
Was it The Lord’s will that Peter survive to serve
another day? Maybe, but this misses the
point of our need to be in constant prayer – “on
the fly” to keep ourselves aware of The Lord’s presence in our daily living and
work, in our rooms with the door closed to be mindful of the reality of The
Lord in our homes, AND with the Body of believers for the sake of the Church’s
mission to be always mindful of The Lord’s reality in HIS Church – not OUR club.
Only in faithful prayer, then, can we know and
appreciate what it means to fully serve in The Lord’s Name rather than acting
according to our own desires. The ministries
of the Church cannot be based only on what we may feel like doing within a
particular “season” and only according to what we think is important and affordable; for our Lord, our God,
our Shepherd alone knows what He needs from us in every “season”; and only He
knows what it is we truly need for ourselves. Only in devoted prayer, then, will we ever
know what these are.
We may already be in the midst of a modern “Dark Age”
in which we have come to depend on the “empire” to subsidize and legitimize the
Church. If this is true – and I think it
must be because we seem to be more aware of the limits imposed by the “empire” – the only way out of the Dark and
into the Light is by our Lord and Shepherd.
Nothing grows in darkness. It is
long past time to turn on the Light of the Church, the very Light of the world
[for] (“You are the light of the world …” Matthew 5:14). Amen.
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