THE COURAGE TO PRAY OUT LOUD

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle
Sunday September 24, 2006 [Rosh Hashanah, 5767]

Where is the Dwelling Place of God?

God Dwells wherever we will let God in.

This is the Ultimate Purpose: to let God in. But we can let God in only where we really stand, where we live, where we have a true life. If we maintain holy [conversation] with the little world entrusted to us, if we help the holy spiritual substance to accomplish itself in that section of Creation in which we are living, then we are establishing, in this our place, a dwelling for the Divine Presence --Martin Buber


I thought I’d start out on just a slightly more academic note than I usually do , just so I can create a little bit of context for some things I want to say later on. But first I want to make it clear that by “academic” I don’t mean “irrelevant;” I simply mean that I’m going to talk briefly about some topics that don’t normally get much discussion outside of a classroom. And by “slightly” I mean that what you are about to hear does contain some pretty broad generalizations, and that in no way will there be anything even slightly resembling a midterm....

But consider for a moment that, despite their obvious differences, the three major “Abrahamic” faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are all basically variations on a single theme -- the theme of Radical Monotheism, which declares that God is ONE and everything in heaven and on earth is under God’s dominion.

Islam is the “youngest” and most recent of these faith traditions to emerge, but in many ways it is also still the most foreign to Americans, and also the most “traditional” (or at least least modern) of the three, which is to say that it has been the least influenced by the secular philosophy of post-Enlightenment European Modernism, and more recently the relativistic philosophy of 20th century postmodern Structuralist/ Deconstructionist critical “theory.” God is still sovereign in the Muslim world; the word Islam itself means simply “to submit,” which makes a Muslim someone who willingly submits to the will and the word of Allah.

Christianity, on the other hand, is probably the most innovative (which is to say, the most derivative) of the three faith traditions. Christians have “borrowed” freely and without apology from every culture they have ever encountered, and have assimilated those beliefs into the “One True Faith” simply by claiming the ideas of other cultures as their own. As a result, Christianity is at once both the most diverse and historically the most contentious of the three faith traditions; and in effect invented the ideas of Toleration and Secularism simply to put an end to centuries of theologically-inspired religious warfare.

From the destruction of Herod’s temple (in the year 3830), to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 of the Common Era, (and in reality for even longer and still today) Judaism has been a religion of the Diaspora, a civilization in exile, confronted by the challenge of maintaining the integrity of it’s own cultural traditions while surviving within a surrounding dominant culture, and balancing the pressure to assimilate with the need to get along. Judaism’s view of pluralism is not a question of learning to practice tolerance, but rather the experience of being “the Other,” and subject to either benign neglect or outright extermination depending upon the whims of their more powerful neighbors.

All three faith traditions understand the Hebrew Bible as “Scripture,” although for each tradition that understanding means something a little different. And all three religions also have additional religious writings that are uniquely their own. For Muslims, the Qu’ran is understood to have been recited by Muhammad, in Arabic, in precisely the exact same words that God had the angel Gabriel place into his mouth. It is God’s final and most perfect revelation to humanity, and therefore the words themselves are Holy, not even to be translated into other languages.

Christianity created a “New” Testament to compliment the scriptures it had inherited from Judaism, and although in historical terms both text and canon are clearly the product of human agency, there are many Fundamentalist Christians today who also subscribe to the doctrines of literal verbal inspiration, and textual inerrancy -- essentially that the Bible was dictated word for word into the ears of its various authors exactly the way God wanted it to be, and is without mistake in either fact or doctrine.

Judaism, however, created the Talmud -- a collection of oral tradition and Rabbinic commentary on the Torah, which describes, explains (and often debates the meaning of) the traditional 613 commandments or mitzvot which stand at the heart of Jewish Law, or halakhah. Devotional practices like keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath, even the study of Scripture and the Talmud itself, are all part of halakhah -- which means literally to “walk,” as in “to walk with God.”

Which brings me at long last to the subject of Prayer. Within Islam, prayer is one of the five pillars of the faith -- it is a highly physical, corporate and communal act which takes place at fixed intervals five times daily. Christianity, as you might expect, has a very eclectic view of prayer: there are rote devotional prayers like the Rosary, well-rehersed public prayers in churches and on other “ceremonial” occasions, including the familiar “Lord’s Prayer” attributed to Jesus himself; and, of course, a rich tradition of private and spontaneous prayer, silent prayer, contemplative prayer and meditation...which also go back to New Testament admonitions attributed to Jesus about going into one’s closet to pray, and avoiding ostentatious prayers which draw unwarranted attention to the one who is praying, rather than focusing attention upon the One [God] being prayed to....

The role of prayer in Judaism in some ways resembles the practices of Christianity and Islam, but in others goes far beyond them. When I was living on Nantucket, the congregation I served there shared its building with a seasonal synagogue. Every spring, when the Unitarians moved upstairs into the large, (and largely unheated) 400 seat 19th-century sanctuary, the members of Congregation Shirat Ha Yam would move into the much more intimate downstairs quarters of Hendrix Hall, where they held their Friday evening Shabbat services all summer long. Until, of course, the ten days which come each year right around now, when the two congregations would swap accommodations, so that the members of the synagogue might celebrate the Jewish High Holy days -- Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kipper, and the “Days of Awe” which fall between them -- in a space large enough to comfortably accommodate all of the Jews on the island. And I still have vivid memories of Rabbi Rachel Sabbath (isn’t that a great name for a Rabbi?) blowing her Shofar (in the middle of my sermon) in order to summon her people to repentance, so that they might be prepared to atone for their sins of the past year on Yom Kippur, asking forgiveness both of God and of one another, and thus beginning the New Year not only with a closed book, but also a clean slate.

The centrality of prayer in the Jewish tradition is profound. For an observant Jew, prayer is constant practice interwoven into their daily routine -- an on-going reminder of God’s presence in the world, and in life itself, even during the most ordinary activities of everyday living. Jewish prayers basically fall into three categories. There are prayers of Adoration or Blessing, which are essentially expressions of wonder and amazement at the Creator’s generosity toward us all. There are prayers of Thanksgiving and Confession, which acknowledge our Gratitude and our own fundamental unworthiness to receive the blessings God has given. And then there are Prayers of Petition, which essentially ask God for a favor.

Yet even these categories don’t really begin to describe the profound role that prayer potentially plays in the life of a truly observant Jew. There are prayers for before one gets out of bed in the morning, thanking God for returning the soul to the body, and prayers for when one retires to bed at night; prayers to recite before performing any mitzvah (such as lighting a candle or washing your hands) or enjoying any material pleasure; prayers for all sorts of special or unusual occasions and occurrences; formal prayers to be recited at services; or before and after meals; literally, prayers for almost every kind of situation you can think of. And the point is NOT that Jews can’t get through a day without praying. The point of prayer in the Jewish tradition is to cultivate an introspective awareness of one’s role in the universe and one’s relationship with God, so that one is constantly mindful of that role, and that relationship, in everything one does.

This principle of “mindfulness” or kavvanah (which is sometimes also translated as “concentration” or “intent”) is essential to creating an effective attitude of prayer. Without it, one is merely going through the motions and mouthing the words...reciting rather than really praying. The basic awareness that one is talking to God, that one intends to pray and has cleared one’s mind of other thoughts and distractions, is what keeps routine prayer authentic rather than empty and hollow.

Spirituality is a profound thing, but it can (and should be) also a very simple and mundane thing. We often think of “spiritual” time as time set aside from other, more worldly things. It may be as simple as time spent sitting in a circle around a candle reading poetry aloud, or lying silently on one’s back in a meadow looking up at the sky; but still it is time set aside from the “real world” to focus on spiritual things. But a discipline of prayer which acknowledges the sacred in every daily and mundane activity we experience reminds us of the constant presence of the spiritual in our lives in a way that is difficult to replicate through any other practice.

This brings me to the next point I want to make about prayer, which is the importance of regular practice itself. Prayer, (or any form of worship, really), is a skill or an ability which one can learn and improve through practice. If you’re not satisfied with your own spiritual life, if you tend to feel more frustrated than inspired by your attempts to pray, or your experience of worship in general, it’s probably because you aren’t doing it often enough. [As we heard in our reading], learning how to pray effectively is like learning a musical instrument or going to the gym. The desired outcome often depends less on the quality of the experience than the consistency of one’s participation: I don’t care how good your personal trainer is, if you’re only working out once a month (rather than daily, or even three times a week) you aren’t going to experience very good results. So why should we think that our spiritual lives are any different?

The Talmud teaches that when we ask God for a favor, we need to keep our expectations reasonable. Pray for wisdom, pray for courage, pray for guidance or patience or fortitude -- and, if you must, pray for a miracle, knowing that miracles are few and far between. But don’t pray for something that is well within your own reach, and then blame God when your prayers are answered only with silence. Make the effort. Overcome your frustrations. Judaism teaches us all to Praise the Creator of the Universe for the blessings we have already received, and to Give Thanks for having received them despite our own unworthiness. And maybe then our other prayers will be answered with something more than silence.

This brings me to the last thing I want to talk about today, which is the language of prayer, and the challenge of learning to Pray Out Loud. The Talmud teaches that one may pray in any language they understand, but many Jews feel that it is preferable to pray in Hebrew, since “Hebrew is the language of Jewish though.” Muslims, of course, pray only in Arabic; and I know of many Catholics who still miss the Latin Mass. There’s a wonderful Hassidic story about an unlettered man who wanted to pray in Hebrew, but did not know the language. So he went to the Shul and recited over and over again the only Hebrew he knew: the Hebrew alphabet. When the Rabbi asked him what he was doing, the man replied: “The Holy One, Blessed is He, knows what is in my heart. I will give Him the letters, and He can put the words together.”

For my own part, I have often wondered in the past whether it was possible to pray without words -- knowing that God knows what is in my heart even before I do. Having grown up a Unitarian, which (like many faith traditions produced by the Radical Reformation, tends to be highly individualistic and favors personal piety over public performance) I tend to prefer private, silent, contemplative prayers, along with practices like meditation and journal writing; and am by nature a little skeptical of the entire idea of prayer to begin with, especially sanctimonious and overly ceremonial group prayer on public occasions, which I’ve so often seen abused as a instrument of imposed conformity and social control.

When I was serving our congregation in Midland Texas, we competed in an ecumenical church basketball league against all the other congregations in town: Baptists and Methodists and Roman Catholics... congregations which often had their own gyms, as well as thousands of members from which to draw players to form multiple teams of various levels of skill. At age 32, I was the youngest player on our squad of eight...and possibly the most athletic as well, so you can just imagine what it was like to try to keep up with our opponents. And there was always that awkward moment, right before tip-off, when the referee would gather both teams at center court, and invite someone to lead the entire group in prayer. Generally we Unitarians all looked at our shoes until someone from the other side spoke up; until that one fateful night when the referee asked specifically whether our team, as visitors there in the “Gym of the Lord,” would like to offer the prayer that evening, and of course all of my teammates looked directly at me....

Now obviously, as a minister, I’d prayed out loud in public before... generally in church, with a script, and a nice long “moment of silence” in my hip pocket to finish things off; or perhaps a brief table grace I had memorized, or something else I had written out in advance. But this was different. This was crunch time. And so we all clasped hands there at center court, Unitarians and Baptists alike; and I prayed. I just said out loud what I was feeling in my heart about what I thought we all needed to hear while standing there in the the Gym of the Lord, in the presence of the Spirit of Creation itself. I took my time and didn’t hurry or go searching for fancy language or turns of phrase; and pretty soon I was finished, and it was over... and I could tell that the ref in particular had been moved by my prayer, because afterwards I noticed him nodding in agreement, and EVERY questionable call that night went our way, and I made it all the way to the fourth quarter before finally fouling out.

It still wasn’t enough for us to win, but it was the start of a big change in my life, because from that day forward I made up my mind that I would no longer be afraid to pray out lout, and that whenever I was asked unexpectedly to pray in public, I would simply take a moment to center myself, to connect as best I could with all the people around me, to focus my attention on the real presence of the Spirit of God... and to say out loud what I was feeling in my heart, without hurrying or searching for the perfect words, in the hope that whatever I had to say would somehow be heard by whoever needed to hear it....

It’s a practice I heartily recommend to all of you as well....

Pray with me now, won’t you?

Mysterious Source of all that is.
We come here today with humble, grateful hearts...
Hoping to have them filled with hope...
Hoping to have them filled with love...
Hoping to have them filled with the Spirit of Life itself,
that creative spirit through which all things are made new.

Teach us how to open our hearts, that they might be filled with a wisdom that surpasses the wisdom of the world, and a peace that passes understanding itself....

Amen. And Blessed Be.


READING: “The Need for Prayer”

by Tracey R Rich (Judaism 101 www.jewfaq.org)

Many people today do not see the need for regular, formal prayer. "I pray when I feel inspired to, when it is meaningful to me," they say. This attitude overlooks two important things: the purpose of prayer, and the need for practice.

One purpose of prayer is to increase your awareness of G-d in your life and the role that G-d plays in your life. If you only pray when you feel inspired (that is, when you are already aware of G-d), then you will not increase your awareness of G-d.

In addition, if you want to do something well, you have to practice it continually, even when you don't feel like doing it. This is as true of prayer as it is of playing a sport, playing a musical instrument, or writing. The sense of humility and awe of G-d that is essential to proper prayer does not come easily to modern man, and will not simply come to you when you feel the need to pray. If you wait until inspiration strikes, you will not have the skills you need to pray effectively. Before I started praying regularly, I found that when I wanted to pray, I didn't know how. I didn't know what to say, or how to say it, or how to establish the proper frame of mind. If you pray regularly, you will learn how to express yourself in prayer.