Words for the journey - February 12, 2023
When you pray, don’t be like hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners so that people will see them. I assure you, that’s the only reward they’ll get. But when you pray, go to your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is present in that secret place. Your Father who sees what you do in secret will reward you.
When you pray, don’t pour out a flood of empty words, as the Gentiles do. They think that by saying many words they’ll be heard. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows what you need before you ask. Pray like this:
Our Father who is in heaven,
uphold the holiness of your name.
Bring in your kingdom
so that your will is done on earth as it’s done in heaven.
Give us the bread we need for today.
Forgive us for the ways we have wronged you,
just as we also forgive those who have wronged us.
And don’t lead us into temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.
- Matthew 6:5-13, CEB
I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.
- C.S. Lewis
More than anything, prayer helps me get my sense of humor back. It brings me back to my heart, from the treacherous swamp of my mind. It brings me back to the now, to the holy moment…
- Anne Lamott
This has been a hectic week, but it feels like I‘ve been saying that a lot lately. It feels like January catapulted us into a plethora of new gathering opportunities mixed with some amnesia about how we were “not going back to our pre-covid busyness”. This has been a hectic week, and when I hear myself say it again, it sounds like there’s going to be this magical moment when things settle down.
That magical moment thinking seems to find its way into more than just looking forward to downtime. See if this sounds familiar…
If I can just get this project done, then I can relax.
If I can just make it to this milestone, then I’ll be happier.
If I can just get to this point financially or relationally or career-wise, then life will be easier - if I can just make it there…then things will be better.
Before we know it, life can start seeming like something to get through, can’t it?
It’s not just our faith that needs some reimagining. It is so easy to caught up in going through the motions, moving from one thing to the next, missing the deeper flow - “the eternal now” theologian Paul Tillich calls it - the reason we are here, which is to LIVE, not to merely get through life.
Going through the motions is not a new human tendency. People have been doing it forever, even and especially within religion. At the core of the word religion, is the Latin word re-ligio, and it means reconnection (think re-ligament), but apparently, in Jesus’s time, instead of being a source of reconnection, religion for some had become a tool for separation.
I know - it’s so. hard. to imagine that happening today.
Isn’t it interesting that despite how much time and attention religious people spend trying to convert the “unchurched,” Jesus reserved most of his critique for the “churched” (aka those who considered themselves the insiders)? Talk about missing the point. Jesus was about restoring everyone and everything - those who see themselves as insiders will always struggle to see it.
In ancient religions, including Judaism, there were three central spiritual practices: almsgiving (or giving to the poor), fasting and prayer.
All three were practices of reorientation - their purpose was:
to help a person return to right relationship,
to keep a person grounded & humble,
in synch & in tune - in communion.
Spiritual practices enabled a person to see themselves as part of something bigger, not the whole thing. Apparently, these practices had made people pious instead. Some were using almsgiving, fasting and prayer to appear good in public. Spiritual practices were being used to put on a show.
The word Jesus uses is “hypocrite”. A hypocrite is a Greek term for a stage actor. Ancient actors wore masks, which allowed them to hide their true selves behind a fake identity. They could be one thing underneath, and another on the surface.
Not only were hypocrites dishonest & living a divided life; they were also long-winded. This is not to say that everyone who prays long-winded prayers is disingenuous; but, for those in early Christianity - for Matthew’s listeners, it could be a sign that you were still stuck believing in a God that needed to be impressed or appeased (the more words the better!), instead of a God who simply desires connection, presence & participation.
“Invited In”, Hand-carved block printed with oil-based ink on paper By Lauren Wright Pittman, Inspired by Matthew 6:1-21.
According to Jewish scholar, Amy Jill-Levine, rabbis referred to hypocrites (along with liars, scoffers and slanderers) as a class of people “who will not bask in the glory of the divine presence” (The Jewish Annotated New Testament, p. 66, Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition). Jesus says the attention they receive or the appearance of looking good will be their only reward. In other words, they will miss the deeper thing.
The art pictured to your right was created by Lauren Wright Pittman in response to this text and she asks:
“Does your outward action align with what’s going on inside of you? If we are more concerned with how our public prayers and acts of allyship are received [if we are more concerned with looking good to others and making sure they see us as good], are we actually praying? Are we actually being an ally?”
Jesus was not calling for the end of spiritual practices any more than he was calling for the end of religion. Spiritual practices still have a place, but they are there to fuel connection, not separation.
Jesus then gives us a prayer, and I wonder if he regrets doing so. He said to pray “like this” and of course, we took that literally. It became about praying correctly instead of staying connected.
I got together with my sister on Friday afternoon, which doesn’t happen often enough. We were supposed to meet in the morning, but she ran super late which was indicative of the kind of week she’d had. Not only had her week been hectic, too, but she had to deal with this fiasco....
My sister is a realtor, and when she arrived at a condo showing earlier in the week, her client was there waiting and she couldn’t get the lockbox to work. She tried everything. So she called the seller’s agent who finally told her to just break the lockbox.
So she did, only to discover that the reason the code didn’t work is that she was at the wrong condo. She’d been given the wrong address and had just inadvertently broken into someone’s home (!). At least my week didn’t include that.
I feel like for some of us, spiritual practices like prayer have become like trying to plug in the right codes into the wrong lock boxes. We feel the disconnect between our emerging faith and these practices & we don’t just want to pretend something fits that doesn’t. Yet, we aren’t sure what to do about it.
I’m noticing these days that prayer is just as often something I am pulled into as it is something I pursue. Whether I am brought to my knees by pain or by beauty or by love, prayer has become that space where I am reminded of what is essential, where I remember that I am not alone here and where I am invited to experience another, deeper layer of life. And that awareness helps me become more connected, more compassionate and more attentive to what is happening around me.
On Friday afternoon, it happened while standing in line at the Superette.
For some reason, I decided that last week was a good week to sign up to bring dinner to new neighbors who just had a baby. It’s something I love to do - but something I ran short on time to enjoy doing. At the last minute, I realized I was out of chili powder and ran to the little corner grocer at 7th and Pearl (aka The Superette). I might as well call this place “the corner chapel” because something about being there always sets me right.
In my rush, I was forced to stand still for a few minutes as I waited in a long line alongside a bunch of neighbors from all walks of life. I caught my breath. I looked around. I remembered that there’s enough - enough time, and enough of what really matters and I prayed the only prayer I can sometimes:
Ok. Thank you.
For many of us spiritual practices like prayer have felt disconnected from real life. Instead of leading us to become more loving & more just, they make us feel like we are pretending to be something we are not - like my sister trying to force something to fit in a box that just isn’t meant to.
We are not here to force or to fabricate anything, we are not here to perform but to become
more real,
more connected,
more compassionate,
more deeply human.
And we still need practices that lead us in that direction.
In the midst of his critique of pious religiosity, Jesus gave us a daring way to pray - alongside others (note it says our father), in a posture of trust in enough (give us this day our daily bread), while daring to reimagine (forgive our debts or the loans we can’t pay back as we do the same!).
Life is not something to get through - and it is not a show we put on - not even for God. Life is something to be lived - in deep connection to each moment, to each other and to the rest of creation.
If we pray this way, perhaps it will prepare us to live this way now - in the chaos, in the uncertainty, in the Superette and in all of the relationships that make life so beautiful, so hard and so holy.