The season of Lent is nearing its end. This is our final Sunday in our worship series that

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Alexina Pitts
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1 A Season of Prayer: Sounds of Silence Psalm 25:1-10, Mark 10:35-45 March 25, 2012 UUMC The season of Lent is nearing its end. This is our final Sunday in our worship series that examines the Psalms for what they can teach us about prayer. We have explored: The obstacles that we find in our attempts to build a deeper prayer life; The questions we have about what is appropriate for prayer. Can we get angry at God? If God knows everything, why do we pray? What kind of good does prayer do? The side-effects of prayer - the blessing-overflow that sometimes produces surprising results. We have talked about changing the way we think about prayer: moving it from something we do at a certain time and in a certain way, to anything we do or experience that brings us to a closer relationship with God. Nevertheless I have to admit to you that I still have a picture of prayer as something soothing and calming; prayer time is or should be -- an oasis of peaceful silence amid the cacophony of my daily life. Which is why the psalms can be so jarring so many of them feel like the opposite of prayer. They are not peaceful, they are angry. They are not calming, they are upsetting. They are not soothing, they seem to shine a spotlight on their enemies and then charge into violent battle against them. Kevin Adams, whose book, 150, has been very helpful to me in preparing this series on the psalms, says that most of us try to steer clear of conflict in our prayers. We aim for the kind of 1

2 prayer that will lower our blood pressure and raise our general level of happiness. We prefer our prayer to serve as a mute button that disables the noisy conflicts of life, leaving us in a peaceful state of unbreakable inner tranquility. In an episode of Seinfeld, Frank father of Seinfeld s friend George has been told by his doctor that he needs to learn how to relax. Whenever he feels his blood pressure rise, he s supposed to say, Serenity now. The episode opens with Frank in the back seat of George s car. Estelle, Frank s wife and George s mother, is in the front seat. Frank orders Estelle to slide her seat forward so he can have more leg room. When Estelle seems unable or unwilling to cooperate, Frank shouts Serenity now! The exclamation surprises George and Estelle and they ask him where it came from. Frank tells them he s following doctor s orders, and George asks Are you supposed to yell it? Frank responds, The man wasn t specific. Frank s high-decibel mantra is the kind of prayer we often think we need: a magic pill, easy and effective, to calm our frazzled nerves. But it sure isn t the kind of prayer we find in the psalms. In the psalms, enemies are everywhere. Prayer is not soothing or calming. It is not a sacred sedative. According to the psalms, prayer is a way to deal with our foes. One moment you re in a tranquil green pasture praying The Lord is my shepherd the next you re shocked to hear yourself pray, You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. In fact, Kevin Adams says, to pray the psalms well is to name and identify our enemies. Who has enemies? Consider that question in light of this week s news headlines: 2

3 Travon Martin, an African-American teenager, was shot and killed in Sanborn, Florida, while walking home, unarmed, from a trip to the neighborhood convenience store. George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who shot Travon Martin, was not arrested, but might be safer now if he had been. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales murdered 17 Afghani villagers, more than half of them children. His wife and children now live on a military base for their own protection. Who has enemies? Consider the things that happen behind the doors of our apparently peaceful American homes: A little girl s father says in a tone she will never forget or doubt, you ll never amount to anything. A mother watches helplessly as her teenage son acts out his violent depression by smashing the television set against the living room wall. A husband learns that his wife is having an affair with their neighbor. A gay son tells his father about his sexual orientation, only to hear the father say he never wants to see him again. Who has enemies? Let us consider our own lives. We say something stupid to the person we love most in the world. We hurt a colleague s feelings. We damage an acquaintance s reputation. We betray the confidence of a friend. In the name of caring for others, we neglect to police ourselves. 3

4 We drink too much, we eat too much, we work too much. So often, we are our own worst enemies. Whether our enemies are in our minds, our families, or the streets of our neighborhoods, there are enough of them in our lives to fill all the psalms in the Bible. Hiding from them will not make them disappear; pretending they are not dangerous will not make them safe. To contend with our enemies we need to do more than simply read the Bible, we need more than a prayer technique, we need a way of life. So we arrive at Lectio Divina, a way of praying that is also a way of living, introduced to the world in the 6 th century by St. Benedict for his monastic community. It is not the only way to approach the question of dealing with one s enemies. Focusing on forgiveness and on loving our enemies as Jesus taught us is another response to this question. But as we close our Season of Prayer, I want to leave you with this one tool with which to build a life of prayer. Technically, Lectio Divina, which means holy reading has four steps. And we will practice those four steps in a moment. But I hope you will resist thinking of it as a step-by-step recipe for improving your prayer life. This would simultaneously trivialize it and make it appear more complicated than it really is. Writer Kathleen Norris says that when she first encountered it, she found talk of Lectio Divina thoroughly discouraging. It sounded too esoteric to her, something that would require more patience and a longer attention span than she had. But soon enough she learned that it was not a method so much as a type of free-form, serious play. It is a way of meditating on Scripture that has nothing to do with knowledge or information, but that uses and encourages one s 4

5 spiritual imagination. Lectio Divina, allows and encourages us to meander through the text, opening us to its instruction, giving us the freedom to ask anything of scripture without requiring an answer or expecting to reach a conclusion. The four steps of Lectio Divina are named in a variety of ways, but it is perhaps easiest to think of them as Read, Reflect, Respond and Rest. Read, hear the words. Reflect, think about the passage, meditate on it. Respond to God with prayer. And rest, allow the words to touch your heart by carrying them with you through your day. Printed in your bulletin are the first ten verses of Psalm 25, from the translation Bill and the choir used when they sang the psalm to us. Let s read the verses together, out loud: To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. My God, I put my trust in you; let me not be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. Let none who look to you be put to shame; rather let those be put to shame who are treacherous. Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long. Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgression; remember me according to your steadfast love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord. You are gracious and upright, O Lord; therefore you teach sinners in your way. You lead the lowly in justice and teach the lowly your way. All your paths, O Lord, are steadfast love and faithfulness to those who keep your covenant and your testimonies. Now take a minute to read the psalm again, silently. 5

6 Find within those ten verses a phrase that jumps out at you, that catches your attention. Memorize it. Close your eyes, if that helps, and repeat it several times to yourself. Now turn to your neighbor and share which phrase you chose. If you wish, you may want to share why that phrase is important to you or why you think it caught your attention, but you don t need to. Keeping your special phrase in mind, I invite you into a time of silent prayer in which you pray to God with this phrase, or for understanding about or around it. (Time of silent prayer follows.) To you, O Lord, we lift up our souls. My God, we put our trust in you; let us not be put to shame, nor let our enemies triumph over us. Let none who look to you be put to shame; rather let those be put to shame who are treacherous. Show us your ways, O Lord, and teach us your paths. Lead us in your truth and teach us, for you are the God of our salvation; in you have we trusted all the day long. Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. Remember not the sins of our youth and our transgressions; remember us according to your steadfast love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord. You are gracious and upright, O Lord; therefore you teach sinners in your way. You lead the lowly in justice and teach the lowly your way. All your paths, O Lord, are steadfast love and faithfulness to those who keep your covenant and your testimonies. We have read, out loud and silently; we have reflected, choosing a focus verse and meditating upon it; we have responded to God in prayer. Now it is time to rest, to allow the words of the psalm to touch our hearts as we go through the rest of our day. Now is the time to put our words 6

7 away, and simply let the Holy Spirit do her good work in us. We may never be able to put into words what gift the Spirit brings us through the words of this psalm; how the psalm plays in us from now until we wake up tomorrow morning may remain beyond expression. But if we are listening we cannot fail to hear it, and be changed by it. If we want to lead a life of prayer, we will spend time not only talking to God but listening to God, and listening sometimes to what only sounds like silence. We will listen to as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it our own wild howls and shuddering sighs, believing that the Holy Spirit bears what we cannot say to the throne of God. Which means, brothers and sisters, that there is no prayer we cannot pray, and nothing in the silence to fear, and everything to gain. 7

8 References Barbara Brown Taylor. Mixed Blessings. Cowley Publications, Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. Riverhead Books, Kevin Adams, 150: Finding Your Story in the Psalms. Square Inch,

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