The sea of prayer
The Rev. Sara Fischer
Holy One, protect them in your name…so that they may be one as we are one.
I found my first spiritual director when I was in my late twenties. Helen was from Tennessee with big puffy bleached blond hair, a deep southern accent, and a lot of big jewelry. I was new to Christianity and I learned a lot from her. We talked about prayer and practice, about our respective images for God, and about how to move forward in faith when circumstances might be a little daunting. It was during some daunting circumstance or other that I called her on the phone one night for advice. She told me to read Hebrews 11, with its litany of our forefathers and foremothers acting on faith. Then she said: “I will pray for you.” That’s nice, I thought. She’d assured me before that she prayed for me regularly. Then she said, in her fabulous Tennessee accent: “Want me to pray for you right now? I’m going to pray for you right now.” When she said this, I didn’t realize she was going to pray out loud. Into the telephone. That was what my son might call “awkward.” I didn’t know that people just did that.
There were two things that Helen’s prayer had in common with Jesus’ prayer, which continues throughout Chapter 17 of John’s gospel. First, Helen’s prayer was almost as long as Jesus’, all 26 verses. Second, she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking about me to God. And really, she was talking about God to God, talking about what God might do for me. I was eavesdropping not only on her wishes for me but also on her whole relationship with God, in the same way that the disciples eavesdrop on Jesus’ whole relationship with the Holy One as they listen to him pray.
This long prayer of Jesus to his Father is also about his relationship to his disciples, in the same way that Helen’s prayer to God was also about her relationship to me. In listening in on her prayers I became aware of the depth of her faith in me and of her love for me.
I eventually got over my reticence about praying out loud.
I have prayed with people in hospital rooms, of course, but also in hospital hallways, waiting rooms, and restrooms. I have prayed with people in their homes, in their cars, on the side of the road, in church parking lots, in restaurants, at Starbucks, on the beach, in campgrounds. And yes, I have prayed out loud for people over the telephone. I have prayed for mass murderers, terrorists, and racists. I have prayed for people I love, people with whom I struggle, people of whom I am afraid, people who are not yet born and people who have died. When I pray for someone on the other side of death, my prayer brings me closer to them. When I pray for people who have caused me hurt or difficulty, my love for them deepens. I say all of this not because I’m such a good person, but because that’s what prayer does. Prayer is one of Jesus’ parting gifts to us, and it is for all of us.
Being pray-ers is one of the ways we are called to be imitators of Christ, to be Jesus in the world.
We often talk about how God is present in us, as individuals and communities. But how are we present in God? What if part of the way we are in God is as swimmers in a great vast sea of prayer? Prayer is perhaps not so much something we give or receive, it is the air we breathe. It is in prayer that we confess our dependence upon God and grow closer to God. It is in prayer that our love for those for whom we pray takes root and grows.
If you’re like me, you may from time to time experience spiritual dryness. Some days I can’t pray or my prayers feel like empty words rather than prayers. I have no idea whether God is listening. Daily prayer feels like going through the motions. We all “coast” from time to time in our prayer lives or, to continue the sea metaphor, we all have times when we float instead of swim. Perhaps lots of times. But if prayer is something we are in rather than something we do, we might more easily forgive ourselves when we’re not feeling it. Let prayer carry you.
In today’s portion of Jesus’ high priestly prayer, there is only one actual petition: he prays that his disciples might be one, as he and the Father are one. Being one has a lot to do with this sea of prayer. Historically, linguistically, Jesus’ oneness with the Father has a quality of movement to it, more like two people dancing than two people fused together. So if we are to be one with one another, it does not mean that we will be of one mind and heart, but that we will be together in the sea of prayer.
Praying in the face of violence and tragedy has taken a bit of a hit lately, as elected officials with the power to change dangerous and unjust systems get by on sending thoughts and prayers.
It is only human, and rational, in our time to trivialize the asking or offering of prayer in the face of devastating crisis, whether personal or global. And yet prayer is what binds us together and what sets us apart from the world as we know it. Often someone will share with me that an event in their life or the state of our nation or the world has shaken their faith. I suggest that at times like these we should be praying more, not less. And that we should be praying together, either literally or virtually.
When we pray together, in our Sunday worship and also in the Daily Office, which some of you pray at home or here on Thursday mornings, we join with others in prayer across the centuries and around the world in an ocean of prayer. In a sermon on the Ascension, Leo the Great wrote: “Our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments.” I believe Christ’s visible presence has also passed into our gathered communities of prayer. This is Jesus’ gift to us, and it is how we are to be present in the world God loves, imitators of Christ, practicing love and making Christ present in the world. Let us pray.
