First Reading: Matthew 6:5-8

When you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward. But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your God who is in that secret place, and your God who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.

Second Reading: Henri Nouwen from Here and Now

In my home country, the Netherlands, you still see many large wagon wheels, not on wagons, but as decorations at the entrances of farms or on the walls of restaurants. I have always been fascinated by these wagon wheels: with their wide rims, strong wooden spokes, and big hubs. These wheels help me to understand the importance of a life lived from the center. When I move along the rim, I can reach one spoke after the other, but when I stay at the hub, I am in touch with all the spokes at once.

To pray is to move to the center of all life and all love. The closer I come to the hub of life, the closer I come to all that receives its strength and energy from there. My tendency is to get so distracted by the diversity of the many spokes of life, that I am busy but not truly life-giving, all over the place but not focused. By directing my attention to the heart of life, I am connected with its rich variety while remaining centered. What does the hub represent? I think of it as my own heart, the heart of God, and the heart of the world. When I pray, I enter in to the depth of my own heart and find there the heart of God, who speaks to me of love. And I recognize, right there, the place where all of my sisters and brothers are in communion with one another. The great paradox if the spiritual life is, indeed, that the most personal is most universal, that the most intimate, is most communal, and that the most contemplative is most active.

Sermon:

I was talking with fifteen teenagers. It was during their over-night mini-retreat at the First Unitarian Church of Worcester. Their parents hoped that I might get them to talk and reflect on their religious selves--rather high expectations for teenagers. I asked them, "What do you think of prayer?" Their response: "We don't!" They looked at me as if I was from another planet. One of the senior girls said, "We haven't been taught how to be religious." Most of them said they never prayed. We spent the rest of our time talking about music they appreciated. Since then, I wondered how I could talk about prayer among religious liberals or folks like teenagers for whom prayer is completely irrelevant.

For most my life, I must admit, prayer seemed pretty ridiculous. What prayers I had heard sounded hollow or shallow. I couldn't see how prayer could be reconciled with reason and science. I relished the definition I found in the Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: "Pray, a verb. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."

Grace happens in the strangest of places. It was in a movie theater that I was convinced of the value of prayer. The film was Shadowlands. It is about the life of Clyde Staples Lewis, the fantasy writer who penned the Chronicles of Narnia and the great English theologian of this century also known as CS Lewis or as his closest friends knew him, Jack. The movie tells the true story of the famed author and professor developing a close friendship with an American admirer, Helen Joy Gresham. As a theologian, Jack often lectured on the purpose of suffering; he spoke eloquently of love; and he had the best answers to any theological question posed to him. Joy, the feisty American woman she was, challenged him both intellectually and emotionally. She asks him "When have you really suffered?" He initially can't think of anything. A while later Jack tells her that when he was nine years old, he lost his mother.

Joy challenged him on personal issues just as English theologians argued over theology. In British theological discourse, one makes a statement and allows the other to affirm or disagree. Joy took this tactic and said, "You are very happy with our friendship and it is to remain platonic. Is that right?" Jack responded with a lame, quiet yes. The story of their friendship continues with delightful twists. Then without warning, Joy is bedridden with cancer. The great professor who has an answer to every theological question suddenly is faced with helplessness and confusion. As he talks with the president of the college, tears begin to stream down his face. He realizes his love for Joy. With the prospect of losing her to cancer, Jack can no longer hide from himself or his feelings. He asks her to marry him.

A few weeks later, at the college, the president approaches Jack and says, I know how hard it must be. You've been praying and now God is answering. Jack responds, "I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because I can't help it. The need flows out of me all the time waking and sleeping. Praying doesn't change God. It changes me." When Joy has only a few weeks to live, Jack takes her to the country. He tries to keep her from talking about her dying, but she insists. She makes him understand that joy is boundless when we honor the pain that comes with it. And the depths of our pain make possible our capacity for sustaining joy. At the end of the film, when Joy is gone, Jack sits next to Joy's nine-year-old son. The boy said, "I thought if I prayed and believed enough, she wouldn't die. It didn't work."

We all suffer the pain of losing something or somebody we dearly love. We all face situations where we would do anything to change them. It is completely normal that we would pray feverishly to make it otherwise. No matter how much we pray, there are many things we cannot change. What else can we do? We can still look to prayer. What an insight CS Lewis comes to in his moment of crisis: Prayer doesn't change God. Prayer changes ourselves. I agree. Prayer doesn't change things that can't be changed. Prayer helps to give us the strength and insight to change things that can, like our hearts, or even our own lives. Prayer can transform how we relate with others and how we move through the world.

Ever since I saw that film, I've been wrestling with prayer. I didn't have a clue how to start. Worse, the most common forms of prayer didn't touch me. I hated reciting prayers. And sitting around trying to talk to God in the solitude of my own room was a fiasco. So often, I would start a prayer, stop for the lack of knowing what to say, forget what I was saying, and sometimes even worse, forget that I was even praying!

So I began to pray to learn how to pray. I was comforted by the words of George Bernanos: "The wish to pray is a prayer in itself."

A good friend told me he also wishes he knew how to pray. He is ashamed to confess that he can't stand the act of sitting down and trying to talk to God. He feels his prayers are artificial and forced, the posturing more sacrilegious than sacred. He gets much more out of simply being quiet and letting thoughts come and go, quieting down as he watches his mind involuntarily sort through the conflicts in his life. I told him that sounded like a sublime form of prayer called contemplation.

There are many kinds of prayer that we might not ordinarily think of as prayer. When I lived in California, I periodically went to the beach. I loved walking to where no one could hear me. And I'd yell at the ocean. No matter how much anger or frustration I had, I knew the ocean could take it. I yelled about how unjust our world is. I yelled out in helplessness how so many people get trampled on. I yelled out in pain how a person I loved walked out of my life. I yelled out my confusion. "Why is there so much suffering? Why so much hatred? So much homelessness, so much addiction?" Often I would come to tears or sometimes a great peace or even a sustaining joy revealed itself.

During my first candidating sermon, I shared with you a most significant time. I was fully intending on going to medical school when countless times I 'd think of things I'd like to do with my life and then I'd remind myself, that I'd already decided what my life would hold. As I walked around the crags of the cliffs of Mendocino, the epiphany suddenly hit me: "I don't have to go to medical school." That may seem mundane but for me this was a revelation. Even though there were only seagulls and rocks about me, it took me several minutes to yell out: I don't have to go to medical school! Once I did, I knew I wasn't going. At that moment, I knew I would enter ministry. It was a knowing so deep I didn't have to decide what I should do. I knew. For me yelling at the ocean is a form of prayer that has had an extraordinary influence on the path of my life.

I know several people who pray through sacred dance or movement. You may say this is because I am from Berkeley, but think of the Whirling Dervishes, the Shakers, and the African American gospel tradition that invites movement and clapping to hymns of praise. It is not uncommon for people to dance their devotion to God. Any activity that calls forth the holy I call prayer. It is our attitude that makes prayers out of our activities. People who are mindful and fully engaged with their bodies and spirits find all sorts of ways to pray. For example, gardening, cooking, or making love.

A story from the Jewish tradition. A man came to the market on his brand-new bicycle because he was in a hurry. While he bought his groceries, he met an old friend. Absorbed in the conversation, he forgot about his bicycle. The next morning, he awoke in a sweat. He suddenly remembered he left it unlocked at the market. He began praying profusely to God that the bike still be there. He rushed to the marketplace, knowing it would likely be gone. The bicycle was exactly where he had left it. He was so happy; he bought a flower and headed for a nearby temple to thank God. When he came out of the temple, his bicycle was gone!

Anthony De Mello offers a teaching that serves as a good moral to this story: "If your God comes to your rescue and gets you out of trouble, it is time you started searching for the True God." I like the bicycle story. It says, "Don't pray to God to bail you out when you screw up. Take responsibility for yourself! Be humble, you have reason enough to seek God. Notice what motivates you to move closer to your truth."

I never was taught to pray. Neither have our teenagers. I wonder if anyone can be taught. We may be provided with a certain form and structure for prayer. We may be given the words to use. But learning how to pray must come from within us. I believe we learn to pray when the stirrings of our own hearts beckon us. Prayer in my understanding is learned in the doing of it. It takes inspiration and practice.

When I wrestle with prayer, I wrestle with identifying the holy, the true, the just in my life. There are two possible outcomes. One, I lose the wrestling match. I either forget what it is I struggle with or I pretend it is not there. This is tantamount to distracting myself, looking away, hiding from my true self and from the world. The other outcome I wish I could claim was more frequent. I win the wrestle and draw forth the holy. In that moment I come fully into the present. But wrestling with the holy doesn't leave us unscarred. Just as Jacob bested the angel of God, he was wounded. We too must face painful realities that throw us into doubt and despair if we open up to what is real. That means prayer is no cakewalk, and prayer doesn't make life into a cakewalk. Indeed, prayer opens us up to the ever-deeper responsibility we have to living with integrity. It also opens us up to the vast resources of grace and beauty available as we live with dignity and compassion.

We wait in the quietness for some centering moment that will give shape and focus to our lives. It is a luxury to be able to give thought and time to the ups and downs of one's private journey while the world around us is so sick and weary and desperate. But how can we get through the great anxieties that surround us until, somehow, a path is found through the little anxieties that prevent us from moving forward? It is the greatest struggle I know of: to be caught between the roar of one's own private needs and the deafening cries of a world hungry for peace, hope, and kindness.

I want to suggest that prayer is opening our hearts and perceiving possibilities. Regardless whether we see this as allowing the divine to move through us, as meditation, or as getting in touch with the spirit of life, prayer as spiritual practice is a subtle form of attentive listening.

It takes time and trust to get to the sacred question of "What is on your heart?" What is on your heart? Answer that and you pray. That question takes many forms, including "What do you long for?" And "What is truly important to you?" Or the final line from the Mary Oliver poem, "Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"