Sermon

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Prayer/Alone with God

How many of you speak Greek? How many of you have heard Greek spoken? How many of you would agree that comparing spoken Greek to spoken English, Greek is almost always spoken louder than English? It’s like when we answer the phone and say “Hello,” and the caller is speaking English, we respond “hi, how are you?” but if we answer the phone, “Hello,” and the caller responds back “Kalimera”, we become animated, “Ti Kanes?” “Oraio, doxa to Theo.” Two Greek people could be having what looks to everyone else to be a bitter argument, when in reality, they are just having a polite conversation. We are, you might say, conditioned to speak the Greek language in a louder and more animated way, myself included. So that when I am having normal tone of conversation but then switch to Greek, I am almost conditioned to default to a louder tone. I know that is somewhat stereotypical, but it’s really pretty true.

Most of us have things we are conditioned to do. Certain activities naturally raise our blood pressure, like going to the doctor for a check-up. Certain subjects raise our stress level, like when it’s time for our performance review at work. And certain words probably make us sweat, like the word audit. My son doesn’t know yet what the word audit means. He doesn’t understand the meaning of stress. Over his childhood, he will learn the meaning of these words and he will become conditioned to respond to them in certain ways that will carry over into his adult life, just like we all do.

There are certain components to American culture that define us. For those of us who are older, many of us are defined by a strong work ethic. We have been conditioned to believe that we can achieve anything with good, old fashioned, hard work. So, when the chips are down, so to speak, we actually take comfort in work. The younger generation is different. They don’t share the same work ethic, at least not yet. The younger generation, in my opinion, is defined by noise. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the average teenager spends 70 hours per week stimulated by electronic media. How is that possible, you might ask, when the week has 168 hours and at least 6-7 hours a day is sleeping and another 35 is at school? Well, 55 hours of sleep and 35 hours of school adds up to 90 hours per week. 168 less 90 leaves 78 other hours per week, of which 70 of them are spent engaged with electronic media. That means that while getting dressed, driving, studying, having dinner, even chatting with friends, there is a TV set on, or a radio, or a computer, or a text message is being sent, or a cell phone is being used. This is the culture of not just our young people, but many of our old people as well. It is a culture of noise.

At our recent summer camp, I asked the teenagers “how many of you send a text message within the first five minutes of being up in the morning?” The overwhelming majority raised their hands. How many send a text before brushing their teeth? Again, the majority. How many people watch TV before going to school? Also, a majority. How many listen to rap music at least once a week? For most of them, it was once a day. Then I asked “what are the top messages conveyed in rap music?” The answers—hate, violence, sex, poor treatment of women, disrespect for authority, glorification of crime. So, before going to school, the majority of our young people have sent a text message, watched TV, and have listened to rap music. Before interacting with another person, even most of them, their own parents, they have received messages of hate and anger. This is their culture. So that when they are confronted with hate and anger, or even normal stress and frustration, the response is often hate and anger, often manifested in profanity, disrespect and in some cases bullying and violence. So just like the Greek speaker is conditioned to speak his language loudly, the overstimulated teenager is conditioned to speak his or her language angrily. And because a good number of adults are overstimulated as well, or because many of us are wrapped up in this culture of business, loudness and competition, we too react in ways that are negative when we are under stress.

I want to contrast the sad picture I have just painted with the image of our Lord, going up into the hills alone, to pray. According the Gospel of St. Matthew, today’s account of our Lord going by Himself to pray follows the story of the miracle of the five loaves and two fish being multiplied to feed more than 5,000 people who had gathered for a long day of hearing Jesus teach and preach to them. If they had had a long day listening, imagine the kind of day He must have had teaching them. While they were sitting patiently and listening, He was speaking, presumably for hours, certainly without benefit of a microphone or sound amplification. He most certainly must have been tired and out of voice. He sent His disciples away, to get into a boat and go across the lake. Presumably they put their feet up, perhaps some of them fell asleep. This is how they relaxed, and recharged. Our Lord recharged in a different way—He went and prayed. In the middle of the night, there was a crisis—a storm arose over the sea. High waves rose on all sides of the boat. The disciples reacted with fear. There is a difference between healthy nervousness and utter fear, sheer terror. This storm brought more than anxiety, it brought fear.

And in the middle of the storm, Jesus came towards the boat, walking on the water. You’d think that that would have had a calming effect on the disciples, but the Gospel tells us, rather, that they were “troubled,” saying “it is a ghost.” And then they cried out in fear. Immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying “be of good cheer, it is I, do not be afraid.” Again, this should have had a calming effect. But the story continues, that Peter, the leader of the group, issued a challenge to Jesus: “If it you, Lord, command me to come to You on the water.” So Jesus said “Come.” Again, this too should have had a calming effect, just trust in the Lord, whom Peter also looked to as a friend, someone he knew, someone he ostensibly trusted. Peter began to make his way towards Jesus on the water, but then became afraid. He saw the wind and waves around him, and he took his eyes off of Jesus, panicked, and began to sink. Then, he cried out “Lord, save me!” Of course, Jesus immediately responded with compassion and mercy, stretching out His hand and catching Peter and leading him safely back to the boat. He said to him “o you of little faith, why did you doubt?” The wind ceased. And we are told that those who were in the boat came to Jesus and worshipped Him, saying “Truly You are the Son of God!”

Faith is believing something without seeing it, without knowing everything about it. When Jesus got into the boat and the wind ceased and the disciples worshipped Him, I’m not sure I would call that faith. Faith would have been them worshipping while the wind was still blowing hard. Yes, it took faith for Peter to get out of the boat and start walking towards Jesus, but we see that his faith was not particularly deep, because he quickly defaulted from faith to logic, which tells a person, it is not POSSIBLE to walk on water, I’m going to drown in the stormy seas. We know that the disciples started off without faith, without knowledge of God. There early experiences with Jesus led them to have a small measure of faith. In times of crisis and duress, that faith was tested, and often it failed. Because they lacked the strong foundation, the strong conditioning needed for the faith to hold up under duress and difficulty. Over time, their faith was strengthened. They eventually became leaders of the early church. All but one of them was martyred for their faith. All of them are saints. All of them will reside in God’s heavenly kingdom forever. It wasn’t time, however, that strengthened their faith. It was experience, consistency, patience, perseverance. It was changing their mindset, from defaulting to their own intellect under crisis, to defaulting to faith in God in times of distress. It was changing their culture, so to speak, from one that was inwardly centered to one that was Christ centered.

I began my sermon by giving examples of two cultures and how our identity in them makes us react under certain conditions. In the Greek culture, when we are engaged in conversation, we become lively. In the noisy, overstimulated culture of teenagers and some adults, when we become frustrated, we act out in ways that are frustrated. We act this way because we practice it, we experience it, and under certain conditions, we default to it.

The Christian culture is not one of anger and frustration, it is not one of loudness or noise. It is one of confidence and control. Over the years, I’ve shared a piece of advice with many people that I received when I was 19 and had spent 6 years as an angry teenager, listening to the music, getting caught up in the culture. The advice I received was simple: “Stop being a victim and start being a survivor. Stop fighting the power and authority of people and starting experiencing the power of God. I took that piece of advice—sometimes I’ve taken it well, and sometimes not so well, but I have tried to take it to heart these past 18 years. The culture of control and confidence that I have tried to build my life around is centered on faith in God. And when I say a culture of control, I’m not talking about being a control freak or bossing others around, I’m saying a culture when one has control over himself, where his thoughts and his actions are controlled and not chaotic. Do I always succeed in being in a culture of control? No, I do not. Sometimes I say a bad word, or a negative word. I unintentionally, and sometimes intentionally do wrong, harm others. But one thing I started to learn when I was 19, and still struggle to learn to this day is how to pray. Our Lord gave us a great example—that even the Son of God needed time alone to pray, to reflect, to recharge. He didn’t recharge by putting on some headphones, or sitting in front of a TV on his couch. He didn’t find strength in loud music nor did He get through the hard moments by being negative. His strength came through constant prayer, constant union with God through prayer. Think about times when the Lord was praying—before His ministry began, He prayed and fasted for 40 days in the desert, and overcame temptations of the devil. He spent long days teaching and preaching and healing, then retreated to pray. And on the night before His crucifixion, He prayed, and it strengthened Him in a time when He felt alone and in fear.

Most of us, myself especially, are not good actors. You can tell who prays in this world and who doesn’t. The people who pray have a calmness, a control about them. They have a confidence that comes from inner peace not from arrogance. Under duress, in times of hardship, their default button, so to speak, is inner peace. When confronted with crisis, they know how to manage without becoming despondent. This control, this sense of confidence is something that is learned. And it is learned through prayer. It is learned through retreating from the world and entering God’s world. God’s world is entered through faith, but before faith, there has to be peace and before peace there has to be silence. You can’t enter God’s world with hateful music blaring, or with the TV on. You can enter God’s world through silence and stillness.

I talk about summer camp often—it is something that I think about every day all year long. It’s fun and it’s meaningful to me and to those who participate in it. At camp, one of our goals is to counteract the teenage culture of noise and anger. We do that by taking away all electronic gear from the teenagers for one week. And we replace the noise with prayer. No, it’s not like a monastery with four hour services. There are ten minutes we call “alone with God,” that the teens spend each day in silence, alone with God and with their own thoughts, not the thoughts of the CDs and the I-pods. Each activity begins with prayer—ten activities per day, that’s ten short prayers. When I sit down and hear a confession, whether it is at camp or here in church, we always begin with prayer, because prayer sets a tone—prayer brings peace because prayer, when we communicate with God, brings peace, God brings peace. So we sit down for confession, which is always stressful for the person confessing and for me as well, and before we begin the stressful process of repentance and confession, we ask God to bring peace, and then it’s not so stressful.

Life is kind of like today’s Gospel—there are lots of storms, sometimes we think our boat is going to overturn and sink. And Jesus stands at all times as a calming influence in that storm. How do we respond to the storm, and His calming presence in it? With fear? Do we challenge Him? Do we faithfully venture to Him? Do we take our eyes off Him? Do we sink? Or do we negotiate the waves safely, in control, with confidence, with faith? The difference between the person of faith and the person with little or no faith, I believe is in his or her conditioning. If one is conditioned through prayer, and prayer brings peace, then under duress, one defaults to prayer and peace. If one is not conditioned through prayer, then under duress, one defaults to chaos, fear, anger, uncertainty.

As I said before, prayer has always been a challenge to me, and it probably always will be. But when I have been faithful about prayer, my life has always been more peaceful and more full of joy. In times of frustration, I need look no further than a mediocre prayer life as one of the causes. There is definitely a correlation between prayer and personal peace. So here are a couple of ideas to help you pray, to help you find peace:

Set aside ten minutes a day as sacred time between you and God. Turn off all noise. Sit or stand in a position that is relaxed, though not so comfortable that you are slouching if you are standing or tempted to fall asleep if you are sitting. Say the Jesus Prayer for a few minutes. “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Time the Jesus prayer with your breathing. I started doing this when I fall asleep—it slows down breathing, it makes you relaxed, it helps you fall asleep quickly. As you inhale, “Lord Jesus Christ,” then as you exhale, “Son of God,” inhale again “Have mercy” and exhale “on me a sinner.” Then begin again. You say the prayer with every two breaths. Try that the next time you are having a crisis. Next, make a list of people that you want to pray for every day. Make sure that not one day goes by that you don’t pray for the people on your list. Pray at other intervals of the day with short prayers—the beginning of a car trip, while your computer is booting up, while warming up something in the microwave—we all have some idle time that can be filled with prayer instead of the other things we daydream about. Find someone who can become your “prayer partner.” It could be your spouse, a friend, whoever, someone who you can talk to periodically and report to about your prayer life. This is not confession, it is a short report, perhaps an email—I had a good week with my spiritual life, or I didn’t have a good week. I was 7 for 7 in days praying, or I was 6 for 7 and will try to hit them all next week, or I was 1 for 7 and will use today to make a new start. This creates not only support but accountability.

What makes camp so special is that we create a culture where there is fun, but it is done under the umbrella of frequent prayer and it creates a culture of peace, which breeds friendship, confidence and ultimately faith. The role of the church is to help us create the same culture in our personal lives, the culture that runs counterculture to the culture of the world, the culture that gives us the grounding, the peace, the confidence and the faith, so that when we are confronted by a storm, we don’t react with anger, or fear, but we keep our eye on the Lord, and we walk on water, secure in our faith that if we keep our eye on the Lord, we can pass through any storm.

I leave you with one more thought—scientists have determined that the average human being has 4,000 independent thoughts per day. How many of your thoughts are about God? There is a direct correlation to the number of thoughts you have about God and the number of angry thoughts that you have each day. The more you think about God, the more you pray to Him, the less anger and the more peace you’ll find. Someone challenged me at camp to improve my prayer life for 30 days. I’m two weeks into a new program—I’ve had some setbacks, but I’ve also seen a lot of improvement in my life, and in my outlook on life. I challenge you to do the same—take 30 days and either jump start or improve your prayer life. It will improve your life, it will improve your outlook, change your personal culture, and it will ultimately change the culture of some of those around you. Amen.