Three Essential Prayers

Anne Lamott has written a little, but very powerful book on prayer that is entitled: Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Survival Prayers. If you don’t know Lamott, I commend her writing to you and in particular I commend that book of essential prayers. Help. Thanks. Wow.Pretty much every prayer falls into one of those three categories.

Help is a big one, especially when we feel like the world is closing in or we are drowning or in a pit. The psalms are a good way into this, which runs so counter to our American values of being self-reliant. We sometimes need help. Twelve-step spiritualities have this as a core value. All of us need help in small ways every day and that becomes more and more true the older we get. We know that our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. God is always there to help and by God’s grace, so are God’s people.

And every new day gives us a chance to say thanks, even the hardest of days. Thanks for waking up, for the sunrise, for loved ones, for friendships, for food on the table, for health, even for challenges and even disappointments. Meister Eckhardt once said that if the only prayer you ever said was “thankyou” it would be enough.

That last one is about being amazed, about being in awe, about being awake to the majesty and mystery and wonder of the world around us. Wow! You’ll discover that a close second to quotes from Bruce Springsteen in my sermons is the late Mary Oliver. I think a lot of her poems are prayers of awe, but for today, how about this one?         

          When it’s over, I want to say all my life
          I was a bride married to amazement.
          I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

         When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
         If I have made of my life something particular, and real.
        I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
        Or full of argument.

        I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Help! Thanks! Wow! I think that people who are learning to pray these three prayers one day at a time are learning to love God and neighbor in the process. They are learning that none of us is an island unto ourselves. We belong to God, and to each other. When we pray those prayers we make authentic community possible.

Last weekend we considered Francis of Assisi. One story I didn’t tell is captured on a fresco that hangs in the church at Assist to this day – an embarrassing private moment between a father and son that played out on the public square. Francis decided that to follow Jesus he needed to give up all his stuff, stuff that in truth his father had worked hard to earn. One day, Francis took off all his clothes in the public square and left them at his father’s feet. The bishop was there and was so embarrassed he took his cope off to cover Francis up.

Francis was the rich young man who stayed with Jesus, who gave it all up to love God more dearly and walk more nearly. He is the counter to the rich young man in today’s gospel reading: Francis felt that to follow Jesus he needed to give it all up and start again, with nothing, not even a shirt on his back.

You don’t meet too many people like Francis as a rule, at least I have not. Far more common is the rich young man who comes to Jesus in today’s gospel reading. Let’s be clear, he seems to be a really good guy. So far as we can tell he really is doing what he says he is doing: following the commandments. But there is one thing that stands between him and God, and Jesus picks up on it pretty quickly. He’s attached to his stuff. His stuff defines him, and keeps him from really engaging and ultimately loving his neighbor. We might say today that he is a person of privilege and that’s ok, but with privilege comes responsibility.

Jesus’ invitation to leave it all and become a Franciscan friar is always out there – and to this day people do that. At it’s heart is the insight that when you have nothing you have nothing to lose. Choosing to embrace poverty, by the way, is very different than having it chosen for you; I don’t know of any Franciscans who would claim otherwise. So we must not glamorize or romanticize the poor who are poor not by choice but by circumstance. But learning to let go and let God and learning to put our whole trust in God’s provision: there is grace in that.

On the other end, many go away dejected because they are always in danger of allowing what they have to own them. We need reminders that it’s just not true that whoever has the most toys when she dies wins. I’ve done a lot of funerals in my day and trust me, across the socio-economic spectrum what people want to notice when someone they love joins the company of the saints are core values like generosity and kindness and creativity and love. Even failures and disappointments can be embraced as graces especially where there is forgiveness.

But I’ve never heard a single person remembered as having some amount of money in the bank. Everyone at a funeral knows that you can’t take it with you.

Help. Thanks. Wow. I want to invite you to consider this thought – that the reason the rich young man cannot loosen his grip on his stuff is that he very likely is not able to pray these prayers. None of them. These three essential prayers teach us that we need God and we need our neighbor. They point us toward authentic community. They open the door to vulnerability which is the doorway to the way of love.

When we fall into the trap of feeling we are self-made or self-sufficient – that we are independent rather than interdependent – we think we need no one. We start to believe that adage of Ben Franklin’s that is not, in fact, in the Bible: that God helps those who help themselves.

All of the generous people I have known in my life have, at some point, faced a crisis where they had to get help. Where they couldn’t do it on their own and needed God and friends to be there. Whether that’s through the twelve-step path to recovery, or whether it’s an illness or terrible loss, they found help, sometimes in surprising ways. You remember the psalmist: from where will my help come? My help comes from the maker of heaven and earth. When we remember that to the core of our being it also leads us to pray: all things come of thee, O Lord – and of thine own have we given thee.

Help! Thanks! Wow!

I submit to you that the rich young man didn’t spend a lot of time counting his blessings, because that’s hard to do when you are clinging to your stuff. Gratitude opens us up and is one of the most powerful spiritual practices we can cultivate. Thank you, God, that I woke up to live another day. Thank you for this good earth, for a home to live in, for friends, for family, for signs of hope, for the transformational power of love. Thank you God. Thank you, my partner, my grandchild, my neighbor, my employee, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And wow. This world truly is amazing. It inspires awe – surely when you look up at the Rockies or the Grand Canyon or that image of the earth taken from space – this fragile earth our island home. Last Saturday, Hathy and I walked along the water on a day that was a perfect ten, to the town beach and back. The birth of a child and even death, are great mysteries. But every single day for those who have eyes to see there are opportunities to pray, “wow.”

This morning, I invite you, in the quiet of this space, in the quiet of your hearts, to take a few moments to take an inventory of your lives and to silently pray these three essential prayers, and offer them up to the living God.

Help. Where do you need some help right now in your life, from God, from a friend or family member, maybe from a good therapist or even a priest? How will you seek the help you need this week and this month? Who do you need to reach out to for that help – and is there anyone who needs your help?

Thanks. Count your blessings. What are you thankful for today? Take a few moments to consider your gratitude. Make a list, if not in this instant then later today, or early next week.

Wow. What takes your breath away? Where do you need to be to put yourself in the presence of God’s tremendous mystery? Often it’s outdoors somewhere – but it might also be at table with really good friends where you feel safe and loved and well-fed. Or live music. Take a moment to think about when you’ve had those awesome experiences, and if there is a way to build more of those into your life?

Let us pray:

O God our help in ages past, be our help now, today, here. Help us to know, to remember, to live. Grant us the courage to ask for help when it’s needed and the wisdom to offer help to others who may be too timid to ask us. We ask for grateful hearts and the grace to count our blessings and not to covet what we do not have. And open our hearts and minds and eyes and ears to the wonder and beauty of your creation. Help. Thanks. Wow.

Amen.

 

Lord, Make Us Instruments of Your Peace

This morning we remember St. Francis of Assisi, a thirteenth-century Umbrian whose ministry continues to inspire us.

This afternoon we’ll bless animals, because good old Francis saw the dogs and cats and birds of the air and turtles and horses as his family members, as sisters and brothers. And Francis was “green” before it was cool, recognizing the interconnections of not only all of life but the cosmos itself: “brother sun” and “sister moon.” He recognized that human beings have a place in that circle of life as stewards, not abusers. Some of you even have him in your garden, looking very peaceful, preaching the good news to the birds. This is, I assume, the Francis you already know.

 For fifteen years I served a parish that took their name from this saint. Today I want to introduce you to the St. Francis you may not know. The mystical experience he had in San Damiano, when trying to figure out his calling, may be helpful for us to consider as we begin that exploration. Francis was praying in front of a crucifix when he heard Christ’s call to him: “rebuild my church, Francesco.” At first, Francis thought this was about a building campaign. The church in San Damiano had a lot of deferred maintenance and Francis thought he was being called to be the junior warden there. But over time he came to understand that this rebuilding was about much more than the building. He came to understand that for the Church to be real we are always re-forming, re-building, re-making community. We are always re-discovering our purpose. It is easy to get discouraged about the Church and much harder to find ways to be part of the solution of rebuilding the Church in order to meet the needs of a changing world. I take great comfort in knowing that Francis didn’t do that alone or immediately, but inspired others to share that work with him. In community.

 Two stories for today that may be less familiar to you all. The first is about the wolf of Gubbio, an allegory about a wolf that was terrorizing the people of Gubbio. As the story is told, Francis went out to talk some sense into the wolf, to ask him to stop being a big bad wolf. The wolf agreed to change his ways but Francis also came back to tell the townspeople that they bore some responsibility here: that they had forgotten that the wolf was their brother and that if they fed him he would not be so ravenous. So that’s an allegory – a story meant to make a larger point. You can ponder what it might mean in your own lives, and in our polarized world, and what it means for us who are called to be “instruments of God’s peace.”

But one of my favorite stories about Francis is of his encounter in 1219 with a Muslim sultan at the height of the Crusades. Francis sailed across the Mediterranean to Egypt, where he was given a pass through enemy lines. There he stood before the Sultan to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Sultan politely replied that he had his own beliefs and that as a Muslim he was as firmly convinced of the truth of Islam as Francis was of the truth of Christianity. Neither of them changed their beliefs but the encounter lasted a while longer, and each was impressed by the religious devotion and compassion of the other.

 Lord, make us instruments of your peace. It’s not certain that Francis actually wrote that prayer – The Book of Common Prayer hedges its bets and says it’s a prayer attributed to him. But every fiber of Francis’ being was committed to living that prayer, even if he didn’t write the words. It is his revolutionary commitment to peacemaking that I want to highlight today, a month away from a national election in a deeply divided nation.

 It is way too easy for us to pray that prayer and let it hover in midair. But Francis allowed that prayer to truly work through him and form him as a follower of Jesus Christ. He lived as an instrument of peace. If you’ve ever traveled to Assisi then you know that this global work of reconciliation continues as a witness to that “revolutionary commitment to peacemaking” and it’s how he’s known even more than as a reason to offer blessings to our pets.

The Catechism says that “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” and that this mission is carried out “through the ministry of all of its members.” (BCP 855) I don’t know how we could possibly live into that mission without a deep awareness of who we are and a willingness to commit ourselves to the revolutionary idea of peacemaking, to allow ourselves to be used by God as “instruments of peace.” That begins with a willingness to encounter the other, not in fear, but with mutual respect.

Part of what I love about Francis’ encounter with the Sultan is that he didn’t sacrifice who he was as a Christian. We tend to have two very different approaches to the work of encountering the other in our culture and I find myself less patient with both approaches as I grow older. For lack of a better term, I’ll call the first approach the “liberal” approach, although I truly wish I had a better name for it. I think the instincts are right, but sometimes we act as if the primary goal is to never insult anyone. So we reduce our beliefs to the least common denominator: Christians and Jews and Muslims are all children of Abraham, we say, and we leave it at that. We all worship the same God, after all. Now I don’t want to mock this too much because I think the motivation is right and it also happens to be true. It takes seriously that part of the Baptismal Covenant about “respecting the dignity of every human being.” The problem is that only very rarely in such interfaith conversations (and even ecumenical conversations) do we dare to step beyond that common ground and out of our comfort zones to discuss our very real differences. Yet it is in exploring those differences that I think we discover real transformation and energy. Right? That requires a high level of trust which requires a relationship. It requires some level of vulnerability and a willingness to go deeper.

Conversely, the alternative approach (for lack of a better term I’ll call it the more “conservative” approach) can tend to think that Christians are right and the other is wrong. Sharing the “good news” means we have it and they don’t. So we do all of the talking and none of the listening. Since we have the truth, it is imperative that we make it clear to the other in order to “save” them. This approach tends to take seriously that part of the Baptismal Covenant about evangelism: our call to proclaim not only with our lips but in our lives the good news of God in Jesus Christ. But I think it forgets the claim of those early chapters of Genesis that all humankind (and not only Christians or Jews) are created in the image of God. And if everyone has the imao dei – that “image of God” – then everyone also has access to the divine.

Everything I can find out about that encounter that Francis had with the Sultan in the Middle East in the thirteenth century, a time at least as polarized as our own day, leads me to conclude that Francis offers a third way, a way that I think has much to teach us. It holds both of those two Baptismal claims together: respect and dignity for the other while also remaining clear about who we are, and our own identity in Christ and the good news it brings not just to us but to the world. For Francis, the way to God was clear: it is through Jesus Christ. And he certainly goes to the Middle East with a glad and generous heart to share that good news, even if it means he could lose his head, quite literally. But Francis remains open enough and humble enough and patient enough and kind enough and loving enough to be changed by that encounter with the Sultan. Even though neither one converts, each of them are enriched. In fact I want to propose that both men were even firmer in their own commitments after that exchange than they were before. But no longer could they caricature, or worse still, demonize, the other. They didn’t discover they were the same, because they were not the same! But they came to see their differences through a lens of mutual respect. 

You and I don’t have to travel half-way around the world, as Francis did, to encounter “the other.” We live in a pluralistic society surrounded by Jews and Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and Wiccans and doubters and done-with-religion and spiritual-but-not-religious and all the rest. Francis invites us to to be instruments of God’s peace in our own day, by allowing Christ’s light to shine through us with whomever we meet along the way. This Way of Love is the Way of the Cross. To paraphrase St. Paul, there is nothing Christ-like about arrogance or rudeness or boastfulness or insisting on our own way. “Never boast of anything,” Paul wrote to the Church in Galatia, “except for the Cross.” That Way of the Cross calls us to a deep sense of humility about the faith we do possess; it calls us to love both God and neighbor, even the neighbor with whom we may disagree.

Francis was on his own faith journey, just as all of us are. His journey and the lives of the saints can inspire us and challenge us. But we are not the same and we don’t live in medieval Italy. Francis had to sort through a lot before he had the courage for that encounter with the Sultan. You and I are called to continue that work not only to honor Francis, but as fellow disciples of Jesus Christ. We are thinking this month together about belonging as we prayerfully consider our financial pledges to this parish for 2025. I want to suggest that stewardship is always about more than money, but never about less. Ask Geoff or Betty about the bills that need to be paid to keep our doors open. Some of that money for our budget comes from the generosity of saints who have gone before us. But it also needs to come from us, the living, who take inspiration from the generosity of those who have gone before us. Even if the endowment was twice what it is, and we didn’t need to come up with any money at all, it would still be good for our souls to practice generosity and to be givers.

If we just make this time about “meeting the budget” we will have failed, even if we have enough money. So I invite you to a time of deeper reflection this month, and to recommit yourself to the work of re-forming and re-building and re-making St. Michael’s. God isn’t done with us yet. And so we enter into a period of discernment and healing and transformation, offering ourselves to be instruments of peace and fearless agents of reconciliation in a world that needs for us to be the Church. Francis is way more than your garden variety saint. He was courageous and generous and hopeful in a dangerous world. May he inspire us do the same, in this time and in this place. Let us pray:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to
be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is
in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we
are born to eternal life. Amen.