Rev. Kristen DelMonte.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
July 12, 2009
Psalm 86
Incline your ear O Lord…It’s so poetic. The image of God, tilting God’s head towards me, listening to my prayer…God’s hand reaching out and scooping me up…filling me with love and patience and understanding. It’s a powerful image from a powerful prayer. That’s what makes the psalms so wonderful and such wonderful places to start to talk about our own personal prayer and spirituality. And what a better day to do that, a day like today when summer has finally hit and we can feel life on the street slow down and actually breathe.
I happened upon Psalm 86 by chance—or maybe it was a Godly moment. I few weeks ago, when it was the newsletter deadline and I had to tell Karin what scripture passage I would be preaching on, I scoured the lectionary for this Sunday. Neither the Hebrew, Gospel nor Epistle lesson inspired me so I turned to the Psalm for the day. I turned to Psalm 86 and the wording seared a fire into my heart. And then, I look at the lectionary again, It was actually Psalm 85 that was written down for today. Breaking away from the lectionary, I decided to go with Psalm 86. It just seems so perfect for day when everyone is wearing shorts and t-shirts to church, all ready for our picnic.
Historically, the Psalms are a bit of a mystery. No one knows for sure which Psalms David wrote and which Psalms others scribed. What is interesting—historically, is that Psalm 86 interrupts a small Korah collection of Psalms (84-85 and 87-88). Like you, I don’t know who the Korah were, but any biblical placement in the middle of something else was done on purpose and I always find that interesting. I mean, why there, what was happening to cause this?
One thing that is interesting about Psalm 86 is what we can learn about ourselves in this poetic psalm. Psalm 86 illustrates what it means to entrust one’s life and future to God in openness to God’s direction and instruction. As Modern day thinkers, being open to God’s direction doesn’t always sit well with our desire to live our life the way we want to. We struggle with our personal desires and that of what we know God would want us to do. This type of tug-o-war with God eventually leads us to a place where we feel desolate and isolated. Then we must try to get back on track, get back to the basics of our spiritual life with God and that which leads us to prayer.
M. Shawn Copeland, a Roman Catholic professor, explains this, “Our spirituality is our capacity to relate to God, to other human beings and to the natural world. Through these relationships, we give meaning to our experience and attune our hearts and minds to the deepest dimensions of reality. Spirituality is about the kinds of persons we are and the kinds of persons we hope to be.” Being such a beautiful summer day, not too hot, not too cool, it is a perfect time for us to reflect on our spiritual ways and our personal prayer life.
Incline your Ear O God, let me search out your ways…
How many of us have a vibrant, disciplined prayer life? How many of us have a time every day where we sit down and pray to God and then, listen to God respond to our prayer? How many of us actually have time to do this?
A few years ago, I began reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’m sure many of you have read this book—at the time it was sweeping across the nation as the “must read” book for the year. On the cover it touts “One woman’s search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia.” It is a very excellent book. After having her whole life fall apart, a life she felt was whole, complete and perfect, this woman treks off to spend a year in three countries learning about pleasure, devotion and ultimately, love. Although she doesn’t know about the “love” part at the time.
The book begins in Italy. Awww, who wouldn’t want to travel to Italy to learn Italian and to eat? That’s what she does. She practices Italian while eating and drinking wine for 4 months. I totally can relate to this part of the book! In the last section on Italy she says, “None of my pants, after 4 months in Italy fit me anymore.” Well, after 8 months of being pregnant…I totally understand!
After Italy she travels to India to study meditation at an ashram. I don’t know how many of you study meditation, but practicing meditation isn’t all that interesting, let alone reading about it. I found it humorous that for awhile she can’t even sit still for the whole time that she was supposed to—it may have been the effects of all the wine she drank in Italy. But, more realistically, it was probably just who she is.
She writes about one instance where she is having a conversation with her mind while trying to meditate:
Me: Ok, we’re going to meditate now. Let’s draw our attention to our breath and focus on our mantra.
Mind: I can help you with this, you know!
Me: OK, good, because I need your help. Let’s go.
Mind: I can help you think of nice meditative images. Like, hey, here’s a good one. Imagine you are a temple. A temple on an island! An island in the ocean.
Me: Oh, that is a nice image.
This conversation continues until she realizes that she hasn’t been meditating and finally gives up. She continues to have these struggles and others throughout this section of the book. Many of us can relate to this part of trying something new. It takes discipline and training to engage in new practices of spirituality. I believe that she eventually has a breakthrough in her meditating only to have an immediate set back and you have to read about all of her struggles all over again. That’s where I finally got fed up and put the book away.
I have enough struggles with my daily prayer and spiritual life that reading about another person’s struggles, which I admit, at first was comforting, began to be a bit too much. I mean, come on woman--meditate already! I totally don’t have the time or the patience for that!
Which brings me around to our personal prayer and spiritual life. In what ways are we open to allowing God to work in our lives and in what ways are we blocking God out? Being in relationship with God is a discipline, it is work, it is a marriage, it is a relationship, it is a blending of two into one. So often we forget to be in relationship with God and then we feel as if God has left us, when in fact, we are the ones who have left God. Why is it that despite our best intentions, we often fall off of the “prayer” wagon and give up on our intimate relationship with God?
Incline your ear, O God…help me to be who I am
Prayer, like plugging in an electrical outlet or logging on to the internet, is a of connecting with God. We do not need to understand how it works, but we will reap the benefits of it. In the book, Practicing our Faith, M. Shawn Copeland writes, “Prayer is intimate conversation with God—real, demanding, loving and engaged conversation between a real person and the real, living God. This conversation initiates, sustains, and augments a dynamic relationship full of risk and joy.” …A relationship full of risk and joy… Being in relationship with God is a risky one. For in our sharing with God, we share the whole of who we are: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sometimes, the realization that we are not the people who we wish we were, stagnates our prayer life and prohibits us from growing in our relationship with God.
When I was in seminary, both at Duke Divinity and Pacific School of Religion, I went through some major identity issues. While at Duke, I was surrounded by youthful seminarians who seemed to one up each other by sharing how “prayerful” they were. At school, they seemed so deeply devoted to their studies and to their relationships with God. I, on the other hand, didn’t feel comfortable praying so much in public, but if I didn’t spend a few minutes in prayer before I ate my cafeteria food, I felt like I didn’t fit in. It felt so unnatural to me to do something just because others did it too. I’m sorry that I am not the type of person who says a public prayer before eating a meal. That is part of my “ugly” side in my relationship with God. But, I finally realized that my private devotions with God were just fine with God and that I didn’t need to flaunt my relationships in ways that made me uncomfortable. I know this is a simple example of one not being comfortable in their own skin. So many of us are sooo over that… Or are we? I don’t think it matters how old we are or what our gender may be—we all have struggles being who we are versus who we wish we were.
The first part of pursuing a deeper relationship with God through prayer is to recognize who we are and allow God to see that inner side. God loves us all unconditionally, we understand that, and yet, it is so hard not to pretend to be “the super Christian.” Poet Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote, “What I do is me, for that I came,” translating that language to our prayer life, Marcus Braybrooke explains that we must, “pray as we can, not as we can’t.”
God created us all as unique individuals who love, rejoice, and experience pain and suffering differently. If this is true, then each of our prayers will be distinctive and the ways that we pray will differ. The ways in which we are connected with God will be unlike our neighbors, our friends and our spouses, and yet, we will still be in relationship.
Incline your Ear O God…help me to be disciplined in my relationship with you.
In First Thessalonians, the apostle Paul says to “pray without ceasing.” I don’t know about you, but I have known a few people who would say that they don’t need a dedicated “prayer time” because they, “pray without ceasing,” all the live long day. Although this may be true, there is something different about having a “dedicated” prayer time. Something unique and powerful happens when one has a disciplined prayer time where one prayers and allows God to respond. Freidrich Bonhoeffer said that “Prayer requires it’s own time.” I believe that is true. When we have a dedicated prayer time, wondrous things begin to happen.
In our pressure-cooker lives, where everything is high speed and our goal is to be faster than before, prayer slows us down. As Marcus Braybrooke continues, “pausing for prayer each day gives us a chance to review our deepest yearnings. Traveling into our inner selves, we gain confidence in our own resources, and discover a strength greater than our own.” Through this confidence, we can gain new perspectives on situations in our lives that may be blocking our relationships. We can discover new ways of looking at family arguments or problems we may be having with friends. We may discover a peaceful resolution to a problem that we are having. Through dedicated prayer, we may be in touch with therapeutic energies that help us through illness or other crisis.
But to reap the rewards of such prayer, we must be dedicated and disciplined. It reminds me of going to the gym. I’m always good for a month or so, I always get up early in the morning and drag myself out of bed and head out to the gym. Once I get there, it is always rewarding and I feel good about myself. But then something will happen—it will rain or I’ll stay up too late and feel too tired in the morning. I’ll make excuses—it’s cold outside or I’m tired. So I’ll skip a day. And that is the end of my “working out” plan. Having a dedicated prayer life is similar. Once we start, we have to stick with it. We have to be disciplined and do it as often as we have set out to. Being a sports person, I work well with having a “game plan.” I can make up a schedule and stick to it as long as I view it as “part of the plan.” I’m not sure what works for you but whatever it is that will keep us in conversation with God, I think we need to do it.
Incline my Ear O God…help me to pray for others.
Although the way we pray and when we pray is an individual and private act, it is not an act of isolation. For when we pray, we are bonding ourselves together with others who pray. And, in praying for others, our relationship with God grows immeasurable amounts. At church, we have corporate prayer time, where we pray together for those who are unable to pray for themselves. Imagine, being in a place so deep and dark and knowing that others who love you are praying for you. In a time when you don’t know what to do for someone, including them in your prayer time is one thing you can do. It’s powerful and I truly believe that the people being prayed for know that you are there, praying for them.
But praying for others is not only about praying for those whom we love. If in our relationship with God we want what God wants, then we must also pray for those who we do not love. If God loves all, then even those whom we do not love, God loves. Thus, we must pray for them as well. Roberta Bondi explains, “Painful as it often is, as we push ourselves to ask God for help in desiring their well being, our imaginations and our hearts are enlarged. God truly gives us grace, and we find that what was begun with great effort and fear ends in a blessed and healing compassion.”
This is not something that one can begin to witness right away, it takes dedication and discipline. It takes opening our true selves up to God—the Good the bad and the ugly. It takes a searching for something more in our lives. It takes prayer.
Looking back at the book, Eat, Pray, Love, I know that the woman finally comes to terms with meditating and grows spiritually-although, I never did finish reading the book. I did, however, pick up the book a few months ago and read the end—it’s probably a great book! What I learned from this book is that living our lives takes dedication and once dedication becomes routine, then we are opened to a higher level of our world. It’s the same with prayer, once we embark on a dedicated journey with God through prayer, we will be lifted to new levels in our relationship with our God.
Incline your ear O God…hear my prayer.