Sermons

“Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.” ― Anne Lamott

READING
Unitarian Universalist Views of Prayer
Exerpts from A UUA pamphlet edited by Catherine Bowers.

Eight Unitarian Universalists (UUs) respond to the questions "How do you pray?" "Why do you pray?" and "What role does prayer play in your life?" These questions, of course, assume an affirmative response to the previous question, "Do you pray?" Some Unitarian Universalists would simply respond, "No." We have within our congregations a rich diversity of opinion and belief about prayer and many other religious matters.

I want to share with you what two of them have written about prayer in their own lives.

Roger Cowan
In a desperate moment, I cried out for help, and I was answered. Some years later I am still a humanist—I believe that religion is about this world, about bringing justice and mercy and the power of love into life here and now. Yet I am a humanist who prays, who begins each morning with devotional readings and a time of silence and prayer. Why do I do this?

I need a quiet time.
I need to express my gratitude.
I need humility.
I pray because—alone—I am not enough and also I am too much.
I express gratitude for the gift of aliveness.
I assert my oneness with you and all humankind and all creation.

When I pray, I acknowledge that God is not me.

Lynn Ungar
During the moment of silence in our Sunday service I close my eyes and sing, silently, inside my head, "Guide my feet while I run this race for I don't want to run this race in vain." As I sing in silence, I imagine myself and the congregation enfolded in arms of love.

At a hospital bedside I hold the hand of a dying woman. The words form in my mind—or perhaps in my heart—"Goddess, be with her, give her strength and courage and comfort for this journey."

The full autumn moon rises, huge and orange and glowing, and I feel my spirit lifting along with it. "Thank you," I say. "Thank you." In the moment of beauty it doesn't matter whom I am thanking or even whether I am heard. It is enough to be grateful and to be a witness to wonder.

READING
“Traditional Hindu Prayer” ~ translated and adapted by Abhi Janamachi [page 10, Voices from the Margins, An Anthology of Meditations, edited by Jacqui James and Mark D. Morrison-Reed. Boston: Skinner House Books, 2012]

May good befall all.
May there be peace for all.
May all be fit for excellence. May all experience the holy. May all be happy.
May all be healthy.
May all experience what is good. May no one suffer.

SERMON
On the night that Jesus was betrayed, after he had shared his dinner with his close companions, Jesus went out to the garden to pray. The disciples went with him. And he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” ⁴¹ And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, ⁴² “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”^{[f] 45} And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, ⁴⁶ and he said to them, “Why do you sleep? Rise up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

Rise up and pray. These words were on a little bookmark that Mary Ellen Hunt gave to me a few weeks ago. There was a tinge of the tongue-in-cheek, I think, on both our parts when I read out the words. And so, I tucked the bookmark into my bag and thought little of it.

Then, later, the words, “Rise Up and Pray” came back to me in a different context from the reference in Luke’s Gospel. I now invite you to consider the deeper meaning of these four words.

Prayer is a tricky business for Unitarian Universalists, as we noted earlier. Among us are those who follow a religious practice where prayer is quite prominent – Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity. We are also naturalists, pagans, agnostics, atheists and humanists – for whom prayer may not be a regular practice.

I want to say a bit more about the Luke passage before I leave it.

This is the evening that Jesus would be handed over to his enemies. This is a terrible time for him. He knows that it will not go well for him. He needs his solitude, but he also needs his friends. So, he retires to the garden where he can be alone with his thoughts, say his prayers, and prepare himself for whatever will happen next. And he brings his friends and asks them to stay with him and wait with him and watch with him and pray.

He instructs the disciples twice. First, when they enter the garden he tells them that they should pray so that they will not enter into temptation. What does he mean? What temptation?

If you remember the events that follow, you will recall that when Jesus is taken by the Roman soldiers, the disciples scatter like the wind. They cannot get away fast enough. The temptation they face is to turn away from the truth they have seen and experienced during their time with their teacher. The temptation they face is to deny Jesus. The temptation they face is to retreat into silence and passivity in the presence of new truth, unfamiliar truth and at the same time, captivating truth. Love and justice lie before them in Jesus’ teaching. They will need to hold fast and be willing to work for it – for a long time.

And so, Jesus goes off a short distance by himself to pray. He is gone for quite a long while and the disciples eventually fall asleep. I do not necessarily fault them. How many of us, intending to maintain a meditation or prayer have relaxed ourselves into sleep, only to wake with a start and self-recriminations? Jesus returns to find his friends, whose company and support he desperately needs, snoozing as if there was not a care in the world. He wakes them and instructs them again saying, “Why do you sleep? Rise Up. Pray.” I do not know if Jesus, finding his friends asleep, was angry, frustrated, sad, or heart-broken. In any event, he and they have little time to ponder. The soldiers are upon them and Jesus is taken into custody.

Now, two thousand years later, I hear in the words of Jesus for my own time and my own life. “Why do you sleep? Rise Up. Pray.”

Our own great teachers know that there is trouble in the world, great and massive trouble. Much of the trouble we are in is the result of our own personal and collective actions and inactions. Our teachers show us the trouble and then we begin to see more clearly the injustices that maybe we could not or would not see before. There is new language for this growing awareness – Wake Up and Stay Woke. Why? Well, it is our responsibility as people of faith to make right that which is wrong. Once having seen the light, we cannot retreat into darkness and claim that there is no light. We cannot sleep through the disaster and we cannot sleep through the revolution. Pray that you avoid the temptations that will divert you from your path. Your path is Love, though it may take you though some difficult experiences. Remain steadfast. You are not alone.

We face great temptations. We are tempted to scatter when things go badly. We are tempted to feign deafness and blindness when injustice is right in front of us. We are tempted to remain silent when we ought to speak up and we are tempted to speak when we ought to remain silent. We are tempted to dodge responsibility by thinking that correcting injustice or reducing suffering is someone else’s problem or responsibility or fault and we walk away from neighbors who need us. We are tempted to believe, falsely, that our puny little efforts won’t make any difference and so we make no effort. We are tempted to think, falsely, that there will always be time; time to do what we know we must do. We are tempted to believe, falsely, that we are not the right one, not capable enough, not smart enough, not committed enough, just plain Not Enough.

These are the temptations we must avoid by staying awake and remaining focused in our intentions.

Now, we might ask, “why pray?” Wake up and stay awake – that makes good sense. If we are to do the justice work and the healing work of our time, we must be awake. We must be people of action who show up and change things that need to be changed. That requires action, not prayer.

Perhaps.

Here’s the thing about prayer: Prayer prepares our hearts and bodies and minds for whatever comes next. And . . . as humanist UU, Roger Cowan, said, “When I pray, I acknowledge that God is not me.”

For me, prayer does not change God. Prayer changes me. Prayer is my way of calming the body, stilling the mind and opening the heart. For those of you who may be averse to the word prayer, meditation can serve much the same purpose. We focus our intention and strengthen our resolve through prayer or mediation. When we focus our intention and strengthen our resolve, we can accomplish much. Indeed, perhaps we will move mountains.

I spent yesterday at the ceremony for Healing Turtle Island. There are native and indigenous elders from all over the world here this week. Hundreds of people have gathered together to focus our intention and strengthen our resolve to heal our home – Turtle Island – Mother Earth. Prayer is a major tool of the elders. We spent hours in prayer ceremony.

One of the elders from Alaska, now living near Seattle, was telling us about the opposition to drilling for gas and oil in the arctic. She also talked about opposition to the pipelines that threaten our water. She has been at any number of demonstrations with many, many people. Some people come to stand, some to march, some to shout, some to hold signs in the air, and some to pray. This is what she told the angry and loud protesters. “Your anger and your shouting will not stop the drilling. The drilling will stop when our prayers and our intention reach Creator and shift the energy. Then the drilling will stop.

This is a major learning for me. We do not need to be angry or loud or carry signs with mean words and insults in order to effect the change we seek. Anger and shouting will not work. We will achieve the change we seek when our prayers and our intentions shift the energy of the universe.

At Standing Rock, most of the people protesting the pipeline and protecting our water were quiet and polite and prayed without ceasing. They changed the energy. We are not finished with this work of changing the energy from destroying Mother Earth back toward honoring and protecting and healing Mother Earth. We are not finished. We may not finish in our lifetime. The learning for me is that quiet, prayerful persistence is more effective than angry shouting and name-calling and negative slogans can ever be. I certainly needed this reminder from our elder, and perhaps you are like me in needing such a reminder.

Another elder, a Dine man, spoke about prayer. We shared a ceremony using tobacco as a prayer gift. He said that prayers are not free and we are to offer something in exchange for our prayers. That’s why many native people carry tobacco or corn meal or sage or cedar or some other plant that is part of their culture. He said that if we neglect our prayer offerings, our tears will be the only thing we have to give. I thought about that. I do not want to have only tears to offer when I pray. So, I will sit with this man’s teaching and see where it leads me.

One more story. A few weeks ago I mentioned that there is a child – really a young woman at age 16 – who is living with an inoperable brain tumor. She was in the Intensive Care Unit then. Frankly, it was unlikely that she would leave the hospital. When I saw my friend this weekend, she said “Hey, I want to give you an update on Gabby.” She told me that Gabby is home. A part of the tumor is dead or dying. Gabby may be a candidate for a clinical trial at St Jude’s Hospital. Wow. That’s really great. I said that Gabby is the kid who won’t quit. I don’t know where she gets all the capital she is spending on staying alive. My friend, a Unitarian Universalist, just looked at me and said, “Maybe it’s all the prayers.” Maybe it is.

To underestimate the power of collective focused intention is a mistake. Thought is energy. Words are energy. Prayer is energy. When we wake up, stay woke, rise up and pray, there is no telling what we are capable of accomplishing. Our world is a mess of injustice. People are hurting. Mother Earth is suffering because of human indifference to her health and well-being. We can do something about it.

Perhaps the gift we offer in exchange for our prayers is a life of integrity and service. We rise up and pray in order to fortify ourselves – in order to resist the temptations of inaction and inadequacy. We rise up and pray in order to do our work, the work to which we are called, each of us in our own way.

In closing, let me repeat the words of the traditional Hindu prayer with slight variation.

May good befall you.
May there be peace for you.
May you be fit for excellence. May you experience the holy. May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you experience what is good. May no one suffer.

Blessed Be. I Love You. Amen.