Prayer and Action

Lent is a season of prayer.  Perhaps that is why I have tended to view Lent as getting in the way of what I’m doing.  That, of course, is the whole idea of Lent.
 

I am admittedly no expert in prayer.  I’m afraid I have generally been one of those people who considers himself too busy doing to spend time praying.  I have come to find, though, that the two are not quite as distinct as I have sometimes thought.
 

Many years ago I learned something important about prayer from someone who was actually good at it.  It completely changed the way I thought about prayer, and it has shaped my practice of prayer ever since.  The most powerful intercessory prayer, he said, is to be willing to trade places with the one being prayed for.
 

Now, I pray for people all the time.  I have very rarely prayed, maybe two or three times, each involving my family, with the willingness, should God allow it, to trade places with the person I’m praying for.  Surely God is no less concerned with my prayers even when they lack the fullness of intercessory intention on my part.  The reason for that, I believe, is that whether or not I am willing to trade places with the subject of my intercessions, God has demonstrated in Christ that God is.  As always, Christ perfects our prayers in himself.  That is reliable.  I can only imitate it.
 

Still, what I have learned is that my prayer must be always connected with my action.  On rare occasion, I mean my prayers sincerely enough to trade places.  Most other times, I may not be quite that fervent, but I cannot pray with sincerity unless I am at least willing for God to use me as part of the answer to my prayers.  The sincerity of prayer has everything to do with the willingness to act on it.
 

When we pray for the sick, the sincerity and power of our prayer has everything to do with whether we are willing to care for the sick, to visit them, to wait on them.  When we pray for justice and peace in the world, the sincerity and power of our prayer has everything to do with whether we vote accordingly.  When we pray for the creation, the sincerity and power of our prayer has everything to do with how we are stewards of it.  When we pray for the poor and the hungry, the sincerity and power of our prayer has everything to do with whether we ourselves stand ready to clothe and shelter and feed those who need it.  When we pray in thanksgiving, the sincerity and power of our prayer has everything to do with what we are willing to share.
 

The primary Christian prayer, of course, is the Eucharist.  We pray our great thanksgiving in common remembering the ultimate act of love made on our behalf in Christ.  But once again, our prayers do not stand apart from our acting on our prayers.  The Eucharist is, of course, also known as the Mass.  Mass is derived from the Latin word for dismissal.  Referring to the Eucharist as the Mass connects our prayer and our action.  Our giving thanks is not to be limited to the ritual we observe inside the church building.  It is to be taken out into the world as we are dismissed to go and serve.  In fact, in this understanding, the whole focus of prayer is action.  Just as the faithful have received the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, with the dismissal the faithful become the body and blood of Christ in the world, Christ who came not to be served but to serve and to give his live a ransom for many.
 

Prayer and action go together.  Prayer is a way of acting just as much as acting is a way of praying.  One, it seems to me, necessarily leads to the other.      

Peace,

+Stacy

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An Alternative Lent

I have never been a great fan of Lent.  I suppose it’s that I don’t have a very penitential sort of personality.  Actually, it’s not that I’m not penitent.  It’s just that I’m a terrible backslider.
 

The thing that has always bothered me a little bit about Lent is that the unspoken premise seems to be that God likes people to be unhappy.  That isn’t right, of course, but especially as a child, it sure seemed that way to me.  So, once a year, just to keep God satisfied, I had to give something up that I liked.  It was often chocolate.  Later on, I moved on to more sophisticated pleasures to go without during Lent.  It wasn’t the end of the world, but I did miss these things.  And it seemed sort of a pro forma exercise that didn’t really have much of a point.
 

Now this seemed odd to me since God had made those pleasurable things I was giving up in the first place.  And on top of that, what I was taught was that God wanted us to be happy and created material things for our enjoyment.  Why was it, I wondered, that for 40 days, once a year, we were all supposed to act as if that were not true, give up the good things God had made, and be unhappy?  It was better, too, if you could feel guilty.  I didn’t get it.
 

And then I came to understand Lent differently.  I came to understand it as being about health.  It wasn’t supposed to make me unhappy.  It was supposed to help me be healthy.  It is an alternative Lent.
 

And at that point I started thinking about Lent in a different way.  Instead of giving something up, particularly something I liked, I started taking something on that was healthy.  Giving up something was actually OK, as long as it was giving up something because it was unhealthy and not just because it was pleasurable.  So, Lent became about giving up what was not healthy or taking on what was.  Lent stopped being about misery and started being about healthy.
 

What I have taken on has been different in various years.  Some years it has been getting some rest.  Some years it has been overdue trips to the doctor.  This year it will be spending more time with my wife, who has finally completed the move to New York.
 

I’m taking the opportunity of Lent to begin our New York adventure.  We will be more intentional about time together.  We’re going to pick areas of the city to explore each weekend.  We are going to talk.  And walk.  And, Lent notwithstanding, have fun.  That seems to me to be much more what God has in mind with this annual opportunity of Lent.
 

Lent is now an annual opportunity to get me to do something good for myself.  Lent has stopped being about God punishing me for being human, which never did make much sense to me, and instead become a way of God helping me be healthier.  I like that a lot better.  I even look forward to it.
 

We are, in the words of the Prayer Book, invited to a “holy Lent.”  May it be a holy and healthy one this year.  That sounds a lot more like God to me.  And, perhaps, you may have the opportunity to discover what it is that really does make you happy.  And human.
 

Peace,
+Stacy