Good morning everyone! It is such a pleasure to be here with you. I realize that for most of us, this is our first time meeting, so thank you for welcoming me here. And I am really honored to be able to share in this wonderful gathering and welcoming of new brothers and sisters into our shared life together in this corner of the Jesus Movement...what a great day for us to be here! So I thought I would take this opportunity to share a little about myself so you can get to know a little something about who I am as your new Canon. Ok?
So, when I first graduated from seminary in Berkeley, I was assigned to worked at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church and School down in San Juan Capistrano. There, I served not only as the first female priest they’d ever had on staff, but I was one of 5 priests all together. And we all had a variety of gifts and skills, mine was annoying the rector, but one of the other priests who was especially witty put a sign on my office door that read “Prays well with others”. He knew my little secret...I’m really rather terrible at praying!
Before going off to seminary, I imagined that my life as a priest would be filled with moments of quiet meditation, opportunities to sit in contemplation, and that I would devoutly observe the Daily Office. But the truth is, most of my day is filled up with pretty routine stuff…conference calls, administrative work, emails, phone calls, and chasing Bishop David around the diocese. And of course there’s the grocery shopping, dishes, laundry and litter box to attend to. Not unlike most of your days I’d be willing to bet. And by bedtime, I realize I haven’t had that moment of quiet meditation and contemplation; I haven’t even cracked open the Prayer Book. This used to really bum me out. I used to get really frustrated by it and think “what kind of priest am I…I never pray!” And since I had confessed my short-coming to my colleague at St. Margaret’s, I knew that his little sign was a bit of a jab. In retrospect, I now think of it as a bit of encouragement.
As many of you know, I came here from the Diocese of Eastern Oregon. On one of my trips to Bend for a diocesan meeting, I ate dinner at a place called “Common Table”. The dinner was lovely and the wait staff was wonderful. Because Common Table provided meals for the homeless in the community, they tried to keep their expenses low, so the wait staff was all volunteer. We had a wonderful woman serving our table, and I noticed on the underside of her forearm a phrase in Latin “ora et labora”. I asked her what this meant, and she said “prayer and labor...or as I understand it, my work is my prayer”.
When Jesus and his disciples are gathered together, he is always teaching them. He teaches them about healing, faith, gratitude and forgiveness. And he also teaches them about prayer. In this morning’s gospel (Luke 18:1-8), Jesus reminds the disciples to pray always and to not lose heart. He isn’t necessarily telling them to read their prayer books, or recite certain psalms, but he is telling them to be persistent in their prayer and not give up…the road ahead, the road of discipleship is not an easy one. Do not be distracted, stay focused, pray and do not lose heart.
And then he tells a parable that calls to mind issues of trust, justice and deliverance, judgment and faith, and persistence and resistance. Now all of these are wonderful lessons worth exploring, so I’m going to save some of them for future sermons and focus on persistence and resistance.
In this parable, we have two main characters—the widow who is persistent in demanding justice and the judge who is resistant to her pleas for help.
Can we, for just a moment, imagine God in the role of the widow? Can we imagine a God who is persistent in offering to us love, grace and forgiveness? Can we imagine a God who is persistent in desiring to be in a deep and loving relationship with us? Really? Can we imagine such a God? So often we attribute other qualities to God...but persistence in wanting to be in relationship isn’t often one of them. So I want you to imagine, if you can, and especially those of you who will be making professions of faith today, that God is persistent in offering us love. We just have to be willing to receive it.
So if God is the widow, then who is the judge? Well, if we’re honest with ourselves, we discover that sometimes it’s us. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in our own “stuff”—our anxieties, fears, and even routine daily living—that we can’t hear God’s persistent pleas to us.
And that’s what prayer is about. It’s about taking a moment and listening. It’s about our willingness to stop being resistant to a God who loves us, and paying attention.
Now I’m not suddenly going to advocate that you change your daily routines and commit to sitting peacefully with your BCP in hand for hours on end. Rather, I’m going to ask that you reframe your daily routines. I have a wonderful mentor who once said to me, “Anna, church isn’t just about Sunday, it’s about what we do all week long. We just happen to get together on Sunday to celebrate.” I understand that this means that daily living is about being a disciple of Jesus. It means traveling, and meetings, and emails, and walking and working alongside those who have been marginalized, it means going places where the outcome is unsure, and it means sharing the Good News of a God who is persistent in their desire to be in relationship with us. It means being like that waitress from Common Table—my work is my prayer.
You see, I believe prayer is not a passive activity. Yes, it can be those moments of quiet reflection, but I also believe that any time we are working towards realizing the Kingdom in our midst, anytime we are bringing about justice in an unjust world, anytime we are persistently offering love to one another, we are praying. Praying is active. To pray means to be in conversation and relationship with the Spirit of God. To pray is to be receptive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
So while it may be a bit tongue in cheek to say that I “pray well with others” I do actually have some favorite prayers that I like to turn to every now and again. And today this is my offering to you...from Steven Case that all that I do in my daily life and work, even when I’m lost, when done with God in mind, is prayer:
God, what did I miss? How did we get here? I really thought I knew what I was doing. Why don’t I get lost when I have time to get lost? I can’t tell east from west. I can’t tell up from a hole in the ground. Is this what Moses felt like? Just wandering...wandering...wandering...I keep looking for signposts. I keep looking for familiar street signs. Who is the angel in charge of these things? Am I all alone, God? God, I’m going to start out again now. Keep me sane. Show me a landmark. Give me an idea that I’m headed in the right direction. Show me what you brought me here to see. Turn up the volume on whatever you want me to hear in this place. Open my mind, soul, and heart to this experience. I will learn from it. Nobody stays lost. I am on my way. Amen.