Sermon: Community of Prayer

Texts: Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11

Date: May 4, 2008

Bob Haslanger, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

In her book Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life, Patricia Hampl writes of a conversation she had as a young girl with Mr. Bertram, her next door neighbor, a mysterious person who never went anywhere. One summer day she helped him in root out dandelions in his lawn. While she was timid about asking about the rumor that he was a screen writer, she was bold enough to ask him about religion.

"No, he said, he did not go to church. ‘But you do believe in God?’ I asked, hardly daring to hope he did not. He paused for a moment and looked up at the sky, where big, spreading clouds streamed by. ‘God isn't the problem,’ he said."

Hampl’s suspicion that there was an underlying problem in life was confirmed. Her uneasiness with the certainties of life solidified.

“The perverse insubstantiality of the material world was the problem: reality refused to be real enough. Nothing could keep you steadfastly happy. That was clear. Some people blamed God. But I sensed that Mr. Bertram was right. God isn’t the problem. The clouds passing in the big sky kept dissipating, changing form.”

There wasn’t anything certain for the disciples as they watched Jesus disappear in a cloud on Mount Olivet. They had been through quite a time. Jesus had been crucified, rose from the dead, and stayed with them for forty days. Now he was gone again, bringing them up short on their question about the restoration of the kingdom. Instead he promised them baptism in the Holy Spirit and the mission to be witnesses to the world. The world as they knew it had changed and changed again, and yet again. There they stood with their teacher gone, clouds passing in the big sky, and mystery as a promised future.

Can you identify with the disciples? Something significant has happened, perhaps a life changing event has occurred, and you are at a loss; locked up. What had appeared real just wasn’t as solid as you believed. There have been occasions in my life where it would have been appropriate to have someone me ask me why I was standing, staring into space.

When I was fourteen my brother, father and I drove from Shreveport, Louisiana to Austin, Texas where I was going to go to a boarding school. We had lived in Shreveport for only a year, having moved the year before from Connecticut. For the second time in such a short time, my world had completely changed. Within an hour or so of arriving, I saw the tail lights winking in the dust carrying away the only two people I knew for hundreds of miles.

Often in the Bible, when angels show up the first thing they say is, “Don’t be afraid.” The two dressed in white who appeared to the disciples weren’t quite so polite. But they bring a promise. Jesus will return. The disciples, brought back to ground, headed back to Jerusalem as Jesus had commanded them.

This was the in-between time for them; between the presence of Jesus in the flesh and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We aren’t directly told of their state of mind, but we are told what they do. They gather in the upper room, and as told in Eugene Peterson’s translation, “They agreed they were in this for good, completely together in prayer, the women included.”

Jesus’ prayer from the Gospel of John has a connection to this moment of community prayer. The prayer is sometimes called Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer. It lays out the relationships between God, Jesus, the disciples and all the believers that will come after, including us. We read less than half of the prayer this morning. 

In my reading, the passage that connects to the disciples as they gather together is the verse, “Holy Father, guard them as they purse this life that you conferred as a gift through me, so they can be one heart and mind as we are one heart and mind.” Later in verses 20-22, Jesus includes not only the disciples in his prayer for unity but for believers who come after.

“I'm praying not only for them
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.

After all they had seen and experienced, the disciples gathered, confirmed their commitment to each other, and prayed together as a community.

The text from John can be read that Jesus was praying within the hearing of the disciples. He had just finished speaking to them directly when he began his prayer. These are two examples of public prayer.

What is the value of community prayer?

Community prayer is meant to bind us to one another, to broaden our vision of the needs of the world, to give us models to steer by, and friends to uphold us and encourage us. We don’t go to church for ourselves alone. We are a body of faithful who stand and witness, first to one another, in our relationship with God.

When we pray together, we reveal ourselves to God and to each other. Robert Keck says, “Prayer is not the moment when God and humans are in relationship, for that is always. Prayer is taking initiative to intentionally respond to God's presence.” When we do that together, we reinforce the unity of our faith so we might be one heart and mind with God and Christ.

I don’t believe I can be a Christian by myself. I wouldn’t presume to speak for others. It’s not like saying, “I’m a duck,” and expecting people to accept my duckness. It is entirely possible for someone to say, “I’m a Christian,” but not go to church, or pray with others. But for me there is an element of doing, as well as being.

I spent many years not going to church, not meeting with others to worship or to pray. I suppose I still considered myself Christian at the time. I had experiences of the presence of God. I got in plenty of trouble where I said hasty and fervent prayers. But there was an underlying problem in my life. “The perverse insubstantiality of the material world was the problem: reality refused to be real enough.” The things I thought were significant kept dissipating, changing form.

Reconnecting to the wider communion began slowly. I met Dawn. We found we shared a common understanding of the presence of God in our lives. After we were married, we shared that understanding with a few friends, one of whom invited us to a small home based church. After some time, a core group of that church migrated to an established church.

What appeared for me was a context. A context that not only supported my sometimes contentious relationship with God, but an understanding of my relationship with millions of others, right then, right now who shared a unity of purpose to be of one heart and one mind with God.

In Greek, verse three of the passage from John, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God…” defines eternal life not as to what we will experience after death but in terms of what we know now. It is our connection, in the present, to the eternal. Jesus’ prayer would have us, then, be connected one to another, as of one mind, and to God, in the single eternal moment of the present.

I don’t know that unity is limited to Christians, either. The same understanding is found in many spiritual disciplines and religions. Whatever differences we may have, when we truly bring ourselves to God in prayer, I believe there is a unity of spirit which is transcendent.

Thomas Merton wrote, “It's a risky thing to pray and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God.... at the very root of your existence, you are in constant and immediate contact with the infinite power of God.”

Within our tradition, the communion rite is a symbol of our participation in the body of Christ. It is our symbolic link through time with the disciples that ate and drank with Jesus before his crucifixion and with all the believers who have come since then, including the millions who will join with us today.

Through our worship and prayer together and our sharing the communion table, I can acknowledge and participate in the unity of spirit. On my own, I am unable to grasp the enormity of God. But by putting myself in the context of communion with Christians in all places, and in all times, and recognizing that as one path to the presence of God, I find myself connected to what is truly real.

At the end of the chapter from which I read earlier, Patricia Hampl writes about a parish lady, a woman from her church.

“We met every morning, just past the Healys' low brick wall. She had a peaceful gait, no rush to it. When finally we were close enough to make eye contact, she looked up, straight into my face, and smiled. It was such a complete smile, so entire, it startled me every time, as if I'd heard my name called out on the street of a foreign city.

She was a homely woman, plain and pale, unnoticeable. But I felt -- how to put it -- she shed light. The mornings were often frail with mist, the light uncertain and tender. The smile was a brief flood of light. She loved me, I was sure.

I knew what it was about. She was praying.

If I had seen a nun mumbling the Rosary along Summit, it would not have meant much to me. The parish lady was not a nun. She was a person who prayed, who prayed alone, for no reason that I understood. But there was no question that she prayed without ceasing, as the strange scriptural line instructed.

She didn't look up to the blank clouds for a response, as Mr. Bertram did in his stoic way. Her head was bowed, quite unconsciously. When she raised it, keeping her hand in her pocket where the clear beads were, she looked straight into the eyes of the person passing by. It was not an invasive look, but it latched. She had me. Not an intrusive gaze, but one brimming with a secret which, if she only had the words, it was clear she'd want to tell.”