"HABIT OR CUSTOM?"
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 28, 2001
Text: Acts 1:1-14
Every single Sunday for three whole years, with the exception of holidays, I as a young boy, would spend the afternoons with two of my closest friends. They were from two Dutch families, one was known as the DeBoers, the other as the Overworders. Every Sunday afternoon, because I was an only child and my parents felt that I needed contact with other children, they would drive me to my friend's house and leave me there from the middle of the afternoon until early evening, right through what the English call ”˜tea time.' I'm not sure what my parents' motivation was in doing this; I have always been somewhat suspicious that their modus operandi was in order that they might have some peace and quiet, but regardless of their motivation it was one of the great joys of my life. The Dutch families that I used to visit were most pious and devout. After tea they would read their Bible; above the mantelpiece were the words ”˜God is Liefde' (God is Love). They would read the Bible and pray. And they had the most amazing sandwiches that you've ever had in your life! In fact, they introduced me to a sandwich that I think is part of the ills of my diet ever since. It is a Dutch tradition and they used to have a thing called hagelslag which is simply ground up pieces of chocolate put between two slices of bread so you had a chocolate sandwich. That might not sound particularly appetizing to you but to a seven-year-old boy it had dropped straight down from Heaven! I used to love my afternoon teas with these people and quite enjoyed praying with them in their meal afterwards. In fact, it became a custom that was really part of my life, for they would pray for all manner of people because they were both farmers and had green houses. They would pray for some of the migrant workers who had come to England in the 1960s from Portugal and Italy to find work and they would pray for each one of those workers who had come. They would pray for world issues and crises that were happening around the world and they would lift up on the wings of prayer, those who in the community in which we lived who needed a helping hand. It was a wonderful custom and it was one throughout the years that I must admit I have taken to heart and have found most winsome.
I think of those people whenever I read a passage such as the one read this morning from the Book of Acts. We read that the disciples, after Jesus had ascended to Heaven and left them, went into the Upper Room and committed themselves to constant prayer. The word that is used to describe the constancy of prayer is proskartereo, the Greek word meaning to do things diligently, to do things with a sense of conviction and dedication and hard work. We read therefore, that the disciples made it part of their custom to go into the Upper Room and pray. The Upper Room carries with it a great deal of historical importance, so much so that we are told by one Latin historian, that after the destruction of Jerusalem of AD 70 when Hadrian visited the City of Jerusalem and the Temple was destroyed and many of the other buildings were also destroyed, he found that there was this house, this seemingly ignominious house, still standing. This house had in fact become a centre of prayer and worship and power. Years later, the Empress Helena, when she went to Jerusalem, decided to build a great church around this house because she believed that this was the home of the mother of Mark, namely the Upper Room where Jesus and his disciples had prayed.
But when they went to the Upper Room they also carried with them a rather pathetic stigma: the times that they had last been in there was a time of great sorrow for the disciples. It was the time when Judas was going to betray Jesus. It was the time when Jesus broke the bread and poured the wine and shared it with the disciples and asked them to follow him. It was a time of impending doom and suffering. But now the events of that week when Christ was crucified, the events of the Resurrection and the Ascension had all taken place and they are expectant, are waiting for God to do something powerful again through the power of the Holy Spirit. So as was their custom, diligently, fervently, they go back to the Upper Room waiting for God to do something powerful. In both the case of my Dutch friends and of the Apostles who went into the Upper Room, there is a sense of the customary nature of prayer, that they were ready for anything that might invade their lives, whether it be positive or negative, on the basis of the custom of setting time aside to go and pray.
I think this is a vital message. I feel this way because when I look at the shelves in the bookstores today there seems to be a plethora of books on meditation and prayer and devotion. Even if you look at Ophra Winfrey's Best Sellers table in the bookstore so many of them are books on meditation, on getting to know yourself, on taking time in order that you might be still and quiet. It seems that at the heart of our society is an angst that is leading people to yearn for this meditation and prayer. In fact I was reading a book by Stephen Harrison which was entitled "Do Nothing - Your Spiritual Search Is Over" and this author suggests that all we have to do is turn in on ourselves and do nothing and meditate, be quiet and nothing else really matters. The great Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that ”˜prayer is the contemplation of the ordinary things of life from a higher point of view.' That definition of prayer is inadequate for our purposes but it tells you what many people are craving for; what they're craving is an experience, a meditative peace of mind. They want to get away from the rigours of the world and have some sense of the spiritual power in their lives. While people want this vitality and while they crave it I would suggest that in and of itself what is being offered is inadequate because it doesn't address the central issue that is at the heart of the Christian understanding of prayer. That is that prayer is not just meditation, prayer is contact, it is a divine, intimate relationship in faith with a living God. To have that kind of living relationship does not mean that one doesn't step aside from the difficulties of life and contemplate, it means that one actively seeks the very presence and power of God through prayer.
I want to look at this today in order that our prayer lives might be full and invigorated and full of joy. The first is that when I look at the Apostles there was an intentional nature to their prayer. We read, ”˜as was their custom, diligently, they went into the Upper Room and they made their requests known to God.' Let's be honest. A lot of prayer is not like that. A lot of prayer is what I call ”˜an emergency measures act.' Dr. Hunnisett and I were talking about this before church at 9:30 this morning. It is more like treating prayer like a Red Cross sign; whenever we have a problem or emergency the thing that we do is call out to God in a moment of anxious expressive prayer in the hope that God is going to do something majestic and wonderful. In other words, it is simply an outburst of anxiety from our hearts. I would like to suggest to you that rather than prayer being an emergency measure that we enact only when we have a crisis, I suggest that prayer actually becomes not an emergency measure but a diet. By a diet, I mean a constant and regular feeding on the power of God through daily intercessory prayer. That prayer becomes an integral part of your life and not just an emergency measure when things go wrong. If you do that you will then be ready for emergencies when they arrive because you will already be in communion, living daily with the living God. But there are many people who when they pray, want to have a big boom experience. They want to have all the bells and whistles go off and unless they have this great and glorious expression of God, unless they have an emotional outburst, they feel somehow their prayers are less effective or less real.
There is a wonderful moment in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters where Screwtape, who is the senior devil, is talking to Wormwood, who is the devil in training. Screwtape says to Wormwood, "There's one thing I really don't want to have happen: I don't want people to pray. There is one way in which you can discourage them from praying and that is whenever they pray for anything of substance just make them feel good instead." In other words, when people have the impulse to actually be charitable as a result of their prayers, don't encourage that, just make them feel as if they're being charitable instead. If people are feeling courageous and are going to do great things for God as a result of their prayer, don't let them be that way, just make them feel that they're being courageous. When they feel that their sins are forgiven and that they have a new life, don't let them be that way, just make them have a little feeling that they are good and just feel that they are forgiven. C.S. Lewis is getting at something: people sometimes want prayer just to be a good and ecstatic feeling, they want it to be glorious, they want it to be powerful, they want it to be effective through an experience and that's what people are craving. But it is more than that. Prayer is not just an emotion, not just a feeling about God; it is being in contact with God on a daily basis.
There's a wonderful line in John Calvin's commentary on this passage where he says, ”˜there's tendency at time for Christians to be a little sluggish in their prayer.' I don't know if you're like me, but I get a little sluggish in my prayer, my prayers are lazy, intermittent. My prayers are not always sincere and I'm often not always open. Sometimes I just repeat things as rote. It's just like saying grace before a meal. I usually say grace before every meal that I have, sometimes I do it quietly, often I do it without even thinking about it. The meal is put in from of me, ”˜for-this-food-O-Lord-I-give-you-thanks-amen' and get on with it. Sometimes if it's a particularly good meal (somebody else must have cooked it!) I go ”˜thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord. Amen.' If I've cooked it and it's not particularly good, I say, ”˜God help me, God help me, God help me, God help me, Amen.' But any way it becomes rote after awhile and is just a banal habit.
That's not what I'm talking about. I am not talking about a habit; I'm talking about a custom. I'm talking about a rigour; I'm talking about a diligence which understands that having God as part of your life through prayer, communicating on a daily basis, is a wonderful and a glorious thing. It might not always have the bells and whistles but it is indeed a diet which keeps us going in our daily lives. Why? Because it is ultimately a response to God's grace. It is a response to the call of Christ. Jesus wanted the disciples to pray regularly. He wanted them to be diligent in prayer, even after he was gone he wanted them to wait on the Holy Spirit in order that through their prayers they might receive what he wants to give them when he wants to give it to them. That requires an intentional nature to our prayers.
There is a second thing: there is an intimacy to our prayers. Carl Sagan once wrote that ”˜all that the world is is a blue dot in the light of the whole universe.' In a sense really, by the whole cosmological sense, even this world in which we live is insignificant and small and really not worthy of too much. There are many times when we as God's children feel a little bit like a blue dot even on this world itself. We feel insignificant. When we do so there is therefore no innate desire to have an intimate relationship with God. Tom Harper in writing on prayer (he has written a very fascinating book) has said that ”˜prayer is intimacy with the ultimacy.' It is intimacy with the ultimate. It is an understanding that the God of the universe who created us actually is concerned with the welfare and being of those whom God created. There is a sense then, of the personal and the intimate in prayer. Sometimes we do need to meditate, we do need to contemplate, we do need to get away from it. Jesus actually said that you go into a closet and you close your door to get away from the world in order that you can have such intimate moments. But those intimate moments are not just contemplation; they actually reveal something about ourselves. I think that one of the great reasons why people fear prayer is about what they might discover about themselves. They might be exposed for who they really are when they become intimate with God. It reminds me of a story that Bill Hybels tells (and it's a true one evidently) of what happened some ten years ago during Desert Storm. There was a newly promoted Colonel who was so thrilled with his new appointment that he went into his great big tent in the Iraqi desert and set up his desk and chair and all his accoutrements and he was ready! Then from the distance there was a Corporal approaching and the Corporal was carrying a case with all kinds of mechanical things in it. Thinking that he would impress the Corporal with his newfound promotion, the Colonel picked up the telephone on his desk and pretended to talk to talk to General Schwortskoff, and he says, "Oh thank you very much, General Schwartzkopf, any time I can help you, I'm your man. Feel free to call on me. And Norm," he says, "When things get really difficult out there you know, Norm, you can count on me. I will always provide you with sound advice and guidance." And he put the phone down. The young Corporal came up to him and the Colonel said to him, "Now then, what can I do for you?" The Corporal said, "Well, actually sir, I have been sent here by the divisional headquarters to hook up your phone!" Alas, all too often we don't have our phone hooked up because we are just so full of ourselves. When we are so puffed up we do not desire to come face to face with God. The great Saint Anselm once wrote about this as a dilemma and I quote, "O painful dilemma, if I look into myself I cannot endure myself. If I look not into myself I cannot face myself. If I consider myself, my own face appalls me. If I consider not myself, my damnation deceives me. If I see myself the horror is intolerable, if I see not myself, death is unavoidable." You see, my friends, one of the reasons why we're so reluctant to become intimate with God is that it might just reveal who we are and not just who God is. But we need to do it. Furthermore, we do need an experience of God.
Just recently I was reading an article in The Globe And Mail called Great Multitudes Come Together. It was about three weeks ago, written by John Stackhouse, whose writing I always enjoy. He talked about the church growth movement and the big megachurches being created. There was this pearl in it which came from Don Posterski of World Vision: Churches that are helping people connect with God are growing; it's the experiential factor. Spiritually people have hungrier hearts than heads, right now. We are clearly a less rational culture than we used to be. I think that is true. I'm not sure that I applaud that; I don't think that there is any discontinuity between reason and revelation, I do not think we should be irrational as people. But what I understand him to be saying is that there are people in our society who deeply want to have an experience of God, who want to have a relationship with God, want to have an intimacy with God and I say to people who want that to take the first step in response to the call of Christ. Make prayer an integral part, a custom, in your life, in order that when you do so, whatever winds might blow, you are ready and prepared because you are in communion with God.
There is a third thing. Prayer also involves our lives. Many of the great medieval fathers of the church used to have a phrase: Ora et labora. Pray and work. They understood something that we lose in the church, namely, that devotion precedes our activity. It motivates, it empowers our activity. Our devotion to God in Christ is not an afterthought after we have decided what we want to do; it is the impulse to do what God wants us to do. That requires of us a dedication, a diligence, if we are to do it and if we are to work in a way that is in line with the justice and the righteousness and the holiness of our God. There is a lovely story of a father and son who went fishing. They went off to a camp and found that when they put their baited hook out and went back to the camp and returned to find they had caught some fish. The boy said to the father, "Daddy, daddy, I knew we would catch fish!" The father said, "Well, how did you know?" The boy said, "I prayed about it, Daddy, I prayed." They repeated the routine and put the baited hook in the water and waited and sure enough there were more fish caught. The little boy said, "Daddy, daddy, I knew we would catch fish!" "But how would you know?" asked the father. "Because I prayed about it," said the son. Again they put the hook back in the water and waited but there were no fish. The little boy said, "I knew it Daddy. I knew there would be no fish." The father asked, "Well, how would you know there'd be no fish this time?" He said, "I didn't pray about it." So the father said, "Well, why didn't you pray about it?" "Because, Daddy, I realized that we hadn't put any bait on the hook!" Powerful lesson!! We might have all the right words but the opposite is also true if we're not prepared to act on the power of that prayer. For that prayer in and of itself is a call to act, and in and of itself is a powerful and a moving thing.
There's a story told of Ethelred, who was the Saxon king from Northumbria. He had decided he was going to attack the Britons in Wales and so we went there with his army to slaughter the Britons who were held up in a place called Bangor. When they got to Bangor and decided that they were going to take on the Briton army they realized that there was a group of monks sitting in the field between the Britons and themselves. The Saxon generals didn't know what to do so Ethelred said these words to them, pointing at the monks, "They have already begun to fight. Kill them first." Ethelred saw prayer as action. He knew what he would be up against. When the disciples gathered in that Upper Room, when they waited for the power of the Holy Spirit, for the risen Jesus to act in their midst, they were doing something. They were doing what Plato called ”˜the joint striving of souls', they were waiting on their God because it was their custom and their custom was based on their knowledge and their faith that God would come. Therefore, my friends, make it your custom to pray, pray, pray. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.