Following Fr. Peter’s marvellous sermon last week on
stewardship, upon reading the Epistle passage for today, I was tempted to
continue with that very important topic, but as it relates to the list of
special spiritual gifts as we heard articulated by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 12.
Equally, it would be appropriate to preach on the
same passage in terms of pointing out that spiritual gifts are a very good
God-given thing indeed; but we must always resist the lamentable popular trend
today, as Dave Hunt states in The Seduction of Christianity, “to seek
gifts rather than the Giver.” The
corollary teaching being that before any of those gifts are likely to be freely
bestowed on us, we must first possess a true and lively faith that seeks
nothing more than God Himself, as when He gives us those special spiritual
gifts, they are not for our personal benefit, but exclusively for the building
up of His kingdom.
But neither stewardship nor spiritual gifts are the
binding theme of today’s readings, rather, prayer. And not just any old prayer, but the “right
kind of prayer.”
At the beginning of the Epistle, St. Paul makes
reference to the wrong kind of prayer by reminding his Gentile converts that
they were formerly led astray by their own impulses into following any and all
sorts of man-made idols. Some might
argue that prayer, at its most fundamental level, is an impulse. Fair enough; but is the impulse self-seeking
or God-seeking?
One of our parishioners has just returned from a
vacation where an old friend, now in her eighties, observed to her words to the
effect, “I think that I have been telling God what I want for long enough; it’s
probably time that I listened to Him.” A
huge step away from the wrong kind of prayer, I should say!
And surely the Gospel speaks to self-seeking or
self-serving prayer on a much, much grander scale. The Temple was an enormous edifice, on a
scale that makes some of the mega-churches today in the United States look
rather puny. And there was constant
“prayer” going on in the Temple - but according to our Lord, the wrong kind of
prayer. So wrong in fact, that He weeps
over, not just the Temple, but the entire city for the fact that they were
completely unaware of God’s presence, “thou knewest not the time of thy
visitation.”
Fr. Gavin Dunbar, a well-known Nova Scotia Anglican
priest, now serving in a traditionalist parish in Savannah Georgia, makes the
following rather damning observation of just how little things have changed in
2,000 years. He is speaking to this very
Gospel reading, specifically that part where Jesus enters the Temple to find
all kinds of commercial activities taking place, and as He is purging the
Temple of the sellers, saying, “My house is the house of prayer: but ye have
made it a den of thieves.”
Fr. Dunbar says, “Is there a place for commercial activity in the church? Go to one of the pace-setting evangelical mega-churches, and you may well find coffee bars, food courts, gift shops, athletic programmes, day care, auto repair and convenience banking, in buildings indistinguishable in style from shopping malls; and with worship that consists in soft rock praise choruses, ‘special music’, videos, and upbeat, therapeutic ‘messages’ relevant to the felt needs of the worshippers. Mega-churches are doing this, because they have decided to package, market, and sell evangelical faith to the religious consumers of America, using every tool that management theory and social science provide. The danger in this evangelistic strategy is that they may turn the bread of eternal life into fast food for the soul, complete with empty calories and spiritual trans-fats.” That last part may be a little corny, but his point should be well taken.
This is actually from a sermon for this tenth Sunday
after Trinity from Fr. Dunbar, in which, as read, he asks whether there is a
place for commercial activity in the Church.
In resolving that there is, but that it is a very unique type of
commerce, he continues, “Jerusalem’s problem was ignorance, a refusal to know “the
time of its visitation”, and “the things which belong unto [its] peace.” It is not that they were not told of these
things. In his gospel Jesus proclaimed
the time of their visitation by God’s mercy; and taught them the will of God
for their peace; but His words fell on deaf ears. They did not want to know. Wilful ignorance of the truth, then as now,
has dire consequences: rejecting the knowledge of salvation, Jerusalem drew
upon itself judgment.
“You may well wonder how this could
happen, in God’s own city, the place of the Temple. In fact the Temple was the heart of the
problem, the centre of resistance to God’s saving will. The corruption of every nation always begins
in the corruption of its religion. The
temple was a perfect hive of religious activity: but there was no room in it
for the word of God; no place for repentance.
Jesus found its courts filled with the buying and selling of animals to
be offered in sacrifice: a sign of the corruption of Israel’s religion, its
pandering to worldly agendas and ambitions at the expense of the service of
God. So with divine authority, “Jesus
… began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought, saying, It is
written, ‘My house is the house of prayer’: but ye have made it the den of
thieves”. And then, as St. Luke
tells us, “He taught daily in the temple”. Where buyers and sellers had done their
business, the word of God, unadulterated, unpackaged, unmarketed, was now
proclaimed instead.
“What Jesus drove out of the temple was one kind of commerce. What He put in its place, however, was another kind of commerce, a holy commerce between God and man, transacted in Jesus Christ, a commerce in teaching and prayer. For in Jesus Christ, the Word of God comes down from above, teaching man God’s will, in which lies our peace. And in Jesus Christ, the man’s word of prayer ascends on high, seeking peace according to God’s will (quoting Richard Hooker in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity). That is the true business of God’s people, willing what God wills, as set forth in God’s word; willing the eternal good, which is God’s will. As today’s Collect puts it, in asking for such things as shall please God - in willing his will - do we obtain our petitions - the peace and happiness which he gives. That is our business; and anything else is thievery and fraud.”
Fr. Dunbar’s observations are frightfully
well-taken; we should do very well indeed to take them to heart. Collectively, we must ask ourselves as a
parish whether we are “willing God’s will” in all that we do as a part of the
universal Church. Happily and very
importantly, insofar as our services are concerned, we are blessed with a
service manual, the Book of Common Prayer, almost all of which comes from much
older service books of the Church, that ensures that at least the words we are
praying are God-centred. Whether they
are offered in the true Spirit that ensures that “no man can say Jesus is Lord,
but by the Holy Spirit” is for God to judge.
Individually, we must ask ourselves whether we are
“willing God’s will” in all that we do, not least in our approach to our
activities in, around, and on behalf of the Church. In our individual prayers, acknowledging that
we are living in a time when the collective mindset is at least as corrupt and
man-centred as was Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, and that it is very difficult
indeed to resist self-seeking, even in prayer, we would do well to stick to the
BCP and other such resources in our private prayers, especially if we suddenly
come to the realization that, “I have been telling God what I want for long
enough; it’s probably time that I listened to Him.”
But of course, it is not the words that we say that
determine the quality of our prayer; rather, true prayer, and right in the
sight of God comes from our inner spirit that seeks to love Him with all of its
heart, soul, mind and strength, for “He knoweth the very secrets of the heart”
(Ps. 44.22b).
Whenever we pray, either collectively or individually, it is a very important exercise to spend a few minutes to attempt to leave the distractions of the world behind and thus to focus our attention on God. I sometimes quote from John Baillie’s Diary of Private Prayer in which he provides morning and evening prayers and meditations. Related to our need to be both God-centred and devoutly honest, the prayer for the twenty-eighth evening begins, “O unapproachable Light, how can I fold these guilty hands before Thee? How can I pray to Thee with lips that have spoken false and churlish words? [And then a confession before prayer] A heart hardened with vindictive passions; an unruly tongue; a fretful disposition; and unwillingness to bear the burdens of others; an undue willingness to let others bear my burdens; high professions joined to low attainments; fine words hiding shabby thoughts; a friendly face masking a cold heart; many neglected opportunities and many uncultivated talents; much love and beauty unappreciated and many blessings unacknowledged: all these I confess to Thee, O God. [And then he continues in prayer] I thank Thee, O loving Father, that, holy and transcendent as Thou art, Thou hast through all the ages shown Thyself to be accessible to the prayers of erring mortals such as I …”
The particular phrase that I often find most
convicting in that is, “fine words hiding shabby thoughts.” Which is to say on the one hand, do we
actually pray the prayers in the BCP, or are we just saying
them? And on the other hand, if we pray
for something without the use of a prayer book of some sort, are our fine words
and intentions pure and God-centred, or self-centred and therefore shabby?
Nicky Gumble, and a host of preachers over the years
have been fond of quoting one John Ward of Hackney, an 18th century
member of parliament in England, who had realized considerable material gain as
a pill manufacturer, and who is alleged to have said in his prayers, “O Lord,
thou knowest that I have nine houses in the City of London and that I have
lately purchased an estate in Essex. I
beseech thee to preserve the counties of Essex and Middlesex from fires and
earthquakes. And as I also have a
mortgage in Hertfordshire, I beg Thee likewise to have an eye of compassion on
that county; and for the rest of the counties Thou mayest deal with them as Thou
art pleased.”
Fine words hiding shabby thoughts. Wrong kind of prayer.
“Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the
prayers of thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make
them to ask such things as shall please Thee…”
ANNUNCIATION OTTAWA 2006 CLRK