St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
“Teach Us To Pray: The Breath of Life"
Luke 18: 9-14
July 10, 2005
Janet L. Forbes

C.S. Lewis is the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.   Shadowlands is the story of his marriage to Joy Gresham.  When Joy becomes terminally ill, Jack is drawn, breathlessly, to prayer. 

(DVD: SHADOWLANDS   1:29:46-1:30:24)

I go to the hospital to see a lady who is facing surgery.   She has never been in the hospital before, and the surgery is major.   I walk into her room.   She is a nervous wreck.    She can hardly breathe.   She wants me to pray with her, which I do.   By her bed, there is a stack of magazines:  “Star”, True Love”, “Hollywood Today”, stuff about Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and folk like that.   She has a stack of them there, and she is a wreck.   It occurs to me.   There’s not a calorie in that whole stack to help her through her experience.   She has no place to dip down into a reservoir and come up with something – a word, a phrase, a thought, an idea, a memory, a person.  Just empty.

How marvelous is the life of the person who, like a wise homemaker, when the berries and fruits and vegetables are ripe, puts them away in jars in the pantry.   Then when the ground is cold, icy, and barren and nothing seems alive, she reaches into the back of the pantry, and it’s July at her family's table.   How blessed is that person!  

During July, we hope to enlarge the fruitfulness of your pantry.    Especially in times of distress, I want the great resources of prayer to be available to you.   Therefore, we began last week with the Lord’s Prayer, the model of prayer that Jesus gives in response to his friends when they ask, “Lord, teach us to pray.”   

When I am eighteen years old, I’m given a new resource.   As a freshman at East Carolina University, I travel with an gospel quartet to a little church near Farmville, North Carolina.    Not only do I play the piano for the group, I give the sermon, trying to tie together the themes.    

There is a woman in that church whose husband had been a minister.  He also taught at the college, years before.   She is old, old, old, but she has us for lunch, Mrs. A. J. Clark.    

After lunch, I help Mrs. Clark clear the table and wash the dishes.   Over the sink in her kitchen, she says to me, “Now you want to remember, Janet, that there will be times when you don’t have anything to do.  You’ll be sitting in a waiting room, you’ll be waiting for a train, you’ll be sick, you’ll be somewhere with nothing to do.   So what you want to do is to remember some short statements of what you believe.   Then, when you’re alone or afraid or in crisis or unable to decide, just call them up, and you can live on it.”    That’s what she says, and that’s what I do.   And she is right. 

I begin to fill my pantry with a collection of scripture that serves me well.   They are, for the most part, the first prayers on my lips.     

Create in me a clean heart, O God 

Glory to God in the highest! 

Be still and know that I am God. 

Perfect love casts out fear.

Lo, I am with you always.

These jewels of scripture have become for me, “heart prayers”.   There is a long history of Christian prayer that aims to move us from the head to the heart.    Our prayers move for one limited dimension to the center of our being.    

Prayers of the heart are usually short phrases.   They are repeated first on the lips and then in the mind, until they take on a life of their own, deep within us.   When such prayers become embedded in our daily activity, they truly become “heart prayers”. 

During a retreat several years ago, the participants are led through a meditation on the heart.  We place our hands over our hearts, feeling them beating.  We find our pulse in various places on our bodies, feeling the blood pumping through our systems.   We imagine the blood reaching the tips of our fingers and we give thanks.   We imagine the blood circulating through our brains and we give thanks.   We attend to the heart beating and pulsing on its own with no direction or control from us, and we give thanks.   The mystery of our bodies becomes a wonder to us and we thank God for our lives. 

One of the participants tells us later that he is a heart surgeon.  “Oh, my,” I think, “what does this sophisticated physician think of our simple exploration of the heart?”    I do not need to worry, for he thanks the retreat leader.  He says that he has re-awakened to the glory of this organ, which he had begun to view as simply an object to be fixed.   “I lost touch with the wonder of the heart,” he says.  “This meditation reminds me of what I know and what I do not know.”

A pilgrim who travels across Russia in the tenth century in search of the meaning of Paul’s instructions to pray always discovers that the heart can teach us to pray.  In his travels, he meets many teachers, some of whom are helpful, some of whom are not.  But he himself finds that if he repeats a simple prayer over and over again, day after day, the prayer moves from his mouth and his mind into his heart.  Once in the heart, the prayer prays itself every second of every day as his heart beats steadily on.    

The pilgrim uses the ancient Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” which he believes to be the essence of the Bible.   

The Jesus Prayer combines the prayer of the tax collector from Luke 18:13, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”, with the earliest confession of the Christian Church, “Jesus is Lord”.   The long form is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”   The short form is “Lord, have mercy”, which Jim will recognize as, Kyrie Eleison.  

A contemporary version of the Jesus Prayer is called “breath prayer” because the words for breath and spirit are the same in Hebrew (ruach).   The use of this kind of prayer over time helps us experience what it means for the Spirit to pray in us (Romans 8: 26-27).  It is also a short prayer that can be said or thought in a single breath.   As a prayer of the heart, it is especially easy to learn and practice as you find the words to your own prayer.  

I practice the breath prayer more than any other form of conversation with God.   God is present to me immediately at the door of the hospital, prior to a Finance meeting, as Bible study convenes, or as I craft my sermon.   The prayer can lessen anxiety, banish fear.    I teach this form of prayer frequently, especially to persons in distress.  

To find your own breath prayer, visualize Jesus standing before you, asking you:  “What do you want me to do for you?”  Let your response surface from deep within.   If more than one thing comes to mind, identify the root desire beneath all the others.    It is strength, or hope, or comfort? 

Next, identify how you normally address God in prayer.  Lord, Gracious God, Holy One, Loving Spirit, Heavenly Father?  Find your name for God. 

Combine your desire with your name of God in a single, short phrase that flows easily in your mind.  You may need to experiment with phrasing to find a comfortable rhythm.     “Give me strength, O God.”  “Gracious God, teach me patience.”   “Father, fill me with hope.”   

Repeat the phrase gently in your mind for several minutes, breathing in, breathing out.   Take a walk, repeating your prayer while you move.  Note how the prayer shapes your perceptions.  You can carry this prayer with you through the day.  It fits well with many solitary activities from household chores and routine tasks to standing in line and sitting in traffic.   It is a good companion for rhythmic exercise such as walking, jogging, or swimming.     I like to fill the Westridge Pool with prayer as I swim.    

Our breath is as constant and as close as our hearts.  In and out, in and out, in and out, the breath of life is continually restoring us.   As we attend to the wonder of our breathing, our breath itself becomes a prayer.   When we are upset, out of sorts, confused, distracted, or in any other state of mind that seems to place us “beside ourselves,” we can simply turn our attention to our breathing and a breath prayer – in and out, in and out, in and out.   This attention reminds us of the closeness of the Spirit, the wonder of life, and the longing of God to be with us.  

Several years ago, I meet a desperate person, panic-y and out of breath.  It is a woman.  I go to the hospital to visit someone else.  I didn’t know her, didn’t know I would encounter her, but when I go down the corridor, I see her.  Her head is against the wall, and both fists are up beside her face, and she is banging on the door, ”Let me in, let me in, let me in!”  I can’t imagine someone locking her out of the room.  I get there and it is the prayer chapel.   

I say, “Let me help you.”  I try to open the door, but the knob won’t turn.  It is locked.  I stop a worker and say, “The chapel is locked.  Where is Chaplain Bradley?" 

She says, “We have to keep it locked.   There were some kids in here some time ago, and they trashed the chapel.   We had to get all new furniture and paint the room.   We can’t afford to keep doing that, so we keep it locked.” 

“Well, find someone with a key.” 

She comes back a little bit later with the chaplain intern, who opens the door for us, and this woman and I go in.  I would say she is about forty.   She has the look of desperation.  I can tell that she hasn’t come to the hospital with any planning; she comes urgently, she comes running.   The dress she has on is not typical public wear.  She has no shoes, just slippers.    Her hair has not been combed, no makeup.   She has the look of desperation.   She has the voice of desperation.  I can’t tell you if she is screaming or crying or moaning or what it is, but it is desperation.   Strange sound.   I hear some of her words, “I know he’s going to die, I know he’s going to die, I know he’s going to die.” 

“Who?”    

“My husband.”  

“What’s the matter?” 

“He’s had a heart attack.”   

I say, “Can I get you some water?”    

She says, “No.”   

I tell her who I am, and I say, “Can I pray with you?” 

And she says, “Please”. 

I start to pray for her and for her husband, and she interrupts me.   She doesn’t just interrupt me; she takes over.   She starts praying herself and stops my prayer.   I think maybe I am too quiet or too slow or saying the wrong thing or something.   Anyway, my prayer isn’t getting there, and she knows it.    

So she says, “Lord, this is not the time to take my husband.  You know that better than I do, he’s not ready.  Never goes to church or anything.  He’s not ready, not a good time to take him.   Don’t take him now.    

And what about me?    If I have to raise these kids, what am I going to do?  I don’t have any skills, can’t find work.  I quit school to marry him.  If I’d have known you were going to take him, I’d have stayed in school”.    

She is really talking to God.    

“And what about the kids?   They don’t mind me now with him around.  If he’s goes, they’ll be wild as bucks.   What about the kids?  This is not the time to take my husband.”   

Whew! 

I stay as long as I feel useful.  I go back the next morning, and she is wearing a nice dress.  She has shoes on.  She has combed her hair.   She looks fine.   She is in the hallway outside intensive care.    

Before I can ask, she says, “He’s better.”   She smiles and says,  “This morning, I can breathe.   We both can!   I’m sorry about that crazy woman last night.”    

I say, “Well, you weren’t crazy.”  

She says, “I guess the Lord heard one of us.”    

I say, “He heard you.”    

She was desperate.   She had God by the lapels, both hands, and was screaming in God’s face:  “I don’t think you’re listening.”  

When life is unraveling around you, breathe.    When God seems distant or unresponsive, breathe.    When your prayers are struggling for voice, just breathe.    

It is life itself.

 

 

 

This sermon is dedicated in honor of the Murrow family:  Dave, Julia, Olivia, and Natalie; and in memory of Irv Larsen (June 28, 2005).   These beloved ones know the power of heart prayer.  

 

Teach Us to Pray (July 2005)

I am grateful to Mike Graves and Richard Ward for collecting Craddock Stories.   Dr. Fred Craddock attunes us to the practice of “filling our cellars” with stories, memories, and practices that keep our connections to God and each other.