Sunday
February 7
Winter Prayer
By Marsh Chapel
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Preface
In a few minutes we will hear again the ancient liturgy for eucharist. We are not together to receive together the bread and cup. But we are together in relationship, by memory, in hope, through prayer. And with a little imagination, with eyes closed and hearts open, we might allow the familiar, ancient prayers of communion, to bring us into communion.
Coming into communion, together, together, let us listen for good news, this Lord’s Day, in Gospel and Psalm.
Mark 1: 29-39
First. In our resolute Gospel, Jesus heals and then prays at some length. What did Jesus pray? And how? And for how long? Was his prayer attendant upon his healings? Or caught up only with his pending decision to itinerate? Where was this that he went? What did he wear? Did he kneel? Is this history or theology in Mark 1?
There is a strong argument to be made that we really know very little about Jesus, including about how he prayed in Capernaum. James Sanders once gave us a list of 8 things we could know about Jesus, one of which was that he died on a cross, and the others of which were not much more startling. Norman Perrin said, “This material had a long history of transmission, use and interpretation in the early Christian communities, and when it reached the hand of Mark any element of historical reminiscence had long been lost…The Gospel of Mark is narrative proclamation.” Yet this scholarly sobriety hardly slakes our curious spiritual thirst.
We want to know about Jesus, as much as we can! When you love someone, you want to know them, root and branch, hook, line and sinker. Every Christian at every time has known this desire. We listen for, and to Him, today. We listen for his word, to his word, today.
Take his word, forbade. Forbade. He did not permit the demons to speak. We do not believe in demons. Not at least in the ancient apocalyptic sense. Some others around the globe, it may be, are much more at home with the first century worldview of the New Testament than are we. Still…we do make some admission in the midst of COVID, of reality beyond our understanding or control. Those struggling this morning with mental illness might teach us all, and rightly, here. Or those battling the corrosive power of addiction. Or those who can bear full witness to racism in systemic exclusion and in generational impoverishment. Or those alive to, keenly aware of, the specters of pandemic, pollution, politics, prejudice and pain. But demons? No. No demons. Not for us. Still…
Or take his word, ‘say nothing’. Why is Jesus forever shushing others in Mark? You can find a dozen places where the writer has Jesus muffle, silence any report about who He is. Here is the first, read today. He did not permit the demons to tell people what was really going on, that he was the Messiah. Why? We really do not know. This may though be a clue for us to the message Mark wants to convey. He is an author writing a certain version of the Gospel that differs from others. There is no shushing in John. What is Mark’s point?
As one great scholar and dear friend has carefully argued (T. Weeden, Mark: Traditions in Conflict), Mark—not Jesus now, nor the early church now, but Mark—has an axe to grind. Here it is. Jesus was powerful but crucified. Christian life will involve glory–but also pain. Jesus was not only a wonder worker whom demons could celebrate or denigrate. He also became a Messiah who disappointed his disciples, to the point of their, to the point of Peter’s, choosing betrayal. Jesus died on a cross, toward which in prayer this morning, a winter prayer if ever there was one, he chooses to itinerate. Christians suffer. Mark may want firmly to teach his generation that hurt is, tragically, a part of the walk of faith. Nero’s persecution may lie in the background. The Jewish war may lie in the foreground. A strongly competitive version of a glory gospel may lie in the background. Regardless, this gospel is about resolute discipleship. To be a Christian means to know how, and why, when you must, to pull up your socks. To be resolute.
Take his word, ‘Shush’. This lack of permission giving on Jesus’ part, confronted by demons, is a hard sell in a culture of leisure and narcissism. Christianity is a hard sell too. (Hence the inversions of it at various points.) Not all youth do easily warm to the required biblical reading of this faith. Not all young adults do easily warm to the sexual disciplines of this faith. Not all mature adults do easily warm to the expected tithing generosity of this faith. Not all older adults do easily warm to the necessary perseverance of this faith. It is a hard sell, to transform a culture of almost life to a culture full of life. This is hard, Sunday morning work. Work in pulpit and prayer. Across America we don’t so much need a political revolution as we need a cultural reformation. Today, across America we don’t so much need a political revolution as we need a cultural reformation. For that, we will need to resolve to take another look at resolution.
For this, this morning, we have some good news. We have ancient, good company in Mark. The writer’s community finds themselves at the beginning of the eighth decade AD faced with a crisis of faith. Forty years have passed since Easter morning. The eschatological age has not dawned…the joys of the kingdom are still only dreams…Mark’s church is beset by suffering…The focus of his spiritual reflection is the on the struggling, even suffering life of Jesus (Weeden, Mark: Traditions in Conflict, 159).
Some by example show us this. There are some heroes and heroines among us, making the case for resolute discipleship, in what they say and how they live. One such is Marian Wright Edelman, now 81 years old. She must pray. She must. Otherwise, how would she have the discipline to stay on the trail for children for so many years, so many decades? She wrote once to and for her students:
“I want to convey a vision to you today, as you (move) into an ethically polluted nation in a world where instant sex without responsibility, instant gratification without effort, instant solutions without sacrifice, getting rather than giving, and hoarding rather than sharing are the frequent messages and signals of our mass media popular culture and political life.
“Don’t be afraid of failing, it’s the way you learn to do things right. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall down, it just matters how many times you get up. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall down, it just matters how many times you get up.”
In other words, this particular walk, in faith, your personal walk of faith, means that you will not always be appreciated. This walk means that you will be required to be kind to those who do not afford you the same courtesy. This walk means that you will daily get nametags thrust upon you that are misspellings. You may die a hero’s death and have your name misspelled in the paper. Jesus’ morning prayer in Mark 1: 29 had one single outcome: a resolve to take a hard path.
Will your morning prayer be resolute?
Psalm 147
Second. Listen to the morning Psalm, 147. Given the wintery snares, cold air shoveling, icy night terrors, and snow bound ennui of this winter, and this week, the icy noonday destruction, evil, scourge, wild beasts of this very day, it could be that a sober, heart-felt, reading of our psalm, one of the great trusting hymns of a faithful heart, will sustain us a bit this morning. Truth can heal. Across this country, perhaps more than anything else, we need to recover a reverence for truth itself, the antithesis of falsehood, the very basis for a shared ethic and a common language.
Our psalmist, our singer is a person of simple faith. We could make many complaints about this hymn and its singer. He has a dangerously simple view of evil, especially for the complexity of a post-modern world. He has a way of implying that trust, or belief, are rewarded with safety, a notion that Jesus many times in the Gospels, scornfully dismisses, and we know to be untrue. He seems to have an appalling lack of interest in the scores of others, who fall by the wayside. He seems to celebrate a foreordained, foreknown providence that ill fits our sense of the openness of God to the future, and the open freedom God has given us for the future. He makes dramatic and outlandish promises not about what might happen, but about what will be. As a thinking theologian, this psalmist of psalm 147 fails. He fails us in our need to rely on something sounder and truer than blind faith. He seems to us to be whistling past the graveyard.
And yet… for those who have walked past a February graveyard or two, for those who have walked the valley of the shadow of death, for us today, for a country mourning 450,000 losses (which in liturgical form we will do here on March 14), for a world searching to match its ideals of peace with its realities of hatred, for you today if you are in trouble, and who are worried today about others and other graves and other yards, and who have seen the hidden traps, unforeseeable dangers, and steel jawed snares of life, there is something encouraging about this simple song: “the Lord heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.” The Lord heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.
Our writer, our psalmist, is not a philosopher. He is a musician, perhaps, but not a systematic thinker. In his psalm, his winter prayer, he has one interest: getting by, getting through, getting out, and getting home. Maybe you feel that too this Sunday morning. So, he does not worry about the small stuff. In fact, you may have a sense that the psalmist is a bit desperate. His song is one for that point on the road when you just have to go ahead and risk and jump. That’s the thing about faith: it takes a leap. You have made your assessment, you have made your plan, you have made your study, then you have prayed. Yet you see all the pestilence about you in homes and institutions and nations, so you wonder, is it worth the risk? You are not sure.
This hymn of the heart is one you sing when you are not sure, but you are confident. Not certain, but confident. You can be confident without being certain. In fact, a genuine honest confidence includes the confidence to admit you are not sure. Faith means risk. Isn’t that part of what we mean by faith? Our writer is at that point, the point of decision. Once you are there, you have to choose between walking forward and slinking away.
Our psalmist is speaking just here to our immediate need. ‘Fear not’. The Lord is not interested in ‘the strength of the horse or the speed of the runner’. Fear not, and go about your discipleship: pray, study, learn, make peace, love your neighbor, agree to disagree agreeably, everyone convinced in her own mind.
Here is the memory of a Day Care center we opened in one of our churches, where every morning you used to see notes pinned to the coats and sweaters of daycare toddlers. Dads and moms pinning notes on the winter coats of their precious children. This psalm is a note pinned to the shirt of a loved one heading into danger. When there is nothing else we can give our daughters and sons we want them to have faith. Faith to go forward, with heart-felt bravery, without being sure of what they will find along the way.
Will your prayer be heart-felt?
Winter Prayer
So, dear friends, travel with a little imagination…Imagine Eucharist at Marsh Chapel. Stand to sing… Pause to reflect… Step out into the aisle… Look at and look past Abraham Lincoln and Francis Willard…Receive cup and bread, bread and cup… Kneel at the altar to pray… Stand in communion with the communion of saints…Here is the bread and cup of friendship…Imagine, a congregation reciting together a creed, a psalm, a hymn, a poem. Imagine, if you are willing, a congregation currently in diaspora, but just now, by the word spoken, a gathered and thus addressable community, you and I and all together, able to offer our winter prayer, framed in Gospel and Psalm, resolute and heart-felt.
Let us pray.
Gracious God,
We summon the better angels of our nature to sit quietly before you at this noon hour, in gratitude. About us await the challenges of 2021: climate, covid, race, economy. Right here, here and now, hic et nunc, on the street where we live.
For the gift of your love to inspire us, to quicken us to try, to join, to sign up, to get out, we are peacefully thankful.
For the gift of your presence to sustain us, to strengthen us to continue, to persevere, to stay up, to move on, we are simply thankful.
For the gift or your power to embolden us, to encourage us to achieve, to give, to change, to travel, to grow, we are spiritually thankful.
For the gift of your peace to illumine us, to steady us to plan, to finish, to complete, to leave, we are personally thankful.
Help us to love what is lovely, to be present to what is real, to find strength in what lasts, and to know peace in what honors, but surpasses, understanding.
Guide us to savor the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty, as with gratitude, right now, we remember and honor those who have supported us, our mentors, our parents, our friends.
Inspired by your love, sustained by your presence, encouraged by your power, confirmed by your peace, our life before you flows on in endless song.
For the privilege of these few days, even for this last, fallow, year, we are thankful. To thee we offer our resolute, heartfelt prayer.
Amen.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
