1 Kings 17:17-24 and Galatians 1:11-24 and Luke 7:11-17
This week my family and I
have been on holiday, and while we were on holiday we saw two
biblically-inspired performances. The first was the Mystery Plays at York Minster. The Mystery Plays are a Medieval morality tale on judgement – the
flawed judgement of angels and mortals, and the ultimate Final Judgement of
God. Held every four years, and the best part of four hours long, the
production brings together professional writers, actors and crew with up to a
hundred ordinary local residents of York. The second spectacular we enjoyed was
Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, here at Sunderland’s Empire Theatre,
last night. While God does not appear as a character, his hidden presence is
discernible to the eye of faith in this tale of dysfunctional family
relationships and a world in which no one, not even the most powerful, command
their own destiny. The entire audience was on our feet clapping along to the
Reprise towards the end. Both performances caught our everyday lives up in
something bigger, drew us into mystery.
Our readings from 1 Kings and The Gospel According to Luke are rich passages. These two tales of widows
receiving back their sons touch on themes including the nature of miracles, of
suffering, and of prayer. The temptation is to fall into a philosophical
argument about these things, but that will not help us much. One man’s miracle
is another man’s logical explanation, or fairy tale. One woman’s answered
prayer is another woman’s coincidence. For one, the reality of suffering is
proof against God; while for another, the experience of suffering is evidence
of God alongside them in it. Why different people reach different conclusions
at different times is a mystery, and the mystery and the person both deserve to
be treated with dignity, not solved or dismissed.
Before I went away on
holiday, I asked some friends what issues these passages raised or addressed
for them. One responded that God hears and answers the prayers of mothers and
widows. If this is so – and I believe that it is – then it is worth noting that
the prayer of our first widow is a complaint against God, and that the prayer
of our second widow is wordless, expressed through body-wrenching tears. Prayer
does not follow a formula – neither on our part, nor on God’s.
This morning, then, I
simply want to offer this: that the only way to discover what difference
prayer might make to our lives is to begin a life of prayer and keep on going.
It is, in that sense, like being married. There are a number of couples here
approaching their wedding day, and we have a process of preparation, but the
reality is that you cannot be prepared for marriage, not really. But you can
learn from those who have been married a long time, and indeed from those who
were married and found themselves to be divorced, or widowed, or never married;
from those who have had children, lost a child, or are childless; from those
separated from their family by war – each of whom discovered that their life
did not turn out the way they might have hoped or planned, and yet for whom
life is the gift we have, breath given back to us when we had no breath left in
us. The key to being a person in relationship with other people, whatever our
circumstances, is not in being an expert in human relationships, but in being a
participant. The same is true of a life of prayer.
Prayer differs from prayers. Prayers take the form of words, and for
some of us, words are intimidating. Prayer,
on the other hand, is an awareness of being in the middle of something we
cannot control or explain but might discern God in – whether that be seeing
Jesus in the face of a stranger, or the work of a Creator behind every tree in
its spring blossom, or in the longing of our own dreams. It is the difference
between being the actor who learns lines, and the hairdresser who gets involved
in the Chorus, or finds themselves singing along to the Reprise.
The week ahead is filled
with opportunity for prayer. Will it make a difference, and if so, what kind of
difference, and how, and why? There are questions that have no answers, that
are not posed to furnish us with answers, questions that lead us further into
mystery. If that is unsatisfactory, then you will just have to go away
disappointed. That too, might do the trick.
No comments:
Post a Comment