This last week of Lent I want to break out of our tendency to conceptualize prayer primarily as conversation with God, spoken or unspoken, to pick up a somewhat counter-church-cultural notion of praying by action. There is a strand of Christian tradition which sees the work we do in the world, the service we do for others, the activities we undertake, as a form of non-spoken prayer. This strand invests every action with prayerful reverence, every bit as much as a reciting a prayer or speaking and listening to God in a silence. You can find echoes of this in some of the monastic writings when nuns and monks and friars count planting seeds or making bread or copying manuscripts as prayers through actions done reverently and for God’s glory. But this strand is also woven through social action ministries, done reverently and for the sake of Jesus’ least siblings. And you probably learned a prayer at summer church camp which used gestures along with the words. All forms of praying and interacting with God through the actions of our bodies, not just our minds and souls.
So, for your consideration these dwindling days of Lent 2015: act out! Act out some of your prayers. Do something, and do it as part of your devotional life, as part of your ongoing conversation with God. Plant a seed to witness to new life and resurrection. Paint a picture and when you are done say, “There, God, that’s for you!” Spend time at Loaves and Fishes feeding Christ’s sisters and brothers with needs. Play your instrument and end with thanksgiving, “Amen!” Read a story to a pre-schooler or volunteer on Sunday morning with the Children and Youth Ministries. Bake some cookies for the IC campus ministry not just to refresh the college students after their meeting but as a prayer for their mission. Make a Church World Service Health Kit as an intercessory prayer. Rake the winter’s debris from your yard as a penitential prayer to sweep the shortcomings out of your soul. Walk a labyrinth as a prayer of supplication, and try it without words, just letting go and letting God in.
We can get so intellectual, so “heady,” so wordy that we don’t let our bodies in on our spiritual life. My final invitation to you this Lent is to imagine some sort of prayer-by-doing, some tangible, active, bodily expression of your devotion to God who loves us. I encourage you to find one physical expression of each of those classic forms of prayer, and act it out, even just to try it one time.
Further, keep this thought going as you experience Holy Week. Take note of the physicality not only of the Bible story but of our worship. We will wave palm branches; feel their texture. On Maundy Thursday we will hold bread in our fingers and taste the grapes. We will shiver a bit before dawn on Easter Sunday at sunrise. We will walk into the sanctuary for the Easter service and be hit by the smell of the flowers, and we will feel the vibrations of the organ and tympani thundering that Christ is risen, risen indeed. Our bodies and not just our minds will be involved in worship. Our faith will have substance. Our prayers will have action.
Prayer works… particularly if you work at it!
In Christ,
David
Texts For Sunday Worship:
From the Hebrew Bible Jeremiah 31:31-34
From the Epistles Hebrews 5:5-10
From the Gospels John 12:20-33
From the Epistles Hebrews 5:5-10
From the Gospels John 12:20-33
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