St. Gregory’s Church Woodstock
Sunday, 5 July, 2009, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev’d Susan Auchincloss
Does prayer have the power to heal? I believe
it does; but I have lots of questions. For instance, did Jesus heal every
person, every condition, that came to him – I mean apart from this group of
skeptics in his home town? Did no one have Type I diabetes in his day? Or
pancreatic cancer? Or clinical depression? Even today's reading suggests that,
except for their doubt, he could have cured any disease they brought to him. In
his home town, where everyone thought they knew him, he could not overcome the
power of their negative expectations. In every other case, however, the Gospels
report uniform success. Are we meant to take that at face value, or is there
perhaps something deeper going on here?
We may feel a bit scornful toward the people of Jesus' home town. After all, if
Jesus came to Woodstock we would welcome him at least as enthusiastically as we
welcomed the Dalai Lama. We would hang on his every word; we would expect
miracles; we would bring our sick to him and be open to his healing; we would be
full of faith. But is that a true comparison? Perhaps not. Suppose one of our
town characters went away for a few months and then returned. Picture that
person teaching on the village green. Our familiarity with him or her would
water down all we heard with doubt. Imagine going to that person for healing.
Wouldn't skepticism outweigh faith? Let's be fair to Jesus' home town neighbors;
they were no different from you or me. To overcome the numbing power of the
ordinary challenges all of us.
Let me suggest an image from my recent trip to Russia to illustrate that
challenge. The churches astonished me. I expected to see perhaps one or two here
and there, but they capped the flat landscape everywhere with their unmistakable
golden onion domes. From what I experienced, though, they were sparsely
attended. So what real purpose do they serve? Remember the story of Ali Baba and
the Forty Thieves? Ali Baba had been cutting wood in the forest when he heard a
troop of horsemen approaching. Fearful, he climbed into a tree above a rock and
hid himself. The band of horsemen came to that very rock. Their leader
dismounted, faced the rock and said, “Open sesame.” To Ali Baba's astonishment,
the rock opened and the men went inside. He remained hidden until they emerged
and rode away. Then he tried it: “Open sesame!” It opened for him and he went
inside to find himself in the midst of a treasure trove – gold, silver, jewels,
all sparkling in rich array. You know the story so I won't go on; but that
moment when the ordinary rock opens onto unspeakable wealth describes the
function of those churches. Those onion domes stand as reminders to the people
that this world is not all there is. They challenge us to seek, in the midst of
ordinary reality, points of entry to another realm.
The point of entry need not be a church. Think of your daily routine, your
everyday haunts. Who expects to lean over a sink of dirty dishes and find it
opening onto the unspeakable wealth of eternity? Or pulling weeds or stacking
firewood? Could these routine activities actually be golden domes? Points of
entry? Or must we go some place special, to a cathedral for instance, in order
to experience that other realm? How can we learn to see the golden domes right
in front of us?
Learn is actually the right word. We do not have to discover these points
of entry. That work has been done for us. Numerous methods exist and they go by
different names, but I will just speak of one of them, centering prayer.
Centering prayer is a method for entering into eternal life;
and by that I mean that
larger life that each of us is living right now, but for the most part, all
unaware. I want to take a moment and give you a sense of how to do centering
prayer.
To practice centering prayer one sits, alert and yet relaxed, feet flat on the
floor, and hands at rest in the lap. A definite length of time is set, at least
20 minutes. Breathing is deep but unforced. One lets go of words, even thoughts
and emotions, just dwelling in the present moment. Naturally, thoughts arise and
they can carry us away from the present moment, as if we had boarded a train.
You might find yourself in the midst of a heated argument with a neighbor, for
instance, or reliving last night's dinner conversation. Distractions like this
occur to everyone, and it may be quite a while before we are aware that we have
gone off in our minds. To help bring ourselves back, centering prayer suggests
that we use a sacred word, almost like a punctuation point, to end the train of
thought and reorient ourselves to the present moment. A simple, impersonal word
works best, and it need not be religious. It could be Yes, or Peace, or Holy, or
Still. We say it silently. The instruction is simply to sit in stillness,
enjoying being present in the present moment. Whether we sense it or not, this
amounts to nothing less than soaking in the presence of God. As much as
possible, we try not to say the sacred word with a self-critical tone, as if
chastising ourselves for drifting off. Centering prayer is an exercise in loving
self-acceptance, just as we are. Even when the whole period has been marked by
repeated distraction, we simply repeat the word and center ourselves again in
the present moment, peacefully and without frustration. The key instruction,
however, is this: be faithful. Make up your mind to a set period of time,
perhaps 20 minutes, and practice the prayer every day. If at all possible, do it
two times a day.
Does it sound daunting? If you can stick with it, the prayer will become its own
reward. Over time you will become aware of what Jesus called “the peace that
passeth understanding;” in other words, a deep peace that makes no sense in the
midst of global tensions and personal troubles. It makes no sense, and yet there
it is, a foretaste of eternal life. At the risk of sounding too glib, let me put
it this way: centering prayer is a way of saying, “Open sesame!” Some form of
prayer of this nature must have been Jesus' practice when he went off alone on
the mountain to pray. It can be helpful to remember this when we accuse
ourselves of naval gazing. He did it for hours on end, and it seemed only to add
energy to his ministry to the world.
I have gone into some detail about centering prayer, because it may explain the
seemingly unbroken record of Jesus' successful healing ministry. Jesus, himself,
was a point of entry. I am reluctant to make the next comparison, because in
most ways it is false, yet I shall. During a period when I was hospitalized, I
received morphine for pain. The painful conditions had not changed, but I did
not feel them; in fact, I felt only deep, delightful peace. To be centered in
the present moment one can feel something similar; and to be with Jesus is to be
centered in the present moment most powerfully. Perhaps Jesus could not cure
every condition; but he could heal in every case. That is, by his
presence he surrounded the pain with the vastly more immediate reality of
eternal life, like an ocean of cool water on a burn.
What about our own case? Centering prayer can help in two ways, first when we
pray for others and second when we pray for ourselves. Many of us hold back from
praying for healing; and we do that for the best of reasons: it undercuts our
faith. Too often we pray and nothing seems to change. I have prayed for years
for my granddaughter who has diabetes, yet she still has to take insulin every
day. I start to question God's love and God's power. I can easily slip into
feeling rejected. A practice of centering prayer shifts my attention from the
outcome of my prayer – its apparent success or failure – to the process: that
is, just being faithful and trusting that whether I can see it or not, God is
working God's purpose out and my prayers are a part of it.
Second, we can help ourselves with it. Centering prayer helps, not so much by
healing the condition, though that may happen. Centering prayer helps by healing
our relation to the condition, putting it in a vastly new context. I will close
with a quote from Barbara Crafton's new book, Jesus Wept: When Faith and
Depression Meet. A woman who had suffered almost her whole life from
depression wrote to Barbara as follows. “Contemplative spirituality taught me
that the Holy One is never absent. He is, however, silent. Eventually I learned
that while I may want a God who hugs me, who protects me from pain, who delivers
what I need at any given moment, what I get is a silent God who turns things
upside down, transforms pain, and can redeem even the worst situations. God is
not going to fix my depression. But he didn't cause it, either. And he stays
with me through it, loving me anyway. I have learned that even when I feel
empty, even when I can't sense it, Love is there. And it's not up to me. He is
there no matter what I do or how I feel.”