Prayer – the Passionate Heart of Spirituality

sermon by Torin Eikler
9th Sunday in Passionate Spirituality Series
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 Matthew 6:1-18

I want to begin today’s meditation by asking a question (and I am going to ask you raise your hands, so be ready)…. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “the spiritual discipline of prayer?”

Alright … how many of you thought of kneeling in a prayer closet or at your bedside with your hands folded and speaking to God (out loud or in your head)? How many of you thought of some similar form of private prayer? Anybody think of singing hymns? How about knitting or sewing blankets? Walking through the woods? Writing poetry or journaling? Growing food? Does anybody have a different image of prayer? (Would you like to share it with us?)

Okay, you get the point. The practice of prayer is difficult to nail down because it is a different experience for everyone. Yet, prayer is essential to the exploration we have been doing in this series because it is right at the heart of passionate spirituality. It is the steadily flowing river that quenches our thirst for God, refreshes our spirits, and restores us to a holier frame of mind.

In essence, prayer can be any activity that serves to focus our hearts, minds, spirits, and lives on God and draw us into a closer relationship with the source of the river of life. And, with so much freedom in the form of prayer, it should be easy for us to follow the scriptures’ guidance to pray without ceasing, but I think many of us find it is actually more difficult when the parameters are so loose. I often find myself committing to make my life a prayer and then going days without really sitting down to pray. What I have found helpful in my own journey is to look at eddies and currents of prayer that have been mapped out, sounded for depth, and ridden by believers in our tradition across the centuries.

Robert Benson, one of my new favorite authors has written a book called Living Prayer in which he tells the story of his experience with one of these traditional types of prayer – a practice that has come to be known as “praying the hours.” If you’ve never heard of that form of prayer, its refers to the centuries-old practice of cloistered monks and nuns who put down their work several times each day in order to re-center themselves in a time of prayer. Usually, the schedule of prayer is the same each day and the monks or nuns gather together at dawn and dusk as well as at the hours of 7, 9, noon, and 3 o’clock (hence the name) to hear scripture read, chant a psalm or two and repeat the prayers that their orders have said generation after generation.

In his book, Benson, has this to say about his experience with the hours at a monastery in Kentucky.

"I never saw a more ordinary group of men in my entire life. No one’s face glowed, no grand current of electricity ran through the place, no thunder crashed, no angels sang…. The community simply stopped its work, gathered to pray, and dispersed, going on to the next part of the day, letting the act and the art of their prayer speak for itself…. When it was over, and it was over too soon for me, it was time to go back to work…. I stood on the steps outside the chapel … [and tried] to think contemplative thoughts, [tried] to savor the sense and spirit of the moment when a monk went past me and knelt down to pull weeds from a flower bed.

[And I realized that] the lives of the monks of Gethsemani are very different from mine. But the difference has less to do with celibacy and fashion and location, and everything to do with what happens when the bell rings. When the bell rings, they pray. Everything is different because of that one thing…."

This “Praying of the hours,” though, is not solely the purview of “the religious.” And though it sounds daunting – maybe even impossible – for modern Americans with our overly scheduled days, the practice of the millions of Muslims who pause for prayer seven times a day shows that it is reasonable if we but commit ourselves to mark our days by the ebb and flow of the tide of prayer.


Another branch of prayer that has been around for quite some time (and seems to be enjoying renewed interest on the part of western Christians) is meditation. Again, this practice is probably more associated with Buddhism or new-age religion in many of our minds, but it has been quite common among Christians at times in the past. In fact, it was the bread and butter of the desert mothers and fathers – 3rd and 4th century desert hermits revered for their wisdom and spiritual authority – and it was very popular among the pilgrims who practiced it as they walked between shrines day after day.

Though there are many forms of meditation as well, one of my favorites is walking the labyrinth. Now a labyrinth and a maze are two different things. A maze is a complex construction designed to confuse people in their search for the way through by offering many possible paths as distraction. A labyrinth, by contrast, has only one path leading to a central space and is designed to be easy to follow. Rather than presenting a puzzle to be solved, it encourages people to walk, skip, or maybe even summersault their way forward, progressively leaving behind the cares and concerns of the world and approaching their spiritual center. Arriving at the central space of the labyrinth, the pilgrim spends time in meditative prayer focused on opening to the presence and guidance of God. The challenging part is holding onto the sense of focus and peace as you walk back into the world and pick up your worries and responsibilities again.


Now, most of us are probably not going to rearrange our lives to follow the rhythm of the hours, nor do we commonly have regular access to a labyrinth (though Carrie and I have planted a garden in that shape if you ever want to come by and try it). But other traditional forms of prayer are an option for everyone no matter their location or their schedule. One of those is intercessory prayer or prayer on behalf of another. Every one of our churches (or at least most) have people who are gifted in this type of prayer that carries us outside of ourselves and our concerns as we hold the sufferings and trials of brothers, sisters, and total strangers before our God (- a deeper and truer prayer than those offered before WV football games, I might add).

When I was young, we called them “prayer warriors,” and I generally avoided them because I didn’t understand the sense of awe they inspired. As I have grown older, though, I have come to realize that the gift they offered to the rest of us is actually something we are all called to do – it’s something that we do each Sunday when we pray together for the concerns brought by our sisters and brothers. I also realized that the “prayer warriors” of my youth were mostly people who had committed themselves to praying for others at least once each and every day and had become more comfortable and more skilled at the practice than the rest of us.

But, there is no reason that all of us should not be able to include this practice in our lives. There is no reason that we can’t find a moment or two each day to ride an eddy of the river of prayer into stillness and lift up another for the blessing and grace of God. Even just those few moments serve to break our self-centered habits and refocus us, to some degree, on God’s perspective and the service to which we are called.


Throughout this service of worship, we have already been praying in many different ways. We have sung our praise, petition, and gratitude. We have shared in the call and response of prayer litanies. We have called forth a special blessing on one of our brothers through the laying on of hands. We have opened our hearts to our community of faith and the one who brings us back to wholeness. And, some of us may even have prayed for the relief from heat and hunger promised by our picnic together at the park.

What I would like to invite you to now is a special time of intercessory prayer with two or three of those around you. There are some simple instructions on the insert that will help you do this, and though I know praying for one another in person sometimes makes us feel uncomfortable, this is an important part of life together in a faith community.

But, before we move into that time of prayer, I want to share with you one more quote from Robert Benson.

"Our work has become almost everything to us. Our lives are built around it and the fruits of it. Productivity, success, efficiency have become the watchwords of the day. It is no wonder that our days seem very often to be devoid of meaning. At best, they are built around about a fourth of who we are. It is not necessarily the work itself that is killing us, it is the way we give it such meaning and power and control over our lives.

Our lives hang in the balance, on might say. And if there is no balance, then they are indeed hanging by a thread."

Sisters and brothers in Christ, whatever form of prayer you choose – be it folding your hands as you kneel by the bedside or meditation as you wash dishes or even repeating a phrase from the psalms as you walk from place to place – I encourage you to seek that beautiful stream, to launch yourselves into the refreshing waters of prayer regularly. It is the only way to keep yourself close to the God we claim to serve – the God who loves us, and it is the first step to building a life on and around the passionate faith that saves us.