October 28, 2018
Mark 10.46-53
+ This past Thursday, one of
the truly great spiritual leaders of the Church passed away. You might not have
heard about his passing. In fact, you
might not have even heard of the man himself. But he was a giant, especially
among those of us who have tried to follow a more contemplative prayer life.
On Thursday, a Cistercian priest and
monk by the name of Father Thomas Keating died at St. Joseph’s Monastery in Spencer,
Massachusetts. And he was a giant because, in a very quiet, very unassuming way,
he radically brought about a very simple kind of prayer that has helped countless
people to no end. The form of prayer he helped people to practice was called “Centering
Prayer.” He did this as a way to “revive the contemplative teachings of
early Christianity and present them in updated formats.” (
For him, it was a form of contemplative prayer
was prayer "centered entirely on the presence of God."
Centering Prayer, according the
method of Father Keating, uses single prayer word to “center” us, to bring us
back into communion with God. Now that single prayer word is important. And it
is meaningful only to the person using it. It might be as simple as
“God”
or Jesus”
or “Abba”
or “Spirit.”
But it is this word that helps us be
centered—to focus—in our prayers.
Now you’ve heard me preach again and
again about this, but I firmly believe that, without a solid foundation of
personal prayer, all that we do in church on Sundays is without a solid base. All of us who have been baptized are ministers
of the Church. And for our ministry to be effective, we need to have a strong
and very solid prayer life to support that ministry.
I, of course, highly encouraged
people to pray the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer from the Book of
Common Prayer every day as the first foundation. From the offices and from the
Mass, our prayer life as followers of Jesus flourish. For many of us, however, the
Daily Offices are not something we can fit into our busy lives.
But, no matter how busy our lives
are, we must always have a strong foundation of prayer. And that prayer life can be very simple. Centering
Prayer and its emphasis on simple little prayers throughout the day are
sometimes, by far, the most effective prayers.
This morning, in our Gospel, we find
a very little, but it seems, very effective prayer, very much in the spirit of
Centering Prayer. It is a story that at first seems to be
leading us in one direction, then something else happens.
We find Jesus at Jericho, which
reminds us, of course, of the story from Joshua and the crumbling walls. We then find this strangely detailed story of
Barthemaeus. It’s detailed in the sense
that we not only have his name, but also the fact that he was the son of
Timaeus. That’s an interesting little
tidbit. And we also find of course that
he is blind.
Now, it’s not a big mystery what’s
going to happen. We know where this
story is going. We know Bartimaeus is going to be healed. We know he is going
to see.
But the real gem of this story
doesn’t have to do with Jericho, or the fact that we will never again hear
about Bartimeus son of Timaeus. The real
gem of this story is that little prayer Bartimaeus prays. There it is, huddled down within the Gospel,
like a wonderful little treasure.
“Jesus, son of David, have mercy on
me!”
Now that designation of Jesus as the
“Son of David” is interesting in and of its self. By identifying Jesus as the Son of the David,
Bartimaeus is essentially identifying Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed one
sent by God.
But it takes on special meaning for
us this morning, on this day after the massacre
Because of this one we follow—this Jewish Son of David—what happened there
at Tree of Life Temple, to those Jewish people, happened to us as well. We are the
same family. We are inheritors of what those people died for yesterday. Those
people were murdered because they were Jews. They were Jews living in
hate-filled society by an anti-Semite with automatic weapon. We cannot simply
explain all of that away. And we cannot blame them because they didn’t have an
armed guard at their door. They were
Jews who were murdered because they were Jews. Jews, just like our own Son of David was a
Jew. And because of that, what happened to
them, happened to us too. We can never forget that fact.
So this man, Bartimaeus, is praying
to the Jewish Messiah, to the One God sent, to have mercy on him. And what does
the Son of David do? He has mercy on Bartimaeus.
It’s beautiful!
It’s perfect!
And in that prayer, we find the kernel
of Centering Prayer to some extent. At
first, it doesn’t seem like much. It’s so deceptively simple.
But, obviously, according to our
Gospel for today, the prayer is important. Jesus does what he is asked. He has mercy on this man and heals him.
So why is this prayer so important? Well, for one thing, we get a glimpse of how
to pray in this wonderfully simple little prayer. Jesus occasionally gives us
advice in the Gospels on how we should pray.
The first one that probably comes to
mind probably is the Lord’s prayer, the Our Father. But today we find a prayer very different than
the Lord’s prayer. The Lord’s prayer is
very structured. It covers all the
bases. We acknowledge and adore God, we
acknowledge and ask forgiveness not only for our sins, but for the sins
committed against us by others. And so
on. You know the prayer.
The prayer we hear this morning cuts
right to the very heart not only of the Lord’s prayer but to every prayer we
pray. It is a prayer that rises from
within—from our very core. From our
heart of hearts. It is truly the Prayer
of the Heart. The words of this prayer are the words of all those nameless,
formless prayers we pray all the time—those prayers that we find ourselves
longing to pray.
Here it is, summed up for us.
More often than not, our prayers really
are simple, one word prayers. And the one word prayer we probably pray more
than anything—I do it anyway—is:
“please.”
“Please!” I pray so often.
Or sometimes it’s: “please, please,
please!”
Poor God!
The one word prayer I should be
praying more than anything is: “thanks.”
But Centering Prayer definitely
comes from that kind of heart-felt prayer. Here are the words we long to use in those
prayers without words.
“Have mercy on me!”
But if we were to pare it down, if
we were to go to the heart of the prayer, what word from that prayer would be
the heart of the whole prayer? It would, of course, be “mercy.” And in
Centering Prayer, that would be our centering word.
We would quiet our mind. We would
breathe quietly. And we would just simply repeat that one word, over and over
again until we are in the presence of God.
The word draws us to God, helps
nudge us into God’s presence. And then once we’re there, we don’t need to use
it again except to use it to nudge us back into that Presence.
Mercy.
Mercy.
Marcy.
And, for many of us, this is the
heart of our prayer. This is what we desire from God.
Mercy.
Please, God, we pray. Have mercy on
us.
Using words like this, praying like
this, simply sitting quietly and just being in the presence of God is a kind of
“prayer of the heart.” That’s a perfect
description of the prayer we heard in today’s Gospel. It is, as I said before, a prayer of the
heart. If our lips could no longer pray,
our heart would go on and this prayer would be the words of our heart.
The fact that it is so simple is
what makes the Centering Prayer so popular. Anyone can do it. It is a prayer each of us can do wherever we
are and whenever we need to do it.
I sometimes do centering prayer when
I am in the dentist chair, getting my teeth cleaned. Or on the airplane. And
during times like this, when hatred and anger and true darkness rages around
us, we need these moments of peace. In fact, it is a prayer that demands to be practiced
in moments like that. It’s almost impossible not to do it once we
dip into it.
And it’s not as though we are
mindlessly babbling on for sake of “saying our prayers.” We are not mindless
repeating a prayer word over and over again for the sake of appearing to
pray. It is a way to truly enter into
the very heart of what prayer is all about.
What I find so interesting about
that statement is that, limitless as this prayer might be, infinite in its use
as it might be, it comes from and addresses our very own limitations. It is essentially the ceaseless prayer that
should be going within us all the time. It
is the prayer of absolute humility.
“Mercy.”
Or, going back to our discussion
about one word prayers, the one word from this prayer we would be praying is
“mercy.”
“Mercy.”
Like Bartimeaus, we can simply bring
what we have before God in prayer, release it, and then walk away healed. There
is no room for haughtiness when praying this prayer. The person we are when we
pray it is who we really are.
When all our masks and all our
defenses are gone, that is when this prayer comes in and takes over for us. This is the prayer we pray when, echoing
Thomas Merton, we “present ourselves naked before our God.” That’s what makes the prayer of the
heart—Centering Prayer—such a popular prayer practice for so many. And this
prayer does not even have to be about us. We can use this prayer when praying for
others. How easy it is to simply pray:
Mercy.
God, have mercy on her, or him, or
them.
It’s wonderful isn’t it? how those
simple words can pack such a wallop. We
don’t have to be profound or eloquent in the words we address to God. We don’t need to go on and on beseeching and
petitioning God. We simply need to open
our hearts to God and the words will come. No doubt those words will be very similar to
the words of the Centering Prayer of Father Thomas Keating.
“Mercy.”
So, like Bartimaeus, let us pray
what is in our heart. Let us open
ourselves completely and humbly to God. And
when we do we will find the blindness’s of our own lives healed. We will find taken from us that spiritual
blindness that causes us to grope about aimlessly, to ignore those in need
around us, to not see the beauty of this world that God shows us all the time. Like
Bartimaeus, we too will be healed of whatever blinds us to the Light of God
breaking through into our lives. And
when that blindness is taken from us, with a clear spiritual vision granted to
us, we too will focus our eyes, square our shoulders and follow him on the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment