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All Saints
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 31st October 2004
Revd. Matthew Vernon
It would take us a long time to agree on a favourite saint. So I'm going to focus on one aspect of being a saint. Prayer. Being a saint and praying are very closely linked.
When I left school I had a year out before going to university. I spent that year working within the church – mainly in a parish in Lewes, in the south of England. Between September and November, I lived with a small group of monks in a house near Lewes. The head of this community was Bishop Peter Ball, the Bishop of Lewes. Everyone who knew him considered him saintly – a holy person. Being a monk helped! But also his simple lifestyle. And his prayer life. Peter's pattern was to get up at 5 in the morning, pray for an hour in silence. Then we'd say morning prayer and there was a Eucharist. And finally breakfast. Those of us living in Peter's house tried to do the same. It was always reassuring when Peter's gentle snoring could be heard in the chapel room.
During those 2 months in Bishop Peter's house I learnt more about prayer than at any other time in my life. I have learnt more since – which is a good job as its 15 years ago- but then I first really learnt about silent prayer. When I was staying with Bishop Peter, a friend asked me what I prayed about during the hour's silent prayer in the morning. She said she'd run out of people and things to pray for after 5 minutes! I did too! But I discovered that praying for my family and about other issues was just a warm up. Praying with words and images in mind was like the first course of a meal. Doing that got you to a point of feeling connected with God. After that there wasn't any need to say anything. You could just sit or kneel there with God and aware of God's presence in and all around you. Until a few minutes passed and I'd realise my mind had wondered off somewhere or I'd fallen asleep! But it was like the story of the man in a village who would sit in the church each day. The priest would see the man there every day. After many months he asked the man about his prayers. He said, "Simple, Father. I looks at God. And God looks at me."
To stop this getting too serious, here's a joke about prayer I was told recently. A lady goes to her priest one day and tells him, "Father, I have problem. I have two female parrots, but they only know how to say one thing." "What do they say?" the priest inquired.
They say, "Hi, we're hookers! Do you want to have some fun?" "That's obscene!" the priest exclaimed, then he thought for a moment. "You know," he said, "I may have a solution to your problem. I have two male talking parrots, which I have taught to pray and read the Bible. Bring your two parrots over to my house, and we'll put them in the cage with Francis and Peter. My parrots can teach your parrots to praise and worship, and your parrots are sure to stop saying that phrase in no time." "Thank you," the woman responded, "this may very well be the solution." The next day, she brought her female parrots to the Priest's house. As he ushered her in, she saw that his two male parrots were inside their cage holding rosary beads and praying. Impressed, she walked over and placed her parrots in with them. After a few minutes, the female parrots cried out in unison: "Hi, we're hookers! Do you want to have some fun?" There was stunned silence. Shocked, one male parrot looked over at the other male parrot and exclaimed, "Put the beads away, Frank. Our prayers have been answered."
We say it time and time again that prayer in Hong Kong is difficult because life here is so busy. That's a shame. Because in the end we won't become saints unless we pray. Of course, Bishop Peter was a single man without children. Even Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and by common consent a holy man, has said that it's hard to find time for pray in the mornings when the children are getting ready for school. He has also said that prayer is "letting God soak in". Prayer isn't so much about asking for particular things to happen, like having a shopping list. It's more like marinating food. If we spend time with God and allow God into our being, then when we face a decision, a situation, a person, hopefully that God-ness will direct how we respond. Hopefully we'll respond out of love. Of course there's no guarantee because we can be so unloving. But if we let God soak into us, there's a chance that will reflect in our lives.
I remember a conversation about this I had when I was at theological college. My tutor said something that has stayed with me ever since. He said "prayer is rehearsal". Michael was in the chapel every morning for the community prayers at 7.30. He saw prayer as rehearsing our faith. By saying our prayers each day, by repeating prayers, readings and intentions, we practice our faith. Like actors rehearsing their lines and preparing for their performance. In prayer, we rehearse how we should live, we remember God's love for us, we reflect on people in need, and so gradually we change. Or like sports people. Johnnie Wilkinson, for example, who seems to pray before each kick. The secret of his success is practice, so that under pressure in a game he still kicks the perfect kick.
The Jewish tradition is always wonderfully practical about spiritual things.
Here's what a well known Rabbi in U.K, Lionel Blue, has said about prayer. "…most situations in life are like the soufflé or Yorkshire pud. It depends on how you take them whether they become delights or disasters, jokes or tragedies. That's why, when they happen, praying is so important. Prayer helps you like a cigarette – but without the nasty side effects – because it allows you to pause. And in that pause is protection, because you have time to ask yourself what your problem is trying to tell you, what God is saying in it. Perhaps, there is blessing wrapped up in there, if you stop panicking."
If we're in the habit of praying, if God has soaked in, we'll respond with God when issues or difficulties arise. And we'll remember God when good things happen.
You know there's a convent just round the corner – at the bottom of Mt Davis Road. We're lucky to have them close by. Their prayer life affects all around them. Its easy to think their lives are so different to ours, but we are closely linked through being able to pray.
The Japanese Christian, Toyohiko Kagawa, says "I have found that the door to meditation is open everywhere and at any time, at midnight, or at noonday, at dawn or at dusk. Everywhere, on the street, on the trolley, on the train, in the waiting room, or in the prison cell, I am given a resting place of meditation, wherein I can meditate to my heart's content on the almighty God who abides in my heart."
For some of us here in Hong Kong it is on the MTR,
• or collecting the kids from school,
• or the sunset from our balcony.
That last bit "the almighty God who abides in my heart" is important.
He's not describing some state of holiness open to only a few spiritual people.
He's stating something that is true for all of us.
It's easy to think we have to go somewhere else to pray.
Either actually go somewhere else, or go outside ourselves.
In fact what we need to do is find our own way of praying.
That might be listening to music or walking or using traditional prayers or modern prayers or stillness or breathing or watching the sunset.
If we find a time of prayer, of stillness each day, everything else flows from that.
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