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Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
                              July 25, 2010  The Rev. Bill Van Oss                         
              Readings    

“Hearts to God, hands to work” is a wonderful saying from the Shaker tradition. “Hearts to God” says “seek God’s vision for your lives and for the world.” “Hands to work” says “make that vision a reality, work at it.”

It’s interesting to notes where Jesus’ teaching his disciples to pray falls in the Gospel of Luke. You might think that Jesus would teach them to pray first, but Jesus has already sent them out, in pairs, to cure the sick and to proclaim the kingdom of God in chapter 10 we are told that the disciples returned “with joy” and said “it worked,” “good things happen in your name, Lord.” And then Jesus tells the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which we heard a couple of weeks ago, where a Samaritan saves the life of a man beaten and laying on the side of the road. The Samaritan does a good thing, he puts his faith into action, he reaches out, and lifts up, and heals. So it’s after Jesus sent the disciples out to do good works, after teaching about putting faith into action through the Parable of the Good Samaritan, then, only then, does Jesus teach his disciples how to pray.

Jesus turns the Shaker saying around. He makes it “hands to work” then “hearts to God.” Jesus starts with practice, with action, with doing good things in God’s name. Then, he gathers his disciples around Him and teaches them how to pray. It’s a subtle, but important, point. Believing in Jesus Christ starts with practice, with action. We call it “the practice of the faith,” so we come together for worship and we are sent out to do good in Christ’s name. And then we pause to reflect, to see how God has inspired and led our activity. To see how our relationships need healing, how we are dependent on God for our daily bread, how we need God’s help to persist and be successful. And as we practice our faith we get better at it. We see the connection between the love of God and the love we experience in our lives and the love we share with others. We see the connection between God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness we extend. We see how the holy creativity of God connects with the work of providing for our daily bread.

Prayer doesn’t change God’s mind or talk God into doing our will, God always wills what is best for us, what is life-giving and good. Prayer makes us conscious of God’s grace in every moment. Prayer makes us aware of God’s love in our midst in both the bread and the wine at this Eucharist and in the lunch we make for our families, in both the waters of Baptism and the never-ending laundry, in both quiet moments of reflection on the shore of the lake and the rambunctious joy of playing with children. Prayer makes us aware of God’s love in every moment. Eventually, and with enough practice, we can begin to see every moment of our lives as infused with the goodness and grace of God. Certainly in moments of formal prayer, like this liturgy, or a meal or bedtime prayer, or saying the Lord’s Prayer in a quiet moment during the day. But we also begin to see the ordinary, even mundane moments and tasks of life as prayer.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this in her book An Altar in the World. Here’s a small passage: “When people ask me about my prayer life, I describe hanging laundry on the line. After a day of too much information about almost everything, there is such blessed relief in the weight of wet clothes, causing the wicker basket to creak as I carry it out to the clothesline. Every time I bend down to shake loose a piece of laundry, I smell the grass. I smell the sun. Above all, I smell clean laundry. This is something concrete that I have accomplished, a rarity in my brainy life of largely abstract accomplishments.

“Most of my laundry belongs to my husband, Ed, who can go through more clothes in a week than most toddlers. Hanging his laundry on the line becomes a labor of love. I hang each T-shirt like a prayer flag, shaking it first to get the wrinkles out and then pinning it to the line with two wooden clothespins. Even the clothespins give me pleasure. I add a prayer for the trees from which these clothespins came, along with the Penley Corporation of West Paris, Maine, which is still willing to make them from wood instead of colored plastic.

“Since I am a compulsive person, I go to some trouble to impose order on the lines of laundry: handkerchiefs first, them jockey shorts, then T-shirts, the jeans. If I sang these clothes, the musical notes they made would lead me in a staccato, downward scale. The socks go all in a row at the end like exclamation points. All day long, as I watch the breeze toss these clothes in the wind, I imagine my prayers spinning away over the tops of the trees. This is good work, this prayer. This is good prayer, this work.”

“This is good work, this prayer. This is good prayer, this work.” “Hearts to God, hands to work” in every moment of our lives. Realizing that Jesus taught His disciples how to pray by first sending them out to do good in the world, to reach out with love and compassion to those in need, to forgive those who wrong us, to be grateful for our daily bread and willing to share it with those who have none.

Prayer is action and quiet reflection realizing that God is with us every step of the way, in our hearts and in our minds.

Father, hear our prayers –
prayers that you know before we ask them,
prayers you inspire us to ask.
Let our prayers to you transform us”
making us more grateful,
more forgiving,
more caring of one another.
In your goodness, give us the grace and trust
to work to make what we ask of you a reality.