Land of Spices (Trinitarian Sept. 2014)

Father Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

September 2014

The Land of Spices

Many parishioners have come to me in recent weeks concerned about the state of the world.  There is a lot of bad out there.  There is a lot of scary, a lot of ugly:  the violence in Russia and Ukraine, the unaccompanied children at the border, riots and demonstrations protesting racism in Ferguson Missouri, an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever from the Ebola virus in West Africa, persecutions of Christians and genocide of minorities in Northern Iraq by insurgents newly proclaiming an Islamic Caliphate, the ongoing bloodshed in Gaza and the State of Israel, poverty and homelessness, and the specter of global climate and ecological disaster due to pollution and the overuse of fossil fuels.   I’ve heard the concerns phrased variously:  “What can we do to help, if anything?” “Is there any hope for things getting better in the world?”  “Has God abandoned us?”   

I often find myself suggesting prayer.  But this is not because I think that prayer is a magic bullet that will simply fix hard things. It often seems that God does not hear and answer our petitions.    So why do I suggest prayer? 

For one thing, Jesus taught that we should pray without ceasing.  And Jesus of all people knew that maybe not all our prayers would be answered the way we want.  For him, connecting to our kind parent, our Abba, and asking for what we need each day somehow works miracles, moves mountains, and gives us what we truly need.  I think this is because it focuses us on the love that drives the universe, the gracious good that is the ground of all.  And this focus helps remind us of the good despite the bad and ugly we see before us.  It energizes us to work to bring more good, and steels us to get out of its way.

We Episcopalians have always defined ourselves by having a tradition of shared, or common prayer.    Where many post-reformation denominations defined themselves by what they believed and taught (Calvinists, the Westminster Confession of Faith; Lutherans, the Augsburg Confession; Roman Catholics, the Decrees of the Council of Trent), we Anglicans were defined by how we worship, using the Book of Common Prayer.  Though we did issue the 39 Articles as a sort of Anglican confession, these were somewhat of an afterthought, and never were as constitutive to our identity as the Prayer Book.    We pray not because we think that we might thereby change God’s mind, but because we believe by doing so we might change ourselves.   We pray side by side with others who may not believe exactly as we do, but who, like us, are willing to be enticed through prayer into loving God all the more, and changing.

Anglican Priest and poet George Herbert described prayer in this way:   

 Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,

         God's breath in man returning to his birth,

         The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

  The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth

  Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,

         Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

         The six-days world transposing in an hour,

  A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

  Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

         Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

         Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

  The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

         Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,

         The land of spices; something understood.

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+