“CHANGING ACOUSTICS: A LESSON IN PRAYING”
Psalm 23; John 10:1-14
Market Square Presbyterian Church in the City of
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
May 7, 2017 - Fourth Sunday in Easter
The best advice I ever was given about praying is to “pray as you can and not as you can’t.”
Pretty practical. If you have a manner of praying that nurtures your relationship with God, that is
wonderful and keep at it. Still, over all the years I have been a Presbyterian pastor, the
dimension of the Christian life in which the most church members say they lack facility is
prayer. The disciples’ request to Jesus to teach them to pray1 is a commonly echoed desire in our
own time. People want to pray but many of us feel inadequate about it. But something so
central to the faith as prayer is not something God would put out of our reach. Prayer is not only
for the professionals or the monks and hermits. Prayer is accessible and available to all of us.
But maybe it is in a way different than we often think of it.
It helps us to pray if we are clear about the purpose of prayer. For those who have a hard time
praying, many are confused at this point. The purpose of prayer is not to make us feel more
holy. It is not something we do as a check off on a “good Christian” list. It is not a means to get
God to give us what we want. Prayer is offered to us by God as a way of being subsumed in
God, as a way of being in communion with God, what the gospel reading today portrays as sheep
with their shepherd. Prayer is a way God shares God’s life with us. That is the true treasure of
prayer.
The farther along in prayer I go the less I am inclined to make specific requests of God because I
cannot see down the road far enough to know the rippled effects of that for which I ask. I may
ask for something I think is good or for what I think I need or want but what if something else
really would be better. I am more inclined, as the hymnwriter suggests, when I use words at all,
to pray in the spirit of that wonderful hymn, ​“Open my eyes, that I may see, glimpses of truth
1
Luke 11:1
thou hast for me. Place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free.”2 The
purpose of prayer is not to get what we want but to receive what God wants to give us.
Nevertheless, we often approach prayer transactionally. We initiate and God responds. We pray
and God answers. We ask and God gives. Or so we think. But do you see how such a practice
of prayer places God at our beck and call? No, God always initiates. We can pray, love, and do
acts of justice only because God first calls, commands, and invites us to do so. In the first letter
of John in the New Testament, for instance, we read, ​“We love because God first loved us.”3
God initiates and we respond. God calls and we answer. God gives and so we are bold to ask.
We do not have to try to “get” anything from God. All that is God’s is ours already. Remember
in the parable of the prodigal son how the elder brother’s nose was out of joint because the father
lavished gifts on his returning prodigal while seeming to ignore the elder brother who had kept
the family business going in his brother’s absence? The father said to him, ​“But you are always
with me and all that is mine is yours.”4
In the parable, the father is, of course, a stand in for God. Everything we need, everything the
world needs, already is available to us from God. We do not have to convince a parsimonious,
miserly Deity to dole out good things. By the grace of God, they already are ours and are
conveyed to us in prayer. But not prayer as we commonly think of it, perhaps. We often are so
filled with our own thoughts and words and preoccupations with our own perceived needs and
wants that we are in no position to receive anything from God.
A journalist once sat down with Mother Teresa to conduct an interview and when the
conversation turned to prayer, the journalist inquired of her, ​“In your praying, what do you say
to God?”
“I don’t say anything,” ​Mother Teresa replied. ​“I listen.”
The journalist followed with, ​“Then, what does God say to you?”
“God doesn’t say anything,” ​Mother Teresa answered. ​“God listens.”
Confused, the reporter asked quizzically, ​“How can you pray when both you and God do nothing
but listen?”
Clara H. Scott in “Open My Eyes, That I May See,” Hymn #451 ​Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal​.
1 John 4:19
4
Luke 15:31
2
3
“Explaining this,” ​Mother Teresa said to the reporter, ​“would take more time than you have.”5
We do not have much time today, either, and certainly I do not presume to speak for Mother
Teresa. ​(In this regard, I hear echoes of Lloyd Bentsen’s zinger to Dan Quayle: “Reverend, I
knew Mother Teresa and you are no Mother Teresa!”) ​But a writer by the name of Eric Elnes in
his book entitled ​The Phoenix Affirmations6 dared to tease out what he thinks Mother Teresa
meant when she said that in prayer she listens and God listens.
Elnes likens Mother Teresa’s understanding of prayer to the sound of falling snow. We do not
directly or audibly hear the sound of snow as it falls. What we do notice, if we pay attention, is
the ​change in​ ​acoustics​ in our surroundings and also in our hearts.
After it has snowed we often exclaim in our wonderment about how quiet it has become or how
peaceful the world seems or how the pace of life is slowed! The acoustics have changed
because of the fallen snow. The fevered life is hushed for a while. With the changing acoustics,
life and our experience of it also change, at least for a while. Similarly, in prayer in which we
listen and God listens, the “acoustics” of our lives change and we are carried deeper into the
kingdom of God. Our lives change even if only little by little. Our perspectives change. Our
commitments change. Our perception of the world changes. We begin to see, feel, act, and even
believe differently and so the world itself begins to change.
The essence of prayer, according to Mother Teresa, is deep listening all around. That is hard for
many of us to comprehend and to put into practice because we like to talk. Sometimes we find
we do not listen very well to others because as the other person is talking we are busy
formulating in our own minds what we are going to say when that person stops talking. We do
not listen well because we want others to know what we are thinking. Our prayer often reflects
that inclination. We do not listen much in our praying because our prayers are filled with words
pouring out our needs and desires to God even though the Book of Common Prayer reminds us
that to ​“almighty God, all hearts are open, all desires known, and no secrets are hid…”7 God
already knows our needs.
When Paul counseled Christians to ​“pray without ceasing,”8 ​he surely was not commending
incessant and unceasing verbosity. Prayer is more about listening than talking.
Elnes, Eric, ​The Phoenix Affirmations​. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006, p. 26.
Ibid., p.27.
7
​The Book of Common Prayer​, 1928, Collect for Purity before the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
8
1 Thessalonians 5:17
5
6
We do not typically hear God’s voice directly. We do not normally hear it as an audible voice.
God does not speak to us in the manner in which we speak to one another. God speaks to us
through “changing acoustics,” through a growing silence in our prayer and in our hearts in which
God can impart what God wants to give us, wants us to understand, wants us to experience.
When the changing acoustics of silence and listening cause us to live, act, and behave in ways
more and more in keeping with the gospel, we will know we have been in prayer and have come
close to God. We will know through the changing acoustics of our lives that we have heard the
Shepherd’s voice.9
The changes in us may at first be subtle but they accumulate and accentuate over time. As we
engage in prayer as listening, as we listen to scripture and allow it to become ​“the Word that
dwells in us richly,”10 as we attune ourselves to the promised Spirit who faithfully comes
alongside of us, we quietly are shaped and formed in a way that leads us away from the worldly
encumbrances of fear, impatience, anger, and clever stratagems that often we have substituted
for the wisdom of Christ in us.
We are not forbidden, of course, to speak to God in our praying and to express our concerns and
desires, and certainly speech is a part of our public and gathered prayer. But we come to find as
we mature in prayer that God very often works and acts in the ​sound of sheer silence​.11 We
listen and God listens. In its focused, quiet moments, prayer becomes the primary means by
which we are made aware of what God is doing in our lives and in the world, and then we can
join God in doing it. Prayer is the way in which God’s thoughts become our thoughts and God’s
ways our ways.12 We will find ourselves being less conformed to the dominant but damaging
values of the world and instead will be emboldened and equipped to go in Christ’s name into
places, situations, and lives we never imagined we would go.
The twenty-third psalm is as well known a passage as any in ​The Bible​. It is a prayer-poem
written near the end of David’s life. It is David’s joyous song of how the divine acoustics
changed for him over the course of his lifetime. He is arguably the biggest name in Israel’s
history and yet this psalm is all about God. He does not recount his ascent to the kingship of
Israel. He does not boast of his military victories. He does not trumpet his accomplishments.
He does not burnish his reputation or polish his legacy. In humility, he simply sings about the
acoustics that changed for him in his life as he prayed and listened to God, increasingly trusted
God, and became aware he did not have to cajole God for what he needed but simply become
quiet and open enough to receive what God knew he needed.
9
John 10:4
Colossians 3:16
11
1 Kings 19:12
12
Isaiah 55:8
10
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
“The Lord makes me lie down in green pastures;
leads me beside still waters; restores my soul.”
“The Lord leads me in right paths…”
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil; for you, the Lord, is with me.”
“You, Lord, prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…”
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me…”
“I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”13
What is true for us as individual Christians also is true for the church and for the world as well.
God has everything the church needs and all the world requires. There is no lack in God. If,
like us, church and world humble themselves and listen, the acoustics will change and all of the
noise and fury will be transformed into the sounds and sights of grace, hope, and peace.
One of the reasons I walk most every morning for forty-five minutes is, of course, for the
exercise. But the bigger reason is that it is my favorite time and way to pray. There are not
many words exchanged between God and me while I conserve my breath and wind to climb the
hills on my course. But I listen and God listens and the acoustics in my life change and cause me
to see differently and to understand more deeply and thus guide my engagement and
participation in the world for the day and across a lifetime. Setting aside specific times to listen
to God will lead us into greater receptivity to God all of the time.
Iit seems well to me as my years add up, and maybe it will to you, too, to trust, as David
increasingly did, that God listens to my heart and knows me and loves me already, and thus I am
safe in God no matter what. ​“Whether I live or whether I die,” ​wrote St. Paul, ​“I belong to the
Lord.”14 For my part, I listen to God who makes known to me the way I should live and go in
the world, doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly, living abundantly now and into eternity
the life God shares with us.15
God listens and we listen. The acoustics in our lives change. We hear and see beyond sound and
sight. God comes close. Everything becomes fresh and new. That is prayer. And, indeed,
“More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”16 Thanks be to God! Amen!
13
Psalm 23 (selected verses)
Romans 14:8
15
John 10:10
16
Alfred Lord Tennyson
14