"Pray without Speaking" - Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Pray without Speaking
Epiphany 4 – Narrative Lectionary 1
February 3, 2019
Grace, Mankato, MN
Matthew 6.7-21

A tale of two couples: a middle aged couple was in a restaurant and, as is their custom, held hands, bowed their heads, and spoke a quiet prayer of thanks. It was a 38+ year custom of theirs. A while later, another couple who had been seated nearby, stopped and commended the couple for praying, saying what a wonderful witness it had been. The praying couple gave an embarrassed “thank you” and went back to their meal. They always tried to be unobtrusive and, though appreciative of the kind words, were a little chagrined at the attention.

Rewind the clock to another couple, far more seasoned than the first. They, too, are sitting in a restaurant. Clearly they were married and undoubtedly had been from some time. Even so, they barely spoke to one another during the entire meal. They ate their meal quietly and left the restaurant. The casual observer of this older couple was saddened. He thought how awful is was that this couple had nothing to say to each other, their lives empty with nothing to talk about. That is until many years later, after his own experiences, he came to understand that the older couple had become so comfortable with each other that they didn’t need words to be together.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ followers ask Jesus to teach them to pray. That’s unusual because Jewish men are taught to pray several times each day. Then, in 1 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul tells his readers to “pray without ceasing … for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.” Yet, here in Matthew during the Sermon on the Mount, the largest of five blocks of teaching, Jesus takes the initiative, telling his listeners to avoid being showy in their faith lives and to not “lift up empty phrases as the gentiles do.” Then he gives them a model for prayer that we have largely adopted, calling it The Lord’s Prayer.

The first couple in my story certainly tried to embody Jesus’ admonitions not to parade their prayers in public and, if you were were to listen in, you’d not hear empty phrases piled up. But it’s the older couple that fascinates me, who embodied prayer in an unimaginable way. With apologies to Paul, I think that it is possible to “pray without speaking,” just as it is to pray without ceasing. But, it’s only within the past few years that I’ve come to understand this type of prayer and frankly, it’s the one that I find hardest to practice. I also think it’s an important type of prayer to have in our tool box.

There are times when we know we need to pray, but just can’t find the words. And there are times when our minds are going a mile a minute that it’s hard to formulate a simple “please” and “thank you.” Yet, if it’s true as Fr. Hernandez says, that “Prayer is a chance to find out what God is up to in your life,” and I believe it is, then “praying without speaking” is a worthy practice to develop for both these times. The wonderful thing about this type of prayer is that we bring nothing with us except the expectation that God will be present with us, even if we don’t say anything or hear anything. What we do is leave behind our perpetually-focused world of doing to just simple be.

Now, of course there are going to be plenty of times when you are going to bring your joys and concerns before God, and that’s great because God truly wants to hear those from you on a regular basis. But I encourage you to carve a little time out each day or each week, maybe five minutes, to just be. Or if you want to practice “praying without speaking,” grab a partner, go to a restaurant and just be together without saying a word. Amen.