I well remember how, several years ago when Philip Buckler was our Vicar, I began a sermon at one Sunday’s main Eucharist by saying – with tongue in cheek of course! – that it seemed to me that when preparing the staff preaching rota the Vicar had taken one look at the three Biblical readings prescribed for that morning, realised that singly and collectively they were useless for any meaningful sermon, and said to himself, “We’ll let Derek have that lot.” Thank you very much I thought after having read them myself. In my sermon, I managed to get rid of all of them quickly and talked about something else.
Without in any way impugning the integrity of Fr. Stephen, our present Vicar, I could almost come to a similar conclusion about this evening’s readings, entirely uninspirational – to me at least – that they are. I suppose that an historian or a poet might produce somehow an interesting lecture about the building of the temple but on a spiritual level the extract from the Book of Numbers is of little help, while the particular extract from Paul’s excellent letter to the Corinthians, telling me that if I was circumcised when I became a Christian I should not seek to remove the marks of circumcision, I find the opposite of helpful, although I realise that it may have had real meaning for the Jewish Corinthians of his day.
I just draw attention to the fact that both readings do tell the reader to obey the commandments of God – a valid call indeed – and otherwise pass over them.
I wonder if some of you may share my experience that sometimes there pops into my head, for no apparent reason, the name of someone of long ago, or some particular event or place. Often I note the memory and then let it go, not granting it any other significance. It so happened, however, that as I lay awake this past Wednesday night, I found, with surprise, the name of Simone Weil edging into my memory. In case you don’t know she was a well known and rather remarkable French Christian mystic in the Thirties and Forties of the last century. She was highly educated, with a university degree in France. She came to want to identify with the poor, with the ordinary people: unusually she got, if I remember correctly a job in a factory; unusually because it was only during the 1939 war which began just a few years later that it became quite normal for women to work in factories alongside men. As always, she maintained a deep prayer life, to which I shall return in a moment.
She escaped to England early in the war and in line with her determination to identify herself with the less fortunate she insisted on eating no more than she imagined her hungry compatriots in occupied France were able to find to eat. She probably overdid this and died young a couple of years later, leaving behind her a couple, at least, of influential books. In one of these she speaks about the Lord’s Prayer. At last I have got to what I want to say! She realised how often she and, as she thought, other church people whether in Church or otherwise tend to speak that prayer almost trippingly off the tongue without thinking of, or reflecting upon what they were saying. We are so familiar with it that we tend to say, like parrots, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” and so on etc.
Why do we say it? Because, of course, Jesus, so we are told, advised his disciples so to pray, when they asked him to teach them how to pray. Yes – but it was not, surely merely a string of words that Jesus was teaching but rather a method or manner of praying. Simone Weil, in her private prayer often found it difficult to complete the paryer. Often she would get so far and then have to go back to the beginning because she had overlooked the significance of something because every word is significant, and then she might have to go back yet again to the beginning. Each word justified reflection.
Our Father – even before you get to Father, there is “Our”, not my, let us remember, but “our” and who are we including as “our”? Our family perhaps, but what about our neighbour next door, or our colleague or colleagues in the office – surely they are part of “our” – then that person within or outside the Church whom we cannot stand or – if we are members of a political party what about the members of other political parties, yes they are included in “our.” As we reflect more, our ambit spreads until at last we come to see, to feel, to know that everyone good or apparently evil are included when we say Our Father: He is the Father of all people. And then Father – what are we meaning by that word – not easy for some to pray to their father. I remember a lady whom I knew over 50 years ago who had the greatest difficulty in saying the Lord’s prayer because her human father had been so cruel and unkind to her. What kind of father are we speaking to? And “Who art in heaven” – not who may be or was but who art – who is presently alive. How are we to imagine the God who is real, who is alive – or again, in heaven.
The discussion which some of us shared in what we call the Wendy Group on this last Friday afternoon showed different ideas many of us may have about what we mean when we say heaven.
I could go on, but happily shall not. The point I wish to make, as I understand Simone Weil to have been trying to do, is to show what we can miss if we merely say the prayer trippingly off the tongue rather than always reflecting closely on what we are saying.
I said at the beginning that when memories pop into the head for no apparent reason, I tend to let them go, seeing in them little or no significance. How the name Simone Weil popped into my head last Wednesday night I know not but it has a significance for me which I would be foolish to ignore, for somehow and belatedly it seems to be trying to teach me or remind me how to pray – which I know, like the disciples of old, I still desperately need to learn. Therefore in part it may be that this will seem to have been a selfish sermon – and I apologise – but somehow I hope that it may help at least one of you to learn to think about or reflect on what you are saying when praying this deepen your prayer life.