I Think; Therefore, I Pray
©
by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers,
February 6, 2000; 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B;
Black History Month)
Psalm
139:1–18 [from 2OrdB] (OT, pp. 639–640);
Mark
1:29–39 (NT, p. 36)
Our
First Lesson is one of the most beloved prayers in the Bible.
In
it, the psalmist proclaims his faith that anyone who prays
is
fully known by God and belongs inseparably to God.
And
our Second Lesson, from the Gospel of Mark,
describes
Jesus as retreating to a lonely spot in order to pray.
It
had been a time of stress and temptation for Jesus.
His
reputation as a healer was spreading,
and
he was being mobbed.
Still
he didn’t think of healing as central to his calling.
Central
to it was preaching, teaching, + proclaiming.
Jesus
needed to make an important decision about
about
the future direction of his ministry, so for
a
few hours he withdrew from his disciples
to
think things through by praying, to gain
access
to the thoughts of God by praying.
Praying—it’s
one of the few acts
that
people of all faiths share in common.
Now
you have to admit that a mix of Catholics, Jews, Muslims, +
Mormons
is an unusual bouquet of peoples, a grouping that one
would
not expect to work together on many joint projects.
But,
as I mentioned briefly last Sunday,
right
in the middle of Los Angeles
there
now stands a huge billboard funded
cooperatively
by persons from all four faiths.
The
sign reads: “I Think; Therefore,
I Pray.”
When
I first learned of this sign ten days ago,
I
instantly fell in love with its message,
and
my only beef is that there’s no
Protestant
money invested in it.
The
sign’s message is, of course, a takeoff on a famous saying by
the
17th-century French philosopher +
scientist René Descartes,
who
lived in Holland + proclaimed, “I think; therefore, I am.”
But,
for me, that association with Descartes’ saying
just
adds to the sign’s appeal.
For
through a deft play on words, the sign’s creators succeed in
suggesting
that “praying” is as intrinsic to human existence
as
are “being” and “thinking.”
Descartes
discarded the authoritarian system of thinking used by
the
medieval scholastics and chose to subject everything to doubt.
For
he believed that genuine knowledge can arise only from
doubting,
from calling into question all that appears to be.
Yet
Descartes maintained that knowledge has to be anchored
in
something that’s beyond doubt, something
indubitable.
And
for him that secure anchor for all knowledge was
“the
thinking self,” whose existence, whose being,
cannot
be doubted.
For
the act of doubting is itself an act of thinking,
and
thinking could not exist
if
there were no such thing as existence.
“I
think; therefore, I am.” That is
to say,
“Since
I am indubitably a thinking self;
therefore
I must unquestionably exist.”
Descartes
went on to observe that my “thinking self” entertains
ideas
that are too great for me, on my own, to have originated,
notably
the concept of “a perfect being lacking nothing.”
Since
I think the grand thoughts that I do,
thoughts
that are unquestionably too transcendent
for
a mere mortal to have created,
one
must conclude that God really does exist.
For
God is the only possible cause great enough
to
have produced in me such grand thoughts.
“I
think; therefore I am.”
And
since I think transcendent thoughts,
it
must also be the case that God is.
But
how does all this relate to that ultra-modern billboard
in
Los Angeles that says: “I think; therefore, I pray.”
In
the Europe of Descartes’ day,
religious
absolutes were taken so much for granted
that
society viewed doubters like him with great skepticism.
But
in contemporary Los Angeles, or New York, it is doubt
+
the denial of God’s existence that is taken for granted,
and
it is persons of faith who are viewed
by
secular society with great skepticism.
Prayer,
for thinkers? Really?
That's
it, you see! Our Los Angeles
billboard is posing
the
same kind of fundamental challenge to modern cynicism
that
Descartes’ thoughts posed to 17th-century
absolutism.
But
please note that Descartes felt free to doubt almost everything
precisely
because he believed that all knowledge was ultimately
anchored
in something that remained undoubtable—
above
all, the existence of the thinking self,
but
also, the existence of God.
&
throughout his life, Descartes remained a Christian.
Yet
in the context of the nihilistic intellectualism of our own age,
people
feel free to doubt absolutely everything, without
retaining
any anchor at all, including the anchor of God.
This
is a spiritual malaise of our time,
and
this spiritual malaise is confronted head-on by our Los
Angeles
billboard when it proclaims: “I
think; therefore, I pray.”
Prof.
James Melvin Washington of Union Theological Seminary
was
the outstanding scholar of American religion who
published
the collection of African-American prayers from
which
many of this morning’s prayers have been taken.
His
book is entitled Conversations with God.
The
premature death of Professor Washington
in
1998 was indeed a great loss to the world.
In
his introduction to the book, Washington argues that it is the
spiritual
malaise gripping the Western world that is the root cause
of
the social callousness that characterizes our society,
the
social callousness that has had
such
negative consequences for African Americans
and
other oppressed minority groups.
To
counteract the spiritual malaise of our time,
Washington
recommends two things: stargazing and prayer!
Stargazing—Washington
contends that
“one
need only observe the stars on a clear evening to [understand]
the
unimaginativeness of [secular] cynicism.”
Star
counting “offers awesome, transporting access to
the
utter beauty and terrifying grandeur of the universe.”
It
“defies the banal interests of our utilitarian age”
and
can kindle or rekindle faith in God.
Now
up to this point, many here this morning
will
have easily been able to identify
from
our own experience
with
what Washington is saying.
But
then Washington goes on to offer a most amazing thought,
one
that I’ve never heard put in this way before.
He
asserts that just as stargazing is the vehicle
for
counting the stars in the sky,
so
prayer is the vehicle
for
counting “the stars of our
soul.”
Prayer
is for counting “the stars of our soul!”
And,
says Washington, it’s under the sacred canopy of prayer that
we
are able to perceive the distance “between who we are
and
who we want to be.”
In
other words, it is prayer and the reckoning of the stars of our soul
that
has the potential for transforming us into a mode of being
that’s
closer to the thoughts and intentions of God.
Counting
the stars above is to ponder the meaning of existenc
and
to glimpse the grandeur and glory of God.
Counting
“the stars within” is to ponder the meaning of life
and
to glimpse the grandeur and glory of the persons
we
could become.
For
prayer, you see, is an inward dialogue with the Spirit of the
universe,
a means by which, with the Spirit’s help,
we
may find our way into the abundance of life
that
is offered to us by the Transforming God
most
fully made known to us in Christ.
To
be transformed from persons bedazzled by the material splendors
of
the world and the advantageous inequities of our society—
to
be transformed from that into persons committed to turning
the
world in a new direction, toward a different goal—
to
be transformed in that way requires a journey inward
into
the depths of our souls.
And
the vehicle for that journey inward is prayer.
As
I mentioned, the billboard “I Think; Therefore, I Pray”
is
sponsored by persons from a variety of religions,
including
Judaism.
So
let me share with you the true story of a Jewish woman,
who,
through the inward journey of prayer,
through
counting the stars of her soul,
was
first transformed and was then able
not
only to maintain her humanity in the face
of
the worst that Hitler’s Holocaust could do
but,
more than that, was able
even
to deepen her humanity.
(The following story comes from Ginger Grab in
The
Living Pulpit, July-September, 1993, pp.
32–33.)
About
a year before Anne Frank began her diary, another
young
woman living in Amsterdam started keeping a journal.
Her
name was Etty Hillesum. She came from a family
of
highly educated and assimilated Dutch Jews.
Etty
had already earned a law degree and was studying
literature
and psychology when the war broke out.
When
the Germans occupied Holland, where
by
coincidence Descartes had done his thinking,
Etty
was 27 years old and leading the life of a
sophisticated,
cultured, liberated intellectual,
without
any thought for God.
To
read Etty’s journal, published under the title An
Interrupted Life,
is
to encounter a most extraordinary spiritual journey.
In
an atmosphere of increasing dehumanization and brutality,
Etty
struggles to maintain and increase her own humanity.
&
to do that she develops an inner life first of meditation
and
then of prayer, an inner life
that
transforms her previously quite secular self
and
prompts her to begin acting altruistically
on
behalf of others and in the name of God.
Early
on in her inward journey of meditation and prayer—in August,
1941—she
records in her journal the following self-discovery:
“There
is really a deep well inside me. And in it dwells God.”
Her
impulse to pray intensifies and she goes on to write:
“Last
night shortly before going to bed, I suddenly went down
on
my knees … between the steel chairs and the matting.
Almost
automatically.
Forced
to the ground by something stronger than myself.”
That's
going on in her inward journey.
Meanwhile,
outside her home, the Nazi persecution is increasing
dramatically.
In April, 1942, Jews are forced to wear
a
yellow star of David, and the deportations begin.
Etty
writes: “The threat grows ever greater,
and
the terror increases from day to day.
I
draw prayer around me like a dark protective wall,
withdraw
inside it as one might into a convent cell
and
then step outside again, calmer
and
stronger and more collected again.”
A
short time later she records the following prayer:
“It
is sometimes hard to take in and comprehend, oh God,
what
those created in Your likeness do to each other
in
these disjointed days.
But
I no longer shut myself away in my room, God.
I
try to look things straight in the face, even the worst
crimes,
and to discover the small, naked human
being
amidst the monstrous wreckage caused by
[humanity]’s
senseless deeds.…
I
continue to praise Your creation, God,
despite
everything.”
In
July of 1942, Etty says to God:
“Dear
God, … one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me:
…we
must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us
to
the last. There are, it is true,
some who, even at this late
stage,
are putting their vacuum cleaners and silver forks
and
spoons in safe keeping instead of guarding You
[inside
us], dear God.
And
there are those who want to put their bodies in safe
keeping
but who are nothing more now than a shelter for a
thousand
fears and bitter feelings. And they
say, ‘I shan’t
let
them get me into their clutches.’ But
they forget
that
no one is in their clutches who is in Your arms.”
Many
of Etty’s friends and acquaintances are beginining now to die
Etty
gives up her job and volunteers to accompany the first group
of
Jews being taken to Westerbork concentration camp,
the
deportation point for transports to Auschwitz.
There,
Etty, as a self-exiled volunteer,
is
put to work assisting others.
She
takes ill from exhaustion, and on a brief sick leave
back
in Amsterdam Etty writes in her journal:
“One
ought to pray day and night for the thousands.
One
ought not to be without prayer a single minute.…
I
prayed, ‘Let me be the thinking heart of these barracks.’
And
that is what I want to be again[, going back there].
The
thinking heart of [that] concentration camp.”
And
so she returns, and the final words in her journal,
dated
December 10, 1942, are these:
“…We
should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.”
For
a number of months Etty works tirelessly at the camp hospital
in
Westerbork offering as much comfort to others as possible.
After
the war, survivors reported that she remained
“a
luminous personality to the last.”
In
September, 1943, Etty and her parents and brother are
themselves
loaded
onto a transport train for Auschwitz.
&
there, on November 30, 1943, at the age of 29, Etty is gassed.
Sometime
later a farmer discovered a postcard she had written
and
thrown from the window of the train as it carried her
from
Westerbork to Auschwitz.
It
read, “We have left the camp singing.”
Etty
had come to realize that praying is as intrinsic
to
human existence as being and thinking
and
that prayer is an inward journey
for
counting the stars of our soul
and
for being transformed from social callousness
into
a thinking heart that lives for the sake of others
and
offers a balm for all wounds.
Let us pray:
O God, our minds are active, and we are alive. Now, teach us how to pray, that we may count the stars within and be transformed from the social callousness of our age to being ever more reflective of Your thoughts and intentions. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.
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