Can you Hear Me Now?

Psalm 4

Luke 11: 1-4

A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

Epworth United Methodist Church

This morning I want to talk with you about distracted drivers; about successful exercise programs; and about prayer.

First, distracted drivers.

Every year some 284,000 distracted drivers are involved in serious traffic crashes.  This is a reality that we are all too painfully aware of in this community.

A new study by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center found that “15% of drivers … were not paying attention … distracted by something inside or outside the vehicle.” 

Now if I asked you to name the greatest distraction for automobile drivers today, what would you guess?  Well, it may surprise you to learn that the highest number,

29.4 % were distracted by something outside the vehicle,

11.4 % by adjusting a radio or CD player,

10.9% talking with other occupants,

1.7 % eating or drinking

and only 1.5 % were distracted by cell phone use.  Personally, I can’t believe that this study included my neighborhood, but that is a whole other conversation.

The study found that:

Distraction is common

Many things distract

Distraction impairs our ability to drive.

Distraction also impairs our ability to live.  The percentage of us that crash while distracted by things inside and outside our lives would be far higher than 15%.

In the first centuries of Christianity, when spiritual seekers came to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, spiritual examples and teachers, asking, “What should I do? I seek to live a spiritual life, to find my true self. What should I do?”

The Desert Fathers and Mothers would answer,

“Do what you are doing.”

Do what you are doing in every moment, bringing full attention and intention to every breath, every movement, every pause.

Thomas Merton said,  The best way to come to God is to go to your own center and pass through that center into the center of God.

Basil Pennington wrote about ATTENTION as a way of doing what we do, the HOW of our living.

This means attending to the present moment (rather than wondering about what we are going to do next or tomorrow).  Even when, or perhaps especially when this is a moment of great pain. 

INTENTION, Pennington writes, is the awareness of the WHY of doing what we do. (rather than being driven by or to distraction).

Another word for this life of attention and intention is prayer – living through the center to the center - of the compassionate grace of God.

From center we are alive to suffering and to beauty, to doubt and to trust.  From center we plant seeds of resurrection in the hardest and harshest soil.  Distraction is overcome in desperation, in wonder, community, in practicing in small ways to allow God’s Spirit to well up from within and heal us.

Another recent study, at Ohio State University, was about success in  exercise programs.

Of the 937 students  in this study, 52 % were physically inactive.  This study found that college students are more likely to exercise if they have social support for being active.

(Sometimes I wish I had the money they spend on some of these studies.  I mean, couldn’t you have told them that we’re more likely to follow-through on exercise if we have the active support of friends and family?  We might join a gym on our own, but going to the gym is much more likely if someone’s waiting for us there.  We might buy exercise equipment from an info-mercial or garage sale, but we’re more likely to use  that equipment if our families are on board.)

Social support increases the possibility of success in a physical exercise program dramatically.  The other factor this study found that contributed to success in an exercise program was self-efficacy:  the confidence students had in their own ability to participate in exercise regardless of obstacles.

A similar national study specifically dealing with African American women found the same two key factors that increased exercise and healthy living:  the social support of friends and family, and confidence in achieving the task.

As a community of faith we can and do support each other and ourselves to pay attention, to bring intention, to have confidence in prayer.

You don’t have to be with other people to experience this – I remember when I visited the Taize community in France, an ecumenical community of prayer and service – Just the week before I arrived tens of thousands of young adults had gathered for days of praying for peace….I walked into a vast room, darkened except for candles,  no chairs or pews, but prayer books and Bibles and the echoes of prayer filled the empty place.  In a solitary moment, I was touched by the powerful awareness of those who lives and prayers had filled that space before me.  And all I had done was shown up!

Eugene Peterson tells a story about John Muir the wonder-filled explorer of Western North America of the late 19th century. This story became a favorite of the Peterson family in stormy times.

In 1874 John Muir visited a friend with a small cabin on a high mountain in the Sierras near the Yuba River Valley. Suddenly, a wild and harsh December storm burst open.  -- Rather than huddling in the cabin in front of a warm fire to ride out the storm,

John Muir LEFT the cabin, and walked into the storm, up on a high ridge and climbed to the top of a giant Douglas fir tree. He rode out the storm at the top of the tree, holding on for dear life --- thrown about by the fierce wind…Muir took it all in, the power, the weather, his fear, the energy……

Prayer…spirituality ….is not an escape, not a cozy cabin, not a coping mechanism.  It is LIVED LIFE.  We can – show up – be present – from the center –of God within, beyond and between us.

When we feel like we are crying out to God, “Can you hear me now?”  when we feel like our prayers are dropped calls, let us drop distractions.  With every breath, let’s bring attention and intention to our whole lives, in community and with the confidence of children.

The disciples saw something in Jesus they hoped for in themselves.  They followed him.  They did not say “give us a prayer to memorize,” they said, “teach us to pray.”

The Lord’s prayer – explored in Wayne Muller’s wonderful little book, Learning the Pray:  How We Find Heaven on Earth  …

“The prayer itself is a guide, a teaching story, the words are not the prayer, they are doorways into lifetime practice.”

Just the first two words suggest some powerful means and meanings to the life of prayer …

The first word is “Our” … When we pray, we never pray alone.  We belong to something larger than ourselves.  Prayer honors deep, unseen connections that place us in kinship with all beings.  Prayer removes the illusion of isolation and self-sufficiency. One person wrote of the experience of prayer, ”When I pray for the healing of this cancer, this loneliness, this grief, I also pray for the healing of all who share my sorrow.”

The second word is FATHER (or Mother or Creator).  The second word is not a word of gender but of relationship.  Prayer brings us

in direct, intimate relationship with the creator of the universe—so intimate that we can call out Abba, Daddy, or Mommy,  so intimate that the source lives in your own heart.  The Lord’s prayer is a child’s prayer … a radical affirmation of relationship.

So let us not be distracted from our own lives… let us pray with confidence … knowing we are not alone.  Thanks be to God.