Video of this sermon is available here.

More than one person has shared with me – and I have myself experienced – powerful prayer experiences that started out as “I don’t know if anyone or anything is out there, I don’t know if you’re real, God or if I’m just talking to myself here …  but I feel like I’m at the end of my rope, and I’m crying out … I’m crying out to You.”

You know, this nakedly honest crying out from our deepest need that lays bare even our own profound doubt and uncertainty, while not letting any of it hold us back from taking the risk of opening ourselves to something beyond ourselves. In our need and limitation we open ourselves before an Ultimate that is ultimately a mystery to us.

It seems to be that this kind of nakedly honest posture-of-being often clears the way for something quite unexpected to happen, that shifts what needs to shift for there to be renewal of life and purpose. When people have shared this kinds of prayer experiences, it’s not like a movie or myth where magically their wishes come true … but more than that, this kind of raw prayer before a Great Mystery can lead to one’s deeper and truer need being met, it can lead to one feeling, unexpectedly, that we are known and not alone in an ultimate sense.

But I don’t want to make it seem like this is guaranteed. Far be it for me to make it seem like anything is guaranteed.

Too often, religious people traffic in certainties. Too often religious people make it seem like you’ve got to be forceful in asserting the one truth and only truth, or so help you God. And if you don’t get it or you aren’t getting results from it, it’s your fault.

But as Paul Tillich – one of the great theologians of the 20th Century – has said:

The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty.

The actual inner lives of actual people of faith are not at it their heart centered around a creed or a statement of belief. That stuff is secondary, I think, at best, in truth.

Also, the actual inner lives of actual people of faith are not at their heart centered around some kind of payoff they may get for our faith, the transactional rewards.

This may come as a surprise to folks who have not experienced what it is like to have faith, because religion is too often promoted as belief and reward: “This is the creed you need to believe; this is why it’s right and the others are wrong; this is what you’ll get for believing in it, this is what you’ll get if you don’t.”

I’ve come to see that this misses the point. In the actual inner lives of actual people of faith something more profound than that is going on.

The heart of faith is rather what I want to call a simple posture of being.

It is a simple posture of being that is a posture of openness. It is a posture of openness before a holy mystery. It is a posture of being that is inviting oneself to be in relation with what is beyond … beyond oneself, and beyond anyone else.

It is a posture of being where one turns toward wider horizons and addresses that which is beyond as “You.” It is putting oneself into conscious relationship with a much greater “You,” and allowing oneself to in turn be addressed and even named by this greater “You.”

In other words, this posture of being is a posture of prayer.  

The important thing about prayer is not that you have a firm and fixed image of the “God” to whom you are praying, and an unwavering certainty about the existence of that “God” and what that “God” is going to do for you. That kind of certainty can in fact be an impediment to deep and transforming prayer. It could even be an exercise in idolatry, in worshipping part of ourselves rather than the Divine.

Rather, the heat of prayer is bowing before the altar of the God Unknown. 

Prayer is simply at its heart a posture of being that is open to the Sacred Source of Being itself, beyond ourselves, beyond what we can imagine or conceive. Prayer is simply inviting ourselves to stir awake to our deeper relatedness to a holiness that pervades and unifies and transcends everything. Prayer is simply a way of honoring our deeper dependence on that which moves us to awe and reverence, desire, and utmost gratitude.

That’s it.                                                      

That’s enough.

There’s nothing special we need to know.

There’s nothing special we need to do.

Nothing special we need to say or think.

Nothing special at all.

It’s enough to simply be as a simple being

Abiding in the Holy Mystery beyond all being.

For this I give thanks.

Delivered Sunday, August 15, 2024, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge

Image by Sabine Löwer from Pixabay