If you were stuck in the middle of the ocean on a lifeboat with an animal, what animal would you choose? It is the life of pi question. A book about a young man who finds himself stranded in a lifeboat in the wilderness of Pacific ocean with a Bengal tiger in the same small boat. The part of the story I want to offer today is that what undergirds the boy in the face the danger and temptations of the 227 days in the wilderness of the ocean was his life of prayer.
Back at his home in India Pi had a childhood a lot like mine we were free-range children, and what he was doing during the day his parents had almost no idea. Pi had a deep curiosity about God and in his part of India, he was able to practice Roman Catholic Christianity and Islam and Hinduism quite freely. They all have different holy days so nobody knew about his holy hobby for a while. Pi’s bravery saves his life on the boat with the tiger in the middle of the ocean. Pi’s creativity was absolutely the tool that provided sustenance in his wilderness trial. But it is the practice of prayer that keeps him going and anchors his sanity in his extraordinary passage.
The season of Lent was originally shaped to prepare people who'd been on a journey to baptism. Each Sunday this Lent I will focus on one of the five active baptismal promises, promises that we have prayed and committed ourselves to. The renewal of baptismal vows begins with a renunciation of evil and renaming the ideas and concepts that we trust in when we say we believe in God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This is followed up with five questions that are the word pictures which fill in what it means for us, as a community of people who trust in the things we just declared. It is easy to remember in five words: continue return proclaim serve strive.
The 1st of the 1st promise is will you continue in the apostle's teaching and fellowship and breaking of bread, and in the prayers. Continuing the apostle's teaching and fellowship means that you keep diving into the learning and reflection of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason in a community that is a community across time. The breaking of bread is clearly gathering for communion constantly and consistently. And the last part of the first promises is prayer.
The regular daily active life of prayer. The easiest and simplest way to think of what prayer should be is it is you and god looking at each other face-to-face it is, it is intimacy, it is candor, it is love, it is challenging, it is a relationship. Now our friend Pi the boy on the boat with the tiger in the wilderness of the ocean his relationship with God was so complex that he used 3 completely distinct traditions of religion and prayer to satisfy his longing to look at God face-to-face.
In the Christian tradition, we have dozens and dozens of ways that are real and true and holy methods of prayer. Some of them involve body movements, some of them involve reading and/or listening. Some of them working in the soil or the kitchen and some others are focused on sitting still and some of them involve lots of silence and some of them involve singing and lots of noise. If for some reason you've always thought of prayer as ___ and that fill in the blank has not held you in a regular relationship, has not invited you into that experience where you regularly look at God and God looks at you, then this Lent I challenge you to try a new kind of prayer.
The last thing I want to point out about our lesson and prayer today is that if you notice it is the spirit of God that leads Jesus out into the wilderness. And it is the Spirit of God that is calling us and leading us into challenges and the prayerful encounter with the great unknown paths that lay around of us. Prayer that is a conversation with the Lord of life will be about living more lovingly, more freely and not being stuck in temptations or selfishness or loneliness. Prayer is a deep breath of God when we are paralyzed by anxiety and fear of the future. Prayer can be the life of Jesus coming alive in you. Prayer is about living a life together in humility and reconciliation and mercy not only for yourself and others but for time and reality itself.
We promise to stick to prayer not because we get it not because we understand how it works but because we experience it as a deepening of the promises of our pledges to be with God who is here for us. Whatever your wilderness is God is with us. Whatever your ocean is, there is a practice of authentic prayer that can sustain you. Whatever the tiger in your lifeboat is, God calls us to live together in peace, whatever that takes. Continue return proclaim serve strive. Our promises are responded to with the promise of God: that we will live into this way of love with God's help forever and ever. Amen.
Grace Episcopal Church
Pemberton, New Jersey
March 10, 2019
RCL Lent 1C
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