further on prayer

 

Notes on Luke 9.28-36

The stories we read in the Bible are rich in symbolism, in recurring motifs. For example, whenever you read about a tree in the Bible, you are reading about a person, and so we should enquire, whom does this tree represent? Or to give another example, the sea stands for chaos.

The Gospel text for this Sunday, Luke 9.28-36, is a story about prayer, and about what comes into being through prayer (the Greek employs the phrase ‘it came into being’ five times in nine verses—and my English translation erases every one of them under ‘Now,’ ‘And while,’ ‘Just as,’ ‘While,’ and ‘came [a voice]’ which is interesting in itself). And this passage employs four recurring biblical symbols: mountain; light; cloud, and (implied, in their returning) valley.

In the Bible, mountains stand for talking with God, or prayer. It is interesting to note that many people report feeling closer to God out in nature, by which we mean in places largely untouched by human activity, by buildings and traffic. But most of us (humans) are now urban dwellers. Jesus claimed that if you have faith, you can say to a mountain, be thrown into the sea, and it will be done. This is often presented thus: the mountain represents obstacles we face, which we can overcome by faith. But in the Bible, mountains do not symbolize obstacles we face; giants, or armies do. Jesus’ point makes more sense as being able to transfer the experience of being with God in the quiet space he models for us to seek out, into the chaotic circumstances we must return to. But if the regular practice of prayer is like being out in the mountains, this invites all kinds of imaginative engagement, from taking a leisurely pace, to needing a map and compass, to moments of breathtaking panoramic view, to times of descending mist. Like getting away from the noise of the city, prayer reshapes us where speed and busyness have deformed us. We come into being, again.

In the Bible, light stands for union with God, our ability to know God affectively with our whole body. As Jesus prays, his face changes, and his whole body radiates with light. The saints of the Church are depicted in art with halos, coronas of light around their heads. We pray with our whole bodies (not just our minds) and prayer changes our bodies. It can cause the face to shine. Ten years ago, eighteen-year-old photographer Shea Glover conducted a social experiment, taking two photos of subjects, the second captured immediately after telling them ‘You are beautiful.’ Their faces literally lit up. (You can find these images shared online.) Union with God is bathing in love shared between us: we gaze on Jesus and Jesus gazes on us as his beloved. Again, we come into being—from one degree of glory to another, as Paul and Timothy, two early apprentices of Jesus, described it.

Throughout the Bible, people pray with arms outstretched and the palms of their hands facing up. For Christians, this ‘orans’ posture symbolizes Jesus on the cross. I adopt this posture whenever I lead the congregation in the Prayer of Thanksgiving at Holy Communion—and for the first Christian millennium, they would have all joined me in the same posture. Early in the second Christian millennium, praying with hands clasped or palms pressed together became more common—a posture many of us were taught as children. Recently, someone asked me to pray; I bowed my head and started to speak to God, but they interrupted, demanding that I prayed ‘properly,’ that I put my hands together. My initial, internal response was not positive: it does not matter what we do with our bodies in prayer! But on reflection, I realized that it does matter: that for this person (and every person) the posture of hands together (or body) was not merely an outward form or a slavish traditionalism, but a posture that helps her come to God—and will help her to do so when she cannot do so consciously, with independence of mind, and when Christ comes to her embodied in a sister or brother.

In the Bible, cloud stands for mystery, the limits of our mind, of our ability to know God cognitively. We know God because of divine self-revelation, through the prophets and most fully in the person of Jesus; but we do not know God in full, because the fullness of God is far greater than our ability to hold that knowledge. And this is surely a good thing, because a god that can be contained within our mind is a creature of our own imagination. We are terrified by the prospect of cognitive impairment, especially of dementia: of being more known by others (chronologically, sequentially) than they are known by us. Yet the reality is that we are all more known—and especially by God—than we are knowing; that our cognitive ability, important though it is, is only part of a bigger whole. My own cognitive impairment—I recognize people not by their faces but by their voices, mannerisms, postures; and routinely struggle to recall names—is a gift, albeit unwelcome at times, that draws me (even kicking and screaming) to simply be with the other in the present moment. To be caught on a mountain in the cloud can be chilling and disorienting, but also an invitation to trust something beyond our interpretation of our senses, and to lean into the experience of others who have erected cairns along the path. We come into being with them.

In the Bible, valleys stand for obedience, trusting God in our daily lives. Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him up the mountain, but they return to the valley with him, having heard the voice that told them to listen to him. Their learning to listen involved not speaking about those things they weren’t to share, yet, for sharing them would jeopardize the departure—the exodus—Jesus was called to lead others in. And testifying as witnesses to what they had seen come into being, when the right time to do so had itself come into being. The valley is the place of obedience and trust. Valleys are also centres of population, human-shaped landscapes, filled with interaction, the context in which we love our neighbour as ourselves. The culmination of the mass, of encountering Christ in bread and wine, is the dismissal, the people of God being sent out into the world in peace, to love and serve the Lord. There is no mountain, light, or cloud without its attendant valley. This is where what has come into being in us—peace, love, a posture of service—is revealed, tested, refined. But what has come into being, through prayer, is the work of God’s Holy Spirit, not some self-betterment.

Mountains, light, cloud, and valleys are recurring symbols in the stories told in the Bible—in the story the Bible invites us to enter-into. Where have you known these in your own life?