Bishops' Blog

Gordian Knot

Of all the ways you can talk about life, think with me about the image of the knot. All the questions, people, problems, and decisions are twisted together like that, aren’t they? Now imagine a knot which in fact has in it three knots, drawn in different directions, so that to pull one string one way, at the same time tightens another knot another way. You are stuck between options. No way out. That’s not all. When I was a rector, I had a parishioner who taught theoretical mathematics. I asked him what his thesis was about, and he replied ‘mapping knots in five dimensions’!  Like Harry Houdini, we can imagine tying ourselves up even tighter, a threefold knot in five dimensions. That is a good metaphor for hard decisions in your life!

In this same theme, there is a legend about Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world (not including Nigeria). In the fourth century B.C. When crossing through central Turkey, he came to a pagan temple dedicated to Zeus. A team of oxen was tied up outside the temple. Long ago the famous king Midas, son of Gordias, had created a threefold knot which no one was able to untie, and he prophesied that whoever succeeded in doing so would be the king of the world. Alexander tried, but failed, to untie it. Then he stepped back and gave it more thought. What happened next has two versions. According to one, he took hold of his sword, sliced the knot in two, and declared the puzzle solved. Alexander was king because he solved the knot as no other human could!  The second version goes like this- Alexander took his sword and cut down the post to which ox cart was tied. This solution challenged the terms on which the dilemma depended!  One more thing- the ancient god of that place was Dionysus, who was the lord of knots. The great king had at once fulfilled and overthrew the prophecy of the old gods of the place.

Our faith does not depend on myths, nor as Christians are we striving to enter a temple made by human hands.  But we are looking for access, to life, to hope, ultimately to the presence of God, as did generations and times before us. Access means to know where He may be found, and to be able to approach him. Access is what all sacrifice in human history has been really about, no matter the tribe or the continent or the era, even this strange time we live in today, where many think they can do fine without God.

Access is what we had in the beginning, in the Garden, in the relation to Him for which we were created. We were creatures, He the creator, and we still walked and talked with Him. Since the fall the way back to such access was barred by an angelic sword of fire turning this way and that.  Still we have a memory of it, a longing in pursuit of the appropriate words. We humans, of whatever religion or none, share the one thing, the hope for access, of home.

The question of access leads straight, as I say,  to the practice of sacrifice, for that is what it seeks to provide. Sacrifice may be found throughout the world, in the history of religion, and people who study it have lots of explanations, but the actions always have in them this same desire for restored access to life. Wherever we are from, our ancestors made sacrifice.  This brings us to our reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the writer agrees that sacrifice, and in particular the sacrifice in the Temple to the God of Israel, has been a glimpse, a promise, of the true sacrifice to come in Jesus. The old sacrifice had to be performed over the over again, because it depends on us, and was our effort somehow to get back to the garden. But the sacrifice of Christ is once and for all- it opens a road that cannot be closed. This is because this road is opened from God’s side. His act is perfect. Secondly, our efforts are as imperfect as our own thoughts, actions, and motives, but Christ offers himself, fully, and without sin.

Recall this verse from an Easter hymn-  Praise we Him, whose love divine Gives His sacred blood for wine, Gives His body for the feast, Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest. Alleluia! 

We can put the matter another way.  Insight into sacrifice comes from both directions, above and below, God reaching out triumphantly downward to us, and the man Jesus offering himself up fully, though in the midst of fear and desolation. The two meet in the God-man Jesus, so that his action leaves a blessed mark on the world like none other.

Our reading is about sacrifice, and what we Christians make of it. On this question let’s circle back to that Gordian knot one more time, but now with the finished work of Jesus Christ in mind. Solving the knot of life remains an important question- the great king does not neglect it. But the great king offers sacrifice in a way no one else has or could. His sacrifice is the last one, and permanent. It is the pure one, though from the man of sorrows. That is what being a great king looks like.  And how does he slice through the knotted wrongs and confusions? with the sword piercing his side, with the sword of the Word declaring ‘it is finished.’ And this sacrifice does not cease because, still bearing the wounds, he is raised and ascended to where the father is, there to plead our case to him. Sacrifice goes on forever,  that one final sacrifice of his, because he goes on forever.

Does this mean that  neither God or we need our sacrifice? In a sense yes, since we have the confidence that the required work is accomplished. That is why Hebrews can speak so much about the ‘rest’ we have, even as we soldier on.  But there is another sense in which we do have something to offer, not because we need to find access, but because we already enjoy it. Our own prayer book speaks of a ‘sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.’ When you receive a gift, these are what you do! We give our hearts to God in praise and thanksgiving as a result, not a cause. That is what this service is all about, named in Greek ‘the thanksgiving,’ eucharist Because our rest with God is already real and available, we can give that thanks as the service says ‘at all times and places, even the ones that are hard. That is the kind of life we are called by Jesus to live, as mothers’ union, at work, as parents, as confirmands, in our illness, in our joy. Struggle though we still do, the knot barring the true temple has been cut open, and there we dwell this and all our days. Amen.   

"Jesus, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me"

‘Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me.’

Mark 10:47

C.S.Lewis wrote a book called ‘Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer,’ which is exactly what it says.  What sort of book like that would be helpful to you, or what would you write to a friend?  I want to address such questions, but in a roundabout way. First I want to note something remarkable, why God in his wisdom put some of the books we have in the Bible? Ecclesiastes airs Solomon’s doubts, and give us permission to do the same before God. Job does the same for our complaints to Him concerning how unfair life is. Song of Songs shocks in a different way, by focusing on our desires, which are not always aetherial, though they always do have covertly to do with really wanting God. Finally Proverbs is often practical and brass-tacks. My point is simply that we are given permission, even a mandate, to make our prayer so as well. Another way to say this is that we are bringing ourselves, just as we are, before the one from whom, says the opening Collect for Purity, nothing is hid, which is the first of many things which are unsettling about prayer.

What would be in your book of letters to a friend, chiefly on prayer?  To bring ourselves before God, all of us, is a struggle in pursuit of blessed rest. To explain how, consider this verse from St. Paul’s second letter to the Church in Thessloniki- ‘

--Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

How is that a struggle? First, because, obviously, not everything is a cause for rejoicing. The same idea is found in our communion prayer- that we should give thanks always and everywhere. The hospital waiting room? The moment I learned I lost my job?

Secondly prayer all the time is not impossible. Sleeping? Distracted? Driving on I-35?  Such praying may be God’s will for us in Christ, though our wills waver- how so? You can see how prayer is a place where the very personal and the wholly theological intersect.

Let’s zero in now- pray without ceasing!  In the history of the Church the verse has been taken as a call to turn your very life into a prayer, as if something as basic as breathing could become prayer. This was the origin of the tradition in eastern Christianity of the Jesus Prayer, which was the saying of the words of blind Bartimaeus, in sync with one’s breathing, over and over again. Inhale- Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, exhale, In the book called ‘the way of the pilgrim,’ the young convert recites the prayer thousands of times, we are told until his tongue went numb, but more importantly  until he ceased his striving, As the prayer descended from his dead to his heart,  he received the divine gift of love. But the idea that prayer should be as embedded as breathing remained. (I might add that the Jesus Prayer became popular in the revival of traditional spirituality in the 70’s, when I was in seminary and was warned by an old priest/ director to make sure that thinking about my breathing not become disruptive, since fervor and neurosis are sometimes not far apart).

This leads to the next obvious stumbling block in prayer, confusing our efforts and God’s. Here the New Testament gives us advice that seems to conflict, although in truth the two bits of counsel fit together, and need each other. First we are told to strive, not in order to earn anything, but because Jesus admires chutzpah! Knock, seek, ask! Be like that importuning widow who wears the Lord out with her knocking at the door. That persistence is consistent with faith, and with the confidence that He is ultimately merciful and attentive toward us. And on the other hand, realize your powerlessness. Remember how Paul says in Romans 8 that we don’t really know how to pray, nonetheless to worry- in our weakness the Holy Spirit is praying through us, even as we can do no more than groan. Praying as banging on the door, and prayer as groaning! Hold the two together, as different as they are.

But sometimes, for all this, we hear- slience. We wait and wait, till we wonder, at the end of our patience, as he forgotten us? Are we like that dead man out of mind in the psalms?  Here the New Testament gives us bracing encouragement, that one day to him is a thousand years (II Peter) So how can you know what will be answered, and when, and what being answered will look like? Frankly, we can’t. So even if the crops all fail, says the prophet Habakkuk at the end of his book, even so will I bless the Lord in my prayer, and I will seal up the scroll of my prayers, like Isaiah, in the expectation that the answer may come I know not when or how, in a way, centuries later, as strange as a poor child, soon to be a refugee, born in a stable. We complain, we question. Then we are reduced to sackcloth and ashes like Job, even as we recall that Job the complainer was also silenced, but then blessed. So are we in prayer, impertinent, impatient, speechless, silenced, blessed.

We are thinking about praying, but we are Episcopalians doing so. By this I mean that alongside these questions of why and when are more practical questions of how, the kind of questions a pragmatic book like Proverbs was game to answer. There are no hard and fast laws here, but a kind of practical wisdom that is honest about what we are like. Good intentions without a standard, a regular practice, will fall by the wayside as fast as New Year’s resolutions. So make yourself rules, and make them pliable too.

This of course brings us back to Bartimaeus, unlikely patron saint of prayer, though he is not to be found in the Temple of synagogue. He’s in the street, and he needs help. He is a good reminder for us proper Churchmen and women, since his prayer is a cry, its purpose a tangible human need. He shared with rabbi Jesus a preference for short prayers! Lord help!  And in this cry is summarized much of our faith, in that single loaded sentence. In the praying is found the believing, as we in our tradition are often reminded.

Today’s Gospel is about praying, though all its interest is in the One prayed to.  That is what the New Testament is interested in, and so too should we be. What prayer as response should be depends entirely on what the One addressed is like.  He is Jesus, the brother, the man of sorrows, who is also Adonai, the Lord of eternity. He is on his way to Jerusalem, but ready to stop at the plea of this blind man, at the plea of yours and mine. His attention is defined by mercy.  And the cry is urgent, which means that all of Bartimaeus is in it. And Jesus turns to him, and His attention is the beginning and end of healing.  His turn in love to us, as disabled as Bartimaeus, though we be, is salvation. The ‘toward whom’ of prayer is everything. And yes, sometimes the Church is like the disciples, too busy, too preoccupied with the minutiae, to slow down and let the blind man approach. But in spite of ourselves, in our midst walks Jesus, whose name means salvation, who, in turning to us, is our peace. He is sure to turn to us, though the healing is not the end of the story. He then sets Bartimaeus, you, me, on the road, to follow him, continuing to pray along the way. Amen