Today I want to talk some more about the journey of prayer.  You will remember that last week I spoke of prayer as the genuine desire to commune with God.  I contrasted this with a practise which so often passes as prayer, but really has very little to do with prayer at all, namely badgering the heavens with a shopping list of things that we would like to happen.  Doing so expresses the desire not for relationship with God, but for control of God.  To order God around and ask God to fetch things for us.  Today I want to put aside such silly notions and talk about genuine prayer.  Prayer which is both more difficult and more rewarding than badgering God could ever be. Our guide shall be Luke’s story of the Transfiguration of Jesus.

You will note, first of all, that Jesus and his companions ascend a mountain to pray.  Luke mentions the fact almost in passing, but the wise will pause and take note.  In the Hebrew storytelling tradition, a mountaintop symbolises the place where God can be powerfully and undeniably encountered. Consider Moses, the Lawgiver, who ascends the Mount of Sinai to make a covenant with God.  There the Lord Yahweh is revealed in a glorious cloud of otherworldly fire.  And when Moses descends to the people, his countenance shines with Yahweh’s reflected glory.  Later we read of Elijah, who flees to the wilderness of Sinai after an exhausting conflict with the pagan queen, Jezebel.  Over a period of 40 days and 40 nights, Elijah is comforted and strengthened by God, although, in sharp contrast to the Moses story, this time God shows up as a gentle breeze.    When Luke sends Jesus and his companions to a mountaintop, he does so, then, with this whole tradition in mind.  He says to the reader, ‘prepare yourself for something special’.

But why mountains?  What is it about mountains which makes them the sacred site in Hebrew imagination?  There are two groups of reasons, I think, one mythological and the other psychological.  Mythologically, the Hebrews believed that God dwelt in the ‘firmament’ or ‘the heavens’, which was located in the blue sky above the clouds.  Going to the top of a mountain, then, brought one closer to God.  But the more compelling reasons are psychological.  Ascending moutains takes some effort and energy, you see.  You can’t say ‘beam me up Scotty’, and suddenly find yourself transported to the roof of the world.  Mountains have to be climbed.  Food and provisions are put aside for the journey. The tasks and responsibilities of ordinary life are left behind to some extent.  And what’s the point of all this preparation?  In a wilderness region, the usual distractions are taken away, and we are left alone with ourselves.  There is space to think.  There is time to feel.  There is air to breathe in the spirit of contemplation, and ask the big questions.  And that is why, I think, mountain symbolism is so instructive for the life of prayer.  Luke is saying to us:  if you are fair dinkum about relationship with God, you’ll put in some time and effort.  You’ll make preparations.  You’ll take the time to get away.  Like mountain-climbing, the journey into prayer requires serious attention.  It requires a certain degree of courage and singlemindedness.

The second thing to note in Luke’s story is that while the companions are praying, Jesus’ usual appearance is dramatically changed.  Luke mentions, in particular, his face and his clothes, which become as bright as a flash of lightning.  Again, a whole tradition of Jewish storytelling lurks in the background.  Moses, of course, came down Sinai all aglow.  In the story from Exodus, the people of Israel became accustomed to seeing Moses’ glowing face after each encounter with Yahweh in prayer.  While it was there, Moses placed a veil over his face because the people were afraid.   The prophecy of the Daniel has similar features. In one vision, a messianic figure appears to rescue Israel from its enemies.  This figure is all alight, with a body like chrysolite, a face like lightening, arms like flaming torches, and arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze.  Daniel bows low at the sight of him, but when he looks up, the figure has become like an ordinary man once more.

Luke draws upon these stories to construct his own.  Here on the mountain, within the envelope of communal prayer, the disciples come to see Jesus in an altogether different way.  Suddenly, they are able to see beyond the veil of the everyday into a more fundamental version of reality, shimmering with divine presence.  And with this new light comes an enlightenment of the mind.  The disciples finally begin to apprehend Jesus’ call towards the cross.  In the silence of prayer, you see, they have found occasion to contemplate the meaning of Jesus’ words.  As they reflect upon these, and also upon the messianic and prophetic traditions represented here by Moses and Elijah, the disciples finally awake to the reality of Jesus’ identity and vocation.  And why has Luke told us this story?  He is telling us that a life of prayer gives to us a new competency, the competence to see beyond the veil of ordinary light, into the glorious light of God’s presence and activity. Luke entices the desire for God in all of us, calling us to embrace the life of prayer.

You see, prayer involves a great deal of reflection and contemplation.  Having put the time aside, having created a space for God amidst the busyness of life, prayer consists in a careful reflecion upon the traces of God in both religious traditions and everyday life.  By contemplating the stories in Scripture, by sitting in front of pictures which depict key moments and themes in Christian faith, by listening to sacred music and reading sacred books, God puts us in touch with the riches of our tradition.  God shows us what God is like and how God acts in people’s lives.  In the exploration of these traditions and stories, God then equips us to identify that same divine agency in our own life and times.  When we turn from the sources of our faith to the apparently ordinary and mundane happenings of our present realities, we have learned to notice God where we have never noticed God before.  The ordinary becomes alive with the extra-ordinary.  The mundane is unveiled, if you like, to reveal its essential sacredness.  Elizabeth Barrett Browing put it so very well when she said:

 Earth’s crammed with heaven
 And every common bush afire with God:
 But only to they who takes off their shoes
 The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.

In Luke’s story, immediately the disciples see Jesus transfigured, a huge cloud descends out of the heavens and envelops them all.  Jesus disappears from their vision and the disciples are gripped with fear.  But then a voice comes out of the cloud saying:  ‘This is my Son whom I have chosen; listen to him’.

Have you ever felt that God is not there, that, perhaps, God may have taken leave of absence?  That can be the case at any time in life, but especially during times of suffering or injustice.  Jesus himself knows about this.  In Mark’s story of Jesus he cries from the cross ‘My God, my God, why have you abondoned me? If Jesus felt this way, whose life of prayer is our example, what of the rest of us?  An exceptional work of mysticism from 14th century Britain, The Cloud of Unknowing, says it is those who seek God the most who feel God’s absence the most keenly:

When you first begin to undertake [this journey], all you can find is darkness, a sort of cloud of unknowing; you cannot tell what it is, except that you experience in your will a simple reaching out to God.  This darkness and cloud is always between you and your God, no matter what you do, and it prevents you from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason, and from experiencing him in sweetness of love in your affection (chapter 3).

It is the devout who are most succeptible to spiritual pride.  Having been granted a vision of the transfigured Christ, Luke’s Peter says ‘Master it is good for us to be here.  Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’.  But note Luke’s remark, that Peter was talking nonsense.  Here we may discern the trap of pride into which many fall when beginning the journey of prayer.  Can you see how this comes about?  The new perspectives, the new visions, the new understandings which come through prayer can be very easily mistaken as the achievements of our own hard work. We begin to boast of our enlightenment, waxing lyrical in all sorts of company about God’s own mind on this issue or that.  Such pride has no room for either doubt or humility, preferring to bathe in the confident and easy waters of its spiritual knowlege.  But wait! The descending cloud reminds us that God is ultimately mysterious.  That our visions and apprehensions are no more than partial.  That even our most glorious perceptions are but pale reflections, as in a glass darkly.  The descending cloud reminds us that we should never make absolute either our images of God, or our feelings about God.  The cloud is the symbol of our unknowing.  Which can be quite fearful.

The author of The Cloud of Unknowing therefore encourages all of us to be humble in prayer, to become comfortable with silence and use few words.  He simply sitting in the presence of the God we desire, and waiting patiently for God to pierce the cloud from God’s own side of the relationship:

His will is that you should simply gaze at him, and leave him to act alone.  Your part is to keep the windows and the door against the inroads of sensation and the enemy from without (chapter 2) . . .  So set yourself to rest in this darkness as long as you can, always crying out after him whom you love (chapter 3).

It is God who will effect the communion we seek, not us.  In Luke’s story the voice from the cloud told Peter to listen, to listen, to all Jesus had to say.  This is what we are called to do in our prayer as well. Instead of stammering with ill-founded words, instead of bearing shopping lists and brandishing our spiritual certainty like a sword, let’s listen to what God is saying.  And look for what God is doing.  In such listening and such looking is our consolation.  In such humility and patience, we make ourselves empty, to receive of God’s plenty.

The way of prayer is long.  It takes commitment and courage, but these are born of a genuine longing for God.  The way is filled with visions and consolations, but also with clouds and veils which cause us to question our motives anew.  Be assured, however, that God loves the one who seeks that communion earnestly.  Their pilgrimage will certainly succeed.  God’s grace is sufficient.

Let me close with a little poem by Noel Davies.  In many ways it summarises what I’ve tried to say.  I hope you’ll take it as a gentle exhortation for your journey.

Clear a little space
in your crowded everyday
and everyday reclaim the sacred site
there at the heart of you.
Give the sacred the space and time
to come and sit with you
to become intimate with your story.