Lk 11:1-4
25 July 2010
“Inner Space”
“Our ordinary waking life is a bare existence in which, most of the time, we seem to be absent from ourselves and from reality because we are involved in the vain preoccupations which dog the steps of every living man [and woman]. But there are times when we seem suddenly to awake and discover the full meaning of our own present reality. Such discoveries are not capable of being contained in formulas or definitions. They are a matter of personal experience, of uncommunicable intuition. In the light of such an experience it is easy to see the futility of all the trifles that occupy our minds. We recapture something of the calm and balance that ought always to be ours, and we understand that life is far too great a gift to be squandered on anything less than perfection.”[1]
That’s a quote from a book that I first read when I was in college. It’s from The Ascent to Truth by Thomas Merton. It goes into the category of “stuff that blew my mind.” I don’t know how often that happens to others. I guess it depends on what you read. (And even, if you read.)
The reason that quote, as well as the book, made such an impact was because it spoke to something I was just beginning to discover: the inner life. By “inner life,” I mean the life of prayer, the life of the spirit. That’s not necessarily the same thing as religion. As I looked back, I would have had to say that my religion was music—hard rock and heavy metal, in particular, but other kinds of music as well.
But with Thomas Merton (and many other writers like him), the marvels of “inner space” began to be revealed. We’re discovering wonders of outer space, but inner space has its own untold treasures. Inner space would be the concern of the unnamed disciple in Luke 11. This is the one who makes the appeal to Jesus: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (v. 1).
Jesus responds with what we call “the Lord’s Prayer.” The version in Luke is shorter than the more familiar prayer in Matthew 6. Matthew’s version is the one that’s found its way into the liturgies of many different churches.
A question asked by many is, “Which version is earlier?” Who is borrowing from whom? That gets asked about other scriptures, as well. The basic guiding principle is that the version which is shorter—or has some language that is tough to deal with—is probably the older one.
The idea is that an author wouldn’t take a longer version, and then whittle it down. (We are dealing with sacred writings, after all!) It’s more likely that someone would take a shorter, or more confusing, text, and try to flesh it out a little more. You know, add some inspired commentary! With the Lord’s Prayer, it looks like that’s what Matthew has done.
We like to debate
which of the longer versions to use: the
one with “trespasses,” “sins,” or “debts.”
(Actually, the Greek word Matthew uses is the one for “debt”—ofeilhma, opheilēma.) Maybe we should dispense with all that and
just use the shorter version that Luke gives us!
Of course, in answering the disciple’s
request, “Lord, teach us to pray,” Jesus isn’t providing something to robotically
recite. It’s not something for them to
simply memorize. It’s often been said
that this is a model for prayer. We are
to take it, and as I said a moment ago, flesh it out. If the inner life is to have any meaning,
then it must be expressed in the outer life—in how we behave.
Chapter 20 of the Rule of Benedict has
something to say about this. “We must know that God regards our
purity of heart and tears of compunction [that is, regret], not our many
words. Prayer should therefore be short
and pure, unless perhaps it is prolonged under the inspiration of divine
grace. In community, however, prayer
should always be brief.” Inner life
isn’t strengthened by posturing, least of all, by posturing during prayer. False fronts don’t work in inner space.
In verse 2, there’s a variant
reading that, I won’t say “blew my mind,” but it definitely got my
attention! (By the way, a variant
reading is a word or phrase that only appears in a few manuscripts.) In this case, when Jesus prays, “Your kingdom
come,” the alternative reading is, “Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse
us.” It’s only in a couple of
manuscripts.
I must admit that I don’t
remember ever paying attention to the footnote that has that phrase. “Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse
us.” It was probably used during baptisms,
and there’s a good chance it was linked to v. 13, where Luke has Jesus speaking
about God giving the good gift of the Holy Spirit to those who sincerely ask.
But I just really like that. “Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us.” What does that mean? What does it mean for the Spirit to cleanse
us, to purify us?
I would think it has a lot to do with the
well-known phrase that it substitutes for:
“Your kingdom come.” Being aware
of God’s kingdom, longing for it to be realized in our own lives—that has everything to do with desiring the Holy
Spirit to come upon us and cleanse us.
But that leads to another question. Do we honestly believe that we need the Spirit to cleanse and purify
us? Are we satisfied with where and how
we are? Do we yearn for more of the
Spirit of holiness, of truth, of love, of courage? Does anyone here ever engage in
self-diagnosis and find that your mind is filled with clutter, with crap?
To revisit the quote from Thomas Merton at the beginning, do we recognize “the futility of all the trifles that occupy our minds”? Would we like to “recapture something of the calm and balance that ought always to be ours”? Do we agree “that life is far too great a gift to be squandered on anything less than perfection”? That isn’t the perfection of flawlessness; it’s the perfection of wholeness, of completion.
There’s the obvious temptation to regard all
of that as a goal we’ll never reach anyway, so why bother? Why not just keep our heads down, and forget
about it?
“The truth is,” as Merton would say, “we are simply not permitted to devote ourselves to God without at the same time leading an interior life.”[2] That takes effort and discipline. And speaking of discipline…
In my psalm reading this past week, I came
upon this little jewel: “Let the
righteous strike me; let the faithful correct me” (141:5). I think it spoke to me—in a rather
uncomfortable way. I have felt the need
of correction by the faithful. (Not so
much striking by the righteous, which has not happened!)
Even though we don’t like it at the time,
faithful correction is a gift. It is
intended to help us grow beyond ourselves, to spur us on to greater
maturity. Unfaithful correction, however, is a very different bird. It doesn’t care about helping us to
improve. It’s only interested in
itself—and grinding anyone who gets in its way into the dust.
Those who desire a healthy inner life (inner
space free of the debris that so often accumulates) are the ones who, like the
psalmist, are willing to both receive
faithful correction and to faithfully
correct.
In case you haven’t already figured this
out, cultivating a healthy inner life is not easy. Prayer is probably the hardest work any of us
will ever attempt. Those who have gone
very far at all into the depth of
prayer will surely agree with me. But as
a wise woman said at a seminar Banu and I attended in Nebraska, “Don’t worry
about the prayer you’re not
doing.” Start where you are.
“Lord, teach us to pray.” It is the Lord, through the Holy Spirit, who
prays in us. Authentic prayer, as
opposed to self-centered babbling, is a gift of grace.
But though it is a gift, that doesn’t mean
we don’t work ourselves into shape
for prayer. There are many different
approaches, but one practical thing that has helped me is learning—struggling—to
be silent, even briefly. We’re so unused
to silence, both outer and inner silence, that five minutes of it can feel like
an hour. But it’s not a
competition. Start where you are.
I want to conclude with the way we began worship.
Hear again our call to worship. “Ask, and it will be given you; seek,
and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. That is the promise of God.” There are plenty of “how-to” manuals on prayer
and developing our inner space. But in the
end, come what may, there is no substitute for the desire and determination to see
it through.
The
Holy Spirit coming upon us and cleansing us isn’t an accident; it is a question
of asking, seeking, and knocking at the door.