Humble Yourself

Chapter Talk # 211, addressed to the Company of Jesus

January 18, 2009

Grace to you on this second Sunday of Epiphany, the season of the Glory of God being made manifest by shining through Jesus.

As I reported to you previously, All Saints Anglican Church is participating in something we call the Divine Experiment. In other words, we’re asking the question, “What would happen if we met together morning and evening for 21 days to pray and humble ourselves before God? Would he indeed hear our prayer and bless us and our land, as it says in 2 Chronicles 7:14?

Well, today is day seven of the ‘Experiment’. We’ve been doing a graduated fast, in which we are gradually cutting things out. Now we’re down to fruits and vegetables. We’re praying from 7-9 in the morning and 7-9 in the evening. Since there are seven churches involved, each church is responsible to lead the prayer sessions one day of the week.

It’s been a real exercise in forbearance as there has been a wild variance of musical styles and proficiency, as well as in prayer styles. Our first kickoff service was quite powerful, with all seven church’s ministers participating and some 400 or 450 in attendance.

I and Br. Mark Goldman had the privilege of leading the Eucharistic prayer and serving the other ministers, then giving them the bread and the ‘wine’ (grape juice for our protestant brethren) and watching as the people came down for communion. We had three medium size pita loaves and somehow God made enough bread for all the people to eat – and for there to be about one quarter of a loaf left over for Mark and I to consume! It was really quite remarkable.

But probably equally remarkable was what happened right before the communion. I had not planned to bring a lavabo to wash my hands, but one of the ministers piped up and said that if we were going to distribute the bread, that the people would want to see that we had washed our hands. I was very pleasantly surprised and immediately affirmed that we had a way to deal with this… So as the ministers gathered around the altar, I poured water over their hands and Mark caught the excess with one towel and offered another towel for them to dry their hands.

My wife, Cindy, said that something powerful began to happen during this time. And indeed, by the time I got to the third minister, his face was wet with tears streaming down. Then, during the prayer, Mark instructed them on how to ‘concelebrate’. One of our retired Episcopal priests in the congregation said that when he saw this, he started jumping up and down, and then started weeping with joy!

It was a great privilege to bring the Eucharist to these mostly Pentecostal folks. They seemed to like it and I think we are scheduled to have communion again at our wrap-up service on February 1 – smack dab in the middle of the Super Bowl! (We’ll see what kind of turnout we get. I noticed in a restaurant the other day that they were closing early in order for the employees to spend the time with their families! Isn’t it nice that we have another secular holiday to celebrate now?)

At any rate, we’ve been going to most of the meetings – at least one per day and sometimes two. We’re very tired, but gratified that God’s people have gathered to pray. We take it as an opportunity to practice our monastic discipline and I have been wearing my habit to the meetings – mostly as a prophetic act to remind me that God wants to build a house of prayer – and that he wants to do it with poor, ragged, sinful people like me and the 20-30 others who meet for these prayers.