February 13, 2011
Today I want to talk about a word – a very popular word – at least according to Google! This word is the name of many diverse institutions … the name of an Alpaca Farm in Fredericksburg, VA, an Arabian horse ranch, a mortgage corporation up in Baltimore, an internet service, a photography studio, a dance studio (“dance makes a difference”), a landscape business, a Bed and Breakfast, an auto repair shop, any number of churches, camps, choirs and other musical groups, a publishing company, music publishing company, retirement communities, a radio network, and most important of all – the name my favorite peanut butter. It is a word used frequently as a Christian meditation mantra or prayer word for those recovering evangelicals who are still a bit afraid of the east – a prayer word, by, by the way, which we were actually encouraged to use in this very service a few weeks ago.
This word is used only once in the Bible – in a verse that we will not even look at today – though the essence of the word is found throughout Scripture and was probably used in the early church worship according to the Didache (for those of you who care about such things). The word is neither Hebrew nor Greek, but Aramaic, a language rarely recorded in scripture – a language that Jesus probably used in his daily conversation.
It is a word that I have re-discovered in the last six months – a word that has enhanced my prayer life and my perspective on daily living. … MARANATHA … I made a new discovery about this word … it can be translated two different ways depending on how one divides the compound verb in Aramaic – the tense changes …
Imperative= Our Lord Come!
Perfect= Our Lord has come … in past and continuing into the present = is already here
I think that the story of the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings may reveal the two sides of this word. But the story actually starts a chapter earlier – let me summarize … the leadership of the nation of Israel have led the people to turn to false gods, so Elijah stages great contest between the new gods and Yahweh on Mount Carmel. …
Elijah: “O Lord let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God.” … then fire … overwhelming demonstration the God of power … Might I suggest that this is a rather over-the-top demonstration of the reveals the first meaning of Maranatha?
MARANATHAIMPERATIVE … Our Lord, Come!! … petitioning, imploring, almost demanding
Let me start out with a disclaimer (confession): I have very little idea how this kind of prayer works and at times I even wonder if it does. Prayer doesn’t seem to fit into my empirical, engineering mind. I don’t get it. It never seems to work the same …
ILL.Praying for mother of woman at VY, then for another man in the hospital … this is how it always goes in my praying – no consistency or pattern, and I like patterns and formulas – I even have a pattern for taking eggs out of the carton – balanced. Dorothy doesn’t have the pattern so I have to re-sort the carton after she takes eggs out.
So I struggle with this kind of prayer. I would like it to work like Elijah’s prayer seemed to work for him. God, come right now and do this, then God comes right then and does it! But that’s not what usually happens. So often I end up praying with little passion or expectation or even not praying much at all. Prayer can easily become perfunctory for me. … After all these years of pastoring and preaching, I finally have to admit that I don’t really know how to pray. … But that is not necessarily a bad thing …
Romans 8:26-28 (REB) … the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness. We do not even know how we ought to pray, but through our inarticulate groans the Spirit himself is pleading for us, and God who searches our inmost being knows what the Spirit means, because she pleads for God's own people in God's own way; 28 and in everything, as we know, God co-operates for good with those who love God and are called according to God’s purpose.
We have this groaning going on inside of us (for our families, faith communities, guys at Cornerstone, pain and oppression in the world, the Egyptians, the Palestinians, the homeless, dying, the poor, the marginalized, etc. etc.) and that leads us to call out Maranatha (Lord come) and then the Spirit takes those groanings to God and does the praying for us. We cry out, not really even knowing what to say, but God knows what is deep inside of us. Then God co-operates with us for good. That kind of takes the pressure off. Maybe I don’t have to say exactly the right words in the right way.
This reminds me of what Paul wrote to the church in Philippi about his prayers for them … “he is confident that God will complete the work he began in them … because I hold you in my heart.”
So I guess the question to us is: How often do we call God into our lives and our situations, into the lives and situations of those around us and into the situations in the world – with those inarticulate groans – how often do we truly hold people in our hearts.
For people like us who so often look at the pain in the world and the corruption in the dominant culture (false gods of the dominant culture), it is easy to slip into despair. Maybe more intentional Maranatha might help. I am not exactly a prayer warrior like Jimmy. But Maranatha has challenged me and helped me to pray more and to be more at ease in my feeble attempts at prayer.
Now we are caught up … Rest of the story … Jezebel threatens … Elijah runs away scared … broom tree – sleep/eat/sleep/eat … I wonder if Abraham Maslow was reading this story when he formulated his hierarchy of needs!) … What are you doing here? … “I have worked so hard for you – served so well – now I am the only one left and they are going to kill me.” … depressed, feeling lonely and isolated … Then told to go outside and look for the Lord (I’m guessing he was looking for something spectacular like Mt. Carmel) … hurricane … earthquake … fire … so then where does he experience the Lord? …
“the still small voice” = "sound of fine silence" … “gentle voice of silence” … “sound of sheer silence” … Elijah needed to look for the Lord in a different place … in the silence … he needed to see that the Lord was already in that place without the noise and big happenings that he had experienced earlier on Mt. Carmel … Might I suggest this is …
MARANATHAPERFECT… Our Lord has come – you just need to open your eyes and ears to see and hear it … Kazantzakis’ poem:
I said to the almond tree,
“Sister, speak to me of God.”
And the almond tree blossomed.
Story:Ram Dass story in Starlight: Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Long by John Shea (after all we are speaking of advent!), p. 164
Story: Reminds me of when we moved into our neighborhood … the light of the world … look for the light that is already here … the Lord has come before and is still here … Maranatha Perfect …
Rachel Remen (My Grandfather’s Blessing): “When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time.”
Can you see what a beautiful symmetry there is in these two Maranathas – I petition, plead, implore – come Lord … and then I acknowledge that the Lord has already come, I just need to look around to see and hear the Lord’s coming in places and ways I have not seen – have missed -- often in the quiet, small, gentle places … we pray then we look for the light, for the unborn wholeness, that is all around us in each situation and in each person.
As I mentioned at the beginning, this has really been helpful to me in my prayer life and my perspective on daily life. … Now in my times of prayer, I center in the silence using Maranatha as my prayer word, but I also write in a prayer journal – names, situations – then Maranatha – come, has come … Then as I go throughout the day I try to make it a practice of peaking maranatha into my day – helps me hold people in my heart and to keep me in the moment and to keep my eyes pealed for the Lord who is already here – for light.
Maranatha also helps me live in a sphere greater than myself. Notice something very important about Maranatha … “OUR Lord come” …remind you of another prayer -- “OUR father/mother in heaven … OUR daily bread” … this is plural, this is communal– together we callout Maranatha … it is ecumenical/inclusive– we call out Maranatha for all. … There is so much power in the plural … AA – first step – “WEadmitted WEwere powerless over alcohol—that OURlives had become unmanageable.”
I was thinking of this as I saw the events in Egypt unfold. I felt myself praying Maranatha – come Lord – along with people of all faiths around the world in there own way with their own words. I felt the unutterable groans rising in me and therefore to God through the Spirit (maybe that is the faith part – believing the spirit does that). And I have to say that I said maranatha in the perfect tense about what finally played out with the more or less non-violent revolution – Our Lord (interfaith) has come.
Let me close with something personal. I often get weary in my work at Cornerstone. I often wonder what I have to give the dear men at Cornerstone. I am white – from a middle class white culture – with a white education. I have never struggled with an addiction to alcohol or drugs. I have never been homeless or incarcerated, never had to deal with a consistently life threatening illness – what do I have to give them? I wonder about that a lot. Well, maybe what I have to give them is Maranatha – to hold them in my heart and cry out, “Come Lord” – and “The Lord has come” and is present with them and in them … to remind myself that the light (unborn wholeness) is there, I just need to keep my eyes peeled and my ears attuned to find it and then nurture it. Maybe that is what I have to give – and maybe that is enough for me to hang around.
Let’s demonstrate Maranatha in it’s two tenses – Maranatha (hands up – come our Lord) – Maranatha (hands out – Our Lord has come).
Thanks for letting me share.