“It’s alright for you thinnies” Boris Johnson apparently told the cabinet as he explained his desire to start a new campaign against obesity once the Covid crisis is over. “It’s alright for you thinnies” Boris has come to see the fact that he is overweight as one of the reasons why he suffered so badly when he caught the Corona Virus and has come to realise that he and other fat people need to be helped to lose weight.
For the last 30 years the government - whether it has been a labour government, a coalition including the Lib Dems or a Conservative government - has sought to get us to lose weight. And it has always come across as a Nanny state thing- “you really ought to lose weight”
“It’s alright for you thinnies” - There is a difference in Boris’s message on this which has nothing to do with whether you support him on any other issue. Here Boris is saying “we should lose weight. I’m in just as much as a mess as many of you - and we need to lose weight”.
It’s often the same when the church talks about prayer. Nanny Church says “You ought to be praying more. You ought to be praying longer. You ought to be praying better”
I think instead the message should be “it’s alright for you holy people...”. Many of us struggle with prayer. Many of us know we need to be praying better. We don’t need an expert ticking us off. We need something like a slimming world for people who want to pray better - where other people who are struggling tell us what is helping them.
Todays reading is about prayer and patience.
12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount of Olives, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. 13When they had entered the city, they went to the upper room where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of* James. 14All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
Prayer and Patience.
The disciples - Mary, the Apostles, Jesus’s brothers - go to the upper room to wait. The last thing they were told by Jesus was that they were going to receive this power from the Holy Spirit and once the power comes they are to be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” But they have no idea how long they have to wait. Is it going to be a few hours? Is it going to be tomorrow? Is it going to be a few days?
God’s timing is not our timing.
In the 1960s, a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel began conducting a series of important psychological studies known as the Marshmallow experiment.
The researcher told the child that he was going to leave the room and that if the child did not eat the marshmallow while he was away, then they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow. However, if the child decided to eat the first one before the researcher came back, then they would not get a second marshmallow.
So the choice was simple: one treat right now or two treats later.
The researcher left the room for 15 minutes.
As you can imagine, the footage of the children waiting alone in the room was rather entertaining. Some kids jumped up and ate the first marshmallow as soon as the researcher closed the door. Others wiggled and bounced and scooted in their chairs as they tried to restrain themselves, but eventually gave in to temptation a few minutes later. And finally, a few of the children did manage to wait the entire time.
The interesting result was not what happened then but what happened later in the children’s lives. But we will come to that….
First a little clip from a comedy show about a psychology experiment into waiting…
{clip 1 from Community}
More on that in a moment.
Mary and the Apostles and Jesus’s brothers were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer”.
What place does prayer have in our lives?
Corrie Ten Boom was a dutch Christian sent to concentration camp for hiding Jews. Corrie asked
“Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?” “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?”
I am very grateful for the fact there is a spare tire in my car - but I try not to use it. I try to keep it there only for when the tire explodes on the A40. The steering wheel on the otherhand….
But prayer isn’t just there for emergencies. Prayer is there for every part of our life.
Or as St Francis of Assisi “We should not seek so much to pray as to become prayer”
They “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer”.
How central is prayer to our lives?
There once was a young seminarian starting out on his journey toward the priesthood. He was a bit of a know-it-all, and wanted to be the best at everything he did. He heard about a very holy monk who was considered a spiritual master in regard to prayer and contemplation.
The seminarian sought him out, and asked the old monk to teach him all of his secrets for prayer. The monk sent him away. The seminarian was stubborn and returned again soon, asking again to learn his secrets to prayer. The monk told him to come back in one week.
When he arrived the next week, the monk took him out behind the monastery to a body of water. He still hadn’t said a word. As they entered into the water up just past their waist, the seminarian grew impatient with the monk, who was still silent.
All of a sudden the monk grabbed the seminarian and held his head under the water. The seminarian struggled and thrashed about, but with the strength of an ox the old monk held him under the water. As the monk let go of him, he came up gasping for breath, embarrassed, angry, and confused. The monk looked at him and said, ‘Until you pray with the same desperation that you have for air, you have not prayed.’
Prayer is as important to our soul as air is to our body! We need prayer to stay connected to the God who created us with a plan in mind. Let’s take a look at some ways we can dive deeper into prayer in our everyday live
As the Catholic writer Kimberly Hahn puts it - Prayer is not just something for our to do list - It’s the breath of our soul.
Any way back to our psychology experiment.
{second clip from Community}
One thing we know about prayer is that we don’t pray alone. The Apostles gathered with Mary and the other women in that upper room. They gathered together to pray. Even when we pray alone we pray together. And we pray not just with the Christians on earth but as Revelation tells us we are joined by the prayers of the Christians in heaven. We are joined by Gladys and Geraldine and Lillian and John Gordon and Alan Faulkner and so many Christians who have gone before us but still pray with us. And we are joined by Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of* James. …. [and]...Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.” According the New Testament Mary has a particular role in this. Mother Patty is going to speak about how that became important to her. I apologise that because of internet difficulties you will only hear her voice and not see her face.
{Mthr Patty shares how praying with Mary became important for her}
And while we reflect on that and as the bible puts it “ponder that in [our] heart[s]”, lets go back to our psychology experiment.
[clip three from community]
“All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer,” but how practically do we do that?
As Boris Johnson puts it “It’s alright for you thinnies” - “It’s alright for you holy people”
What tips can we find for prayer? There’s so much to learn, but here’s three for starters.
Have a place or a posture
Have a pattern
Practice makes perfect
1) Have a place or a posture
You have probably heard the advice that during lockdown if you are working from home you should consider putting on your work clothes to work and changing into casual clothes at the end of the day. If you try to work in your pajamas your productivity would be lower.
There’s a reason for this.
When God wanted to come to us he came as a physical bodily human being. When he created us he created us as bodily human beings. When God designed worship he designed it to be physical including bread and wine. He did all this because we are physical beings. Our bodies are part of who we are. So by adjusting your physical circumstances you adjust your mental and spiritual circumstances.
Susanna Wesley, John Wesley’s mother, had huge numbers of children. But every day when it was time to pray she sat in one particular seat and put t-towel over her head. Her children then knew not to disturb her but her body also knew that meant it was time to pray. A lot of people have a particular chair to pray in - a prayer chair - perhaps before some sort of altar or an icon, but the main thing is the prayer chair.
It doesn’t have to be a particular place. One of you told me that when I phone her to do the communion by telephone, she always lights a candle - a ritual and a physical sign that prayer is starting. In the old days many people would kneel down at the side of their beds. During national service would get great mockery for kneeling and praying. But the kneeling was a ritual and a physical sign that prayer was starting. Your knees might not work that well but perhaps you can make the sign of the cross as your way of saying hello to God and preparing your body to pray
2) have a pattern
The early Christians used a pattern of praying the psalms and doing bible readings which came from the ancient synagogue worship in the time of Jesus and developed through the monks into the morning and evening prayer that clergy pray today. That pattern is readily available online - and there are simpler versions as well as the full scale thing.
But it doesn’t have to be that pattern.
Some Christians use the Lord’s prayer as a pattern, using the different lines of the Lords prayer as headings for their different types of prayer.
Some Christians use the acronym ACTS - Adoration Confession Thanksgiving and Supplication - again using the different headings to make sure they have balances prayer
Some use the five finger model (do ask me about it) where each of your fingers represents a different type of thing to pray about.
Jesus doesn’t care about what pattern you use. But having a pattern will help you pray in a balanced way and help you not to get bored in your prayer
3) practice makes perfect
Patty talked about diving into the swimming pool and trying out asking Mary to pray for her. That applies to anything to do with prayer. If you are always going to start your diet tomorrow, you will never lose weight. If you are always going to start your new prayer regime tomorrow you will never spend any time with God.
Dive in
It doesn’t matter if you only spend a few minutes at it. Try it.
Back to our psychology experiment.
{final clip from community}
“Lord give me the gift of patience and do it quick”
As this comedy sketch shows us - most human beings are not naturally very patient. The experimenters thought they were testing the breaking points of their subjects. But actually they too had their limit before they broke.
I told you about Walter Mischell’s marshmallow experiment.The interesting part came years later. As the years rolled on and the children grew up, the researchers conducted follow up studies and tracked each child’s progress in a number of areas. What they found was surprising.
The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures.
When the Apostles and the women and Jesus’s siblings met to pray in the upper room, they had no idea how long they had to wait. Would it be a few hours? Would it be tomorrow? Would it be three days? They didn’t know it was going to be nine days. They just waited and prayed until the Holy Spirit came.
God’s timing is not our timing. Look at Joseph - given dreams when he is a kid and it is decades later they are achieved. Or Abraham told in his seventies that he will be a father to many nations, but it is not until his nineties that his child is born. God’s timing is not our timing.
At the moment we have no idea when our churches or lives will reopen. We can only be patient and pray. But when they do - let’s not forget this lesson.
This week Mayush sent round a quote on the Church Whatsapp Group “Faith is not knowing what the future holds but knowing who holds the future”
I leave you with that
“Faith is not knowing what the future holds but knowing who holds the future”
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