The Third Sunday after Trinity

“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.”

Lately, Shannon and I have been watching bits and pieces of a show that a few in the Parish and even a few outside the Parish, commended to us – Rogue Heroes. It’s a dramatized history based, of course, on reality, but based also on a book by the same name by Ben MacIntyre, a favourite historian and author of mine lately.

Rogue Heroes tells the story of the founding of the SAS, the Special Air Service – essentially British special forces in WWII – who were formed to operate somewhat outside of the conventions of regular warfare and to operate in the shadows in order to halt the progress of Rommel and the Nazis in North Africa, prior to the invasion of Europe. In the show (as in reality) the SAS didn’t look for the sharpest and most obedient, the most put together soldiers – those exemplars of dutiful soldiery – but rather, they scoured military prisons and bars. They wanted the scrappers, the ones which had trouble with authority, the black sheep who could be given an ugly task and whom you could trust to see it through.

After some rocky beginnings, the missions and campaigns that the SAS ran – more or less independent of high command – were a staggering success, at times sneaking onto Axis controlled air bases and destroying dozens upon dozens of planes which would be otherwise used to win Africa and, subsequently, the war for the Axis. Because of this, the SAS often operated at night and in the dark, covertly, and this was in a time before radios were as they are today, so communication was a problem.

In a few scenes, when one unit needs to link up with another unit or meet their contacts in Crete in order to carry out a secret mission, they identify themselves by singing a familiar song, a favourite among soldiers even from the first war – The Beer Barrel Polka, “Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun!” to which challenge the other group replies, “the gang’s all here!” By this they come to know that it’s safe to make contact; by this familiar song, they know one another, but a tinge of a German accent, the wrong lyrics to the song – and they opened fire.

I’ve told the story before in a sermon about a time in my undergrad when I was working security in the summer and had to open the gym for a fellow about my age and his mother so they could get to a basketball game. The young man was blind, but when I made small talk with them both he immediately said to me, “I know you. Your name is Colin, isn’t it?” and I replied, “Yes. And yours is Philip, isn’t it?” You see at the time Philip and I were about 20, but we had spent no more than 5 days together at a day camp in Dartmouth when we were both about 11; I didn’t talk to Philip much, then, a few sentences perhaps, as there were 20 of us – but yet he knew me by my voice after all those years, and without a face to go with it.

In Scripture, many are called by a voice or recognized by a voice – the young Samuel whom God calls but Samuel mistakes for Eli; Elijah and the still small voice; the sheep recognizing the shepherd’s voice; Paul on the road to Damascus hearing the voice of Jesus; the disciples recognizing the resurrected Christ by the sound of his voice, and so on.

I suppose one of the points of all of these little encounters through the Bible is the very important reminder to us, despite what we often feel, that our relationship with God is conversational. It can, at times, feel like a monologue; we may never, like Samuel or Paul actually hear a voice speaking words to us – though some might; and sometimes we can be discouraged because we just feel like we’re talking to ourselves, so we don’t pray. But prayer is heard, and God responds if not with words and sounds, then certainly in other ways.

Because prayer is, I think, the language of heaven, the language of God, the language which, like a mult-tinned tin-can phone goes from the Father, down through the multitude of heaven: archangels, angels, seraphs, cherubim, Saints…all the way down to us. And I believe that it’s safe to agree with much of the thought and belief of the universal Catholic church, that like the party-lines of olden-days when you could plug into another’s conversation or when calls had to be transferred from one place to another, our prayers are heard all the way up the line.

If the activity of heaven is worship and prayer, with everything gathered around its very centre – the Father – then what is preposterous about assuming that all they who are engaged in prayer, are engaged in prayer for us? It is God who answers prayer, but we can ask for the intercession of the whole company of heaven, for heavenly help in all its forms – because Lord knows, we need all we can get.

But even on that line prayer is the lingua franca, the language, prayer is the way that we communicate with God, and while we gather and submit ourselves to constant and formal prayer, as we do on Sunday, prayer that has been consistent and led Christians for millennia, Prayer can take many forms and can be as conversational with God as a chat with an old friend.

The collect today I think sets the tone for our readings, it gives us the thrust of what today is all about, firstly asking God, in His great mercy, to hear us, to listen to the language of our prayer. But it goes on to say something that we often – but should not – forget, something that might even bake our noodle just a little bit: and that is that our prayer is really not our prayer. “O Lord…grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray…” Even this prayer today – the Collect – isn’t ours; the collect makes clear that if we pray, we are only doing so because God has given us the desire to pray. Our prayer is God, through the Holy Spirit in us, bringing us to desire to pray in the first place; in other words prayer is, in some sense, the deepest desires of our hearts being given a voice by God, so that we can express them to God, and thus know what it is that we truly desire which ought to what God truly desires for us.

  Note also that the prayer doesn’t go on to say, “we…may by thy mighty aid…avoid all dangers and adversities…” but rather, “we…may by thy mighty aid be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities.” The dangers and the adversities are going to happen, the question is whether we can offer those dangers and adversities to Him, trusting that God will (as God can) make good come from those adversities. The child who repeatedly falls and scrapes their knee while learning to ride a bike but gets up and keeps at it is going to be much better both at riding a bike and dealing with scraped knees, than the child who never picks up the bike and thus avoids the fall to begin with. Our prayer should always be that whatever the fall, and whatever the scrape, God will see us through.

So what of us, then, if prayer is simply God talking to himself, as I seem to have insinuated here? Well every conversation – which prayer is – requires two willing participants (we all know what it’s like to try and keep up a chat with someone who’s tired or bored); the question for us, perhaps, is whether we are willing participants in that dialogue? Are we willing, are we able, do we make time for, do we desire God to speak through us, to give us that desire, and to use us to His glory?

It strikes me that part of this dialogue(maybe the hardest part),  is our willingness to try and keep the conversation going. And while this does indeed demand of every Christian the sacrifice of time to pray, to recognize that desire that has been planted in us, we must recall that it is not us that initiates it nor our desire that drives it – but God’s; and that in all things, as the other readings today teach, it is upon the abundant and wonderful grace and mercy of God – who would seek out even lost sheep or rolled away coins like you and me – that all of this, and our safety in danger and adversities, rests. As Peter says in the Epistle today,

“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.”