Women's World Day of Prayer

The story of the feeding of the five thousand is so well known that it can be easy not to listen very well to it. We know what happens - Jesus has been teaching a large crowd all day and it is dinner time. The Disciples want to send everyone to buy their own food but Jesus has other plans. From five loaves and two fish, somehow - and the how is told in different ways, appears an abundance of food - so much that there are twelve baskets left over at the end.

When I have to preach on a well known passage my first rule is never assume I know what it says. It is amazing that something I have read a hundred or more times can suddenly come to life in a whole new way by simply paying attention both to the words and to what God might be saying through them. This time in reading the word that stood out to me was "blessed" - Jesus blessed the bread.

Blessing can mean slightly different things to different people - but the difference seems to be more mechanical than practical - I think we would all agree about the possibility of God blessing things, of setting things or ourselves aside in some special way. How that happens and who says the words vary between our Churches but the idea of offering ourselves, our lives and those things which we use to God and asking God to bless them is, I hope, not too controversial.

But what does God's blessing do to anything, what does asking for or allowing God's grace really mean? It is an important question because it very quickly cuts to the heart of the question of who we are, who we are as human beings and who we are as people of faith. The question of blessing and grace very soon asks questions about life and prayer which reach out into every corner of our existence.

God's blessing is not a little thing. In the rich symbolism of the feeding of the five thousand one of the threads which runs through is that of abundance. God wants God's people to be fed, Jesus will provide and will do so in such a way as exceeds all of their expectation and needs.

God still does provide in excess of our expectations and needs but we often lose track of that beneath some other strange ideas which we develop for ourselves. We tend to want things to be a little more neat and tidy that God makes them, we want our prayers to be tucked in neatly with folded corners. We become uncomfortable with the challenges of a life of faith because we have. somehow, convinced ourselves that ticking the boxes which our respective denominations lay before us as expectations and suggestions should get us where we are going without too many bruises or batterings.

But I cannot offer you an academic review of either God's blessing or of prayer. Or rather I could, I could probably write a very careful and well researched book with ideas and theology from very clever people but that would not be what I want to tell you. What I want to tell you is that God's blessing is something which is true, it is something which makes us bigger and better than we might have been, it is something which encourages and challenges us and it is a lifetime of getting deeper and deeper into God.

Equally prayer is something which I live in. Sometimes it is as easy as breathing and sometimes I cannot get my mind to the words and actions to which I am called because I am tired or distracted. This Women's World Day of Prayer calls us not just to pray but to consider our prayer and to ask God's blessing both on our world and to dare to ask that blessing for ourselves.

Many years ago I spent a summer working with the Iona community at their island centres. Over the door to the community room at the Camas Centre were the words "laborare est orare" I am sure many of you are familiar with this idea of "to work is to pray". I heard a story once of two monk. The question posed was can you smoke while you are praying - no one answered, the other answered differently - no, but you can pray while you are smoking. I Orare est laborare - to pray is to work.

And that seems to be the heart of the matter, to work is to pray and to pray is to work - somehow we have to look for lives blessed by God in such a way that there is a seemlessness in them - that our prayer and our work are together in God's grace. Now do not hear me wrong, this is neither an excuse to stop that special communication with God which is prayer, in all its forms, nor is it an invitation to withdraw from the world into a cocoon of comfortable words - it is the very opposite of comfort - but then blessing is not always comfortable - the signs in the Bible of blessing, often fire and water, are not quiet and gentle things, they have the ability to permeate and transform.

We pray, not because we have to, but because that is who we are. Those people who say prayer is a waste of time and breath have not understood prayer at all. Prayer is not something we do and then put neatly on a shelf until next time - prayer is something which we become. This might seem a strange thing to say - but it prayer is simply our communication with God and God's communication with us then as we walk down this road of faith it will become bigger and wider - this communication will move from words carefully chosen to become who we are and what we do. To say that our whole lives will become prayers blessed by God - if only we will allow them to - is not far fetched - and yet too often we limit ourselves and our faith to something small and careful - and really that does not make much sense.

There is a Greek word which turns up the the Letter to the Romans which I love - periseussen - it means exceeding or abundant. But it isn't just abundance it is absolutely bursting at the seams superabundance - and what it relates to in the letter is Grace - God's grace and God's blessing. I love that idea that God's Grace and God's blessing is bursting out - it is so big that in us that we cannot contain it - that we will drip God's Grace all over the place - that we will indeed become prayers and blessings in our daily living.

I realize I have not mentioned food in the world, I have not mentioned Chile and its women - but I hope you will forgive that - I want us instead to think about our common task for the day, that common task of prayer, that common task of blessing and sharing God's abundance. Practically our actions will differ from person to person, but we are all coming from and going to the same place - a generous and loving God - a God of abundance and overflowing blessing, a God who invites us in and dines with us, a God who longs to communicate with us and a God who blesses our prayers and drips great dollops of Grace all over the place.

It is never going to be as neat and tidy as some of us might like - but this life of prayer is exciting and challenging. This life of prayer fills us and sustains us. This life of prayer is doing something vital and vital in all our doings. Until, one day, at the last, we will become seemless - we will become one with the God who has blessed us through good times and bad, we will be welcomed home to that great and abundant feast.