In her best-selling book Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor reflects on the many ways God reveals himself in the dark, that we can discover God in the moonlight as well as the sunlight. She writes about being unable to sleep after a long, demanding day:
“There is one cure for me on nights like this. If I can summon the energy to put on my bathrobe and go outside, the night sky will heal me – not by reassuring me that I will be just fine, but by reminding me of my place in the universe. Looking up at the same stars that human beings have been looking at for millennia, I find my place near the end of the long, long line of stargazers who stood there before me. Thanks to them, I can pick out the same constellations to which they gave names: the wobbly ‘W’ of Cassiopeia pointing to Andromeda and Pegasus above and Perseus below; the North Star in the handle of the Little Dipper pointing straight to the cup of the Big Dipper below. Long after I am gone, those stars will still be there, giving others their bearings after their beds have pitched them overboard.”
The Gospel today tells us much about the Jewish approach to prayer at the time of Jesus and his response.
First, Jewish prayer tended to be formalized. The Jews were expected to pray each day the Shema which takes its name from Deuteronomy, and Numbers, and the Shemoneh ‘esreh, which was 18 prayers.
Second, Jewish liturgy supplied prayers for all occasions. There were prayers before and after each meal, prayers in connection with light, fire, lightening, the new moon, the sight of lakes, rain, rivers, on using furniture, on entering or leaving a city, and more.
Third, the devout Jew set times for prayer, at 9am, 12 noon, and 3pm.
Fourth, the Jews had prayers for certain places, the danger here being that one could assume that God is confined to certain places.
And finally, there was amongst the Jews a tendency toward long prayers.
This is the context of Jesus’ words encouraging prayers that are brief, and not for show or attention.
So perhaps Barbara Brown Taylor has the right idea. To be able, in silence, to admire the expansiveness of the universe and let it remind it of the expansiveness of the love of the God who created it, and us, and in silent prayer acknowledge and give thanks to God.
In today’s Gospel Jesus asks us to embrace a sense of humility before God. Not that we are insignificant, but in God’s eyes each one of us is a star and that the meaning of our lives is found not in self-centeredness but in the greater human community.
We are all part of something greater than ourselves, something not confined to our own time and space.