Finding space for something new

Keeping company with my koan. Part 3 of 4.

Last week I doubted I would find the answer I wanted in the gospels. This week, I thought I might find something useful by learning how Jesus’ peers prayed. How would a “late Second Temple” Jew like Jesus pray when he was not at the Temple?

I learned that scholars are pretty sure that Jesus and his peers would have practiced all the same kinds of prayer we do, plus whatever prayers accompanied Temple offerings and animal sacrifices.¹

Jesus prayed. How?

And I realized that my dismissal of the gospels was a mistake -- a mistake I made because I had forgotten what my tradition teaches about scripture: that it is not science, history or political prediction. It is not a verbatim transcript or an eyewitness account. Scripture is an inspired attempt to tell a story which communicates an experience of God.

The gospels are an attempt to communicate an experience of the Risen One. Jesus-as-teacher was an important aspect of that experience. Mary recognized the Risen One as “Rabboni” (my teacher) in the garden. The disciples at Emmaus met a teaching Stranger. The disciples never really understood what it meant for Jesus to be a “messiah” – but they understood that he was a healer and a teacher, and that like John the Baptist, he could be counted on to teach about prayer.²

The Risen One can still be counted on. We may not have the exact words or everything Jesus said on the subject of prayer. But we have enough. With what we have, we are invited to enter the gospel stories listening for all of the ways and places in which prayer happened or made a difference… in Jesus’ life or in the life of someone calling out for help, in the life of a Pharisee who asks a question, or someone who regains their sight. Maybe in the life of a fig tree, a storm or a mountain that found itself moved. And of course, in our own lives, which can be like any of the gospel characters, sentient and not.

This week, once again, it felt like my koan was suggesting I talk less and listen more. Like the Holy Spirit, a koan sometimes gives us words and sometimes takes words away. Whatever it takes to help us find the space for something new.

1. Most of what I read was a discussion of “translation of sacrifice” – a study of Jewish prayer practices before the destruction of the Temple. A good article is available on-line here. In it, Arjen Bakker argues that there are “remarkable affinities between early configurations of Jewish prayer in the Second Temple period and the later rabbinic liturgical system.” There is also a very interesting article (accessible to non-scholars like me) by Professor Judith H. Newman of Toronto University entitled “Teaching Prayer in Early Judaism.” It’s actually a chapter in a book called The Lord’s Prayer, eds. Langstaff, Stuckenbruck & Tilly (Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Company KG, 2022). I am asking if there is a link I can include here.

2. Luke 11:1 – [Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” Bruce Chilton, a scholar and Episcopal priest, theorizes that shortly after Jesus’ first exposure to the teachers in the Temple (Luke 2:41-49) Jesus ran away from home and became a disciple/student in the community led by John the Baptist. Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography. (Doubleday, New York) 2000. I can believe that.