120 in a Room

There's a really challenging book by Michael Budde (1997) with the title 'The Magic Kingdom of God - Christianity and Global Culture Industries'. I appreciate that you may be switched off from the title but stay with me on this one. Fr Michael is an American priest and lecturer who was hired by the Catholic bishops in a certain state the 1990s to create a strategy to rededicate efforts on confronting poverty in the States. I sensed that what they wanted to buy into was a new lobbying initiative or perhaps a special conference on the subject. I'll give you words..

"I told them that they should attempt to take every parishioner in their state
on an intensive retreat, with follow-up programs upon their return.
Nothing the Church could do would benefit the poor people more, I argued, that
to energise, and inspire."

He felt that without attempts to convert the baptised the stranglehold on self-interest and isolation. Religious indifference, he said would continue to "throttle" church attempts to deal seriously with poverty in a global capitalist order. He was fired.

The days from Ascension to Pentecost mark the period in which the first believers stayed together in one room and waited, and waited, and waited. The Acts of the Apostles tells us there were 120 of them. Imagine that! 120, in one room. You can see from Big Brother episodes what a dozen people are like in fairly nice house, so 120 in one room is something else.

The crucial thing is that they didnt just get the Holy Spirit after Jesus left. It wasn't instant. They had to endure these ten days. Sometimes were have to submit ourselves to God in this way. We have to sit and wait. We have to offer the time we have to Him who made time. In doing so we are acknowledging what we receive is His gift and not our right. The simple act of waiting is a process of purification.

I was trying to think of a mission strategy one day and a priest friend of mine said this to me 'pray them in Father'. Secretly I scoffed at what sounded like a pious solution. But for years now that phrase has stuck. 'Pray them in.' We've been challenged to grow by 25% in two years in this diocese. How are we going to do this? Its great to have lots of strategies for church growth, well certainly need to wise-up. But what this priest is telling me is that the MAJOR work will be done in prayer. Let me repeat that - the MAJOR work will be done in prayer.

This might sound a bit scary, if not daunting. It is a bit like when we read John 17 (which we do at the Sunday Gospel today) and think that prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper is really long and complicated. We then begin to say to ourselves, 'I could never pray like that.' Or maybe we think to ourselves, I'll leave that sort of prayer to the vicar and the people who are experts in that sort of thing.

Prayer is not so much about words, but about what we dare to give to God. The prayer of waiting, like those early disciples, is the prayer of entering into quietness, silence, boredom, and fear that God will not respond. Just a sort of sponsored silence. It is then, in his own time, that God smiles on the patient and works his miracles. Consider if a congregation like this (Malborough - this Sunday) we went into ten days of prayer. Maybe we even locked ourselves up in this building. How would we expect to be changed at the end of it? What vision would God give us for what we do with the Gospel, let alone the biggest building in the South Hams?

The caterpillar never becomes a butterfly unless it goes into its cocoon.

I dont know if those 120 in that Jerusalem room had the slighest inkling of what coming. But I know that if they hadn't stayed - nothing would have happened.