Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with
one accord to make our common supplication to you; and
you have promised through your well-beloved Son that
when two or three are gathered together in his Name you
will be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, our
desires and petitions as may be best for us; granting us in
this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come
life everlasting. AmenPage 102 Book of Common Prayer
Dear friends,
Do you know this prayer? It comes at the
conclusion of Morning Prayer from the Daily
Office in our Book of Common Prayer. For
many of us who were regulars in the
Episcopal Church before 1979 we would hear
this prayer every Sunday when Morning
Prayer instead of the Holy Eucharist was our
weekly liturgy.
As a child I was always struck by this
phrase, “you will be in the midst of them.” It made me think that we could summon the
presence of God séance style. This had to be
around the time I was attending lots of
slumber parties and turning out the lights and
listening for sounds from the “other world”
was very popular. As I recall we also loved to
try to levitate some poor girl, too. I felt as a
child and through much of my life I would
love to have a more visceral sense of God
being in the room. Though I knew there was
a weakness in my theology somewhere, I
liked the idea we could summon God to be
more present.
This past Sunday we heard again the
wonderful story of Jacob's ladder.
“Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under
his head and lay down in that place. And Jacob dreamed
that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it
reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending
and descending on it......Then Jacob woke from his sleep
and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place-- and I did not
know it!" And he was afraid, and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and
this is the gate of heaven." (Genesis 28)
I understand in my head and the best parts
of my heart that God is always present, always trying to connect with us. That ladder
is always there, we just don't always see it. But I have often envied those people who
could tell about very dramatic experiences
where they could just feel the presence of the
Lord in their midst in a powerful, palpable
way. I have a couple of those stories in my
own life, but they seem few and far between.
Which brings me back to this past Sunday. After the exchange of the peace, during the
announcements, it became clear that one of
our members was having some sort of
medical emergency. As various healers of
various sorts came to her side, our
congregation calmly and powerfully pulled
ourselves into one body united in song and
prayer. For some very long minutes, “our
eyes were watching God” as Zola Neal
Hurston once put it. We were powerless yet
we fully and faithfully surrendered Dorothy to
the healing power of God.
AND, many of us (I heard it from person
after person later) could feel the presence of
God in a way that we rarely if ever had
experienced it. That is not to say that God is
not present at all times, or that we are just
less mindful or sincere at other times. It is
just to say that on that morning, in that way,
there was an especially obvious convergence
of God and God's people. The ladder was
revealed and those angels were present as
they brought healing and renewal to Dorothy
and to us all.
As the EMS folks took Dorothy to the
hospital we were relieved to see the color back in her face and hear her speaking with
gratitude. I am sure I was not the only one to
think “"How awesome is this place! This is
none other than the house of God, and this is
the gate of heaven."
Peace,
The Reverend Anne E. Hodges-Copple