Every time I Feel the Spirit

Play Leontyne Price CD.

Every time I feel the spirit, moving in my heart, I will pray.
Up on the mountain my Lord spoke, out of his mouth came fire and smoke.
Jordan river chilly and cold, chills the body but not the soul.
Every time I feel the spirit, moving in my heart, I will pray.

All around me looked so fine, asked my Lord if all was mine.
There ain’t but one train runs this track, runs to heaven and runs right back.
Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray.

That’s Leontyne Price.  And if we weren't Episcopalians, we'd be standin', and movin' and clappin'. “Every time I feel the spirit movin' in my heart, I will pray.” Leontyne Price was not the first African American to sing from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, but I think it’s fair to say she was the first to sing there regularly. She was the first black American to really have an operatic career in the land of her birth, although she had to sing in Europe for ten years before she made her Met debut in 1961. She was born in Laurel, Mississippi, and when she sings American spirituals like this one, she is singing the songs she heard and sang as a girl in church, at school, and with her mother around the house. “Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray.”

What do you do when you feel the spirit moving in your heart? Do not quench the spirit, Paul says in his first letter to the Christians in Thessalonica. Do not quench the spirit. Yet so often when we feel the spirit moving in our hearts, that’s exactly what we do. We quench it. Every time we fail to respond when the spirit stirs within our hearts, we quench the spirit. Unlike the words of the spiritual, our more modern refrain might be something like, “Every time I feel the spirit, moving in my heart… I do my best to get it to quit moving. I persuade myself it must be something else. Or my song might go… every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart… I put it aside, because I really don’t have time to deal with it right now. Or, every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart… I quickly change the subject to something safer, more settled, more familiar. Every time I feel the spirit, I manage, one way or another, not to respond. Over and over again, we quench the spirit.

Yet Paul begs us, all of Scripture begs us, not to quench the spirit, but to respond. When the spirit moves within us, we are to respond. Sort of like Newton’s law: for each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Each and every time the spirit moves within us, we are to re-act, to respond. And Paul tells us exactly how to respond. Paul doesn’t mince words. “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; give thanks in all circumstances.”

Rejoice always. I write my sermons on Saturday. As I sat in my study yesterday trying to bring the pieces of this sermon together, I looked out on one of the gloomiest, dreariest, most miserable days imaginable. Rejoice always, Paul says. Right. I quoted Walter Brueggemann in my sermon last week. He has some good things to say this week, too. He writes that the over arching purpose of this week’s Scripture readings is to “summon the community to joy.”

But how can we summon up joy? You cannot force someone to rejoice, even yourself. Brueggemann continues, though, that we need to think through what it means to rejoice. It isn’t as obvious as it seems. Things need sorting out in the harried euphoria of the Christmas season, when we sing about joy but many face staggering depths of depression and anxiety.

The joy the church speaks of, the joy Scripture calls us to is not the same as pleasure, nor satiation, nor even the emotional high we call happiness. It is rather a steady assurance that what is about to happen will fundamentally transform reality. What is about to happen will change the world.  This sort of joy is not a mark of our culture. Just watch people, especially in this season, in the pushing and shoving of a shopping mall or any other place else where people have their guards down. Most people look bored or distracted or tired or anxious. And boredom, distraction, fatigue and anxiety are not the conditions of joy. Real joy is a rare practice among us.

And yet we, a minority community, a community of Christian exiles in a secular culture, are invited to the scandalous, subversive activity of joy. Joy, the passionate anticipation for what is coming. Joy, the steady, hopeful conviction that in the birth of Jesus the wounded will be healed, the captive will be set free, a new heaven and a new earth will be created, and the former things shall not even be remembered (Isaiah). The reality of this hope cannot be proved or explained or bought at the mall. It can only be felt in the heart as the spirit’s gift. So pause in the midst of life’s boredom, fatigue, anxiety. Stop. Look. Listen. Feel the stirring in your heart. The spirit’s gift is Advent joy. Do not quench the spirit. Rejoice always.

And yet even if the bounds upon our hearts are so dark and strong that we cannot open a space to feel the spirit’s joy, we still may follow Paul’s other instructions. Pray without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances. Pray without ceasing. We don’t have to be in church or kneeling piously by the side of the bed to pray. Prayers don’t have to be full of thee’s and thou’s, or formed in complete sentences. We don’t even have to be 100 % sure that our prayers will be heard or answered. Just pray.  Pray without ceasing. And maybe in the process of praying, we will open up the tiniest crack, let the smallest ray of light enter into our hearts, so that the spirit will move and joy will awaken.

Listen to these prayers written by Chinese Christian men and women. “Prayer when opening a door: I pray thee, Lord, to open the door of my heart to receive thee within my heart. Posting a letter: I pray thee, Lord, to add to me faith upon faith, that I may always have communication with thee. On writing a book (or, writing a check, we might say): I pray thee, Lord, by the precious blood of Jesus, to pay my debt of sin and write my name in heaven, making me free in body and soul. When boiling water for tea: I pray thee, Lord, to send down spiritual fire to burn away the coldness of my heart and that I may always be hot-hearted in serving thee.”

There are more, but I tried to think of some prayers, in addition to these, that would come out of the daily experiences of my  particular life. On walking the dog: People always say when they see Abby and me, “Who’s walking who?” Dear Lord, when walking life’s journey with you, I pray I may not lead my own way, but always follow where you guide me. When going on-line to the world wide web: Dear Lord, You have established a connection with my heart that is cosmos-wide, eternal, and always open. I pray that I may not break, may not quench that connection.

There is a classic book in the Episcopal Church called Praying Shapes Believing. Not believing shapes praying. Praying shapes believing. Paul says, Give thanks in all circumstances. Praying shapes believing. In all circumstances let us pray in thanksgiving for God’s presence, God’s hope, and God’s spirit that moves within our hearts, bringing the gift of true joy.

“Every time I feel the spirit, moving in my heart, I will pray.” Do not quench the spirit. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances.

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