Sunday, December 29th, 2024: "Prayer Labyrinth"
The First United Presbyterian Church
“Prayer Labyrinth”
Rev. Amy Morgan
December 29, 2024
Luke 2:41-52
41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents were unaware of this. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you.” 49 He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them, and his mother treasured all these things in her heart.
52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor.
I have a superpower. I may have mentioned this before. When one of the other humans in my house can’t find something, they come to me and ask me to employ my superpower on their behalf. I start with, “Where was the last place you saw it?” Then move to, “have you looked under this or inside that?” And, of course, they say they’ve looked in all the places I mention. I think about it for a minute and discern which of those places the object is most likely to be hiding. Then I go and look in that place, and magically, the lost item appears to me when it had been invisible to them just moments before. It’s truly amazing.
The things that are lost are valuable – car keys and wallets, school assignments and forms, one time I found a guitar Jason had been searching for for weeks – in the closet I first told him to look in, which he had looked in and still somehow managed not to see an entire guitar.
But reading this story from the Gospel of Luke should make us all feel better when we lose something and can’t find it in an obvious place. Car titles and your favorite pair of shoes might be valuable. But they’re not as valuable as the Messiah. Mary and Jospeh managed to lose track of the Son of God. Talk about panic.
They start asking their relatives if they’ve seen him. Maybe they hoped one of them had my finding-things superpower. Maybe one of them asked, “Where was the last place you saw him?” So they head back to Jerusalem, the last place they laid eyes on him. Maybe they even looked in the temple, but didn’t really expect to find him there so didn’t look closely enough to see him tucked in among his elders. It took three days for them to finally find him in what Jesus tells them was the most obvious place for him to be.
As we approach the new year, we embrace this idea of “out with the old, in with the new.” There’s hopefulness in newness, of course. But there’s also a sense of loss in what is past and gone. This is reflected in the remembrances of celebrities who’ve died in the past year and news stories that are now part of history. For some of us, there are more personal losses. Loved ones who have died, life transitions that have caused a loss of identity, cultural shifts that resulted in a loss of certainty, even a loss of faith.
These are things that are valuable – people, moments, ways of life, truths we hold dear, connections to meaning and purpose, our relationship with God. And when we lose these valuable things, we experience fear, grief, anxiety. Maybe we go looking for them. Maybe we go to people we hope can help us find them, or at least a sense of them. Maybe we return to those places where we last experienced them.
And maybe, eventually, we find them. In a story or joke our loved one used to tell. Or in a small, familiar ritual that used to be part of our daily life. Or in a deeper truth that is revealed when old certainties are washed away. And we discover that this is the most obvious place for them to be, even though it may have taken us a long time to see it.
Mary and Joseph and Jesus were in Jerusalem because they were following the ancient practice of pilgrimage. Every year, they would make the 4-day journey to celebrate the Passover, a journey that helped them find that lost sense of liberation, of identity, of trust in God, in a time and place where Jews were living under an oppressive regime, threatened by cultural assimilation, and concerned about God’s plans to redeem them. They travel to the very center of Jewish religious practice, the temple in Jerusalem, and re-connect with what they’ve lost.
When Mary and Joseph realize they’ve lost Jesus, they embark upon a second pilgrimage, a second sacred journey, to find him. They wander around, and their path takes many twists and turns before they find themselves, once again, at the center. And that is where they find what they’ve lost; that is where they find Jesus.
This practice of ancient Judaism, the practice of pilgrimage, was later developed by the Christian community as a way to repair a lost connection to God. Whether that loss was the result of a sinful act or a life transition or a personal loss, Christians journeyed to places where others had encountered God in powerful ways. They traveled to the center of Christian experience – in Jerusalem, Rome, and later to places of sacred encounters in Europe, South America, and around the world.
These journeys were difficult and costly, and not everyone was capable of pilgrimage, either physically or financially. And so the church developed a more accessible form of pilgrimage. They developed prayer labyrinths.
These labyrinths were traced onto floors of cathedrals and later constructed in gardens and courtyards. Today, there are more than 6,000 registered prayer labyrinths around the world, including several here in Loveland.
Most Christian prayer labyrinths have a single path that twists and turns in such a way that you can’t really tell which direction you’re going, how far along the path you are, or where you’re going next. You can just take one step at a time, trusting that it will lead you to the center. And once you’ve reached the center, you can spend time contemplating what you have found along the journey. Then you retrace your winding path out of the labyrinth, taking with you what you have found.
For all of us who have lost something this year, or who might be feeling lost right now, the labyrinth is a way to re-connect, to find our way through grief and anxiety, to find a way to experience that thing we are missing in a new way. So I have printed out for each of us finger labyrinths, a labyrinth you can trace with your finger instead of walking. And we’ll put it up on the screen for those worshipping with us at home.
I invite you to begin by spending some time thinking about something, just one thing, that you’ve lost, or that is making you feel lost right now. It might be a person or relationship. It might be a doubt or decision. It might be a living situation or health challenge. There might be many things, but for right now just choose one to focus on.
Pause
And while you’re holding that loss in your heart, spend a moment inviting God into that loss and inviting the Holy Spirit you guide you on this journey you’re about to go on. Invite Jesus to walk alongside you, maybe even picturing yourself walking with Jesus along this path.
Pause
And now we’ll take several minutes to trace your finger along the path of the labyrinth, slowly and prayerfully. You can stop and rest your spirit along the way. It isn’t a race. You can feel your feelings. You can ask God questions. Whatever you need to do on this journey is fine. It is your pilgrimage.
When you reach the center, you can spend as much time there as you need, talking to God, exploring what you’ve found, asking for whatever you might still need.
And when you are ready, you can trace your way back out of the labyrinth, praying about what you are taking back home with you from this journey.
I’m going to give us 5 or 6 minutes for this practice, which will be too long for some and too short for others, but you can keep tracing during the hymn if you need to, and you can take this home and practice at your own pace.
Pause and trace labyrinth
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