O quam metuendus est locus iste: vere non est hic aliud nisi domus Dei et porta caeli

When I travel by train I look at all the windows flashing by and it makes me quite dizzy to think that behind each window there is a human being who is the centre of their own universe. And then I see a church. That unmistakable architecture. And I wonder what God thinks about it, and why we think it is at all helpful to put up these strange buildings.

There’s a special feel about churches. Some churches smell of incense. Some churches smell of wax polish or Mr Sheen. Some churches, where the priest or minister lives next door, smell of cabbage. But there is something about most of them; whether or not it is the prayers seeping into the walls I do not know. But when you enter a church, you know where you are. Architects are clever. They can do almost as much as magicians can with smoke and mirrors, and there is a reason why church buildings have evolved as they have: it’s rather like chemists imitating natural substances with artificial ones: orange flavour in chocolates, vanilla scent in perfumes; a building that evokes the numinous in imitation of the naturally numinous that comes upon us anywhere. The ancients were not so wrong when they believed that every tree and every spring had its own deity. But you need to bottle a scent to spray it on your wrists, and you need to wall in the numinous to be able to summon people to experience it Sunday by Sunday – and other days too.

That’s not all bad by any means. A church can be a refuge on a busy or sad day – it’s easily recognised and easily accessed. And it is a place for fellowship. But Jacob tells us something very important in today’s reading: that the house of God and the gate of heaven is everywhere – or rather, anywhere. There is no place on this earth where we might not see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending. And St Paul was not talking figuratively when he said that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. I said I recognise the churches as I gaze at towns and cities from the train. But in fact, behind every one of those windows in every one of those houses is at least one temple of the Holy Spirit.

And the natural activity in a temple is prayer. It’s strange: nobody ever tells you the fact that prayer is easy. Prayer is the simplest and the most natural thing that there is: it is as natural as breathing; actually, it is as natural as being. There are countless books written about prayer and precious few of them tell you how it’s done; and those that do often give complicated techniques that only suit people like their authors. Many of the techniques are helpful; I have found the Jesus Prayer helpful, and I find lectio divina invaluable. But they aren’t prayer, just techniques; just preparation.

So here’s a suggestion. One of these days, take your guilt, and your gut feeling that God likes things to be tough for us, and leave them outside the room. Find a really comfortable armchair. Make sure you aren’t hungry or thirsty, too cold or too hot, and that you don’t need the loo. Set aside half an hour to do nothing, in comfort, in the presence of God. Or if you prefer, go for a walk, nowhere in particular, in the presence of God. And relax. And wait, or listen, or just do nothing. Breathe; be. Don’t worry about whether you will hear anything, whether you will fall asleep, whether you will be “distracted”. I don’t believe in distractions. If they’re not important, you can push them aside, or simply be aware of them as something that’s chattering away somewhere in the background. If they are important, then God’s interested in them too, and they’re not distractions.

Prayer is simply being with God – what you do with the time once you and God are sitting in companionable silence is your business. “But we’re always with God!” Are we indeed? Am I with you if we’re out somewhere and I have my nose in my mobile phone, texting someone else? Are you with me if you are reading Scotland on Sunday while I’m preaching? Honestly…it has happened to me…and that’s why, when you’re beginning to pray, you really do need to be somewhere without phones or computers, or whatever your equivalent is. With practice you can be with God anywhere; like Rabbi Lionel Blue I find busy railway stations and doctors’ waiting rooms ideal for prayer, but you do need to practise in quiet places first.

So what’s this got to do with Lent? Well now, what is Lent for? Would any of you like to give me a suggestion? No, seriously, go on…
OK. Lent is the preparation for the resurrection. Lent is the run-up to the leap into eternal life. The point of Lent is to accompany Jesus on his journey towards Easter, and at the same time practise for the journey towards our own Easter. We do this through reading the story of his journey (the Gospels), and also reading the background to it (the rest of the Scriptures). And above all, by being with God.

Giving things up for Lent, making ourselves uncomfortable, hungry, tired, cold – is totally neutral. It can be useless, it can be damaging, or it can be immensely valuable; everything hangs on why you do it. And for that you need self-knowledge. Self-discovery can be painful, but it is always worthwhile, because unless you know who you are, your inclinations, your strengths and weaknesses, your style, you can’t become the person God had in mind when he started you off on your journey towards resurrection. We do indeed see Jesus in the Gospels, but the other place we meet him is in our lives. When we sit in silence, just listening, just waiting, not talking, we meet him. And, like Nathanael, in his presence we meet ourselves.

I do wonder whether silence is a frightening idea to many of us because in silence we’re faced with our own undiluted selves, and none of us is as perfect as we would like to be and, perhaps, would like to kid ourselves we are. But the thing about silence is that God’s there. And he has told us over and over and over again that in his presence we are totally safe: a safe environment to practise being ourselves; nobody’s watching except the one who knows us better than we do.

I’ve often heard people saying they wished they had been the two disciples who spent the whole day with Jesus. Or simply wished they had lived at the same time as Jesus. Well, I’m quite glad I didn’t, as I am not sure that I would have spotted the difference between him and all the other wandering teachers, prophets and what-have-you; and I am not sure at all that, with all the religious authorities telling me that he was a wrong ’un, I would have had the discernment to spot that they were wrong. The first Lent wouldn’t have been a comfortable time or place to be.

So maybe there is something that’s worth giving up in Lent: our comfort zone, the place where we hide from God and from ourselves. I don’t know what yours is – perhaps you could sit down with God sometime and let him tell you? And don’t forget: just because you don’t see the angels ascending and descending – that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.