What Prayer Isn't

I'm going to take up the advice of some of you and, invoking Janus (the Roman god of new beginnings, who was able both to look back and look forward), I'm taking a new approach here. From now on, I will make this blog about looking back at the previous sermon, while also looking forward to the coming week.

So...last week. (If I can remember - I'm a bit behind this week!) I spoke of Abraham's encounter with God in Genesis 15. The intent of the sermon was to be a meditation on an essential aspect of prayer: trust. Trust implies a relationship. Relationship requires communication. How do we do that? We might be good at talking to (at?) God; but how do we understand this as a conversation that bespeaks a relationship - even one as intimate as that on display in Genesis 15 between God and Abraham?

Of course, seeking to stay in stable Reformed waters, I spoke of the Bible as that great prayer wheel that is the means by which God speaks. I've had that experience. God speaking to me through that book - in ways that are both freaky and ordinary.

But one of the questions I raised also at the beginning (and this is where I want to spend some time here) was this: how is prayer helpful when you find yourself in the wilderness? When you find yourself in the dark night of the soul?

One of the images I lifted up was that of my father, who was bi-polar, hearing the voice of my uncle praying for him while he was the depth of darkness during one of his hospitalizations. God came to him, God communicated to him, using the words of scripture spoken through the human voice of my uncle. But, what if God does not do that for you when you are there? That's one question I received in response to the sermon - and here's where I'd like to spend a few words.

I spoke of an image - which has always been so very helpful to me in my own prayer life - from the movie Wings of Desire, by Wim Wender. A movie about two angels who want to become human again, and who spend eternity patrolling the earth. In one scene, a man atop a building in Berlin, where the movie takes place, is about to commit suicide. One of the angels embraces him from behind, lays his head on his shoulder, unbeknownst to the man.

This has always seemed to me to be such a poignant image that invokes God's desire to be in relationship to us, especially in such moments of darkness. But what do we make of our inability to perceive it, when we are in our own darkness? And further, what if speaking of God in such moments, is indeed unhelpful? Even painful or cruel?

One thought that occurs to me is this: how do we speak of, and to, God when we are either ourselves in the wilderness, or when we are with someone who is in that place?

Seems to me that sometimes, speaking of prayer this way - that God is with you even when you aren't aware of it; just pray and it'll be all right - to someone who is in the darkness of despair can also be less than helpful. Like Job's so-called friends, even invoking hope itself, giving a neat and tidy explanation for God's place in an ordered universe can be less than helpful to one who is suffering in the chaos of despair.

This is so often a challenge for me or anyone seeking to minister to others in the name of the gospel; how do you impart hope to people when they are in a place where hope makes no sense? How do we proclaim the gospel in such a context?

Sometimes I wonder if the best way to proclaim the gospel to folk in that situation is...not to.

We often want to say, "all will be well; and all manner of thing shall be well," because another person's chaos can threaten the sense of order on the part of the onlooker. This is indeed what happens with Job's friends, in their attempt to comfort Job. Their so-called comfort seems at times, ironically, an aspect of God's torture of Job. Their attempt to "fix" Job, purportedly out of kindness, is in reality utterly cruel.

Is it possible to be a prayer for others by your presence, even if that other does not recognize it as such? Is it possible that a trusting relationship with God, which develops through intimacy, communication - can take the form of simply being with. Like the angel in that movie. Simply being there. When someone cannot feel God, ours is simply to be present, to hear, to listen, to weep and gnash teeth if necessary with them. But not to justify a hope that is unseen. That can only be seen in the light; when one is in the darkness, such light can seem illusory or even cruel.

As I read the scriptures, I hear Jesus over and over batting away elaborate human systems that are supposedly built on good, religious ideas - knocking them down in favor of getting involved in the muck and complexity of human compassion. Over and over Jesus religious system is built on the insistence to be with people in a spirit of transformative compassion. But how do we practice that?

Perhaps that's a good segue into this sermon's topic: the title of the sermon (not as yet written): "What Prayer Isn't". Based on the lectionary texts for this Sunday, we might call it "bad theology Sunday." The assumption in Luke 13:1-9 is that people suffer for a reason. There's a reason folk got hammered by Pilate: they were bad. The reason people died in the terrible tower incident: sinners. All a neat, convenient moral physics, in whose faith we can feel good about our lack of compassion. To this, Jesus says: No.

But prayer is not moral physics. It is closer to Heisenberg's quantum uncertainty than the Newtonian universe of cause and effect. We cannot say exactly how it works; even the concept that "it works" is a one borrowed from a human construct, like trying to look at Andromeda with binoculars. But it's the only thing we have. We get glimpses of its glory through that feeble instrument of vision we've been given, in order that we can use the greater instrument of imagination and faith to see it.

But moreover, when we use this instrument (prayer) to glimpse its glory, its mystery, there's something that matters in doing it; something that changes something - and not least of all...us.

Please pray for each other, especially those in the wilderness; perhaps pray for the Spirit as we seek God's mystery to change us this Sunday.

Blessings,

Jeff

PS - not too late join those wandering with Dante this Lent.