Confidence In Prayer
Preaching
Gathering Up the Fragments
Preaching As Spiritual Practice
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.... Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-- Romans 8:26-27, 35-39
My subject this morning is prayer, taking as inspiration the reassuring words of Saint Paul: "The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words."
The Spirit helps us. I believe that God wants us to have confidence in prayer, confidence to approach God freely and frequently with the concerns of our hearts. But it's hard to feel that kind of confidence when, like Saint Paul, we don't know how to pray and aren't sure what to expect when we do. There's good reason for us to be uncertain or ambivalent about prayer -- intellectually, we want to know how prayer "works" in a way that makes sense, while our hearers are afraid to be disappointed or duped. We want to open, but not naive; faithful, yet not misguided in prayer.
I read an article about Joel Osteen, the head pastor of Lakewood Community Church in Houston, Texas, which draws 30,000 people each week for worship. This is the church that purchased the former stadium of the Houston Rockets for its worship site. Lakewood is clearly doing some things right. The congregation is racially and socio-economically integrated in ways that a church like ours can't even imagine. And Osteen's message of God's love speaks to whole segments of our population that liberal Christianity has written off for years.
Osteen has a fascinating view of prayer -- one that encourages us to believe that God wants only good things for us, defined mostly in terms of material wealth, physical attractiveness, and happy relationships. We needn't be satisfied with mediocre lives, he says. "You have to start believing that good things are coming your way, and they will!" He's not completely off the mark, as far as I can tell. There is some gospel in what he says, and people are genuinely drawn to him. There is also sufficient distortion and superficiality in his teachings that others, looking to him as an example of Christian leadership, could rightfully discard the entire Christian enterprise as a rationalization for American self-preoccupation and greed. Still others, like those of us who want to follow Jesus and yet are acutely aware of how prayer can serve to reinforce our own biases and wishful thinking, might be left somewhat paralyzed, unsure how to articulate what we think or believe about prayer.1
The scriptures have much to teach us here. There's a story in the gospel of Luke in which Jesus has just finished a time apart from his disciples -- his prayer time with God -- and they ask him to teach them how to pray. He says to them, "When you pray say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial" (Luke 11:1-4). These are straightforward words of request, for sufficient food and forgiveness and to be spared from hardship. A recent biblical paraphrase interprets the Lord's Prayer this way: "Father, reveal who you are. Set the world right. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and from evil."2
After teaching his disciples words to pray, Jesus tells them two stories: the first is of a man going to his friend's house in the middle of the night asking for bread and the friend answering the door because of the man's persistence; the second is of parents whose child asks for a fish to eat. "Is there anyone among you," Jesus asks, "who, if your child asks for a fish will give a snake instead?" Jesus wants us to trust in God's love and to persevere in prayer: "Ask," he says, "and it will be given you; search, and you will find" (Luke 11:9).
This is the simple, foundational prayer, of bringing our concerns and needs before God. It requires no expertise, liturgical structure, or intermediaries. It doesn't depend on a particular view of who or what God is; it asks only that we acknowledge that mysterious presence at the center of all things to which Jesus himself entrusted his life. Praying in this way does require honesty, however, with ourselves and with God. In the words of theologian, Marjorie Suchocki, "Prayer is not the place for pretend piety; prayer is the place for getting down to brass tacks. Emotions that one might hesitate to express in conversation with others are appropriately expressed in prayer ... God receives us as we are, and who we are is no surprise to God."3
But does this mean that prayer is simply a matter of asking for what we want? Are those who preach the prosperity gospel so prevalent in this country right? Jesus' words seem to imply -- ask and it will be given you. Yet there is more to prayer than asking; Jesus himself knew that. "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. "But your will, not mine, be done." In addition to honestly placing our desires before God, there is something in prayer that has to do with acceptance and surrender to all that is beyond our control.
The Jesuit storyteller, Anthony de Mello, wrote of a spiritual leader whose disciples wanted him to teach them how to pray. He responded this way:
Two men were once walking through a field when they saw an angry bull. Instantly they made for the nearest fence with the bull in hot pursuit. It soon became evident to them that they weren't going to make it, so one man shouted to another, "We've had it! Nothing can save us. Say a prayer. Quick!" The other shouted back, "I've never prayed in my life and I don't exactly have a prayer for this occasion." "Never mind," the other yelled back. "The bull is catching up with us. Any prayer will do." So he said the one he remembered his father used to say before meals, "For what we are about to receive, Lord, make us truly grateful."4
Nothing, de Mello concludes, surpasses the holiness of those who have learned to accept everything that is. "In the game of cards called life," he writes, "one plays the hand one is dealt to the best of one's ability."5 Which, if you think about it, is another way of saying, "Not my will, but yours be done." Saint Paul writes of a similar moment of surrender and acceptance in his life, in reference to something he refers to as "a thorn in his flesh." We don't know what the thorn was; as you can imagine, there is all sorts of speculation about it. Whatever it was, Paul asked in prayer that it be removed. "Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness' " (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Then there is the kind of prayer that asks for change, not in the circumstances around us, but in our response to them. It's prayer that takes us beyond acceptance, I think, to personal transformation. Again, in the words of Marjorie Suchocki, "We pray to God from where we are, not where we consider we should be. And God, who knows us where we are, can lead us to where we can be."6 "Change not one thing in my life," I once heard a very courageous person pray, "instead, change me." Change me. Take my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. Take my selfish, frightened soul and make of me a person of generosity and love. Allow me to live with joy in a broken, troubled world. To echo the words of St. Francis of Assisi, "Where there is hatred, let me sow love." My spiritual director said to me recently, "Resilience is the transformation of grief into compassion."
This may be the hardest prayer of all, and yet the most freeing. It shifts our perspective, ever so slowly, away from what we want and how we imagine other people or circumstances must change in order for us to be happy, toward God and God's capacity to change our hearts. It opens up the possibility of cooperation with God in the redeeming of the world. Suchocki writes, "What if prayer increases the effectiveness of God's presence in the world? God works in the world as it is in order to bring it to where it can be. When we pray, we open ourselves to be part of that creative, loving work of God."7
My favorite description of prayer comes from the novel by Louise Erdrich titled The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. It tells the story of a woman named Agnes who lives most of her life disguised as a male priest, Father Damien, living among the Ojibwe people in Northern Minnesota. Hers is a long and complex story, as you can imagine, but she loves being a priest. She loves being Father Damien. Yet, the cost of her life is high. How does she cope?
"Four times a day," Erdich wrote, "on rising, at noon, late afternoon, and before going to bed, Agnes and Father Damien become one person who addresses the unknown. The priest stops what he is doing, makes himself transparent, and breaks himself open. That is, he prays." He prays that the warring factions among his people will dissolve their hatred. He prays for the conversion of one of the native leaders and then prays for his own enlightenment in case converting another is a mistake. Agnes prays for a cheerful spirit and for her dangerous longings to cease. And she prays to better understand the Ojibwe language and its mysterious effect on the experience of God. She begins to address the trinity as four, to include the spirit of each direction -- those who sit at the four corners of the earth. There, at the center, she allows herself to fall apart. "What a relief it was, in those moments, to be nothing, and to have no thought or expectations." Then she rises, rubs her eyes, and goes on in Father Damien's skin. She quietly and unassumingly goes back to work, back to her life and her service, as faithfully as she can.8
I offer you these images of prayer: first, as honest, personal communication, laying before God the concerns and desires of our hearts; second, as acceptance, learning, by grace, to surrender to the things that cannot be changed; and finally, as transformation, allowing ourselves to be changed, by life and by prayer, into compassionate, generous people, partners with God in the loving and reshaping of the world. The most important words to remember are those with which we started, from Saint Paul's letter to the Romans, which assures us that no matter how ambivalent, uncertain, unbelieving, uninformed, and inexperienced we may be in prayer, the Spirit of God that dwells within us helps us to pray, beyond language, with sighs too deep for words. And there is nothing, Saint Paul says, nothing at all, that can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
____________
1. Jason Byasse, "Be Happy: The Health and Wealth Gospel," in The Christian Century, July 12, 2005, pp. 20-22.
2. Eugene Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary Language, Like You've Never Read It Before (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994), p. 146.
3. Marjorie Suchocki, In God's Presence: Theological Reflections on Prayer (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1996), pp. 37-38.
4. Anthony de Mello, S.J., Taking Flight: A Book of Story Meditations (New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 31.
5. Ibid.
6. Op cit, Suchocki, p. 38.
7. Op cit, Suchocki, p. 18.
8. Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 182.
-- Romans 8:26-27, 35-39
My subject this morning is prayer, taking as inspiration the reassuring words of Saint Paul: "The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words."
The Spirit helps us. I believe that God wants us to have confidence in prayer, confidence to approach God freely and frequently with the concerns of our hearts. But it's hard to feel that kind of confidence when, like Saint Paul, we don't know how to pray and aren't sure what to expect when we do. There's good reason for us to be uncertain or ambivalent about prayer -- intellectually, we want to know how prayer "works" in a way that makes sense, while our hearers are afraid to be disappointed or duped. We want to open, but not naive; faithful, yet not misguided in prayer.
I read an article about Joel Osteen, the head pastor of Lakewood Community Church in Houston, Texas, which draws 30,000 people each week for worship. This is the church that purchased the former stadium of the Houston Rockets for its worship site. Lakewood is clearly doing some things right. The congregation is racially and socio-economically integrated in ways that a church like ours can't even imagine. And Osteen's message of God's love speaks to whole segments of our population that liberal Christianity has written off for years.
Osteen has a fascinating view of prayer -- one that encourages us to believe that God wants only good things for us, defined mostly in terms of material wealth, physical attractiveness, and happy relationships. We needn't be satisfied with mediocre lives, he says. "You have to start believing that good things are coming your way, and they will!" He's not completely off the mark, as far as I can tell. There is some gospel in what he says, and people are genuinely drawn to him. There is also sufficient distortion and superficiality in his teachings that others, looking to him as an example of Christian leadership, could rightfully discard the entire Christian enterprise as a rationalization for American self-preoccupation and greed. Still others, like those of us who want to follow Jesus and yet are acutely aware of how prayer can serve to reinforce our own biases and wishful thinking, might be left somewhat paralyzed, unsure how to articulate what we think or believe about prayer.1
The scriptures have much to teach us here. There's a story in the gospel of Luke in which Jesus has just finished a time apart from his disciples -- his prayer time with God -- and they ask him to teach them how to pray. He says to them, "When you pray say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial" (Luke 11:1-4). These are straightforward words of request, for sufficient food and forgiveness and to be spared from hardship. A recent biblical paraphrase interprets the Lord's Prayer this way: "Father, reveal who you are. Set the world right. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and from evil."2
After teaching his disciples words to pray, Jesus tells them two stories: the first is of a man going to his friend's house in the middle of the night asking for bread and the friend answering the door because of the man's persistence; the second is of parents whose child asks for a fish to eat. "Is there anyone among you," Jesus asks, "who, if your child asks for a fish will give a snake instead?" Jesus wants us to trust in God's love and to persevere in prayer: "Ask," he says, "and it will be given you; search, and you will find" (Luke 11:9).
This is the simple, foundational prayer, of bringing our concerns and needs before God. It requires no expertise, liturgical structure, or intermediaries. It doesn't depend on a particular view of who or what God is; it asks only that we acknowledge that mysterious presence at the center of all things to which Jesus himself entrusted his life. Praying in this way does require honesty, however, with ourselves and with God. In the words of theologian, Marjorie Suchocki, "Prayer is not the place for pretend piety; prayer is the place for getting down to brass tacks. Emotions that one might hesitate to express in conversation with others are appropriately expressed in prayer ... God receives us as we are, and who we are is no surprise to God."3
But does this mean that prayer is simply a matter of asking for what we want? Are those who preach the prosperity gospel so prevalent in this country right? Jesus' words seem to imply -- ask and it will be given you. Yet there is more to prayer than asking; Jesus himself knew that. "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. "But your will, not mine, be done." In addition to honestly placing our desires before God, there is something in prayer that has to do with acceptance and surrender to all that is beyond our control.
The Jesuit storyteller, Anthony de Mello, wrote of a spiritual leader whose disciples wanted him to teach them how to pray. He responded this way:
Two men were once walking through a field when they saw an angry bull. Instantly they made for the nearest fence with the bull in hot pursuit. It soon became evident to them that they weren't going to make it, so one man shouted to another, "We've had it! Nothing can save us. Say a prayer. Quick!" The other shouted back, "I've never prayed in my life and I don't exactly have a prayer for this occasion." "Never mind," the other yelled back. "The bull is catching up with us. Any prayer will do." So he said the one he remembered his father used to say before meals, "For what we are about to receive, Lord, make us truly grateful."4
Nothing, de Mello concludes, surpasses the holiness of those who have learned to accept everything that is. "In the game of cards called life," he writes, "one plays the hand one is dealt to the best of one's ability."5 Which, if you think about it, is another way of saying, "Not my will, but yours be done." Saint Paul writes of a similar moment of surrender and acceptance in his life, in reference to something he refers to as "a thorn in his flesh." We don't know what the thorn was; as you can imagine, there is all sorts of speculation about it. Whatever it was, Paul asked in prayer that it be removed. "Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness' " (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Then there is the kind of prayer that asks for change, not in the circumstances around us, but in our response to them. It's prayer that takes us beyond acceptance, I think, to personal transformation. Again, in the words of Marjorie Suchocki, "We pray to God from where we are, not where we consider we should be. And God, who knows us where we are, can lead us to where we can be."6 "Change not one thing in my life," I once heard a very courageous person pray, "instead, change me." Change me. Take my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. Take my selfish, frightened soul and make of me a person of generosity and love. Allow me to live with joy in a broken, troubled world. To echo the words of St. Francis of Assisi, "Where there is hatred, let me sow love." My spiritual director said to me recently, "Resilience is the transformation of grief into compassion."
This may be the hardest prayer of all, and yet the most freeing. It shifts our perspective, ever so slowly, away from what we want and how we imagine other people or circumstances must change in order for us to be happy, toward God and God's capacity to change our hearts. It opens up the possibility of cooperation with God in the redeeming of the world. Suchocki writes, "What if prayer increases the effectiveness of God's presence in the world? God works in the world as it is in order to bring it to where it can be. When we pray, we open ourselves to be part of that creative, loving work of God."7
My favorite description of prayer comes from the novel by Louise Erdrich titled The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. It tells the story of a woman named Agnes who lives most of her life disguised as a male priest, Father Damien, living among the Ojibwe people in Northern Minnesota. Hers is a long and complex story, as you can imagine, but she loves being a priest. She loves being Father Damien. Yet, the cost of her life is high. How does she cope?
"Four times a day," Erdich wrote, "on rising, at noon, late afternoon, and before going to bed, Agnes and Father Damien become one person who addresses the unknown. The priest stops what he is doing, makes himself transparent, and breaks himself open. That is, he prays." He prays that the warring factions among his people will dissolve their hatred. He prays for the conversion of one of the native leaders and then prays for his own enlightenment in case converting another is a mistake. Agnes prays for a cheerful spirit and for her dangerous longings to cease. And she prays to better understand the Ojibwe language and its mysterious effect on the experience of God. She begins to address the trinity as four, to include the spirit of each direction -- those who sit at the four corners of the earth. There, at the center, she allows herself to fall apart. "What a relief it was, in those moments, to be nothing, and to have no thought or expectations." Then she rises, rubs her eyes, and goes on in Father Damien's skin. She quietly and unassumingly goes back to work, back to her life and her service, as faithfully as she can.8
I offer you these images of prayer: first, as honest, personal communication, laying before God the concerns and desires of our hearts; second, as acceptance, learning, by grace, to surrender to the things that cannot be changed; and finally, as transformation, allowing ourselves to be changed, by life and by prayer, into compassionate, generous people, partners with God in the loving and reshaping of the world. The most important words to remember are those with which we started, from Saint Paul's letter to the Romans, which assures us that no matter how ambivalent, uncertain, unbelieving, uninformed, and inexperienced we may be in prayer, the Spirit of God that dwells within us helps us to pray, beyond language, with sighs too deep for words. And there is nothing, Saint Paul says, nothing at all, that can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
____________
1. Jason Byasse, "Be Happy: The Health and Wealth Gospel," in The Christian Century, July 12, 2005, pp. 20-22.
2. Eugene Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary Language, Like You've Never Read It Before (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994), p. 146.
3. Marjorie Suchocki, In God's Presence: Theological Reflections on Prayer (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1996), pp. 37-38.
4. Anthony de Mello, S.J., Taking Flight: A Book of Story Meditations (New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 31.
5. Ibid.
6. Op cit, Suchocki, p. 38.
7. Op cit, Suchocki, p. 18.
8. Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 182.
