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St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
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Young Trevor McKinney is caught up by an intriguing assignment from his
social studies teacher, Mr. Simonet. The assignment is to think of
something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor conjures
the notion of paying a favor not back, but forward. Trevor’s first
gesture is to befriend a homeless man. Trevor’s plan is a prayerful
attempt to interact with the world.
(DVD: PAY IT FORWARD) How did you learn to pray? When I ask that questions, I am greeted with stunned silence. Then someone says, I’ve never asked myself that question.” “My mother taught me the words to the prayers of our Catholic tradition and listened to me recite them every night,” one woman says. A man interjects, “My father, who traveled the region meeting his clients, taught me to just talk to God with my own words and feelings.” “No one taught me to pray,” a young woman adds. “But I knew my grandmother prayed. I was curious, but never asked her about it.” “I learned to pray in Sunday School where I went with my best friend. I couldn’t pray at home because my family was scornful of religion and prayer.” “What seems odd to me, is that no one taught me to pray, but I have been praying as long as I can remember. Maybe God taught me to pray.” How did you learn to pray? Our early experiences of prayer are important in praying for the world because they are the basis for how we pray. They hold our assumptions about prayer and about God – who God is and how we are present to God through prayer. We have to be aware of what those assumptions are in order to begin our exploration of what it means to pray or we may get stuck in those early lessons. Whether you still pray the way you were taught, have discovered other ways to pray, or have even stopped praying altogether, understanding the core assumptions from childhood is essential. Prayer is relational Prayer is about growing closer to God. When we first learn to pray, we are being introduced to God. As we pursue prayer, we become more friendly with God. In time, that friendship blossoms. We might think of our relationship with God as similar to the bond in which two people merge with one another, even as they remain separate. They become so close that they know each other’s thoughts, dream the same dreams, and sense when the other is in need. And yet, each has room to grow, space to explore, and the ability to surprise the other. Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century mystic, feels so close to God that she is willing to express all her feelings. One night, she is traveling through northern Spain. A storm comes up. The wheels of the wagon get stuck in the mud. Teresa climbs down from her perch into the pouring rain, raises her fist to God and shouts, “If this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!” You may not think of yourself as a mystic (like Teresa or Rev. Fred), but you may long for closeness with God, just as God wants greater intimacy with you. God’s desire for us is sometimes hard to believe. We may feel unworthy, unwilling to respond, or even question the existence of God. But God loves us. God tells Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you.” God’s longing for us sometimes makes us want to pray. So when people tell me they long to pray but they do not know how or have forgotten, I tell them that their wanting and their longing is prayer. Their hearts stir. They want to respond. Beginning to pray in any form is responding to God’s yearning. We are simply saying, “yes”! As I write about justice this week, I find myself overcome with a sense of inadequacy. My first doubt comes in very specific form. I ask myself, ”How can I preach about justice and peace when I never march?” This may seem like an odd question, but I have always associated people who pray for justice with those activists who demonstrate. I realize that this inadequacy is connected to my longtime guilt at not being involved in the civil rights movement. I spend these turbulent years hiding in a music practice room. I am ashamed of my inaction, my sideline perspective, in this critical time. Wrestling with my own inadequacies, I remember the words of a wise mentor. “You have many advantages,” he says. “You are white, educated, economically comfortable. The question is not, Why do you have these gifts? But rather, How can you use them to serve God?” I am able to see that each of us can serve, in unique ways, the prayer for justice and peace. I find that my commitment to becoming a global citizen leads me to risk action prayers as a volunteer in mission in such places as Haiti, Angola, and Guatemala. I begin to realize that there are other people who feel as I do - people who are not on the public front lines but who care deeply about justice: parents teaching their children how to solve conflicts without violence, young adults speaking out against prejudice as their own family gathers, teenagers drawing close to protect a young boy from bullying, teachers telling the hard stories from the underside of history, retired folk showing up faithfully in the neighborhood reading program. Maybe all these people are activists, quietly praying for the world. We cannot all be Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. But we can listen and answer the call. The work of justice depends us. Mother Teresa says, “Don’t look for spectacular actions; what is important is the gift of yourself.” We get our marching orders weekly from the prophet, Micah, who sends us out to seek justice, love kindness, and walk with God. Micah is angry at the politics of Jerusalem. He feels that the rich use their influence to exploit the vulnerable. Increased fortifications to hold off foreign invaders further burdens the poor. What can we do to please God, when we have gone so far astray? Do we have livelier worship services? Do we say more creeds? Does Carrie double clutch the organ? Micah says that God is more interested in the way people live their everyday lives. Justice is something that people do. It is not enough to wish for justice or to complain because it is lacking. God’s people are to work, particularly for those who are exploited by others. Showing kindness is about love and loyalty. We don’t act out of duty. We act out of love. We walk with God, putting God first. Micah says that it’s about lifestyle and ethics, one’s total outlook on life. How does one actually pray for justice? Prayer does not take us out of the world but draws us more fully into the world. It is not escape. I once heard a man of prayer described as “someone who is so heavenly that he is no earthly good.” Contemplation and action are not opposites. Prayer leads us to service which leads us to reflection and back to God. In prayer, we gather courage to return to a hurting world which only reminds us of our dependence on God. We ask God to intercede in places of war and oppression so that peace may be made and justice done. There is no way to make these problems small enough to be manageable. Just open your heart. “God, I want to pray for the starving people of the world. I don’t know how to begin. Help me!” Use your anger! “How can you let this happen, God? You who are a God of peace! Use your power! Use your wrath! Make them stop the killing!” Action prayers are when we speak or act in any way for the sake of justice and peace. Writing a letter to a congressperson, teaching conflict resolution skills, going to a forum on interfaith dialogue, and demonstrating are actions that can become prayer. We are praying with our bodies – our voices, our hands, our feet. We may see so many ways to serve that we are in danger of wearing ourselves out. Before this happens, we are in need of prayers of renewal, helping us to remember in whose name we act. Making music, walking, swimming, reading, painting, gardening, journaling, writing poetry, and finding silence are some of the ways that people pray to renew. When we pray for the world in any of these three ways, we open ourselves to the possibility of transformation. Our intention to be with God and to do God’s work opens us to God’s grace so that our prayers, our hearts, our very lives may be transformed. We can examine our own hearts for seeds of violence, prejudice, hate, and revenge, and we can pray for healing. We are a busy people, almost frenetic. I want us to remember to pray. Simply, to remember and to pray. A church committee is struggling with an issue that may divide the congregation. The discussion is going nowhere and tempers are rising. Someone suggests that we postpone the discussion until the next meeting, and in the intervening weeks, pray about the issue and pray for reconciliation. Anther team member pushes back his chair in disgust and says, “Good heavens! Have we come to that?” Prayer is not a last resort; it is the primary and radical action. Karl Barth, twentieth-century German theologian, writes, “To clasp our hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorders of the world.” Prayer forces us to face the world and to ask ourselves what we can do. Beloved, before all else fails, before the last straw, before the other shoe drops, let us pray…and by our actions, change the world.
Teach Us to Pray (2005) |