Scripture Texts
Genesis
18:23-38; Psalm 85: 8-11; Luke 11: 1-13
A
few of you have recently taken me up on my offer to preach a sermon series on topics
you suggest. Thank you! Today’s sermon is my response to this question posed by
one of you: “How do progressive Christians pray?” This topic and the others suggest that we as progressive
Christians are starting to rethink our spiritual practices.
You’ll
notice that, according to Luke’s gospel, Jesus’s disciples had to prompt him to
teach them to pray (Luke 11:1). Our question about how to pray is, it seems, as
old as the Christian faith. And the Bible
clearly understands prayer in wide-ranging ways, as evident in our varied
scriptures for today: prayer as negotiation between Abraham and God, prayer as
silence for the Psalmist, and, for the Gospel writer, prayer as naming the
needs of our hearts, prayer as aligning our intentions with God’s will.
This
is a sermon for those who started down a progressive spiritual path and at some
point looked back to realize they’d left their prayers behind. This is also a sermon for those who still
pray—but without a former earnestness—because their former prayers no long reflect
their expanded understanding of God. And
this is a sermon for those who never did pray or who no longer pray because prayer
just doesn’t make sense or feel authentic.
If you’ve been exploring progressive theology and have come to doubt,
for example, that God is a physical and, specifically, male being whose job it
is to comply with all our requests, or at least the requests of his favorite
folks, you may have also started rethinking your prayer life.
If
you haven’t already felt this dissonance, this sermon may not speak to you. My
intention is not to criticize a perfectly beautiful spiritual practice if you continue
to find it fulfilling. I want to open up
a prayer path for others without closing off the path you’re using. Open Table’s mission is to offer our
community an alternative and emerging expression of Christianity for folks who would
not otherwise have a spiritual community. We are not dismissing the older version
of Christianity (and keep in mind, we believe we are in many ways retrieving an
even older version than that!). But there
are plenty of churches in Mobile where people can pray in more conventional
ways—even with the thees and thous of the glorious King James English. We want to include those who cannot otherwise
reconcile certain tenets and practices with modern science, sound psychology,
interfaith understandings, and life experiences. And I want to call into question potentially
harmful teachings on prayer—like the idea that if you pray hard enough you’ll
be showered with prosperity. That
theology, my friends, has a limited shelf life.
As a progressive church, we hope to push the frontiers of Christian
spirituality in ways consistent with healthy psychology and progressive
theology.
And
it’s our progressive theology that has caused some of us to think that “we don’t
have a prayer.” Some of us understand what poet Christian Wiman meant when he
admitted, “I have never felt comfortable praying. I almost feel I should put
the word [prayer] in quotes, as I’m never quite sure that what I do deserves
the name. . . . Mostly I simply (simply!)
try and subject myself to the possibility of God. I address God as if.”[i]
Progressive
theology poses to us at least three problems with prayer as we’ve
previously practiced it. If you don’t
want to hear what these problems are, now is the time to inoculate yourself
against this sermon by placing your index fingers in your ears.
Problem
#1: Many of us no longer conceive of God
as a being. As Joan Chittister put it, “There is only
one thing wrong with the traditional definition of prayer: it misrepresents
God.” If God is no longer for us a “regal, distant judge outside ourselves” or
“male humanity writ large” and is instead the
“very Energy that animates us,”[ii] then to whom are we praying? Are we still addressing a “Father” who “art”
in some literal location above the earth?
Are we actually talking to Someone with physical ears to hear and hands
and feet to do our bidding? And if not,
if we are not talking to a person—or Super-person—then what is the point of the
words we utter aloud in worship or in the words we form silently for private devotion?
I’d respond to that question first
by describing prayer for progressives as often a practice of silence. A wordless prayer might be an embodied prayer—like
deep breathing that allows us to experience God’s presence in our very breath
and bones and pay attention to what’s going on in our bodies, we who so often
disconnect mind from body. Or prayer might be a silent centering prayer in
which we contemplate an image, for instance, or repeat a verse of scripture, or
practice mindfulness of the world around us. The 4th century
Christian teacher Evagrius practiced what he called “pure prayer” that was very
like Zen meditation.[iii] Practices that allow us to still our spirits can
heal us from the spiritual violence our noisy, frenetic culture increasingly
inflicts upon us.
But progressives also use words in
prayer, and even those who don’t direct the words to an invisible personality “out
there” can use prayerful words to focus thoughts or follow them to new
insights. I’ll speak in a future sermon
about the function of corporate prayer, prayers in worship, for instance. But I speak now about our individual prayers
and suggest that before the Spirit can move us to loving actions, our human
brains must conceive of those possible actions through language. We may or may not choose to address these words
to God, and we certainly want to be careful that our images of God are not
reinforcing cultural prejudices, but words offer us the power to clarify our
needs. It’s a brave and difficult but
healing act to know and name what it is we long for, to put words around the truest
thing we desire, to speak about our hurts with a confidence that love can
eventually heal that hurt. We can lead
such unreflective lives that we can’t even say what it is we need—what is that one
“needed thing” that Jesus, as we learned last week, told Martha she had to
discover for herself.
“Ask, and you shall receive” is a
mantra that invites us into a process of prayer--not a promise of prosperity. We
find our way safely home through the labyrinth of language, guided by the
loving Spirit. And by addressing the
unnamable Sacred force, we are tacitly expressing faith that we are
participating in and with Something Greater than Ourselves.
Problem #2: Some of us feel either phony or degraded by praising
God as a high potentate. Any God who
requires veneration and flattery doesn’t seem worthy of veneration and
flattery. But we do appreciate the
importance of living with gratitude. We
are full of gratitude. And gratitude is a close cousin to praise. While we know how to say thank you to the neighbor
who shared freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, how do we say thank you for bird
song? Perhaps in silence or song or art
or actions. Or with the spontaneous “wow”
prayer Anne Lamott recommends. Research shows that “gratitude improves emotional
and physical health” and “can strengthen relationships and communities.” One
researcher recommends “keeping a gratitude journal,” which is a type of prayer. We don’t have to say “Hallowed be thy name”
to express our awestruck gratefulness for Life’s inexhaustible gifts. But we do need some
way of offering a hushed “thanks” and flinging out an exuberant “wow.”
Problem #3: All of us have prayed for things
that never came to pass—despite the Bible’s promise that if we ask, we’ll
receive. There are people who have starved
to death while praying “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Of course, you’ve
heard the explanations for “unanswered prayer.”
“Well,
you just didn’t pray hard enough or in the right way” is one explanation. (As if life is a contest won by super
pray-ers, or a fairy tale in which you have to figure out the right incantation
to break the evil spell!)
You’ve
also heard: “God answered your prayer but just not in the way you wanted it
answered.” (Well, then, that was the
answer to SOMEONE ELSE’S prayer.)
Or
“God will answer in God’s own time.” (As I continue to suffer.) Or “God is using this period to teach you
something.” (As I continue to suffer.)
All
these explanations make God seem mean and manipulative. A loving parent would never inflict cancer on
a child, would not even “permit” it, in order to teach her “a lesson.” God has
nothing to do with meanness.
When
bad things happen to good and prayerful people, some wonder what’s the point in
praying. For me, a stronger deterrent to prayer is when bad prayers
happen to good and prayerful people. Prayers that treat God like a vending
machine. Prayers in which the pray-er
poses as the mouthpiece of God. I don’t
pretend to understand how the miraculous can happen, but I don’t give up hope
that the unexpected and unfathomable can occur.
I see miracles of beauty and compassion every day. I assure you that I pray, in faith, for your
healing and for this world’s healing. But as I understand it, the power God
wields in this world is Love. Only Love. And one way I understand prayer is my
own participation in a flow of love that is the strongest medicine and
mightiest miracle on the planet.
We
pray not to change God’s mind but to change our own hearts. We are God’s hands and feet in this
world. When we pray as Jesus prayed that
God’s “kingdom come,” we are aligning our intentions for this world with God’s
loving purposes. Holding a person or
situation in a loving place in our hearts is prayer, which builds up our
capacity for compassion and adds to that mighty Force for good in this world.
Praying with regrets for our failings and with extravagant forgiveness for
those who have “sinned” against us” is also part of the process that builds up
that reservoir of compassion.
We
pray as a first step toward action.
Christopher Winan shares this honest story: “One day when I had gone to a little chapel
near my office at lunchtime and was once more praying while wondering how and
why and to whom I prayed, a man came in and eased into the pew directly across
the aisle form me. As we were the only two
people there, his choice of where to sit seemed odd—and irritating. Within a
couple of minutes all thought of God was gone into the man’s constant movements
and his elaborate sighs, and when I finally rose in exasperation he stood immediately
to face me. He had the sandblasted look of long poverty, the skeletal clarity
of long addiction, and that vaguely aggressive abasement that truly tests the
nature of one’s charity. Very cunning, I
noted, failing the test even as I opened my wallet: to stake out this little
chapel to prey upon the praying! For days it nagged at me—not him, but it, the
situation—which, I finally realized, was precisely the problem: how easily a
fatal complacency seeps into even those acts we undertake as disciplines, and
how comfortable we become with our own intellectual and spiritual
discomfort. Wondering how and why and to whom I prayed? I felt almost as if God had been telling me,
as if Christ were telling me (in church no less!) get off your mystified
[posterior] and DO something.”
Ah,
yes. Problem #4: Prayer can become a substitute, not an
impetus, for action. Progressives must act.
PRAYER:
We have preached and heard a sermon on prayer—and we have no idea how to pray. But surely learning to pray is not about developing
technique. We trustingly enter a silence
that speaks to us louder than words.
