If the breath doesn’t come, death is inevitable. The tragedy of death is both in the end of a relationship as well as the end of possibility. Therefore, each prayer, each breath, is an invitation to live into relationship and possibility. Each prayer acknowledges that the breath of God still courses through our bodies, giving us life and hope.
Think of the role prayer plays in your life. How do you pray? Where do you pray? When do you pray? How were you taught to pray? How comfortable and confident are you with your prayer practice?
Prayer can take many forms. The book One Hope: Re-Membering the Body of Christ, which we are using to frame this month’s sermon series, breaks down the following types of prayer:
– individual / communal
– words / silence
– intercession / thanksgiving
Beyond the simplistic definition of praying by one’s self or among a group of people, the categories of individual and communal prayers is a false dichotomy. All prayer in uniquely individual and yet points us towards unity with God and our neighbor.
Regardless of the style of, or intent behind, one’s prayer, our first move after the pause, after the breath, is a move inward to self-reflection and self-inspection. Recall what we do when we participate in the liturgy of confession and forgiveness. We look at our role in the situation for which we are praying, confess our negative roles, and trust that God will use us in ways to bring life, healing, forgiveness, and love.
A personal prayer of thanksgiving begins with an acknowledgment that every gift in our lives is unmerited and has no strings attached; and so, we are profoundly grateful.
A prayer of petition or intercession for someone else also begins with acknowledging our role in the triad relationship between the prayer, the Lord, and the one being prayed for.
In other words, if we pray for God to heal someone but we are not affected, inspired, or moved to act in a more loving and gracious way towards that person, then we have removed the proverbial third leg from the stool.
I believe this could be what is at the heart of the frustration you might have noticed this week about people offering their “thoughts and prayers” to the people murdered and otherwise horrendously impacted by the mass shooting in Las Vegas. The verbiage of “thoughts and prayers” has almost lost its meaning in our culture. It is now understood as a culturally appropriate idiom devoid of much meaning; much like “How are you?” (it is polite, but not necessarily an invitation to deeper conversation).
How often has every one of us said something like “my thoughts and prayers are with you,” but even if we remember to pray for that person or that situation, we often fail to go deep enough in the prayer to identify our role in the situation.
It’s like we put our prayers on a prayer train and wave goodbye as we watch our prayers disappear down the track, trusting they’ll end up in God’s capable hands. The problem is that we are supposed to get on board the prayer train! Otherwise, the prayer then skips past the first stop of self-reflection and goes right to the part about asking God to make everything better, preferably without our needing to address the situation in any meaningful way.
Again, back to science. While science proves the health benefits of a robust prayer life, I’m sorry to say it offers no proof as to the demonstrative benefit of intercessory prayer. Study after study fail to prove any difference between people who are being prayed for and people who are not. (Link to sources).
I don’t think this information is proof that prayer doesn’t work; rather, I think it proves that we have some work to do.
I wish I could stand here and recount for you a personal experience that demonstrates the miraculous power of intercessory prayer. But I’m not aware of one.
I know many people who do have stories of miraculous healing after being prayed for. I celebrate these stories and do not discount them. But I also know that I’ve prayed for recovery and healing for many dying people in my time as a pastor, and each one of them has died. I’m batting zero. A swing and a miss, every single time.
I’ve never managed to bend God’s ear or God’s arm to make something happen that I thought needed to happen.
And yet, to say God hasn’t intervened in my life is the most absurd statement I could make. To say God hasn’t intervened in my life is to make me the God of my own tiny universe. It assumes I am the rightful earner, ruler, and owner of everything in my life, which limits prayer’s effectiveness because it makes me both the subject of my prayer as well as my own God.
Which get us back to the idea that it is not the outcome of the prayer, rather, it is the alignment to unity with God and the person for whom you are praying that matters.
How would things be different if every time we said “I’ll pray for you” we understood that doing so would fundamentally change us in some meaningful, even if painful, way. I think it would be glorious.
Prayer calls us “to deeper awareness of the way that God’s Spirit is as near to us as our own breath, continually at work in our lives and in the world around us” (p. 23, One Hope). So consider this an invitation to pray in a way that you are letting go of control and opening yourself to the possibilities that only God can supply.
Amen.
