If I'm honest, which mostly I try to be, honest! Anyway. If I'm honest, I find prayer as much of a problem as a solution; and I find praying raises at least as many questions as answers. It isn't that I don't believe in prayer - of course I do. And I believe in prayer because I believe in a God whose way of being is relational, personal and communicative. Those ubiquitous words inclusive and accessible, have significant purchasing power when used theologically. I think together they convey essential truth about the God I have come to know through Jesus Christ. The God to whom I pray is a God who is revealed as an eternal Triune communion of mutually self-giving love, and of outward reaching creativity. The Creator is not dependent either on the Creation. or on all the creatures brought into being through that purposive creative gift that calls all that is into being.
At the same time human beings, created by God in the image of God, have that within them which answers to the transcendent and condescending grace that seeks fellowship, communion, shared purpose and convenanted obedience. "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." The fact that those words of Augustine have near cliche status doesn't entitle us to assume we have no more need of the reminder. God seeks to include all God has made within the life of the Triune God. In Jesus Christ God has created a new and deeper access to the heart of God. No-one has put that better than the intellectually brilliant author of Hebrews,who mid-argument about the call to faithful obedience, urges his (or her?) readers, "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Heb 4.16) Three words in this verse are themselves a triune promise of inclusion and accessibility; grace, mercy, help. Whatever else we pray for, and for whatever other reasons we pray, these three touches of divine blessing into our lives are reason enough to pray.
Grace, that unlooked for gratuitous gift from the heart of God, reaching out to hold in being that which God created; mercy, which is forgiveness but so much more because mercy looks not only to forgiven past wrong, but to enabled and renewed rightness, obedience and hopefulness towards a new future; help, which is that sense of being held, supported, sustained, carried through waters too deep for us and up hills too steep for us. And the theological genius who wrote Hebrews energises and ignites those words, grace, mercy and help with the advice "come boldly before the throne of grace." Permission is given to be outspoken, to speak our mind and pour out the heart; forget the niceties, the protocols, the usual hesitations and deferences of being before the throne of power. This isn't mere power - this is the throne of grace, and permission is granted to speak plainly, and with confidence.
So I pray, in the name of Jesus who reveals the heart of God; and in the communion and power of the Holy Spirit, God's creative presence suffused throughout all reality. In prayer I give thanks and praise; I intercede in love and concern for the world in its brokenness; I confess my sin, seek forgiveness and pray for grace to forgive as I have been forgiven. At times words are necessary, at other times they get in the way. Other times silence, contemplative waiting, deep reading of Scripture, place me in the attitude of listening for that still small voice which announces the presence of God.
But however I pray, I hold on to those three words, grace, mercy and help. And whenever I pray for grace, mercy and help I am encouraged to do so with confidence, openness and trust. So, here's where the problems arise when it come to praying. What am I to pray for in a post-Brexit, post-Trump, world in which some of the most destructive ways of seeing the world and speaking of the world are well down the road to normalisation? What would grace, mercy and help look like, if I were to pray for each of these to be given to all the followers of Jesus trying faithfully and obediently to live the good news right here, right now? As I think deeply, and seek wisdom to understand what is happening in the world these days, I don't doubt for a second we need mercy, but how is that to be lived, demonstrated, made real? So perhaps I need to pray grace and help to live that radical word of Jesus, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." We live in a world impatient with mercy and given to anger - so how to model mercy, to answer anger with understanding, to make respect and compassion more persuasive than grievance and resentment.
I have no doubt that prayer is now an urgent calling on the Christian church seeking to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the sign of God's justice and righteousness in a world dangerously over-fuelled with forms of anger that are destructive of our humanity and of the social safeguards of respectful discourse. How we work that out personally, and together as church and churches, is now a required research project into the deep wells of Christian spirituality, political theology and biblical wisdom.
Thanks for this, Jim. I have been pondering on prayer all day since listening to Terry Waite speaking about it on Radio 4 this morning. He said that when he was taken captive, he resolved to pray only the prayers of the Anglican prayer book, and he didn't let himself 'fall into' (his words) extempore prayer, as that would just become 'God get me out of here'. It was a fascinating interview, but I didn't relate to his approach at all. Dyed in the wool Baptist, I don't have all that Cranmer committed to memory! But bottom line must be that we're all called to pray.
Posted by: ANGELA ALMOND | November 13, 2016 at 08:38 PM
Prayer is both personal and universal, and how and when and why we pray is likewise personal and as diverse as our hearts and minds must be. What suited Waite in captivity may not suit him now;but I do understand the strategy of objective prayers as a wall against self-pity, introspection and self-concern. Extempore prayer seems natural, open to the Spirit within us, rooted in the relationality of God's ways and Being. It needn't be the "God deliver me" petition, though the Psalms are full of that! What I am increasingly feeling is that amongst the responses of the church to the brokenness of our culture, the dissemination of fear, anger and hate, there is the praying community, and communities, affirming the opposites of fear, anger and hate. Grace, mercy and help as in the text from Hebrews is a start. But Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Luke, Revelation are also voices we need to hear and echo for justice, righteousness, peace-making, defence of the poor and vulnerable, and speaking truth to power, and the more corrupt the power the more persistent the triuth speaking and praying!
Posted by: Jim Gordon | November 14, 2016 at 07:42 AM
Getting analytical about prayer seems difficult. This Anglican agrees with the general principles you note above. What I note in the Psalms is a repeated prayer about shame. It is not my mother's "Shame on you" statement which I would find unacceptable today. But it is the often repeated phrase 'let them be ashamed and confounded who seek my hurt'. The shame that comes from a correction that is from God is a shame that leads to repentance that is ultimately healing.
I had a situation recently when a Christian supporter of the condemnation of others (and a believer in Trump also) who were different from him, led a man to send me questions that were abusive. I guess he feels that my position on the interpretation of this or that Scripture was offensive to his rigid (in my view) sensibility.
I haven't seen the man recently, but I found his questions were blocking him from any possible growth. Silence in conversation was better. What do I pray for him but for divine intervention, and for myself that I not write him off. A conflict that would bring him to shame might help. But it is out of my hands. If asked, I would encourage his own desire for purity, but not at the expense of the many people who are different around him. I think isolationist purity may be a harder problem than blatant impurity.
Posted by: Bob MacDonald | November 14, 2016 at 03:49 PM