A couple of months ago I was having a conversation with my older sister, Steph, about praying to God for things that we want. I asked her permission to share this story and she said yes. A friend of hers had a family member, we’ll call him Dave, who was quite sick. This friend asked Steph to include Dave in her prayers. Steph really struggled with this idea, and so she asked me about it. She said, “I don’t want to pray for something that isn’t going to happen.” We had a really good conversation about it and it opened me up to a lot of my own questions about faith.
One thing that I do regularly on my job is pray, not only with, but for people. I pray for people to be healed, I pray for people to be made whole, I pray for justice around the world, there are all sorts of things I pray for. These are called Prayers of Petition. But I think my sister’s anxiety, which she openly stated, poked and prodded at an anxiety, a question, which I have deep down inside; a question that I need to bring to the light.
What are we doing when we pray to God for healing, for ourselves, for others, or for the world? What are we doing when we ask God for something? I think we have two perspectives on this issue, represented by conservative and liberal Christianity. And I think both are missing the mark; to quote Jim Wallis, “The right gets it wrong and the left doesn’t get it.” Though he is talking about politics, I think the same can be said for prayer.
Often, in conservative Christianity, there is the sense that God can heal, that God can make changes. I think that is a solid belief, one that I hold – though sometimes it is one that I just want to hold. But when we pray for, say, healing, for myself or for others, do we actually think we are swaying God? Is God saying, “Well, I was going to let Joe die, but since you prayed, I guess I’ll give him a reprieve.”? That God is kind of a jerk when you think about it. And it is pretty arrogant to think we have power over God.
Liberal mainstream Protestantism doesn’t get off the hook either. This is where the United Church of Canada often falls, and this is where I often fall. Deep down, we are having a struggle with our faith. What is termed, “functional atheism” has crept into our prayer life. We’re not so audacious as to think we can control God, but we don’t really hold onto the belief that God can and will effect the world. Anything that will happen is up to us.
Both perspectives offer something that is good to the conversation, but both sides miss something as well. It seems to me like one side is trying to barter with God, in a sense trying to control God, and the other side leaves God right out of the picture.
So why do we make prayers of petition to God? This is a tough question that gets to the core of our faith. It forces us to ask what we are doing when we engage in that critical Christian practice of prayer. Just a heads up, today we’re only talking about prayers of petition. There are many other types and forms of prayer, but today we’re just focusing on that one.
In our scripture reading, we hear about the leper coming to Jesus and asking for help. He says to Jesus, “Listen, I know you have the ability to cure me. And so I know, that if you choose to do so, you will.” This is his last hope. He has gotten on his knees, lost all sense of pride, and is begging Jesus.
How Jesus responds is actually up for debate. In our reading for today it says he was moved by pity. Many ancient sources, however, imply that it was not pity that moved Jesus, but rather, anger. In many ways, this fits with the rest of the story. But his anger is mysterious, what is he angry at? Is he angry at the leper? Is he angry at the leprosy, or perhaps a demon that was making him a leper? Is he angry at the way the man has been cast out and forced to beg? Is he angry that everyone seems interested in his healings and not in his message? I don’t know. It could be any of those, or it could be that the original author did, in fact, use the word “pity”.
I think what is important in this story is that the man surrendered himself, and Jesus’ responded to that by saying “I do choose.” The man is healed. Yes, the leper then disobeys Jesus, and does not follow up with Christ’s prescription. But for an instant there, for one instant, there is something very remarkable in this man, and Jesus responds.
This man, provides a wonderful example of a petitioner. He is a wonderful example of someone asking God for something. And I think that in his very petitioning of God, we get a sense of what it means to ask something of God.
One of my favorite stories in the bible is of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and I look to this example as teaching us how to pray. His words are very similar to the words of the leper. “For you, all things are possible, remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want.” “God, I know you could get me out of this if you choose. It’s up to you.” The difference in the two stories is simply that the Leper is healed and Jesus doesn’t get what he wants.
Like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, like the leper, when we pray for world peace or when we pray for the healing of a loved one, we may not be expecting it to happen. Instead we’re admitting to ourselves and to God, that it is beyond our reach, that it is out of our control, that we are, in essence, powerless.
And there is the word that makes Christians of all stripes shudder. On one side there is the sense that if I just pray hard enough, or believe just the right stuff, God will change things. It is, at its heart, an attempt to control things. It is an attempt to get God to do what we want. On the other side, the sense is very much, why would I pray to God about it, since God might very likely not do anything. Anything that is done in the world is done by us, by humanity. We are in control.
Prayers of petition are actually a counter-cultural act. In a world that says we are powerful, in a world that says we control our fates, our destinies are entirely in our hands and in our hands alone, in a world that says we get what we pay for, what we deserve, what we have earned; prayers of petition say this isn’t about us. Prayers of petition, when motivated by a sense of powerlessness, hand off any attempt of control. We don’t have control, and we are admitting it. It is a surrender.
Now, I am not saying that prayer cannot heal, that prayer cannot effect change. I think it can, but we need to look at motivations. If we are praying to try to maintain control, to try to get God to do something, to fix a problem for us, I think we are missing the point. If we are trying to control things with prayer we are not surrendering. We are not admitting that God has power over all things. We are not joining with the Leper, joining with Jesus, embracing the words from the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done…”
Catching up on all my sermons to be posted... lots of work to do I've fallen too far behind! This sermon as I recall I liked the idea more than execution. But I realised I didn't talk about prayer often enough and saw this as an opportunity.
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