There
aren’t that many secrets that pastors know that you don’t. I suppose I probably
shouldn’t admit that. It’s probably in my best professional interests to keep
the veil between clergy and laity as impermeable as possible so that you
believe I am the gatekeeper to all the secret knowledge, but the truth is I
don’t have much of that. There is one thing, however, that I do know—that I
suspect most pastors know—that I’m not sure everybody does, and it is this:
Prayer is hard work.
Really hard work.
So much of the way our society talks
about prayer treats it as something rather easy. “Thoughts and prayers!” But
that’s just where the hard work begins. And I’m not just talking about remembering
to do it, though that is part of it. Prayer is hard work because it is so much
more than saying bedtime prayers, or getting on our knees, or even praying in
worship. I’m talking about the hard work of having a conversation with God that
is centered on something other than my own immediate wants and needs, and then
coming to the understanding that that prayer doesn’t end just because I say “Amen.”
It’s hard to know what to say to God, how to listen for God, what you should be
asking for (if anything), how to express your thankfulness and also be honest
about your feelings, especially when things feel pretty awful.
The hardest thing of all is to
listen for God against our expectations. We all have expectations of who God is
and how the universe should work, and when God’s answer to our prayers runs counter
to our expectations, it is incredibly difficult to live in that space. You have
expectations and faith—choose one.
In today’s scripture reading, Jesus
addresses some of these challenges. He begins by chastising those who heap up
long prayers. I’ve been in settings like this—where it starts out as prayer and
soon turns into a hostage situation. God is not impressed by how big our words
are. God doesn’t care about you showing off. Instead, prayer belongs in secret,
which is tough, because deep down we want credit. More than that, we want people
to know that we are devout. The world out there will always claim you are not
devout enough; you are not Christian enough; but your job is not to please
others but to please God. Part of the hard work of prayer is ignoring what
other people think.
Related to this is one of my great
pet peeves. So, if you’re taking notes, this is one thing I cannot stand—when somebody,
almost always on the internet but increasingly often in real-life, doesn’t
believe you, and they say “pictures or it didn’t happen.” If you need pics to
believe anybody did everything, then maybe you should focus more on your own
experiences in the world, because it sounds like you are doubtful that this amazing
world, where God is imminently available in prayer, contains anything exciting.
The truth is you don’t need to take pictures to prove anything to anybody. The
life of prayer defies documentation. You won’t be able to explain it, because this
is between you and God.
We have a much too narrow view of
prayer on the whole. Prayer is speaking aloud in church, and kneeling at
bedtime, and saying grace before a meal, but prayer is also meditation; it is
also reading scripture; it can also be watching a sunrise, or driving a
tractor, or riding a bike. The only thing required for prayer is attentiveness.
Just be aware of the world around you. Crouch and feel the ground beneath your
feet. Be attuned to the way you are interacting with the world. Then, bring
yourself to God in all of your questions, and concerns, and sorrows, and joys.
Prayer is so individualized that you
cannot rely on anybody to tell you how to do it right. This is why the prayers
we pray together are uniform and simple. Just “Our Father”—just a few petitions
of help for others. So much of prayer depends on our personalities and
proclivities. Prayer is not one-size-fits-all. If you like to sit in silence,
great. If you like to meet God on the road, constantly moving and shaking,
great. Prayer only requires being attentive.
I used to struggle with this. I felt
like I was expected to spend a good deal of time in a traditional prayer pose,
saying things in my head with my eyes closed. Then, one day, I learned about
the concept of pilgrimage. I learned about prayer on the road. I also learned
that silent prayer doesn’t necessarily look like I imagined it. It can be
simply closing my eyes, sipping coffee, and reflecting. When I learned about
pilgrimage I had a kind of epiphany—that because we meet God on the journey and
not just at the destination, prayer, too, is a journey. This changed the way I
prayed, and it refreshed me in a way I didn’t realize was possible before. More
than that, I learned that so many of the things I was already doing were, in
their own way, prayer-ful.
I expect many of you do these things—sewing
or quilting, or walking or jogging, or driving in silence, or drinking coffee
and looking out the window, or gardening, or making art or music. All of these
can be prayerful. All that is required for prayer is attentiveness and a space
for reflection. To that end, things that we know
to be prayers, like the Lord’s Prayer, can become something other than
prayer if they are just rote—if, in our hurry to get through them to something
else, we breeze through them without thinking about who it is we are praying
to.
The same is true of other spiritual
practices. Every once in a while I have somebody ask me about yoga or something
similar. Since yoga is a Hindu philosophy, I can understand the concerns. More
than that, if it doesn’t work for you for that reason, great, then don’t do it.
But there have been countless forms of Christian meditation dating back to the
earliest days of the church and some of them look a lot like yoga—based on
posture and silence and slow movement—so, personally, it seems to me that it
matters most what we put into it—asking ourselves for what reason we are doing
a thing. And I find this is true about just about everything—most things are
not “Christian” or not Christian; most things depend on what you put into them.
Again, I return to Jesus, who seemed
concerned only that this life of prayer is a thing centered on our relationship
with God. Judging other people based on how much you think they pray or not is
not going to be helpful. Showing off how much you pray is just plain missing
the point. Praying flowery prayers simply to show people how pious you are is worthless.
Prayer is hard because there is no one size fits all, but prayer is easy
because God meets us in a way that is profoundly personal. God doesn’t expect
you to pray like somebody else; God will meet you where you are.
The good news about prayer is that,
even though it is hard work, it is also a thing that nobody can take away from
you. It is not inherently divisive, or complicated, or political. It is simply
yours as a gift. It won’t necessarily give you what you want or change your
fate, but it will change you—sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. And, in
the end, you can’t do it wrong if you are genuinely seeking after God. That’s
the good news—you can’t mess this one up. Prayer is grace, and it’s free. It
won’t save you, but it might just remind you that that is already taken care
of.
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