What happens when you pray? When you cry out to God? When you listen in silence? What happens? What does it feel like in your heart? What does it feel like in your body when you pray?
And when you pray, how do you know that God is there? That God is listening? That God hears the cries of your heart, whether you express your prayers silently or out loud with deep reverence, with holy rage,
sharing unfathomable sorrow, boundless joy and everything in between
How do we know God is there? that God is listening? that God hears the cries of our hearts? That God will respond?
I remember a number of years ago hearing the story of Dan Rather’s interview with Mother Teresa. If I remember correctly, the famed CBS news anchor asks Saint Teresa of Calcutta
“When you pray, what do you say to God?”
Mother Teresa answers, “I don’t say anything…I listen.”
Caught off guard, somewhat befuddled, somewhat confused, the not-so-unflappable news man takes his time and asks, “So then, what does God say to you?”
Mother Teresa responds, saying “God doesn’t say anything. He listens.”
Another long pause.
And then Mother Teresa continues: “if you can’t understand that, I cannot explain it to you.”
As I found myself praying through the lectionary this week, I found myself reflecting on what a gift it is to pray. What a gift it is to listen. What a gift it is to sit silently in adoration and to know that God offers that adoration back. What a gift it is to speak our cares to the Creator of the universe, to believe and to know that we are beloved, and that as God’s beloved we are heard.
I found myself reflecting on prayer as a gift. A baffling, befuddling gift that I don’t always understand. Because sometimes—and I don’t know how it is for you—sometimes it seems as though God is silent. That God does not respond, at least in ways that make sense to me. Sometimes I think I understand prayer. Sometimes I don’t.
And as I prayed through the lectionary this week, I wondered if maybe, just maybe, prayer isn’t something we can ever fully understand. It’s not as though we can pull the experience of prayer apart and say “this is what it is, if we strip it down to its essential parts.” Prayer is about experience. And relationship. It’s no dry formula, but the language of love.
And like the language of love, prayer is something we participate in, something we grow into, a language that grows and evolves over time. We learn much about prayer by praying. Perhaps taking on words and formulas we’ve experienced elsewhere, in the liturgies we pray, the thanksgiving we offer before meals, the way we start and end our days in thanksgiving. And also, those prayers we mutter throughout the day. At various points, our relationship with God, and our conversation takes on various characteristics.
Adoration, which Mama T is talking about, is simply turning ourselves in devotion to God
Praise is when we glorify God, expressing admiration for who God is.
Thanksgiving is perhaps more specific, offering gratitude for God’s goodness
In Penitence, we are honest with God about our shortcomings, and our desire to heal that relationship.
In oblation, we offer our selves—indeed our whole lives—to God and to God’s dream for the world
In intercession, we come before God on behalf of others
And in petition, we bring forward our own needs and desires, asking for what might best serve us and God’s creation.
Sometimes we pray in all of these ways. Sometimes we rely on one or two. In her book, Travelling Mercies, author Anne Lamott has said: “Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Hardly a day goes by that I don’t mutter one of those.
All too often I resonate with the news anchor’s confusion. What do you say to God? What does God say to you? How do you measure the efficacy of prayer? How can I tell a broad audience what exactly prayer is? What are its benefits? How do I sell the power of prayer to the masses? What’s the value proposition here?
And here’s my problem, I think. Here’s my problem.
I am a doer. A fixer. A get-on-with-it-let’s-move kind of person.
I go through seasons where I’m better at listening than others,
Yet all too often, I want God to show up, to speak, to answer,
On my timelines. Which are very short, actually.
Very short. Like, once I’m done telling you what’s up, God,
I want to hear what you’ve got to say for yourself.
Which may mean that I’m more like the psalmist than I think.
When the Psalmist and the Prophets cry out “how long O Lord,”
I’m right there with them. Hurry it on up, already.
I’m the kind of person who all too often focuses
On efficiency and value, the kinds of things that
Our world values, but that can often be out of step
With God’s values. God’s sense of time.
I can get impatient. And I can forget
That it takes time to build relationship—
Whether with God or with anyone else.
That God is not a cosmic vending machine,
That God is a subject, not an object, that we are persons in relationship
Not convenient tools for fulfilling the other’s desires.
It takes time to listen, to get to know one another
To get to that point in a relationship where we’re
Able just to sit in the comfort of shared silence,
If just for a moment, to glory in shared company
In shared pleasure of a time together,
Coffee with Christ
Scotch with the Saviour
If all you’ve got is water, don’t worry, pretty soon you’ll be drinking fine wine.
Prayers of adoration, like what Mother Teresa seems to be describing offer time
To glory in shared space, shared time, shared experience
Of the world and one another, the kind of relationships
We might have with an old friend—where in the unforced rhythms of grace
We don’t need to say anything, and still somehow know what the other is thinking.
I’m the kind of person who all too often focuses on outcomes.
But in this time and place
(and this I believe, is the trouble for an anxious church)
in this day and age we are so wrapped up in anxious busy-ness
In doing, doing, doing so that we can stay afloat
That we don’t create intentional spaces for prayer in our lives.
We struggle to create intentional spaces for silence in our worship.
We rush through the liturgy—even the prayers of the people—as though the goal
Is to get to the end, and not to enter into deep communion
With God and with each other, to lift high those people and situations
Which concern us most, those situations which grieve us,
And those people who we want to remember to God in prayer.
In the latest iteration of the prayers of the people that we’ve been using
Here at St. David’s, the intercessor is asked to leave 20-30 seconds after each bidding
To allow people to think, to reflect, to listen for God, and to offer their own prayers
Into the silence.
And sometimes we do that. And sometimes we don’t.
And sometimes we come to church prepared to pray
To name the relationships and situations on our heart
And sometimes we don’t.
Prayer, like any relationship, takes work.
Even when we don’t have the energy, we come anyway,
because sometimes we need others
Sometimes we need the liturgy to do the praying for us.
But I’m convinced that silence is crucial. Even if I’m not always good at it.
Sometimes I need those notes in the margins that remind me
Hey. Slow down. We’re on God’s time here.
It’s time to listen. It’s time to offer heartfelt prayer.
It’s time to offer ourselves, our cares and concerns, our joys and sorrow
To the Creator who calls us beloved,
And who hears, who listens, and who will respond.
As a culture, we struggle to keep silence.
We seek to fill the gaps
With something—anything—so that we are not left alone for any length of time
That would lead us to a lack of comfort.
Our modern world is built on noise,
but God speaks in whispered tones.
No wonder I struggle to listen.
No wonder we struggle to hear.
This inability to listen is detrimental for us as humans.
It’s detrimental for us humans, and especially for the church.
Especially in these days when we lament the shifting landscape,
And that people we once knew are no longer coming to church
We feel as though we have to run harder and faster, creating something
shiny and attractive. Create something for the children who are no longer here,
And whose parents aren’t bringing them.
But what if all of this is a chasing after the wind?
What if this is all about us trying to rush ahead of God
Like children in the grocery store, who end up getting turned around, lost?
What if, instead, we are called to wait on the Lord?
What if, instead, we are called into dialogue with silence?
What if, instead, we are called to be a people who expect—against the odds—
That God will—that God does—show up,
But that we will have to be persistent
Persistent in our faithfulness
Persistent in our prayer
As individuals and as a community we will need to cultivate practices of silence and listening
So that when God speaks, we are listening, able to hear. [SILENCE]
So that we’re able to hear God in the silence, but also the cries of the suffering.
So that we might be persistent in our petitions
Against the injustices of a world and a church that leaves too many behind.
Today’s gospel shows us that the world is unjust,
And in Luke’s account, we’re invited into Jesus’ parable
About the need to pray always and not to lose heart.
Even when it seems like nobody is listening.
Even when the answers don’t come readily
Even when the answers come back, and we think they really suck.
In today’s gospel, Jesus tells of a widow—a marginalized, penniless widow—
Who comes day after day to the judge, demanding what?
Demanding justice. Demanding that the judge do right by her.
In a situation that is unjust. Unfair. In a situation where she is
Disadvantaged. In a situation where she has less than enough.
A widow who has absolutely no standing in society,
And we can think of many today who our society pushes to the margins
Who might be people in our community who play the part of the widow today?
- Homeless / Poverty / Sex Workers / Those of marginalized gender identities
- People from other cultures / indigenous people / disable folks
- etc.
People who, like the widow, come back day in and day out to
Beg for justice. To beg for mercy. To beg—against the odds—to be seen
And treated with respect. As beloved children of God.
And this widow comes to the judge
seemingly without any corroborating witnesses
But who knows the truth. Who knows what justice looks like.
With no formal education, but a sense of what is good and right.
And so she comes back. Day after day. Week after week.
Until finally the unjust judge relents.
Are we saying that God is like this unjust judge? No. Absolutely not.
This is another example of Jesus setting up a story to say
“If this terrible person eventually gets it, just think about how the
God who created you in and for love will respond.”
God is a God of justice. God is a God of compassion.
God created you, created each of us in and for love.
And we come together to worship and pray to a God
Who hears our prayers,
A God who—in Jesus—shows us how to pray
For daily provision,
For justice, peace, and freedom
For strength, and for forgiveness
For hope in hard times
And a love that sustains us all
When we pray, we admit that we depend
Not on our own understanding, but on
God-breathed wisdom, the whisper of holiness
The whisper of truth.
That even as we seek to make sense of it all,
Our prayer is an act of vulnerable trust,
Rooted in our collective memory that
God has provided for us in the past.
That God is providing for us in the present.
And that—even though we can’t always explain it—
God will provide all that we need
to be sustained in faith, to be sustained in life,
To be sustained in the work of this community
To bear witness to the abiding presence
Of God’s love for all of Creation
God will provide all that we need
to be sustained in our work—the pursuit of
Justice—that all might have enough
In this world, and the life that is to come.
So let us pray, my friends. Let us pray fervently and with expectation
That God hears our prayers. All of them. And may we embrace the silence
That we may listen, hear, adore the God who created all things,
That we might faithfully respond to God
And neighbour this day, and in the days ahead.
