March 8,1998

James A. Todhunter

" Prayer: 'Contraries Meet in One'"

How do you define prayer? Here are some examples: Prayer is listening for God's will in order to be obedient to it. Prayer is asking God for what you want. Prayer is standing in awe before the beauty of nature. Prayer is an internal psychological exercise which, whether there is a god of not, helps us to feel better. Prayer is a waste of time because people should take charge of their own lives and get on with it. Prayer is like groveling before a mighty monarch, a form of flattery before someone who has power over us. Prayer is self-delusion to protect us from the reality that life is hard, if not meaningless. Prayer is an argument with God. Prayer is attentiveness without an object to be attentive to.

What do you think? What I have recited are all definitions of prayer that have been invoked, at one time or another; many of them from the Bible itself, others from a skeptical world. From the words of Jesus alone, we seem to get contradictory messages. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." Jesus says even a bad father won't give his son a stone, if he is asked for bread. God is good, so go ahead and ask. But elsewhere in the same sermon Jesus says don't think that you will be heard for your many words because God knows what you want before you ask.

I find the Apostle Paul's honesty on the subject very reassuring. Paul simply says, "We do not know how to pray as we ought." Yet nearly every page of the Bible attests to the importance of prayer. We do not know how to pray, yet pray we must. Indeed Paul says elsewhere "Pray without ceasing."

When asked about prayer one time, the late Mother Theresa replied "Don't worry about it. Just say the Lord's Prayer once a day, and spend the rest of your time doing good." Perhaps there are many for whom such advice settles the issue. For others, perhaps not. But I believe there are no simple answers to the matter of prayer and that we should be cautious about any that are given. The proof is in what answers the question for you.

Let me share with you the ways I try to pray. First of all, God is for me a kind of continual preoccupation, sometimes up front in my thoughts, sometimes in the back of my mind. Often prayer is a kind of brooding and mulling over. It happens in the car, in the shower, reading a book, or lying awake at night. It can also be a kind of wonder and appreciation before things that amaze me; say in nature and especially in music. And I brood over the presence or absence of God in my relationships with other people. With Paul I see this as a kind of prayer without ceasing, a kind of backdrop to my daily life that is always there, sometimes unconscious, sometimes conscious. But it is always going on.

Secondly, I experience prayer as a time set aside. I don't pray on a schedule or at a particular time or place dally. For many people I know that is important and I respect that. Given my particular temperament, I have little trouble just dropping what I am doing if I feel pressed to pray. I can say that some of my most sincere and anguished moments of prayer have been at strange hours of the day and night in which I have knelt on my knees at my bed, or even sprawled on the floor. I can relate to what Jesus means when he says go into your room and close the door and pray in secret. Jesus himself knew the importance of having to get away from everyone in order to pray.

Both of these styles of prayer are, of course, deeply personal. When I am in worship, I am very conscious of participating in communal or corporate prayer. That is different for me, but no less important. In worship I use the pronoun "we", while in personal prayer, I use the pronoun "I". For me there is a powerful difference.

These are three styles of prayer for me. But let me go on to say that there is no simple answer to the question of how to pray, because at the heart of prayer is a profound tension. Prayer cannot be made easy (like in some "How To" book) because of this in-built tension which must be faced and understood.

The title for this sermon comes from one of the Holy Sonnets of the Elizabethan John Donne. In speaking of his spiritual life, he rarely dwells on peace and tranquillity, but instead on the conflicts, the turbulence, the unsettledness. He says here "Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one." In the spiritual life opposites exist in tension.

Roy Oswald, the Alban Institute Consultant, has written a book recently in which he says that the difference between a church like CCC and a fundamentalist church is that we understand the importance of living with polarities in our spiritual lives. And there are many. For example, is our God a god of compassion, forgiveness and tenderness? Or is God a god of Justice, accountability and anger? Well, our God is both - and these sets of attributes live in tension. If we swing too far too often to one side or the other, we seek to limit God. If God is simply a god of compassion and forgiveness and not justice, then no matter what we do, it really doesn't matter. But if we see God only as a god of Justice and retribution, then we experience God as simply angry. We sometimes (incorrectly I believe) see the God of wrath as the Old Testament God, and the God of compassion as the New Testament God, forgetting that Jesus himself could be just as wrathful as any Old Testament prophet. These two ideas of God are inseparable and must live in tension. And this applies to our personal lives. What is the relationship between loving and forgiving each other and demanding honesty and accountability? We need both.

In the matter of prayer, I believe we experience this tension as a polarity between two understandings of prayer. On one side it the understanding of prayer as petition; that is, prayer as the honest, heartfelt, urgent and passionate asking of God for what you want. "Ask, knock, seek," says Jesus. You must do this. Blind Bartimeaus by the side of the road, asks, indeed, demands that his needs be taken seriously. Ask for what you want. I know that it is often said, be careful what you ask for, because you may get it. But Jesus deals with this eloquently when he says that whatever you ask for, count on God to respond with what you really need. But you have to ask, and as you ask, believe that God will give you what truly nourishes. That's one side of the equation of prayer - the asking, the petition.

On the other side of this polarity is the understanding of prayer as listening to God. It is listening in order to learn what God's will is for us. While asking is, of course, assertive, this kind of prayer is receptive, a tuning in to God. Here the real issue is discernment. How do we truly hear what God is saying? Here the spiritual disciplines of meditation, biblical reflection, imaging, and so forth are critical. It is only in recent times that Christians have come to reclaim a whole wonderful tradition of Christian spiritual discipline going back many centuries.

So we have this polarity of prayer: on the one hand, prayer that asks for what we want; and on the other hand, prayer that listens for what God wants What is it like to live with this tension and take it seriously? At one level it means that prayer is genuinely seen as a conversation with God, a learning to speak up and to listen. How easy is that? Look at our own personal and intimate relationships. On simple, day to day matters, conversation may be easy and relaxed. That is at one level. But when the conversation gets serious about what you or that other person is feeling - say about not getting their needs met, or feeling unappreciated or abused, or hurt or misunderstood, then what? Then it gets tough. Communication with a loved one can be the hardest and most painful thing in the world.

Well, it is the same way with God. Our relationship with God, it has been said, is like a lovers' quarrel. As blasphemous as it may sound, the biblical image of prayer is of two equals thrashing things out. Now, I know that God is God and we are not equal to God. But the fact is that God wants our love and appreciation, even commands it - but God cannot make us love him. We have the power to chose whether we will or we won't. In giving us free will, God has made us equals. Therefore, we fight it out. And honest anger is very much a part of this. Facing our anger is as important in our relationship with God as it is in our relationships with those closest to us. This wrestling match between Jacob and the river spirit (maybe an angel, maybe God) is for me the perfect metaphor for true intense prayer.

For me one of the most moving examples of the tension that is built into the heart of prayer, the pain of living with the polarity long enough to come to the right answer, is Jesus in the garden. Here is a struggle that has moved deeper than anger. Jesus has gone to Gethsemane to pray, walking up beyond the disciples in order to be alone. He must choose his course. It would have been very easy to walk away from it all. Mark's version of Jesus' prayer is most poignant to me. "Abbe, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt." The desire of Jesus and the will of God meet. I find Jesus' appeal to his daddy, his Abba, heartbreaking. And how could God's heart not be breaking?

We hear only one side of the struggle, the words of Jesus. What did God say and how did Jesus perceive it? A voice from heaven? A thunder clap? A still, small voice? How God speaks to any of us is ultimately a mystery. But it seems to me that here, the conversation has been internalized. Paul says we do not know how to pray as we ought, but then says "the Spirit intercedes for us," enters us, "with sighs too deep for words." Both sides are within Jesus. We have all experienced the inner tension any hard decision presents us with; the anguish of choosing between duty and personal comfort or survival, between what I want and the greater good, the easy way and the hard way; all these are internal debates, inward struggles. On the surface Jesus' choice would appear to be between the option of saving his life and disobeying God, and obeying God and losing his life. That is what it seemed. Somehow the answer came to Jesus. For he says "It is enough; the hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners."

But was God's answer to Jesus' prayer, "Obey me and die" or was it something else? I believe God's answer was "In letting go of your life, you will gain your life. Trust me." God's answer to Jesus' prayer lifted the struggle out of the either/or of agonizing choice, into a higher life-giving resolution. And Jesus' pain in the Garden, Just as his suffering in the wilderness of temptation three years before, and his agony on the cross a few hours hence, this pain was the crucible which made clear the reality that God can be trusted. That pain of prayer opened the door to eternal life. Amen.

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