Margie Quinn
I have been thinking about prayer a lot this week. I’ve been thinking about it as I’ve learned of the five men living on death row who were executed this week. I have been thinking about the continued genocide in Palestine, the billions of dollars our country so sinfully doles out to perpetuate this violence. I have thought about the flooded cities in our region that will start the years-long work of rebuilding houses and restaurants and the people living outside in those places…where did they go? I’ve thought about Judi Sachs, who is resting at home after experiencing a stroke last week. And of course, I’ve thought about Thomas’s news that he will retire in May. I’ve done a lot of thinking and very little praying.
In my 33 years spinning around the sun, I have had a complicated relationship with prayer. At times, it has been fervent and ceaseless, a long string of “Help mes” threaded throughout my day, a big list of “Thank yous” as I close my eyes before bed. And at other times, it has been absent, dry. I have told people that I would pray for them and have forgotten. I have been asked to pray publicly and sort of bumbled my way through something possibly reverent. I have even denied the power of prayer.
In those moments, I often turn to those who I think of as saints in my life to offer their wisdom on how to pray. Womanist theologian Renita Weems once wrote that she “prays by the end of her pen.” Queer poet Padraig O’Tuama says that a good place to start with prayer is to say, “Here I am. I am here.” A friend Ruth Fletcher says that prayer is “being exactly who you are before God.” The author Wendell Berry writes that “Prayer is like lying away at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart…It is like standing for a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door.” The poet Mary Oliver says that prayer doesn’t have to be fancy; it’s a doorway into thanks and a silence into which another voice may speak.” Anne Lamott says that the only three words you need to pray are “Help,” “Thanks,” and “Wow.”
But the first prayer I learned wasn’t a personal one, it was in community. It was a song, sung around the dinner table every night as a kid. “Oh the Lord is good to me…;” you know the one. The next prayer I learned was the Lord’s Prayer, which is now so deeply ingrained in me as I’m sure it is in you that I hardly need to think what word comes next when I recite it on Sundays. I once heard of a woman with dementia who still recited the Lord’s prayer, even when she lost her memory. Or the prayer I said every morning in seminary when I lived in intentional community: Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. And then, (and I love this part), we have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. Or the prayer many of us are familiar with at the end of 12 step meetings: “God, grant me the security to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Part of the reason I believe in prayer is not necessarily that it changes what will happen but that it changes me.
And so I, like James, believe in the power of prayer. And like James, I believe that prayer is important on a personal level, but that it is crucial on a communal level.
And I believe that James’s words come at the perfect time.
“Are any among you suffering?” he asks. Pray.
“Are any cheerful?” Sing songs of praise.
Here we have it. The beginning of a recipe in the midst of so much unknown. The response to life’s grief and joy. Pray. James addresses not just one person but an entire community, offering them an anecdote to their spiritual anemia. Prayer, for James, is not a suggestion but an obligation.
“His emphasis on prayer,” Mark Douglas notes, “ought to be a sign for us that at least parts of the church have long understood prayer to be both significant and powerful and that prayer uniquely binds human and divine activity together, such that it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins.”
Many of you may have a private prayer life. You may pray in your car, in your head before bed, on a walk around your block, while you journal, when you paint, or through song. And of course, Jesus tells us in Matthew that private prayer life is important: he says go into your room and shut the door and pray. But here, in this context, James offers us the other, crucial aspect of prayer.
This morning, I implore you and me to consider the power of communal prayer.
I want you to consider our own communal prayer life as a church. We do not pray by accident during worship. We offer an opening prayer, we pray for people in the middle of the service, pray for the offering after we collect it, pray the Lord’s Prayer, and pray before we share communion together. We lift our voices in praise with every hymn, and are sent out with a prayer of sorts as we proclaim once again that Caesar is not Lord, Fear is not Lord, but Jesus Christ is Lord. In the span of one hour, we begin to see that prayer is sprinkled throughout every spiritual practice, connecting one ritual to another. It is as if we are being reminded that before a thing, after a thing, and during a thing, we can always turn to God in prayer.
Look at what James asks next:
Are any among you sick? “Call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise them up.”
Did you know that the Elders of our church, Larry, Roger, Linda, Erica, Kathy, Jim, Julia, Rachel, Ed, and Pat, are each assigned your names to pray over? Did you know that after worship, they take communion to those who can’t be here in person? They pray over us prayers of faith, perhaps not saving the sick from maladies and ailments, but saving the sick from loneliness, despair, or isolation.
In this way, “Prayer for James,” Mark Douglas continues, “is not a private matter, it helps to shape a particular kind of community in which people are committed to each other. The sick call the elders to pray over them. Sinners confess to one another. The cheerful sing. The community that prayers together, stays together.”
The community that prays together, stays together.
James continues, “Therefore confess your sins to one other, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” Yeah, I believe in that, too. I believe in sharing the ways in which we have come up short, chosen greed over generosity, chosen selfishness over selflessness, and not loved God or others with our whole hearts. I believe that we don’t need to look up at the ceiling to do that but can look at another member of our community, whose confession will follow in due course. And I believe, like James, that deep healing can come from that, that praying together can indeed be powerful and effective.
Jesus did not teach one Disciple the Lord’s prayer when they asked, he taught it to all of them. He didn’t say, “My Parent, who art in heaven…give me this daily bread.” No, he said, “Our Parent…give us our daily bread…forgive us our sins”. We chant this together, Sunday after Sunday, as a way of remembering that we do not do faith alone, that we do not do life alone.
“It is a practice,” Kathy Dawson writes, “in which all ages can participate. Prayer changes relationships and lives. It should be our first practice as a congregation, if we are truly to walk in James’s concept of godly wisdom.”
We are in a season of change and transition. The hot, thick air is cooling off, loosening its oppressive grip on us, as fall comes around. Our country will see change, in one way or another, in a little over a month. And our beloved minister, Thomas, has announced that the time has come for him to seek mountains, water and trees.
What do we do in such seasons? We pray for those suffering and those who are cheerful. We call for the elders, we confess our crap to one another and we bring the wanderers back home.
James teaches us that it is not just for ourselves that we pray. We pray for others. We can do this on our own, but the power of prayer is seen most clearly in the praying community of the church, as these concerns are voiced aloud in worship and other gatherings of God’s people. Before church meetings, after church meetings, throughout worship, by a hospital bed, around a dinner table, with a friend, we can always offer prayer.
James has given us our homework for the year. Let’s try, however timidly, to ask, “Can I pray with you?” or even scarier, “Will you pray for me?”