Texts: Ephesians 3: 14-21
Different Ways to Pray, Part II: Strengthening Your Core
Several weeks ago now, I shared with you an experience I had this summer, traveling into a mountain hollow in Kentucky to hear a distinctive form of singing found in the Old Regular Baptist churches of that region. I found myself transfixed by the sound, but also by the way of being that it represented. In that tradition, singing is to be tuned up in the Spirit, which is to say, to be connected to God through a form of prayer. The beauty and mystery of that experience got me thinking about the myriad ways that people pray in the world. It got me thinking about the ways that you and I might pray, if we do pray. And more generally, it got me thinking about what it is that we’re doing when we pray. I’d like to keep on pursuing those questions throughout the autumn season, because I’ve come to believe that prayer, the quest to be attuned to the divine, to the sacred, to God, is one of the most fundamental pieces of our humanity. It is mysterious, and sometimes baffling. It’s beautiful, and it’s often marred by abuse. It’s powerful, and yet stunningly ineffectual by most common measures.
To get us into the topic, I’d like to return to a quote I shared last week from Paul Tillich, having to do with grace. Tillich suggests that separation, alienation, and estrangement are the core features of human existence that we struggle against, a reality that the Bible designates “sin.” There is, however, a countervailing power within the world that the Bible designates as “grace.” Here’s Tillich’s quote once again:
Grace is the reunion of life with life…Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when despair destroys all joy and courage. We (then) experience the grace which is able to overcome the tragic separation of the sexes, of the generations, of the nations, of the races, and even the utter strangeness between man and nature. Sometimes grace appears in all these separations to reunite us with those to whom we belong. For life belongs to life. [1]
As often as not, grace simply happens. It’s anarchic, without why, blowing wherever and whenever it will, like the breeze, like the wind, which is how Jesus himself describes the life of the Spirit. And yet here and there and now and then, it does happen. And there are things we can do to facilitate the emergence of grace, to initiate or prepare for the reunion of life with life, to overcome the separations and alienations that plague us. Prayer is one such practice that drives toward reunification.
There are, of course, as many ways of praying as there are human beings. In the coming weeks, we’ll touch on several different aspects of prayer. Today I’d like to concentrate on one such form of reunification, one such practice of the presence of grace. Throughout the ages, it’s been called intercessory prayer, which is to intercede on behalf of another, to express a desire before God for the well being of another. It’s one of the most common forms of prayer that I know, transcending religions, transcending cultures, existing in secular forms as well. We do it for our kids. We do it for family members. We do it for one another. In the Bible, we’re instructed to do it for those we dislike or disdain. Sometimes it takes the form of a particular request, but most often, it amounts to a simple refrain: be with, be with, be with.
I remember a moment of intercessory prayer that occurred some years ago when I was working as a hospital chaplain. It was my very first day on the job, and I was shadowing a truly gifted chaplain named JoClare, as she made her rounds. At the close of the day, we entered the room of a man facing surgery the following day. The conversation was brief, but long enough to learn that though the man identified as Jewish, he didn’t think much of religion, or its practices. When JoClare asked if he wanted a prayer anyway, he shrugged and said, “What the hell.” It was a short prayer, a simple prayer, and I don’t remember the words. But when I opened my eyes after the “Amen” there were tears in the man’s eyes, and he couldn’t speak, except to say, “Thank you, thank you.”
It’s a moment that I saw repeated again and again, one that I still witness from time to time when I visit the hospital. But that moment reveals something important about the act of intercessory prayer. It’s a mysterious and powerful event, but its mystery and power do not reside in the ability to manipulate external events or to change the future. We’re not magicians when we intercede for another – we can’t ward off disease with our words. We can’t alter weather patterns or alter the course of biology with the force of our thoughts. We’re not wizards casting spells of protection, uttering formulas to ward off undesirable events. The man still went to surgery the next day. So far as I know, the surgery went just fine – as well as it would have gone with or without that prayer the night before. He still had to undergo recovery, and I’m sure the intervening years have brought new struggles as his body has aged, struggles every one of us is forced to undergo. The prayer I witnessed that afternoon couldn’t change any of that.
Instead, it was something more powerful and mysterious by far that took place. The mystery, I believe, is located in the tears. Because the very act of addressing something beyond us, or within us, or between us, or wherever it is that God resides, worked to open up something deep and real within. It happens to the true believers among us, but it also happens with some frequency to those who are estranged from religion, to those who are skeptical of the power of prayer, to those who don’t quite believe in God. Hands are clasped. Heads are bowed. Words are spoken on behalf of another. And the tears flow. And there is the mystery. Where did the tears come from? What do they mean? Have you ever felt something like that?
I know I have. Not often, and not every day, but I have. When I was ordained as a minister, friends and family and other ministers were invited to place their hands on my shoulders and on my head at the end of the service, much the way we do with our confirmands. Somebody said something or other, but what I remember was the sheer grace of the moment, that all those people were gathered for me, were, in a literal and figurative way, extending their being toward me in an act of generosity and care. And, not unlike that man in the hospital, it moved me to tears.
What’s going on in a moment like that? The best way to answer that is to turn to the Bible. There are examples of intercessory prayer all over the Bible, but one of the most beautiful is offered by the Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians. Listen to Paul’s words to his readers once again: “I pray that, he, Christ, may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” Paul’s words contain two important insights about intercessory prayer, but really about all forms of prayer. The first is contained in the words “strengthened in your inner being.” It seems a trite thing to say, especially in church, but I probably don’t say it often enough. We probably need to affirm it again and again in a success driven and accumulation minded society such as ours. You have an inner being. You have an inner life, one that is related to such external parts of yourself like your work, or your family, or your interests, or your history, but is still somehow independent of those things. You have a core inside of you that works something like a muscle, one that can be strengthened if you attend to it often, or that can atrophy if it suffers from misuse. You have an inner being that is not the same as your outer being, which means that others can’t always see it or notice it. It also means that you can’t always see it either. But it’s still there. Sometimes we need the help of another to realize that it’s there, and to help us find that inner being. That’s the work of intercessory prayer.
Eight years ago, the artist Marina Abramovic conducted a public art performance installation at MoMa, entitled “The Artist is Present.” For three months, eight hours a day, six days a week, she sat silently at a table in one of the museum’s galleries. And she invited anyone who wished to come and sit across the table from her. The stipulation was that you had to meet Abramovic’s gaze, without speaking any words. You could take as much or as little time as you wished. You simply had to meet her gaze, without looking away. Before long, lines formed that lasted all day, every day. And the strangest things began to happen. As people sat silently and wordlessly with Abramovic, many began weeping, sometimes uncontrollably. Some people claimed it was the most intimate moment they had ever experienced. Some people said that they felt unmoored by the experience, that it destabilized them somehow. Some people said they had never felt love before, but that must be what it felt like. Some people returned again and again to be met by Marina Abramovic’s gaze.
It was, I believe, a form of intercessory prayer that Abramovic was conducting. She was exposing, and honoring, the inner being that resides within each of us. With her wordless gaze, she was cutting through the external layers that we surf upon, landing upon an essential core that we each of us carry, that we each of us are. She exposed how hungry many people are for that kind of contact. We crave it with some level of our being, and yet we so often need help to get there. Intercessory prayer does that. It works by extending our being toward the being of another, or having another extend themselves toward us. It’s a way of acknowledging not only the need of another, but the personhood of another, affirming that other’s existence through the ministration of attention. It doesn’t change external events, not really. But it does somehow strengthen one’s inner core, calling it into a fuller form of existence. And that strengthening, in turn, does often have the effect of changing external events – providing courage or resolve that we might otherwise lack, lending us the confidence to continue amidst struggle and adversity. It suggests that we are more than the sum of our actions and reactions, but are souls upon whom God has conferred status. Through the act of intercession, the power of grace is conferred, where estrangement is overcome, where alienation is undone, where what has been separated is reunited in love. That’s what happened in Abramovic’s installation. But it’s also what happened in that hospital room, and on that Sunday evening when a community extended their hands and their hearts toward me. Separation and alienation were suspended, and grace intervened. When we pray for one another, separation is overcome. And that changes everything.
The second truth follows from the first, and is contained at the very end of Paul’s statement. You have an inner being, yes, but it is “rooted and grounded in love.” It’s the truest thing that can be said of each of us. Despite the ravages of our alienation from ourselves, from others, and from God, we are rooted and grounded in love. Despite the worst things we’ve done, despite the estrangement that we all participate in and perpetuate in larger and smaller ways, despite the ways we’re all entangled in the policies and politics of dehumanization, we are rooted and grounded in love, and we’re called to participate in the world in such a way. To put it in the words of the great civil rights activist Will Campbell, “We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway.” To pray for one another, to intercede for one another, is to call ourselves toward that form of love. It is to remind ourselves that nothing in heaven or on earth, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, can separate us from the love of God. We are already rooted and grounded in that love, if only we could acknowledge it, if only we could let it move through and among us. It is the power of reunification, the power of grace, the power of life returning to life. That’s what we testify to when we pray for one another.
As we conclude our time together this morning, I’d like for us to try praying in exactly the way I’ve been describing, using a form of intercession to affirm the being and humanity of several people in our midst. Malik and Zahida and Roniya have been with us now for nearly six months, and they’ve endured what few of us could ever imagine enduring. Throughout all of it, they’ve exhibited remarkable courage, and even though they’ve been subjected to a ruthless form of dehumanization, they’ve never lost their humanity, and they’ve never lost their humor either. But the days are growing longer and longer. And the future remains uncertain. We continue to work, trusting that justice will prevail. Even so, now is the time to pray. It’s not that we haven’t been doing that already. And it’s not that Malik and Zahida don’t pray every day – they do. It’s just that I believe prayer matters – the prayers of this community, the prayers of each and every one of us. I believe it has the power to grant confidence and courage. I believe it has the power to affirm the deepest parts of who we are, to bless us for the long journey. I believe it has the power to uphold and to heal, to protect and to keep, the power to become rooted and grounded in love.
As Malik, Zahida, and Roniya come forward, I’d like to invite everyone who wishes to come forward and to place their hands upon the shoulders of Malik, Zahida and Roniya, or upon the shoulders of those standing close to you. If you can’t come forward, place your hands upon the shoulders of those in front of you, or if you’re up in the balcony, extend your hands toward them. We’ll pray for the three of them, but remember that this prayer is for you as well, for you’re being touched, and the power and affirmation of prayer are coursing through you as well. We’re praying for Malik and Zahida and Roniya in the particularity of their situation, but know that in so doing, your being is also affirmed, your worth is also established, your life is also being rooted and grounded in love.
Let’s pray: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of Jesus, God of the prophet Mohammed and all of the prophets who preceded him: we know that nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us from your love. We know that living within your love and care as we do, neither death, nor life, neither angels, nor rulers, neither things present, nor things to come, neither powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from you. May it be so for Malik and Zahida and Roniya. We thank you for the ways you have upheld and strengthened this family during these past months. But we ask that you would continue to strengthen and encourage them. May they know that they are your beloved children. May they know how precious they are. May they trust that come what may, you are sustaining and upholding them. Amen.
[1]Tillich, Paul, “You Are Accepted” from the collection of sermons The Shaking of the Foundations(Wipf and Stock Publisher, 2016). A pdf of the sermon can be found online at:
http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/383693/9154847/1288214160857/You+Are+Accepted.pdf?tok
This quote taken from Paragraphs 12 and 13.
