Speaking with God.
Proper 24
Job 38:34-41; Psalm 104:1-9; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45.
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
John Wall

In the name of God: Our Creator, Our Redeemer, Our Comforter. Amen.

I sometimes tease our regular clergy about leaving me with the dark, the obscure, the difficult and paradoxical lessons. But I can't complain today, for the lessons for today are a rich collection of texts. They are rich in proclamation, in language and imagery, in ideas, in hope for us, in guidance to us, that we may, in the words of the Collect for today, benefit from Christ's works of mercy and therefore “persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name.”

We have today God's encounter with Job, who when we get to today's Old Testament Lesson has for hundreds of verses been demanding that God account for all the terrible things that have happened to Job. Today's Lesson is God's answer to Job, and it's not exactly the answer Job hoped for. But it's one of the great proclamations of God's power and majesty and splendor. God asks Job where Job was when God made the world – when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy.

We also have today the Psalmist's celebration of God's wonder –

O LORD my God, how excellent is your greatness!
you are clothed with majesty and splendor.
You wrap yourself with light as with a cloak *
and spread out the heavens like a curtain.

We also have the writer of Hebrews' proclamation that Jesus is made by God a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek and therefore is our eternal intercessor before God, the source of our salvation, of our hope in this difficult and fallen world.

We also have Mark's account of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples, especially James and John, about what their relationship with Jesus means for them. James and John ask of Jesus that he do for them whatever they ask of him, specifically that they may sit at his right and left hands when he comes into his glory. And Jesus says to them, in effect, you are operating according to the value system of this world, which is about who is in and who is out, who is powerful and who is weak, and they want to be winners, they want to be seated among the rulers, the powerful, the elite. And Jesus says to them that the kingdom whose coming he proclaims operates differently, that it is not about winning and losing, not about being powerful or weak, but about serving others, for the Son of Man, he says, comes among us not to be served, but to serve, even as he is the host of the meal we share together this day and every time we gather as God's people, one who prepares a table before us, even in the presence of our enemies, even in the valley of the Shadow of Death.

In thinking about this rich set of lessons, it occurs to me that they all are -- each in its own way -- about prayer, about speaking to and with God, about how we speak to and with God, about what it is appropriate to bring before God in our prayer. Speaking with God is important to our lives together as Christians, as the people God calls together in Christ's name. But I find that people tend to think of prayer in very restricted terms, as a very special language, as a form of speech that may seem strange, alien, difficult. They approach prayer as one might a mystical incantation or magic spell, that one has to get exactly right if one is to get the desired effect, or else things might go horribly wrong as they often do when Harry Potter and his friends try to learn magic at Hogwarts School.

Prayer can seem so tricky or complicated that I remember some of my friends at seminary taking comfort in the depiction of Jesus at prayer in Mark's Gospel, the one we are reading now Sunday by Sunday. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus rarely prays, and when he prays he usually has gotten himself in a jam and wants God to get him out.

Actually, prayer is any address to, or even about God. I find that people pray all the time, sometimes indeed the most unexpected people pray all the time. The American poet Billy Collins, who like me spends a lot of his time on college campuses, says he finds that college students, especially, seem to pray easily, frequently, gracefully. He made a poem about overhearing two young college women and one was praying in the midst of their conversation, and she said, and this is Billy Collins' poem:

When he found out, he was, like, Oh My God.
And I was, like, Oh My God.

That's it. That's a prayer, right, Oh My God. I have heard my students, in the hallways, and in my classes, especially just after I have reminded them an assignment is due, pray the same prayer -- Oh My God.
And prayer happens all around us, For God's Sake. I mean, Jee-zus.

I once heard of a man who was an avid golfer, and who played golf every Sunday morning. A friend asked him why he didn't come to church; he said he called on God often enough on the golf course – he didn't need to come to church.

Recently in the New York Times, the rabbi Marc Gellman is quoted in a long article on prayer to the effect that that there are 4 basic prayers.
Wow, Gimmie, Oops, and Thanks.

Wow – that's prayer of adoration, of wonder at God. That's the prayer the Psalmist is praying in the Psalm for today – “O Lord, how excellent is your greatness, how wonderful are your works.” That's a wow prayer.

Gimmie – that's intercessory prayer, that's asking for things from God, whether it be to pass a test, or to get good news from the biopsy, or to achieve world peace or to meet any or all of the Millennium Development Goals. Intercessory prayer can come in at least two forms – personal and general. Jesus in the Gospel seems to privilege prayer for others, but in the Lord's Prayer he invites us to pray for ourselves, that we might have our daily bread, that we might find forgiveness, that we not be brought to the test.
Usually we pray to be delivered from bad things, or to be given things we need, but it is just as appropriate to pray that God shield the joyous in their joy.

Oops – that's prayer of confession, of acknowledgement of our limits either in achievement or attempt – in the words of a prayer of confession from an older prayer book, we acknowledge that we have done those things we ought not to have done, and not done those things which we ought to have done.

Thanks – that's a prayer of thanksgiving. That's a prayer in appreciation for all the good things that God is doing for us. The whole service of worship we are involved in right now is an offering of EUCHARIST, a Greek word that means, “Thanksgiving,” in which we give thanks for God's creation of the world, for God's persistence in love for us when we turn astray, for God's saving acts in human history, and especially for his gift to us of Jesus, his Son, who as he says in today's Gospel, comes not to be served, but to serve.

That's a good list of prayers, but I would add a couple more.

There is also the prayer of Lament, the prayer Job engages in when God speaks to him in today's OT lesson, the prayer of calling on God to be God, of holding God accountable, of insisting that God answer for the conditions of the world and to fix the mess we find ourselves in. This is a form of prayer that one does not find much in our tradition, but it is all over the Psalms. A good example is Psalm 13, in which the Psalmist says that the world is a mess, and God needs to come fix it:

How long, O LORD? will you forget me for ever? *
how long will you hide your face from me?
How long shall I have perplexity in my mind,
and grief in my heart, day after day? *
how long shall my enemy triumph over me?
Look upon me and answer me, O LORD my God; *
give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death.

We don't pray this kind of prayer very often in our tradition, but such lamenting calls on God are everywhere in the Psalms and the Prophets, and it's what Job is all about. And God says it's what he calls us to, he says to Job's companions that they have not spoken of God the things that are right, as Job has. I think it's a good form or prayer to have around when things are looking especially bleak, when the biopsy comes back positive, or the job has ended, or there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

I would also emphasize the tradition of corporate prayer that is ours, the tradition of daily, regular Bible reading and prayers of praise and intercession in which we engage as the Church – the Benedictine tradition embodied in the BCP in the Offices of Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, of Noon Day Prayer and Compline. We may engage in this tradition in our daily prayer life, and it is a feature of life in some parishes, and in cathedrals, and in monastic communities. It is good to know that even when we do not pray as often and as faithfully as we might in our daily lives that the Church as a whole, corporately, is praying on our behalf.

And I would also remind you of those prayers that seem more and more appropriate the older I get, you know, the ones Anne Lamont calls the daily prayers of the older person – in the morning, “Whatever,” and in the evening, “Oh Well.”

Prayer is as common and as easy and as difficult as sitting quietly in God's presence, or reciting prayers from the BCP, or pouring out before God the deepest joys or concerns of our hearts. After all, if as we pray every week our God is a God to whom all hearts are open, all desires [are] known, and from whom no secrets are hid, there is nothing we can disclose to God which God does not know about already, so we might as well let it rip.

Prayer is the work to which God calls us as the people of God, the work of celebration of God, the work of holding up ourselves to God in all our brokenness and limitation, and in all the brokenness and limitations of our world, to the One who made us and who makes us whole. Prayer is the work of thanksgiving for all God's gifts. Prayer is also the work of developing and deepening our relationship with God, who calls us into friendship with Him, who knows us as only One to whom all hearts are open can know us, to be ourselves before Him.

Prayer in other words is central to this whole life we live as the People of God – this new life we are called to in Christ, a life in relationship with One who comes to serve us, who invites us to His table, who knows us as we are, in all our capabilities and our limitations, in all our capacity for selfishness, for putting ourselves first, for putting ourselves at the center of our universe, and still invites us to His table. But who also reminds us that in His kingdom, the first shall be last and the last first, that the one who truly follows Christ is the one who comes to serve in His image and in His stead, so that war might end, and hunger and ignorance, that peace might prevail, that creativity might flourish, that justice might roll down like the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream, that every one of God's people might be celebrated, might be treated justly and mercifully, and gracefully. And so we work, in the Name of Christ. And so we pray, in the Name of Christ. Amen.

©2009 John Wall