Power and Prayer

Scripture can be found here and here

If you’ve ever been in a meeting with me, you have probably seen me pull out this book. This is the Presbyterian Daily Prayerbook. It contains orders of prayer for Morning, Midday, Evening, and Night, for ordinary time, but also for all the special seasons of the church—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. You can use it for personal or group prayer. I’ve had a copy of this book—the previous version or this newly updated 2018 version—for the past 25 years or so, ever since I found my way into the embrace of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

 

Scripture—and especially the psalms—is the foundation of the prayerbook. If you use it daily, your immersion in the Bible significant. The book is also filled with beautiful stand-alone prayers for all kinds of times, places, and circumstances. Here’s one for nighttime:

 

Keep watch dear Lord,

with those who work,

or watch,

or weep this night,

and give your angels charge over those who sleep.

Tend the sick, Lord Christ,

give rest to the weary,

bless the dying,

soothe the suffering,

pity the afflicted,

shield the joyous,

and all for your love’s sake.

Amen.

 

Years ago, when I first opened an earlier version of this book, that prayer was a revelation. It was simple and powerful. It managed, in those few words, to describe the condition of every person on the planet. It’s a kind of undercover prayer for the whole world. I’m forever grateful that I found it.

 

Two years ago, I was visiting my daughter in Boston and I accidentally left behind a small bag containing the books I’d taken with me, including my prayer book. I anxiously called the hotel where I’d been staying to see whether anyone had found it. After about 36 hours and at least 6 calls, a manager spoke a kind but firm, “Ma’am, it’s gone.” I cried for a week.

 

There are probably a lot of reasons why I cried. One has to do with a photograph. I tuck things into my prayer book: pictures of people, those little cards you sometimes get at funerals, with the name of the deceased and a poem or a psalm, ticket stubs from movies and plays. There’s not much rhyme or reason to what I tuck in there, except for the obvious one: Every item is connected to a person I love. My lost prayerbook contained a photo-booth picture of my mom from her early twenties, and there is no other copy of it. So, when my prayer book was gone, that picture was gone.

 

But the other reason I cried was the book itself. Prayer is connected to your most intimate sense of self. Anything connected with prayer becomes an important part of your everyday life: it has been with you in joy and sorrow, in fear and hope. Yes, it was a book, and one I could replace, as you can see. It was still a painful loss.

 

Prayer is central to both our readings today. In the reading from Mark’s gospel, the disciples become jealous of someone who is offering healing prayers for those who have been possessed by demons. They seem to think there has been a breach of protocol—as if successful exorcism in Jesus’ name is a commodity, and one to which they ought to have sole and exclusive rights.

 

They have seriously misunderstood prayer, healing prayer in particular. Whoever isn’t against us is for us, Jesus tells them. Others praying and healing in Jesus’ name can only be for the good: they’re taking part in distributing God’s love letter to the world.

 

James speaks of several different kinds of prayer, with a special focus, again, on healing prayer. Are you suffering, he asks? You should pray. Are you joyful? Sing your prayers! Are you sick? Let the elders of your church pray for you, anoint you, lay hands on you.

 

James writes, “The prayer of faith will save the sick,” and then he explains what he means by that. “The Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”

 

It’s possible that James is talking about prayer that can heal illness, disease, possession.

 

But it seems at least as likely that he is talking about the powerful healing that can come from simple conversation, whether with God or with another person.

 

For many people, that is exactly what prayer is: conversation with God. (I have a theory that those who are most comfortable praying this way had role models in the home when they were growing up.)

 

And just as a conversation with your best friend would include listening as well as speaking, so would a conversation with God. Quieting the mind. Opening the heart. But don’t forget, God speaks at all hours of the day, and may well speak to us through the voice of another person, an unexpected phone call, the evening news, a passage of scripture, even a strong emotion.

 

We pray here every week for those who are sick, and inevitably we have to reckon with the question: does prayer work? Prayer absolutely works, in the sense that, the more we pray, the more we are allowing our hearts to be tuned to God: to God’s presence, God’s will, even God’s power for healing. But we also know that God isn’t a vending machine, popping out results that match our exact request. Prayer works, but not always in the way we anticipate. Prayer doesn’t change God, but it most certainly changes us. Prayer aligns us with God’s way of being in the world, which is love. That’s why my prayer-book is filled with mementos of the people I love: prayer is always about love, one way or the other. A wise person said, this week, “When I pray for people, I have an experience of my love for them, and God’s love for them.”  Pastor-poet Steve Garnaas-Holmes describes it this way:

 

God is not a fix-it man.
God is not a guy
who (sometimes) does what we ask
(though clearly not always).
God is love. Love is the only power God has.
Love doesn't fix things.
Love liberates, blesses, connects, accompanies.
Love sees, honors, and gives itself—gives the giver—
to the beloved.
But love doesn't solve problems, get jobs, end wars,
cure cancer, or rescue people from danger.

Praying isn't asking for stuff, even very good stuff.
It's paying attention to God.
We hold our hopes, fears and desires
in the light of God's love, so, yes, we say what we want.
But we listen more deeply to what we really want,
and what we want more than that.
And mostly we listen for what God wants—
what God is already doing,
here even in our unmet needs, our “unanswered” prayers.

Love is an energy like electricity, a force field like gravity.
When we give ourselves to God
we tune ourselves to love,
we harmonize with the oneness of all things
(we are one in the Spirit),
we add our love to God's.
We increase the power of love in the world.
That doesn't fix things. But it changes them.

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective
because it puts us in tune with love,
so miracles can happen, even if just in us.

To that, I say: Thanks be to God. Amen.