How We Pray

"God, you are strong to heal us. We ask that you relieve us of this pandemic and heal those who are sick or suffering. Help those who are hungry find food. Help those who have lost a job find new employment. Lord, we also see the tensions rise between races in our country and we grieve. Help us to get along with one another and love one another. Create peace where there is unrest. Give us love for each other and help us to get beyond our differences. Thank you for hearing our prayers which we pray in the name of our Lord, Jesus. Amen."

I think that's a fairly common prayer these days. I've seen a lot of calls to prayer lately. I feel certain most of you have lifted up similar requests to God during the pandemic and during the racial tensions of the past couple of weeks. So have I!

Good! We all need to be in prayer for one another and for ourselves as we face very difficult global issues today and tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. But may I suggest that this sort of prayer may do more harm than good? Let's take a closer look at what is being said.

Simply put, we're asking God to do it all. Try an exercise in grammar with the prayer. Everywhere we ask God to do something, put a 'you' in front of the verb. "You relieve us... you heal... you help those who are hungry... you help those who have lost a job... you create peace..." etc.

Mind you, most prayers look like this. Even those prayers I have read in the "Book of Common Worship," which are written with great care and theological reflection, call for God to do all of the healing and the relieving and the peacemaking.

Well, isn't that appropriate? We are pretty insignificant and everything we do gets corrupted. Isn't it better if we just ask God to do it? God is the one with all the power after all.

There is nothing at all wrong with asking God to do these things as long as we don't leave ourselves out of the equation! Do our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears? It might be because we are hoping that asking God to do it is enough. We don't want to get involved and we don't want to have to do anything. We've prayed. Now we may go on with our day. See the problem?

God sent Jesus to be a human amongst us, doing God's mission with perfect precision. He was always on the move. He stopped when he saw injustice and addressed it. (See the story of the man born blind and the story of the woman at the well. Recall the parable of the Good Samaritan.) He went out of his way to address hunger, poverty, and sickness. He went into people's homes, ate meals with sinners, blessed both soldiers and citizens. He never stopped doing God's will. And at the end of it all, he commissioned us to do the same.

There's nothing wrong with asking God to bring peace and health and blessings. But let's put ourselves into the equation too. A prayer like that might go more like...

""God, you are strong to heal us. How may we heal one another through you? Give us eyes to see those who suffer during the pandemic and help us to relieve their suffering. Guide us to bring food to those who are hungry because of lost employment or high medical bills.

Lord, we also see the tensions rise between races in our country and we grieve. Help us to get along with one another and love one another in purposeful actions of peace. Help us have uneasy conversations and give us wisdom so that we might stand firm with the oppressed. Help us ferret out injustice and bring to light wicked acts of racism. Help us to speak and act when we see others being hurt by worldly power. Give us love for each other and help us to get beyond our differences. Thank you for hearing our prayers which we pray in the name of our Lord, Jesus. Amen."

And then... oh boy! We are called to act. That's when prayers like that get scary! We might have to do something. We will need to listen to what God is asking us to do. We will have to pay attention to what God is leading the church to do. Because, know this! Christians are not lone rangers, riding out to defeat the enemy alone. We act together and that gets a whole lot less scary! One antibody can't kill a virus. But many antibodies, working in concert, can! How can the church address these things? How can we stand together to make known to the world that we do not tolerate injustice and that we will do whatever we need to do to alleviate sickness? How can we move as one to bring light to God's people in our world? It's a question for us as individuals, but also a question for us as a church.

Please do pray for our world and our nation. Pray for police officers who are just trying to do their job. Pray for people of color who feel fear because of those in authority who perform acts of corruption and violence. But do not pray and then remain idle. We must move together as one to stand with God's people.

Peace to you!