Prayer

       I got into an interesting conversation about prayer early this week.  It started with a magazine article the person had read about “unanswered prayer” and moved onto various personal and research accounts about prayer across cultures.  Since it is Lent, a season focused on prayer and reflection, and I am a minister, the reader got to talking with me.

      Technically, theologically (at least in 21st century U.S. mainline Protestant Christianity, to disclose my perspective) prayer can be categorized as of “adoration,” of “supplication,” of “confession” or “repentance,” of “intercession,” or of “thanksgiving.”  If you pay attention to my “classically trained” prayers, you will hear “Wow, you are wonderful, God,” “Could you help me/us with this,” “We made mistakes,” “Can you help so-and-so with something,” and “Thank you for what you have done for us” prayers, respectively.

       The magazine article and most research deals with prayers of supplication and intercession.  Makes sense, since these are typically the most urgent ones, the prayers where we ask divine help for ourselves or others having troubles.  These are also prayers which may or may not yield the results we ask for.  Prayers of thanksgiving or adoration are pretty much given to God out of a sense of gratitude.  Prayers of confession rise from guilt or shame, which we ask may be removed so we can do better.  But supplication and intercession are more transactional and can be tracked: did so-and-so get better?

      Some religious traditions believe prayers cause the divine to do something for the pray-er, while others (such as Protestantism) believe in God’s sovereignty, which rules out prayers coercing God into doing human will.  Ancient religions had no such qualms about saying, “Baal, I brought two sheep to sacrifice, so you owe me a good harvest.”  Around us, other Christian traditions are comfortable asking God for things with the expectation God will give it to them, ranging from material blessings to healings.  Some prayers don’t have the desired outcome.  In general, if the result doesn’t come through, more people believe their faith or worthiness is lacking and they need to pray harder, but some believe it is God’s failure.  Certainly, it can be emotionally difficult when prayers you have set your heart on don’t come to pass.

      Still, most people who pray believe it is worth doing, often saying it helps clarify your thoughts and center yourself.  Contemplative praying is often described as very freeing and beneficial.  Quite a few years ago there were studies of contemplatives and mystics of many traditions around the globe, and the health and wellness benefits were both physical and psychological.  Praying is good for you, the pray-er.

      The next question is far, far more interesting: is praying good for the other person?  The research is not so conclusive, partly because the internal experience of spiritual energy is hard to quantify.  Of course, scientists keep trying, but prayer refuses to be pinned down.

      One small study I saw took persons described as successful pray-ers from many faith traditions and set them to praying for a number of subjects who were asked to report on what they felt at different times.  In general, the results were positive; the recipients of prayers felt better because they were being prayed for.  I am more intrigued by another study (also across different faith traditions) in which prayer athletes were given persons to pray for, with specific sorts of externally determinable results: “did the person’s cancer go in to remission?”  The wrinkle was that the recipients didn’t know they were being prayed for!  The results were not as good statistically.  Clearly an important dynamic is that subjects for prayers know they are in our prayers and know of the support, and that makes a huge difference.  Even being aware of an anonymous prayer circle around you is beneficial, and it appears that even non-religious recipients of prayer have more sense of well-being.  Sometimes that provides medical relief or other tangible benefits, but not always.  So prayer “works” in that sense, even if there is no change in the medical outcome, for instance.  Intercessory prayer surely works because of the person-to-person connection, not necessarily because of some energy flux causing cancer cells to evaporate.

      And that, to me, is how many people will speak of a broader sense of healing rising from other people’s prayers even if the physical results are not dramatic nor contravene scientific expectations.  Parishioners whose illness or problems are not removed say to me that they feel loved and supported and safe in God’s love and the love of others even when the scans come back worse.  We are not just the sum of our finances or medical conditions, and a nuanced sense of prayer understands that.  Sure, we can start by asking for bodily healing, but we may well discover our greatest healing is emotional and spiritual.  In that sense, I totally know prayer works!

      So let’s do a bit extra praying this Lent, especially of thanksgiving and penitence, but also for others we know and care about.  If a Lenten trial run of intercessory prayer seems good to you, I encourage you to join the group of people on the email prayer list each week and the group of people who gather at the front of the sanctuary offering prayers in person to others.  Prayer works… particularly if you work on it!

      Thank you, God, for the privilege of prayer!
                                                                                   

                                                                                      In Christ,
                                                                                
                                                                                      David

                                                
Texts For Sunday Worship: 
   From the Hebrew Bible   Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16                                                        
   From the Epistles             Romans 4: 13-25
   From the Gospels             Luke 8: 1-3

Words about Genesis 9:8-17

      The rainbow.  Remember it from the Bible? I seem to recall part of a camp song that goes something like “God promised us a rainbow…and He always keeps his word.”  Let’s see what’s behind God’s rainbow promise.

      Since God created all life, the animals were sacred.  Noah’s family built a ponderous boat to house representatives of all kinds of land animals.  The ark drifted on the rising waters, while the animals, closed inside, were protected from death.  Like the ark, our planet Earth is a closed, sacred container comprising rock, water and air.  Earth’s biological inhabitants are held here, while Earth orbits around the sun.

      So Noah’s ark symbolizes Earth, the sacred container of biological creation.  Noah’s family had taken care to build the ark to God’s specs and to make it seaworthy.  The story tells that Noah’s family fed and cared for the creatures God entrusted to him.   We can consider Noah’s family to be the example of how to be diligent in treating living creatures, including humanity. 

      Now let’s take a look at the covenant.  A covenant is a binding promise.  Covenants between two mortals are one matter.  The implication of a covenant with God and people is that the people had messed up, are mending their ways, and God is extending grace.  Shining through the covenant is God’s love for all living things. Humanity had made unwise choices, causing God to feel sorrow for having created humans in the first place.  God’s love is evident in her giving humanity another chance.  God’s action of grace is manifested in her not annihilating creation.  The surviving people were told to multiply, the animals would breed abundantly, and crops would grow.  To seal the covenant, God promised to keep her end of the covenant, with reminders at intervals from a rainbow.
          
      It’s entirely possible that people have been simply regarding God’s covenant with Noah as they read it literally in Scripture -- God’s one-sided promise to humanity.  People can easily feel absolved of responsibility for stewardship.  It’s critical that we look beyond God’s declaration, to realize that people need to take responsibility to care for biological creation, as well as for Earth.  Over the centuries, people have deluded themselves into believing they could do whatever they wanted to do to Creation, without repercussions. – That depleting water resources, over-heating the atmosphere, and neglecting thousands of people – would not be harmful in the long run.  In Genesis 1, and 9, people were told to multiply, and have dominion over all creation.  So, it’s hard to assume culpability for our poor treatment of creation – weren’t people merely doing what God said to do?

      God established the covenant through grace. Even if God required nothing of people in return, it behooves us to try to repair Earth, and provide upkeep for creation.  Think of this:  someone crafts a special gift for you. You know that it’s right to thank the giver.  You take good care of the gift.  Even pass it on down to your children. Consider that Earth is a very large, complex gift.  God gave it, lovingly, to all that inhabit it.  And God loves and cares for each creature.  So, should we not love Earth and God, and care for Earth’s inhabitants the best way possible?

      God set the creation-care covenant in motion. Generations beyond the time of the Hebrew Bible, we have the honor of choosing the path of faithful and effective stewardship. And should we lapse into forgetfulness, there will always be rainbows - which aren’t only for jogging God’s memory. Rainbows have two ends - one end is for God, and the other end of a rainbow can be a reminder for us. So what are we waiting for?

                                                                                           Susan Fast



Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible         Genesis 9:8-17
      From the Epistles                  I Peter 3:18-22
      From the Gospels                 Mark 1:9-15

Snow Days

      I confess to having two opposite (polar opposite, actually) reactions to snow days.   This is, perhaps, informed by being the spouse of a public school employee, for whom most school closings are matters of great ambivalence.  Just follow teachers on Facebook to see their mixed feelings.

      Even now, my first reaction to school closings is a childlike “Hooray!” even after this many years later.  When young, it was a day of delight and freedom to sled down the hill on those dish-shaped aluminum coasters (OK, not very far; it was a small hill), help shovel the walk and later the driveway, build snow sculptures (my father considered mere snow people unimaginative, so we had dinosaurs and other wondrous creatures), and get so totally frozen that we couldn’t feel our toes while warming our hands around cups of hot cocoa.  Snow days were for playing and reading and enjoying a day unstructured by schoolwork.  When I got slightly older, they were for sleeping in! 

       In college it changed, since classes were held on all but the worst days since most professors lived within walking distance, and big snows started to lose their magic.  By the time I was chronologically an adult, snow days were either just another day for working or an extra pain because I had to get out earlier to shovel and clear out the car and blow the driveway clear.  No more sleeping in…

      It then gets to where many of us dread snow days because they end up being extra work, not fun.  Everything that you couldn’t do while the school or your business is closed has to be made up, while also doing the subsequent day’s work.  Production quotas have to be met anyhow, meetings rescheduled, deadlines are that much closer with less time to do the work.  Teachers have to redo lesson plans to compress more work into fewer days.  No snow day goes unpunished.  Closings are bad news.

      In upstate New York, we have come to terms with storms and closings.  You simply learn to cope.  Some things have to get done anyhow, but often times we will reassess and reconfigure, and often enough decide that Monday’s meeting doesn’t have to be rescheduled, but we can phone around or send emails to get most of the important stuff done, and just let go of the less important things or wait until next meeting.  Sometimes we just write something off with a sigh of relief, “well, we had a snow day,” and everyone understands.  There is no point beating ourselves up because of an act of God.  We shrug and invoke “Snow day rules.”  The important stuff gets done, but sometimes you can just enjoy the day off.  Even as adults.

      The Bible often uses “The Day of the Lord” to refer to the last day or the end of time or the day of judgment, or even the day of our personal reckoning when we meet our maker.  Some people worry about that as a cataclysmic, grim event to be feared.  The Day is bad news.  Others imagine it as bright and sunny and wonderful, a freeing from the weights of this age, a liberation from care.  Like a snow day for children!
I think it’s a lovely parable of grace.

      If we could relax our grip on our spiritual future a bit and accept that once in a while God allows us some holy space in the middle of all the work and effort and anxiety and busyness we endure, we might actually do better.  That taste of relaxation and freedom that we had as children can soothe our spirits even now.  God offers us a break, more often than we notice.  And that is grace.  Maybe God’s love is like that warm cup of hot chocolate in our hands, pure wonder and delight.  With marshmallows.

      So, let’s imagine God’s grace being the grandest kind of a snow day, the giddy delight in being free to enjoy “really free time,” not just eternally but even here and now, where we can celebrate as kids at heart.

                                                                                            In Christ,
                                                                                     
                                                                                             David