Prayer

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

As we finish up our month of sermons on the Book of James, I thought I’d remind you of a few highlights from Sunday’s worship.

We read a Bible passage from the Book of James on Sunday where James invites Christians to call on the community for prayer.

Pray when you are suffering…
Pray when you are celebrating…
Pray…in community.

It’s fascinating to me for this passage to be in the Book of James since it gets the deserved reputation of being more interested in “works” than in “words.”

At one point earlier in his book, James wickedly skewers believers who pontificate in big words but fail to reach out in love and service.

“If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?” (James 2:15-16)

This line, “Be warmed and filled…” could literally be translated into our modern-day “thoughts and prayers.”

Far too many leaders —when some horrific event happens in the world— rush in to say “our thoughts and prayers are with you,” but then do little else to really change things in our world.

And to this James would say, “What good is that?”

And yet…

Later in the same writing, James extols the virtues of prayer as well. I think this is what makes James such a great book. James is passionate about our inner life of prayer *and* our outer life of action. James isn’t willing to just lift-up one and denigrate the other.

Many folks say they don’t know *how* to pray. I think the most important thing about prayer is to “just do it.” Seek a spiritual life in which short prayers become a part of your daily routine. You don’t have to get all the grammar, spelling and punctuation correctly placed. 

As Nike might say, “Just do it.”

God hears our prayers, whatever form they are in, and with whatever words we use for our praying. If God truly is the great God of the universe, this must be so.

In this, I am much inspired by writer Anne Lamott’s words on prayer. She is a woman who spends much of her time arranging words “just so” on a page…writing for a living. But when it comes to prayer, she says her prayer life is getting simpler and simpler all the time.

She now says there are three types of prayers she prays regularly:

“Help me, help me, help me…”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

And… “Wow…”

Sometimes, there are no other words than these that need praying. God simply needs us to check in with our spirit, mind, and heart…and have a conversation. 

To close, I’ll share an extended excerpt from Frederick Buechner’s amazing thoughts on prayer. When I am having trouble continuing in my prayer life, these words speak to me again and again. Hope they will help you:

“Everybody prays whether (they) think of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else's pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world…

“Talk to yourself about your own life, about what you've done and what you've failed to do, and about who you are and who you wish you were and who the people you love are and the people you don't love too. Talk to yourself about what matters most to you, because if you don't, you may forget what matters most to you.

Even if you don't believe anybody's listening, at least you'll be listening.

Believe Somebody is listening. Believe in miracles. That's what Jesus told the father who asked him to heal his epileptic son. Jesus said, ‘All things are possible to him who believes.’ And the father spoke for all of us when he answered, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’

“‘What about the boy who isn't healed?’  When, listened to or not listened to, the prayer goes unanswered? 

Who knows?  Just keep praying, Jesus says.  Remember the sleepy friend, the crooked judge.  Even if the boy dies, keep on beating a path to God's door because the one thing you can be sure of is that down the path you beat with even your most half-cocked and halting prayer, the God you call upon will finally come, and even if he does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring you himself.  And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers that is what we are really praying for.”

— Frederick Buechner