5/16/21 “The Absurdity and Audacity to Pray” by Nancy E. Petty
John 17:6-19
There was a sense of urgency in his voice. “I pray and nothing happens. I don’t feel anything. I thought if I prayed I would feel a connection to God.” This is the way the conversation began. The young person had reached out to me to share his spiritual struggle—a struggle of wanting desperately to feel a connection to God. As our phone conversation began, there was little small talk. I could feel the pain, the anxiety, and the urgency to get to the issue at hand: Why do my prayers leave me feeling more alone and if God is more absent than present?
The conundrum and complexity of prayer and praying is real. If we grew up in a faith environment we learned that prayer is at the heart of a life of faith. And if we grew up specifically Christian, we learned the magic formula of how we were to pray. If I were a better Christian, I would remember the exact order in which I am to pray; but if memory serves me even a little, it went something like this: adoration or praise, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication or petition. As a youth, I was taught a simple acrostic as a way to remember the formula: A.C.T.S. Each of the letters in the acrostic stands for one of those key elements of prayer: adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication. That formula worked as long as I was checking off the “duty” box, that is, I had done my duty as a Christian. But like that young person on the other end of the phone recently, the struggle to feel a connection with God through prayer, the questions and confusion about answered and unanswered prayers, and honestly the disappointment that came with praying was real and disorienting. There were always the questions in the back of my mind: Does God really hear our prayers? Does God hear my prayers? Is there something wrong with how I am praying that leaves me with feelings of loneliness and the absence of any connection with God when I pray? Do my prayers go unanswered because I am not praying enough or the right way or because I am not worthy or because…?
Maybe like you, throughout my faith journey, I have had many different relationships with prayer. My understanding of prayer and what I believed to be prayer has been as varied as the Baskin Robbins original 31 flavors of ice cream. At times, my understanding of prayer could have been labeled “Rocky Road.” At other times, when I was experiencing a spiritual high, I would have told you my prayer life was more like the flavor, “Love Potion #31.” And yet, Mississippi Mud, Wild’n Reckless, Vanilla, and Rainbow Sherbet could all describe the various stages of my praying.
Somewhere along the way I stopped praying in the traditional sense, speaking words to God. My prayer life took a more meditative form: a walk in nature, lighting a candle and sitting in silence trying to listen to that “still small voice” amidst the chaos, and more recently marching and protesting as a form of prayer. Of course, being a pastor, there were times that I had to put words and voice to prayer: at the bedside in the hospital room, communal worship, and in pastoral counseling sessions when someone would ask me to pray for them. In those moments, I would fumble around with my words trying to offer something that would give comfort and reassurance. But much of the time I felt like a failure—my words falling short of their intent. I walked away from those moments questioning myself: I should have said this or that, why didn’t I say…
And as a confession, on a very personal level, in recent years, my prayers for the ones I love deeply who are struggling, and my prayers for the injustices in the world haven’t seem to make any difference. My prayers haven’t seemed to bring relief, or comfort, or change to the pain and suffering in their lives or in the world. So, other than the occasional frantic “O God, please do something” prayer, in recent years, I stopped praying. I stopped talking to God.
The walks in nature, the lighting of a candle and sitting still to listen, the marching and protesting, the singing or chanting, love-making, meaningful and authentic conversations with friends and strangers are all ways I feel connected to the holy and sacred. Maybe that’s enough. And maybe I am overcomplicating prayer by focusing on the more traditional act of prayer as speaking to God with my words. But I don’t think so. I have been asked too many questions about prayer and praying in my pastoral ministry and I have sat with too many people struggling to feel connected to God through this kind of prayer that it seems to me that the struggle is real. This access to God, this relationship with God, the space to speak to God and feel as though God is listening and responding is a deeply spiritual and human need for many of us. I know I need that place to cry out in anger and to feel like God hears my cries. I need the space to speak words to God of the pain and suffering in the world and feel like God cares and hears. I need to believe that relationship with God is indeed a relationship—and in relationship both parties listen and respond to one another. And I need to know that that relationship is not built on formulas or correctness or withholding but on raw and honest truth and expression and vulnerability.
There is an element of absurdity to this notion of speaking/praying to God. It seems ridiculously senseless, foolish and almost laughable to think of speaking to God. I remember as a child wondering how God could possibly hear all of us, especially when we were talking at the same time. This child-like belief in a God of the Santa Claus variety had to suspend a lot of logic to make it all work, and as a child, I thought like a child – God is God, and so God knows how to manage what I, as a human, couldn’t fathom. As an adult the absurdity is even more complex. What is the expectation? That God grants my prayers? That God meets my needs? That God just “listens” to me? We know enough in this world to know that it isn’t “just” anything. And most of us have lived long enough to feel the absurdity of petitionary prayer.
Maybe that is precisely why there is also an element of audacity to the idea of speaking to God. It takes an audacious spirit to defy the absurdity and the doubt and to reach for God anyway. Because no matter what I’ve thought about prayer, and no matter how I’ve felt disappointed, the reaching has never stopped. There is that within me, and I believe within all of us, that just knows that there is a higher love, a higher truth, a higher meaning to these little lives of ours. And it is that knowing that longs for contact with this higher love. It is that knowing that is audacious enough to speak into the dark night, without a hope of anything changing. It is that longing that pulls us toward prayer, no matter how we say it, and even when we don’t. I have come to trust this longing, and to recognize it as an unlikely proof that the God for whom I long longs for me.
My vocation as minister has given me some incredible examples of this longing. The mother who has lost a baby, crying out for God. The trans-person pleading to know that God loves them as they are. The father praying his questions at the graveside of his son who died from an overdose. The husband praying for relief for his beloved suffering from cancer. But the most powerful and audacious faith to lean into the longing for God has been, for me, witnessing oppressed and marginalized people as they have endured not years, not decades, but centuries of oppression and discrimination as they bare their souls in prayer before God. In the presence of African-Americans and Jews and Muslims I have felt the power of prayer and witnessed the cathartic emptying of pain and suffering as well as gratitude to a God they trusted heard their prayers.
I stopped praying for a time because of what felt like the absurdity of speaking to God. And, I started back praying because I have had the privilege to witness the power that comes with the audacity of speaking our deepest longings and questions to God. I started back praying to God with my words because I stand in the linage of spiritual ancestors who prayed to God regardless of the outcome of those prayers. I started back praying to God because of the witness of those who had the audacity—the willingness to take bold risks—in speaking to God of the things that matter to them. I no longer understand my praying as prayers answered or unanswered; or even as a way to connect with God. I pray to God because praying connects me to my faith, it connects me to those who have risk praying on behalf of others for centuries before I uttered my first prayer. I pray to God because praying allows me to stand in solidarity with my fellow beings and those whom I love. And I pray to God because praying helps me connect to myself—my longings, my hopes, my struggles, and my deepest desires.
In our text this morning, Jesus prays for the disciples. He asks God, on their behalf, to protect them and that they may find joy in this world. Jesus asks God to keep them safe as they search for truth and justice and love. It is a beautiful, loving prayer. Jesus speaks to God often—praying for others and for himself. He prays for Lazarus before raising him from the dead. In his own darkest moment, it is to God whom he cries out to in prayer. That prayer didn’t take away the suffering and pain and injustice that he endured on the cross. And I doubt that it made it more bearable. And yet, and yet, it gave witness to the audacity to do that which our faith calls us to—to be bold, to be vulnerable, to be human, to have enough foolishness to believe that in prayer there is power, whether we can see it or understand it. It gave witness to the audacity of believing that we are connected to the One who created us even when we can’t feel the connection.
There is something holy and sacred about having the audacity to speak to God—to name and lay down one’s burdens and worries and anxieties before this one we call God. There is something both absurd and audacious about speaking to God with only a faint hope that the praying will connect us to something larger than ourselves.
Our world needs people who are willing to have the audacity to speak to God on their behalf. This willingness has been on my mind this week as I have watched the violence and suffering in the Holy Land. Earlier this week, I texted my dear friends Imam Antepli and Rabbi Dinner. In a shared text to both of them I wrote: “Shalom my beloved friends. I love the two of you and I am thinking of you and your communities in these troubling days.” Rabbi wrote back: “We have to pray with all our hearts and act with all our might to end this lunacy.” We have to pray… Imam wrote: “Really rough and painful days indeed. Prayers are much appreciated.” Prayers! The people of Palestine and Israel need people of all faiths to have the audacity to speak to God on their behalf. The poor of the world need people of all faiths to have the audacity to speak to God on their behalf. Our family members who struggle with addiction and depression need us—those who love them—to have the audacity to speak to God on their behalf. All of us need, at times, someone with enough audacity to speak to God on our behalf.
This praying—the speaking to God with our words—won’t make all the suffering and pain and loneliness and violence and injustice in the world go away. But it may very well be an act of faith that helps us sustain a small measure of hope in a world filled with suffering, pain, violence and loneliness. I still go on my meditative walks. I still light my candle and still my body to hear that still small voice. I still sing the hymns of my faith to connect with the sacred. And, I have returned to speaking to God in the tradition of the psalmists and in the linage of our spiritual ancestors, and following the example of Jesus because if our faith means anything it means having the audacity—the willingness to take bold risks—on behalf of our fellow human beings.
In the words of St. Augustine, “Pray as if everything depended on God. Act as if everything depended on you.”
Our speaking to God isn’t about a tally sheet numbering our answered and unanswered prayers. Our speaking to God is about standing in solidarity with one another. We speak to God on behalf of one another, and in so doing we become connected to each other and to a love that is larger than us.
