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Prayer

17th Sunday : 28 July2013  : Luke 11: 1-13

What is the most gripping insider view of the world of politics? Without doubt the Alan Clark diaries. A cabinet minister in the Thatcher government, he lays bare for us the intrigue, gossip, and hunger for power that are the oxygen of ambitious politicos. For all his wit, intellectual acuteness, and literary flair, the man that emerges from these pages is not entirely admirable. His love for his wife Jane does not hinder his compulsive womanising. An extreme nationalist, his politics are somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan. A lover of the corridors of power at Westminster, he loathes constituency work and describes those who come cap in hand to the electorate office as, "mendicants and supplicants."

Yet in all this curious mixture of qualities and attitudes he is a Christian, of a somewhat crusty 1662 sort. He prays, and writes about this praying in the diaries. Here he is in 1996, bitterly regretting his departure from politics, wanting to get back in to parliament, and ardently desiring to take over the leadership of the shattered conservative party:

What I like about this prayer is it’s confident conversational tone. Alan Clark lays out before God in simple, clear, direct terms what is on his mind. He approaches God with the same kind of trusting attitude that Jesus had, and with the same kind of faith filled expectation, - "you can do anything." He starts with gratitude. He moves on to a big ask, but one with an underlying moral purpose. He admits failing to reach out for an opportunity offered by God. He offers a view of the world as providentially ordered by God. He is open to God’s direction and guidance, especially in being delivered from his own folly and blindness. But the punch line at the end is best of all. The acknowledgment of how lovely it is to be in communication with God. The almost child like plea, "please stay with me." Having God’s presence with us is the best thing of all to have in this life.

Prayer, as Jesus demonstrates it, and teaches about it, in the New Testament is like this. Imagine having a conversation with your best friend, someone you can trust enough to say anything too, someone you are relaxed enough with to ask anything of. Our friend may say no, or I will do it later, but often they say yes. That is part of the dynamics of friendship. Loving friends are inclined to say yes.

God made us because he enjoys our company. There is a liveliness and a quirky uniqueness about each one of us that God would like to share in. For that to happen there needs to be conversation. Prayer is that conversation. Friends who enjoy each others company like to be in touch often, their conversation a frequent occurrence. Keeping company in this way builds up a sense of the presence of the person we love. That is why daily prayer is a must. If we don’t pray we wont experience the presence of God.

The conversation needs to be a dialogue, not a monologue. We need to be able to listen to God, and not just egotistically mouth on dominating the airwaves. That is really what contemplative prayer is about. Giving God the space and time to get through to us. Learning a bit about how to deal with the fantasy and illusion generating capacity of our minds that block out God’s communicating with us, what a friend of mine called the Barbara Cartland novelist we all carry around inside our head.

We don’t have to be perfect, or to have our lives in good order, to be in regular contact with God. That is why Alan Clark is a helpful example. He didn’t let his many moral failings get in the way of putting himself in the hands of God. After all, prayer is more for our benefit than God’s.

Be bold in your asking things of God. Be utterly honest about yourself, and about what you really want. There is no point in pretending to be more religious than you really are. If what you want right now is a win at lotto and success in a personal project then ask for that. Who knows, God might give you what you want, and then you will be confronted with the reality of your choices. What will happen for certain is that God will purify the ground of your beseeching, leading you eventually to see what lies behind the things you want so desperately. You can get around to praying for world peace and the reunion of the churches when you have got your true self into communicating relationship with God. When people complain about being bored and distracted in prayer it often means that they are trying to be some idealised self in their conversation with God. If you are pretending to be a pious little toady in prayer then all essential life energy will drain out of the dialogue, and you will be left in the desert of your own phoniness. God would prefer one honest, selfish request out of you than ten Uriah Heap like intercessions.

When you have got to a place of some reality in your relationship with God you can then learn how to pray by turning to Jesus, our great teacher. On the last night of his life on earth he uttered the most powerful prayer in the New Testament:

Father, O my Father, all things are possible to you. Let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will be done.

It has been said that from the moment this truest of all prayers was offered our broken world began to reorganise itself around this expression of trust in God.

Use this prayer in all the great trials of your life. Believe that God can do anything, just as Jesus did. Ask for anything, just as Jesus did. Be prepared to resign your self into the will of God, just as Jesus did.

Above all don’t agonise about prayer. Just open your mouth and start talking to God, honestly, simply, directly ...

There is another New Testament text for us to hang onto when prayer seems difficult. It comes from Romans 8:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

When we don’t know what to say to God, and feel that the well springs of prayer have run dry, then we can ask God to pray through us, which he has been doing anyway whether we are aware of it or not. Prayer is a kind of circulating energy in which the pattern of Trinitarian prayer moves through us, to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The triune persons take our inarticulate groans, our fumbling attempts at dialogue with God, and turn them into something else, the genuine currency of connection with God. So when we feel empty and dry we can say to God, "Come and pray through me, come and pray in me, let me be a part of your circulating energy of love and communication through the world."

In that sense prayer isn’t something that we do, it is what God does in us, and through us. Our attentiveness to God, our desire for him, our willingness to make a space and place in our daily lives for this movement of the Spirit through us is all that is required. The good habit of finding the best time in the day to be available to God is what is helpful here.

The point of the Christian religion is to be united to God. Prayer establishes a point of connection with God, a channel of communication with him so that this union becomes more and more of a growing reality. This is why daily prayer is essential for us.