Prayer in Good Times — and in Bad
DATE: September 27, 2009
SCRIPTURE:
James 5:13-20
Last week Linda and I bought some beautiful McIntosh apples fresh from the orchard. Like leaves turning from green to orange, new apples are a sure sign of fall. So is football as all across the nation high school, college and professional teams are all well into their schedules; every one of them dreaming of a winning season.
It is not uncommon, in many parts of the country, to see teammates huddle up before the game begins for a team prayer. The best of those prayers ask God to protect the players from injury and to help insure a good and fair game be played by all. But I suspect many a player is praying for victory.
Several years back the sports related comic strip Funky Winkerbean depicted a team prayer. In the first frame the Coach says to his players, "Remove your hats [men] and take a knee for the team prayer!" Helmets are removed, heads are bowed, and the coach offers a silent prayer. Then, as the players look up, one of them, gazing across the field says, "It didn't work, Coach. The other team is still there!"
That is often how prayer is viewed. If we pray in the right way, folks say, if we pray hard enough, often enough, then we will get what we want. But the truth is, prayer isn't magic—rather, it is how we relate to God.
Kathleen Norris tells about a Benedictine friend of hers who is confined to a wheelchair. He has dealt with constant pain for many years. His prayer life is rich and full, but not in the ways one might think. "From him," she writes, "I have learned that prayer is not asking for what you want but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine. To be made more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been." (Amazing Grace, 60)
"Prayer," wrote Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, "doesn't change God; rather it changes the one who prays."
James, probably writing to Christians in Palestine sometime before 70 AD, urges his readers to pray at all times. Pray in all circumstances. "Are any among you suffering," he writes, "They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise." (5:13) Happy or sad, good times or bad, he is saying, pray. Later he writes, "The prayer of faith will save the sick… and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven." (5:14) That may be troubling to you. It seems to imply that sickness and sin are directly connected. That sin causes sickness. And, perhaps James did view it that way. In his prescientific world it was a common enough idea. Personally, it's a notion that I reject. While I acknowledge that things like guilt can lead to physical ailments, I am not willing to see an automatic cause and effect relationship between sin and sickness.
But just because we might rule out James' understanding of the relationship between sin and sickness, that does not mean we have to jettison this passage. Indeed we can look at it another way if we so choose. For both sin and sickness do have much in common. When we are sick, our bodies aren't working up to their full capacity. When we commit sin our lives aren't working the way they should. Both sin and sickness expose our fallibilities and limitations. As one scholar writes, "In both cases, for different reasons, people fail to meet the human ideal. They come down with acute cases of the human condition…" (Barbara Brown Taylor, Feasting on the Word, B:4, 113)
When we are sick, or when we behave in sinful ways, we always have a choice. We can acknowledge that we are indeed limited human beings, mere mortals—or we can pretend to be something other than what we truly are. But James encourages us to face up to the reality that we are, after all, only human! We are not invulnerable—and we are not always in the right. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it when someone is sick or when someone is caught in sin, "the typical human reaction to such exposure is to look politely away, James recommends a different course of action." (Ibid) "Confess your sins to one another," he writes, "and pray for one another so that you might be healed." (5:16a) Or, as Eugene Peterson very helpfully paraphrases it: "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed." (The Message, 2208)
Most folks here know Bonnie Brown. Bonnie is a parishioner here at Saugatuck, an ordained UCC minister, and a retired professor. Like Norris' friend, Bonnie deals with a wheelchair and a measure of pain. She has dealt with post-Polio Syndrome most of her life. And she too is a person of prayer—but not prayer as magic.
In her small booklet called Living with an Imperfect Body, Bonnie describes the role of prayer as she went through chemo treatments for breast cancer a few years back. "Because I believe in prayer," she writes about that time, "because I wanted the prayer support of others, I [decided to] ‘go public' with the diagnosis… and my inner commitment… was to share the process as completely as I could…" This choice, as she calls it, was at the very heart of her prayers. To be open. To be vulnerable. She was facing a double mastectomy—and all that goes with such a major procedure. Yet her prayers focused around her relationship to God, to others, and to the world.
"The greatest gift of my choice to be vulnerable," she writes, "and the response of so much loving prayer is the deepened opening of my heart. I can feel the change as I relate to others… People are more beautiful to me; the natural world is more alive in my vision. My soul is more deeply and lovingly at home in this world, in my own battered body." (5-6)
"Prayer doesn't change God; rather it changes the one who prays."
There are football players who understand that prayer isn't just about winning ball games. One of them is Troy Polamalu of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Polamalu is a strong safety, who has made the Pro Bowl three times. He is a first class player. But he's not fooled by his own image. Despite wearing two Super Bowl rings, he doesn't think he is super human. He understands that he is falliable. That he is mortal. And he understands that in and through prayer he can keep grounded.
"[E]gotism is a really tough struggle," he recently an interviewer, "especially in this business… It's a big struggle of mine." But prayer, he says, helps him to remember who is truly is. Prayer helps him remember he is human. "As your prayer life becomes more and more fine tuned," he said, "your conscience becomes more and more fine tuned…" (www.cbn.com) Prayer changes the one who prays.
Or perhaps you remember Dennis Byrd. He played for the New York Jets back in the early nineties. On an autumn afternoon in 1992, in a game against the Kansa City Chiefs, his neck was shattered as he collided with another player. He was paralyzed—and for a time it appeared he would never walk again, much less play football. But in time he did walk again. His playing career was over, but he did regain use of his legs.
The story of his recovery is a story of faith and prayer and courage and good medical treatment. He endured much pain, and indeed still experiences pain and limitations. But while he is, of course, overjoyed to be walking again, the real miracle, as he puts it, is not one of physical recovery, but rather, deepened faith.
In his autobiography he recounts some of his trials and victories. "In every material sense," he writes, "I was weak and vulnerable…" But it was in that place of weakness and vulnerability that he learned afresh how to trust in God and God's love. He learned anew the importance of acknowledging his need for others and for God—in his prayers and in his living. And he recognized that even in the midst of his pain and suffering there was much good. The love of his wife, the support of his teammates, the dedication of his doctors and therapists. In and through them all he experienced God's presence. "That's the miracle," he says, "It's knowing that all of life is a blessing, that the Lord is with us even if we falter… even if we fail, [God] is with us when we break,… [God] can make us whole." (Rise and Walk, 258)
Prayer doesn't change God, rather it changes the one who prays. In good times—and in bad.
So, are you ready to be changed? Are you ready to be made whole? Are you ready to have your eyes and your mind opened in new ways? Are you ready to be in a deeper, fuller, stronger, relationship with God, with others—with creation itself? Then pray, my friend, pray with all your might. In good times—and in bad.
Amen.
John H. Danner