Prayer: Speaking Truth To Power

Sermon

Why have people been taught that there is a right way to pray? I believe that it is not because there is a right way to pray, but because prayer is important and therefore awkward. Have you noticed? When things really matter, when they are really important to us, they can feel awkward because we don't want to mess them up. This is the reason for diplomatic protocols and lined paper and lines on roads and also all the myriad books and tracts and rules created and treasured by religion. In the case of religion, they tell us how best to pray because they believe that praying most effectively matters to us. And what is effective prayer? By traditional rules, it is the prayer that comes most powerfully from you and moves most powerfully across time and space and fundamental difference to God.

I spent a semester once in a class on prayer. It was one of the most complex and fascinating courses I ever took. We had to learn the difference between contemplation and meditation and prayer for most of the important church leaders from Origen up through Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross. (John of the Cross being, of course, a disciple of Theresa of Avila. So there's one in the eye to all those who think women leaders have had no historic role in shaping Christianity, but that's a topic for another sermon.) Everyone we studied: Origen, Augustine, Evagrius, Denys the Areopagite, Gregory of Sinai and Gregory Palamus and Gregory the Great who first came up with the seven deadly sins, Catherine of Siena, everyone had their own take on prayer, contemplation and meditation and the difference between the three. Sometimes the differences were great and sometimes they were small. Often their language was potent and memorable: one of them described prayer as a cry like an arrow, the preparation for prayer being like the long bending of a great bow such that upon release the prayer would streak with the same blinding speed and direction, across the distance and difference between us and God.

But between many of these theologians' takes on prayer, there were striking similarities. Many described prayer as an extended experience of intimacy with God, one that built on itself, mounting in ways described in terms that seemed inescapably, almost embarrassingly sexual, to those of us living at a distance from vows of chastity.

For these theologians, their descriptions of the proper mindset, physical attitude and expression for prayer were not to proscribe wrong prayer but to describe best prayer, according to their experience, as part of being helpful, the same way you or I might write out directions somewhere so that someone else didn't have to wander around trying to find their destination.

Some of you may remember from a sermon last year that I derided a book I spotted in the UUA bookstore catalogue called How To Pray Without Being Religious. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to order and read it for this sermon, but I didn't, and that's probably not a huge loss because I think to get hung up on praying "unreligious" prayer is to entirely miss the point of prayer.

Prayer is a humble act. That's why a lot of people get on their knees, or bow their heads to the floor or look down or clasp their hands. These are all positions that acknowledge a power greater than the person assuming the position. And you may not agree, but I think that's a good thing, because it's a true thing that there are powers greater than us, greater than any of us, even greater than all of us together operating in our world and universe and we but dimly apprehend them if at all. We may not be clear on the existence of God, but we know randomness and luck and gravity and atoms exhibit and exert all kinds of massive power and not all at our behest. The universe is benevolent and it is malevolent and beauty and ugliness coexist and we seek the one and we assuage the other.

And frankly, I think it's silly to bash religion. We are a religion. The Buddhist nuns and priests regularly killed by Chinese army while they attempt to honor their faith and adherence to his holiness the Dalai Lama are religious. So is Bishop Desmond Tutu. Religion has done terrible things and wonderful things and a religious movement or person or act is neutral – it's the nature of the movement, person or act that gives it negative or positive value. We don’t need to free ourselves of religion to be spiritual or fulfilled or valuable. We need to bolster our religion's spirituality, fulfillment and value in the world. Having not read the book, I nonetheless aver that prayer always has been, and always will be, a religious act. There is no way to pray that doesn't draw on some religious tradition or standard whether it's through language or position or content or attitude.

But while I say that prayer is a religious act I don't mean that we are, or need to be, clear when praying, about exactly who or what we're praying to and what they look like and what their gender is and whether they can hear us and whether they care even if they hear us. It sure would be nice to be clear about those issues, and would make our prayer a lot more specific. "Dear God: I know it's Tuesday and Tuesday is a bad day for you but you know you always look great in that green outfit and since I'm having this situation with my children and I know it's right up your alley I felt sure that praying to you about this, along with the donation of calla lilies and strawberries, your favorite flower and fruit, would be worthwhile, even though they'll take a while to reach you all the way over there in Alpha Centauri."

In fact, some prayer has had that sense of knowing and intimacy. Early Irish prayers to Mary often speak as if she is a revered neighbor who they can and do know well – her beauty, her compassion, her concern for her son and for all humanity – Irish prayers to her are part importuning, part self-justification and part love letter.

But that is not our tradition and it's okay because we don't have to know where a prayer is going for it to be worthwhile. Some of you may know about the study a number of years ago that compared the health outcomes of people being prayed for vs. people who weren't and found that people being prayed for tended to do better. Two critiques of the study were that one, if people knew they were being prayed for, they might do better just because they had a stronger sense of being held and helped, and two, that the study itself was biased, run by and for religious people who were invested in finding a measurable value to prayer. Both critiques could be right, and so what? Is it a revelation that people should wish for proof of prayer's efficacy? Is it hard to believe that being prayed for brings comfort and perhaps not only comfort but strength to endure suffering and to improve?

And there is another way to consider prayer's value. There is what we get out of it. I'm struck by how many people have come to my office – now you know there's a bunch of you – and expressed concerns about how to pray and what form of prayer is valid. A lot of people have struggled with a sense that there was a right and a wrong way to pray – in fact, it seemed so unusually homogenous a concern as to seem downright un-Unitarian Universalist. But actually it’s very UU, because most people’s sense of what is wrong is that it is wrong to pray for what you want, wrong to pray in traditional language and wrong to ask God about or for personal issues. A lot of people use some form of the serenity prayer that has spread to popular usage via 12-step programs: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

If that is indeed the inmost prayer of your heart then by all means, pray it. But here's the rub – if there's more in your heart, or something entirely other in your heart, then what about the authenticity of your prayer? Why should your prayer be any less honest than a confession to a loved one or a session with your therapist? If anyone or anything in fact has the capacity to hear our prayer, do we really think that they don't know what our secret prayer is anyway? Why are we editing our prayer? If we are in fear, why can't we pray about our fear? If we desperately long for love or companionship or health or emotional stability, why can't we pray about that?

Jewish tradition can be helpful here. There is a long heritage in Judaism of praying to God and communicating with God honestly – whatever the terms. If that means God taps you to be a prophet and you demur vigorously, that's okay. If that means God lets you down, as you see it and you’re pissed, that's okay. As Dr. Solomon Schimmel of Hebrew College wrote: "[F]rom a biblical perspective it is legitimate to cry out to God in anger. It is OK to protest the fact that God appears to be unjust in subjecting [us]… to illness and suffering. In the biblical Book of Job, Job expresses intense anger at God’s apparent injustice when he is afflicted with horrible misfortunes…. Although by the conclusion of the book, Job is reconciled with God, his initial feelings of anger at God are praised rather than condemned." (from Anger in the Context of Illness: Perspectives in Jewish Tradition - www.med.yale.edu/intmed/hummed/yjhm/spirit2004/anger/sschimmel.htm) Moses argues with God, Jonah sulks and complains… there are numerous models and they are all of people in special relationship with God – they are not estranged from God, they are close and this is part of their closeness.

Of course, as Dr. Schimmel points out, deep and sustained anger at God is probably unhealthy. But as we know, anger does not go away when we bottle it up. Only when we release it, express it and work through it, can we get past it. This is as true for anger at life, or God, as for anger at a person. So if what is in us is anger and incomprehension, let us put that in our prayers – if God hears us, God can certainly take it and God already knows it anyway.

But what about ignoble prayer? The kind that is not righteous anger or hurt but unjust prayer, prayers that ought not to be granted and really ought not to be expressed. There's sort of averagely ignoble prayer, where we pray to become wealthy or for a Porsche or for some jerk at work to be demoted the way we know they deserve to be. And then there's really ignoble prayer – honestly worse than ignoble, evil – where we might pray for something terrible to happen to someone we hate or fear or are jealous of or angry at. The distinctions matter – if we pray for a Porsche – well, if that's all we can muster ourselves to pray for then there's plenty of internal work for us to do and we need to get on it some other way than with prayer. The other kind of prayer, unjust prayer is what ought not to be prayed – if that is what we need to express, the appropriate vehicle is not prayer but conversation or therapy. Prayer is sacred and ought rightly to be reserved for requests for lifting up, saving, helping –for justice, not retribution, for what is offered in legend and theology by goodness or god and not evil or its legendary personification, the devil. Perhaps if we picture who would answer our yearning, we know whether it deserves to be a prayer.

We're in far off territory now, aren't we? Using the devil as a tool for spiritual discernment when Unitarian Universalists are pretty clear that whatever we believe about God, we really don’t believe in the devil as such. But it's a useful metaphor regardless and points us back to that ultimate question of prayer: What if nothing and no one is listening?

No one has the right to impose our answer to this on another. Barbara Pescan offers one answer in The Athiest Prays (read it from Morning Watch, p. 36).

My own answer is different: that if nothing and no one is listening, then my prayer has a different function but the same form. It does me good, it keeps me humble, it keeps me honest, to express my yearnings and to address them to God even if that is my saddest and most foolish act because no one is listening. It does not hurt me; it helps me. If God does not hear me, or is not even there to hear me, it still does me good to get my yearning, my fear, my question, my grief, my anger out, to acknowledge it and express it and release it to the world.

Shma, yisrael! Adonai, eloheinu. Adonai echad.

This is what I am doing when I sing the Sh’ma or Dodi Li in the woods. This is what I am doing when I kneel in my study or by my bedside to pray for myself, for my sister, or at the request of my friend for his beloved pastor who has cancer. This is what I am doing when I stand in front of you in silence and close my eyes and my mind fills with the faces of those I love every Sunday during our time for prayer, meditation and contemplation. This is what I am doing when I am in the car and drive by a roadside shrine or dead animal and feel my soul send an arrow upward asking that they be at peace. This is what I was doing years ago when I knelt at the ruins of Artemis Brauronia's temple in Greece, placed an offering under a stone at the crumbled foot of the stairway and asked for a portion of her self-reliance and fearlessness and strength. This is what I was doing at the sacred spring at Delphi where I dipped my hands in the cool, clear water and bathed my face and drank and asked what I should do with my life and heard, clearly, in my head, a voiced response. My prayers are not uniform and they are not certain but they are honest and they serve me well.

In the end, my prayers are about speaking truth to power. Sometimes the power is death, sometimes it is nature, sometimes it is the turning wheel of fortune. Perhaps sometimes it is God, surely on my end it is God, whether or not God is there and listening. Sometimes I am singing truth. Sometimes my truth is not universal. Sometimes I am not even certain it is mine. Sometimes all I truly seek is serenity and courage, sometimes I seek more. But what makes my prayers powerful, or at least meaningful is that they are honest and they are mine. They refine my sense of myself, my seeking, my journey, and occasionally my answers. Sometimes they are a wish. Sometimes they are an arrow. They sustain me and if I had a prayer about praying it would only be that I did it better and more often than I do. If you had a prayer about praying, what would it be? So be it.

Amen.