James 24:7

Prayer Walking in the New Ordinary

Jim Street

Last week I received a phone call from someone who lives in another state. “What is going on down there?” she asked.  I didn’t know what she meant until she went on to say that the news where she lives reported on a big drug bust in our county that allegedly involved a ruthless drug cartel. As it turns out, our little neck of the woods was a center piece in the crack down that included arrests in 17 states last week.

The next day I waited for the morning paper to arrive so I could read about the local happenings. I was sitting on the couch reading Neil Cole’s newest book Organic Leadership when the paper arrived. I went out, picked it up, walked back into the house, sat down on the couch, and read the article.

The article detailed the way law enforcement swarmed a house in an ordinary neighborhood a few miles from where our church meets. The article detailed the amount of methamphetamine, the number of automatic weapons, and the huge sums of cash taken from that home-based methamphetamine lab situated in the middle of this ordinary sub-division.

I wondered what that must have been like for the ordinary folks who lived in that ordinary neighborhood to learn that the quiet couple with the baby down the street was allegedly a front for a violent drug cartel, that their home was an arsenal and the site of a volatile methamphetamine conversion lab. I wondered if they hugged their kids a little tighter the night after the raid. I wondered about single moms in the neighborhood and whether they felt even more insecure about their surroundings.

I wondered about my own neighborhood, which has endured its share of burglaries and even one home invasion.

I finished reading the newspaper article, picked up Cole’s book, and started reading where I left off. The next paragraph I read said this:

“Once you have been crucified, you are a different person. Old things have ‘passed away’ new things have come. (2. Cor. 5:17) A dead leader is a dangerous leader. Such a person has nothing left to lose. No personal glory is at stake. Ambition is dead. There is no agenda, only what Jesus asks. Reward is not an issue because the leader is already dead. A dead person has no possessions to protect. You can’t even really tempt a dead person; corpses feel no pain and have no lust. Once we pass through death, what else is there to fear?”  (Neil Cole; Organic Leadership: Leading Naturally Right Where You Are, Baker Books, p. 275)

My next thought was, “Jim, you need to take a prayer walk through that neighborhood.”

And my next thought after that was: “Uh….Patience, Lord, I don’t think I’m dead yet.”

For some reason (could it have been all the thought of death and drug cartels and methamphetamine and fear and death and death?), my mind switched to thoughts of resurrection. “Ah, yes…resurrection.” April. Easter. Bunnies. The empty tomb.

But then I remembered something New Testament scholar N.T. Wright had written in his book Surprised by Hope, something about how dangerous people of the resurrection can be because, seeing that death is not the final victor, they are freed from the terror of terrors- death in all of its manifestations. (Resurrection, according to Wright, takes the power from the powers because they lose their capacity for threat. Caesar for all his Easter attire does not really care for resurrection, which is the ‘ace” that trumps his “king”.)

“Man, this business of Jesus following gets you going and coming”, I thought.

I got up from the couch, walked to my bookshelf and pulled off Wright’s book. I was looking for the exact reference that I had remembered when I came across this:

“…a proper grasp of the (surprising) future held out to us in Jesus Christ leads directly to a vision of the present hope that is the basis of all Christian mission. To hope for a better future in this world- for the poor, the sick, the lonely and depressed, for the slaves, the refugees, the hungry and homeless, for the abused, the paranoid, the downtrodden and despairing, and in fact for the whole wide, wonderful and wounded world- is not something else, something extra, something tacked on to the gospel as an afterthought…to work for that intermediate hope, the surprising hope that comes forward from God’s ultimate future into the urgent present, is not a distraction from the task of mission and evangelism in the present. It is a central, essential, and life-giving part of it. Mostly, Jesus himself got a hearing from his contemporaries because of what he was doing.” (Wright, Surprising Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church, HarperOne, p. 192)

Right there, standing in my sleep duds, between the early morning headlines, Neil Cole and N.T. Wright I thought, “Looks like I’m taking a prayer walk...”

+++

Later in the morning, I told a friend of mine that I was going to go take a prayer walk through the neighborhood of the big drug bust. He cocked his head and asked, “And what will that accomplish?”

What will that accomplish? I turned his question over in my mind. What will that accomplish?

Something about his question reminded me of something my friend Phil Kenneson wrote in his book Life on the Vine. In that book, Phil, in addressing the ways  the convictions of American culture seem to work against those particular virtues we call the ‘fruit of the Spirit’, writes about our deep commitment to being  “productive”.

As I recalled in my little flash of memory, Phil had argued that our convictions about productivity, which is the amount of some supposed good that is produced by a certain investment of time and resources, works against the development of certain other convictions.

For example, a culture that values productivity will not hold “Sabbath-keeping” in high esteem unless such Sabbath-keeping can be seen as servicing our productivity. It is okay to “keep Sabbath” if doing so will prepare us for the upcoming six days of “productivity”. Rest as an end in itself is suspect in a culture that values ‘product’.

Likewise, a culture that values productivity will only value prayer to the extent that “it works”. The ‘productivity culture” might value prayer if it can somehow be demonstrated as a kind of technology (or magic) that “produces” some desired end. To simply pass one’s time in prayer, without regard to whether anything is produced, is seen to be the ultimate folly in a culture given to “productivity”- even when that culture claims to believe in God!

Heck, a culture that values productivity will only value “walking” to the extent that it produces some desired outcome like weight loss or personal health or arrival to some destination. To walk for the sake of walking, or, to walk simply because you can, seems like so much foolishness in a culture that values the productive use of time and energy.

In a culture that values productivity, walking for the sake of walking while praying for the sake of praying is worthlessness squared. And, to do that in a culture that is, for all practical purposes, indifferent to God (unless he can be somehow roped into being yet one more “technology” to help us achieve our self-selected ends) crosses the border into Whackytown.

“I have no idea what it might accomplish,” I replied to my friend. “It just feels like something I’m supposed to do.”

Later I thought some more about my friend’s question: What will that accomplish? And I thought about the great god Productivity. The more I thought about it the more I realized that Productivity is at least part of the reason why we do not value art or poetry in this culture.

I thought about how those folks who appear on the Antique Road Show are not sure they “have something” until one of those antique dealers puts a dollar figure on it.

“This vase has been in my family for 300 years.”

“And, it’s worth $25,000 dollars!”

Cue the swoon!

The real value of the thing is the dollar value of the thing- grandma be damned!

How do we value our possessions? How do we value our time? How do we decide when anything is a worthwhile pursuit? What deep, and hidden convictions, shape our hearts to embrace one kind of action as worthwhile and another as not?

What will that accomplish?

I thought about my reply to my friend.

I wished I had said, “Oh, it’s not about accomplishing anything; it’s just my art.”

+++

Friday morning I told someone else about the big drug bust and all that had happened in that subdivision that was located in our county just the  day before. I told him about  the guns, the drugs, and the cash. I wondered out loud what that must have been like for those ordinary families in that ordinary subdivision to see extra-ordinary swarms of law-enforcement come wheeling onto their streets from every direction at once.

“I’m going over and take a prayer walk through that subdivision today,” I said.  My friend was not keen on the idea.  I assured him that I would be very unassuming, as close to invisible as a sizable fellow could be. “Besides,” I added, “Could there be a safer subdivision in our county the day after one hundred or so law enforcement types swarm in on a house in the subdivision?”

I thought about that comment of Jesus about the house being swept clean of the demon only to have seven more move back in. It seemed to me that the lag time between when the first demon was swept out and the next legion moved in would be the appropriate time to make my move.

My friend shook his head and repeated that he wished I wouldn’t do that. I said something like, “sometimes a feller’s gotta do what a feller’s gotta do.” (Lest you think that I was being bold, you should know that I did not see any more danger in taking my little stroll than when I take a walk and cut through any other sub-division closer to my house.)

So, Friday afternoon I drove over to the subdivision, which is located within walking distance of an elementary school. The entrance to the subdivision looked like every other entrance to every other subdivision. An ordinary sign identified it as ‘just another” subdivision.

I decided to drive through to get a feel for the size of the place. As I drove I noticed ordinary split level homes with ordinary cars and trucks parked in the driveways. I saw a sign identifying one house as the home of senior football player in a high school close by. The yards were well-trimmed. A couple of houses looked empty. One or two were for sale. Here and there I spotted a swing set, a couple of bikes lying on their sides by a driveway. I estimated there to be about 60 houses in the subdivision.

I passed a white SUV parked by the side of the street. I saw a young woman and a large man unloading something out of the back. I passed the house where the bust occurred. Even though a mini-van and a car sat in the driveway, the house was empty. All of the windows were open. A red sign had been plastered on the front door. Swept clean.

I drove the length of the subdivision, turned around, and drove back through. I saw a couple of ordinary folks either getting out of their SUVs or getting into their mini-vans.

That old Monkees song passed through my mind: “Another Pleasant Valley Sunday…” Of course, it was Friday but who was counting?

I parked my car at one of the street, got out, and started walking.

+++

As I walked I looked ahead down the street I had just driven. A slight rise in the road prevented me from seeing all the way to the end of the street. It was so quiet. Although I had seen a few people during my little drive through, I could see no one at the beginning of my walk.

I thought about a conversation I had with a former colleague of mine who lives surrounded by the beautiful mountains and pastures of East Tennessee. We were talking about the little church I serve in the suburbs of Atlanta. He asked me about the church and how well we were doing at serving our community. We had been talking about missional theology and the little missional self-assessment: “If your church disappeared from your community tomorrow, would it be missed?”

I remembered saying to him, “Our church building is located next to a few subdivisions, and some of them are gated. On top of that, few people are ever home.” I explained to my friend that I was not sure that there is a “local community” in the suburbs of Atlanta.

“I am not even sure that the home is the center of life in the suburbs of Atlanta,” I said. “I think perhaps the street, or, better- the expressway- is the center of life in the suburbs of Atlanta. People live in their cars; they just shower, sleep, and watch TV at home.”

My friend sort of snorted. “Want to know my theory of suburbia?” I asked. He nodded as if to say, “If I must”. That’s all it took.

We were sitting at a table so I grabbed a napkin and drew a straight line. “This as a continuum”, I said. On the right end of the continuum, I wrote the word “membership” and on left end of the continuum I wrote the word “subdivision”. To the right of the word “subdivision” I wrote the word “neighborhood”. To the left of the word “membership” I wrote the word “community”.

Subdivision—Neighborhood—Community—Membership.

I pointed my pen at the word “membership”.

“Have you ever heard of Wendell Berry?” I asked my friend. He said that he had, that he knew he was a Kentucky poet, essayist, and fiction writer. He went on to say that he had never read him.

“Well,” I said, “One of the key ideas in Wendell Berry’s writing is the idea of ‘membership.’ I went on to describe Berry’s vision of this small town in Kentucky where people knew each other so well that the rhythms of one person’s life fit with the rhythms of another person’s life. Each knew the other’s needs before the needs were expressed. Each knew when to come and when to stay away.

I went on to say that part of what made membership possible in Berry’s little fictional community was that people were tied to land and to farming and to seasons, to the “fullness of time” rather than to “tick-tock time” and to a deep sense of kinship, which entailed not only blood relations but also deep understanding.

I said that in Berry’s understanding membership emerges over time and as a result of being rooted to a place. I recounted the ways in which Berry critiques the transitory nature of modern life. I paraphrased him: “Everybody wants to be someone other than who they are and somewhere other than where they are.” I said that such desire flies in the face of membership.

“We not only don’t have membership in our ‘community’ in the suburbs of Atlanta,” I said. “I’m not sure we have membership in our churches. We are commuter churches by gated subdivisions where no one’s home”

I pointed to the word “community”. “There are about a gazillion definitions of community,” I said. “We use the word all the time but really don’t have an agreed upon way to define what it is.” I went on to say that in most of our ways of describing community we include shared values, shared history, and some degree of social cohesion.

I then claimed that, for all our missional talk about being “the presence of Christ in the local community”, we probably knew more about being the presence of Christ than we did about “local community”.

“I stand on the porch of my own house and look around,” I said. “I look to my right and see locked houses. The folks who live in those houses are from Mexico, Eastern Europe, Korea, and Texas. I look across the street and see the rental house where some folks from Germany just moved in. Straight ahead I see the house where, every so often, I see a tall skinny guy carrying a big medieval sword rush out to his car. I look to my left and see folks from the West Indies, Viet Nam, Liberia, and North Carolina.”

“I have at least waved at all of them,” I continued, “but I do not know any of them. We have no common story and few common convictions. We do seem to agree to enough rules to cohere in some sense but those rules are pretty basic: ‘Pick up the newspaper that is thrown uninvited into your driveway. Cut your grass. Pick up the trash that settles in your yard. Take in your garbage can and recycling bin at the end of trash day.’”

I pointed to the word “neighborhood” on my napkin continuum. I told him I had only recently learned what the word ‘hood’ meant. “The word ‘hood” means ‘the condition of’”, I said. “So, a neighborhood is a place in which the condition of neighborliness pertains.”

I looked at my friend, “ I know the guys next door to me on either side well enough to borrow a wrench, offer to pick up their mail when they are out of town and offer to ‘watch their place’ when they are gone. That’s it. And I know them that well because they are southern boys like me from North Carolina and Texas and because we live next to each other.”

I talked about how our houses are arranged to face the street, which, again, is where the action is. I talked about how folks drive into their garages at night and out of their garages in the morning and about how, if you wanted to visit the guy next door, you had to go out to the street, walk down it, and then down their driveway and up their sidewalk so as not to tread on their grass. I suggested that we humans don’t like to take paths with that much resistance.

I then pointed to the word “subdivision”. “This is where I live, where we live, “I said. “We don’t live in neighborhoods or communities or memberships. We live in places defined by what was done to the land more than the condition that exists among people.”

“A sub-division describes a place that was probably once a farm or a woodland and that was divided and sold and then subdivided and sold in ‘parcels’, which is the same word we use to describe “packages.” Think ‘commodities. We live on commodities that were shaped by a creature called a “developer,’” I said. “A developer is a guy who buries his construction garbage in your yard and then high tails it out of there to the next project. He makes a fortune and several years later you get a sink hole. Where I live is defined not in terms of people but in terms of what happened to the land.”

Last Friday I walked my prayerful steps into a subdivision, a place marked not by neighborliness or community or membership but by artificial boundaries and invisible barriers. I walked between the concrete curbs and prayed as I passed locked doors, suspicious blinds, and fenced yards.

I took an ordinary walk and prayed ordinary prayers in an ordinary subdivision.

I felt right at home. Sadly…

+++

As I topped the little rise in the road, I came upon the young woman and the large man who I had seen during my drive through unloading something from the back of a white SUV. The young woman carried a microphone and trotted toward me.

“Sir, do you live in this neighborhood?” she asked. The large man trotted from the other side of the SUV with a large and complicated looking video camera on his shoulder.

“No…no, I don’t,” I said. I felt a little caught off guard. “I’m just walking through the neighborhood and praying for these folks.”

“I’m sorry?” she said. I repeated what I said and she did a real-live-honest-to-goodness double take. “You are? That’s great! Will you talk to us?”

“Uh, no thanks,” I replied. (I would like to be able to say that it was only because I didn’t want to “practice my righteousness” before men. However, the truth was that I imagined some drug lord sitting somewhere in a darkened and smoke-filled room watching the evening news. “Bring me the head of that preacher.” In those moments Bonhoeffer’s words rang a little differently: sometimes it really is better to talk to Christ about a man than to talk to a man about Christ.)

The reporter and her cameraman moved on down the street behind me. As I walked I looked back and saw them scurry from one house to the next, she with her mic and he with his camera.

I came to the  white two story house where the raid occurred. A couple of vehicles sat in the driveway. All of the windows were open. A red poster was plastered on the door. I stood in front of the house for a moment and prayed. I prayed for the subdivision and for the people who had been arrested. I prayed for their families and for their children.

As I looked at the house, I remembered hearing Maya Angelou say that she did not allow anyone who visited in her home to curse or to use racial slurs or any form of hateful speech. I remembered that she said she believed that those kinds of words and the attitudes they represent stuck to the walls and to the furniture and that the spirit of such words seeped into the rugs and lingered in the air.

I wondered about all of the things that stuck to the walls and the furniture and the rugs of the house that stood before me. I wondered whether open windows could do anything to clear out the smell of the demonic.

I turned and continued my walk down the street. I saw a man and his wife load their child into an SUV. I saw a young mother open the door of her mini-van to let her son out. I saw him run into the house. I saw her close the door of the van, turn and follow close behind.

I walked past a house where a large man stood in the doorway of his open garage. He talked on a cell phone and I could hear him tell someone about all the guns they brought out of that house. I heard him say “millions of dollars” and figured that he was talking about the street value of the drugs.

I walked and I prayed until I came to the end of the street. I then turned and headed back in the direction I had come.

I thought about that time when Jesus sent out his disciples on a short term mission trip and told them: “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him…” I wondered if there was a “man of peace” in this neighborhood and, if there was, whether he had pulled in the welcome mat following the raid.

I walked past a few more houses and saw a woman standing in the open doorway of her garage. I waved and she waved back. I said, “You all have had a rough week haven’t you?” She took a step or two forward and turned her right ear toward me. “I’m sorry?” She said. I repeated what I had said.

“Oh, my gosh!” She said. “You have no idea!” She stayed close to her open garage and I stood at the edge of the street and she told me about what had happened. She told me about how the fire engines and police and SWAT team and DEA agents had come swarming in from every direction at once and how the streets were lined with police cars and fire trucks. She told me about being evacuated from her house because of the explosive possibilities. She told me about how they had brought in a robot and about how the robot entered the house. She told me about the family who lived in the house and how they were carried off and how there was no gun fire and no violence. She told me about how quiet they were and how seldom they ever saw anyone coming and going.

“I guess they were just trying to fit in,” she said. “Just trying to be as ordinary as the rest of us.”

I listened to her for five or ten minutes. She seemed to want to talk it out, if even from a safe distance. I said, “Well, I sort of figured you all had been traumatized so I thought I’d just walk through the neighborhood and pray for you and your children”.

“Oh, my gosh! Thank you!” she said. She went on to tell me that she and a woman down the street were prayer walkers and how they had circled the whole area many times praying for families and for children and for the elementary school down the street. She pointed to a house down the street and said, “The woman who lives down there is a part of a women’s ministry. She’s a real prayer person too!”

She asked me what church I was from and I told her. I added, “I am not really here to promote my church. I am just here because it seemed like what I was supposed to do.”

I went on to tell her that I had decided to invite the men’s group at our church, a group we call BOB, to return to the neighborhood on Saturday morning to prayer walk. I assured her that we would do so quietly and discretely.

“Oh listen!” she said. “You and your men’s group can come over here and pray for us any time you want to! We are just an ordinary subdivision but we need your prayers.”

We said our farewells and I continued on my way.

I had met a “man of peace”. He happened to be a woman.

+++

I got back to my car, started it up, and drove out of the subdivision. I thought about how odd it seemed to feel the way I felt, like I had “done something” when, in truth, all I had done was walk through a subdivision similar to my own and prayed in ways I usually pray- when I remember to pray.

I couldn’t figure out what I had done to merit that feeling, except perhaps that I had felt some sort of nudge and actually gotten off my butt and responded. I confess. I felt a little like I feel when I take out the trash without having had to be asked, like I deserved a medal for doing the most ordinary, least-little-thing.

Maybe it was one of those ‘man things’…you know, to feel heroic simply because you’ve remembered to put the toilet lid down? I thought about Jeff Foxworthy saying that he shouted out the door to his wife who was blacktopping the driveway: “Honey! I emptied the ash tray!”

I felt good but guilty that I felt good.

I looked down and noticed that my gas light was on. Linda had warned me three times the night before that I had better get gas because “THE GAS WARNING LIGHT IS ON!” I pulled into a Shell Station. I remembered the place.

It was the station where, once before, I had managed to pull up to the pump, get out of the car without pressing the button to open the gas cover only to realize that I had locked my keys and my cell phone in the car. A double whammy! I couldn’t even pump gas while I waited on a locksmith to charge me a hundred bucks to pop my lock. A quadruple whammy! Heck, I couldn’t even call the locksmith. A quintuple whammy! And all that in a matter of seconds!

When I realized my bind (and that I could not even move my car from the owner’s pump…a sextuple whammy!), I went in to see if I could use the phone and to tell the clerk, an impassive Indian man, my predicament.

I put on my best whine, acknowledged my utter stupidity and my sorrow as I told him what I had managed to do. “This was all I needed today!” I sighed.

He stood there behind his cash register and Binaca bottles and Bic Lighters, there beneath his rack of cigarettes and replied in his thick Indian accent: “Sir, thees locking of the keys and thees blocking of the pump…thees is not an exception to life. Thees is life!”

And to think that I had always believed you needed to climb the Himalayas to meet a guru.

I looked to see if that same guy was working as I pumped my gas. I could not tell but I sort of smiled to myself as I remembered that day. “Thees is not an exception to life, thees is life.”

I watched the numbers whiz by on the gas pump and thought: “How many times have I assumed that the good moments in life are life while the bad moments in life are interruptions or exceptions to life?”

After I got back into my car and pulled away I thought about my prayer walk. “This is life…” the thoughts seemed to think themselves…“this methamphetamine in this ordinary subdivision; these thugs hiding in plain view there among these children, these families.; this evil that lives among us; this is not an exception to life; this is life.”

I experienced my “aha”.

Life! That’s where I live! That’s where we all live!

I realized why I felt so good. It was not because I had done something significant or courageous or because I, in my insecure mannishness, felt I deserved a medal; it was because I had actually seen the ordinary.

The old, by God, had become new.

I prayer walked in the new ordinary.

And I felt great!

 

We all prepare before we pray.  Some of us give more thought to prayer prep than others of us.  Some set aside a particular time and place for prayer.  Some of us play some music to help us transition from the madness to the moment.  Others of us engage particular rituals.

Just about all of us assume some posture: we bow our heads, we close our eyes, and we fold our hands just before we pray.  We often step aside from life to pray.  We close our eyes to shut out the distractions.  We turn our hearts inward or upward behind drawn blinds.  

That’s all well and good.  There’s not a thing wrong with any of it.  Jesus himself often went off by himself to pray.  I am sure that sometimes he closed his eyes and others he kept them wide open.  He also taught a prayer prep practice that many, if not most, of us neglect. 

In his book, Missional Rennaisance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church, Reggie McNeal advocates a practice called “Prayer-Scaping.”  Prayer-Scaping does not look like prayer.  It entails no drawing apart, no drawing of the blinds, no withdrawing from the hubbub.  Prayer-Scaping involves getting into a very public place- a mall, a restaurant, a bookstore, a park- and asking of God one simple thing:

“Lord, help me see what you see.”

He tells the story of a church staff who decided to go to a public place that was close to them, pray that prayer and then listen to God for one hour as he instructed them on how to really see.  After a time what was once a forest of anonymous faces became trees with particular bark, leaves, and fruit.  Where they once saw…well…nothing, they now saw worry, anxiety, brokenness and yes, joy and laughter. (Not everyone that Christians call “lost” feel “lost”)   Where they once saw a “mass” of humanity, they now saw people in all their richness.

They also saw a lot of folks who would no more enter a church building than walk on the moon.

The exercise was so powerful for them that they actually sent the whole congregation out (on Sunday no less!) to do the same thing.   “Go to a public place close by and pray: ‘Lord, help me see what you see.’  That one exercise revolutionized the congregation into becoming a force for positive community transformation in the name of Jesus. 

Jesus said:  “The works my Father does are the works I do.”  While that is a very thick word repeated in different ways in the Gospel of John, I think it is safe to say that it at least means that Jesus saw (and sees)  people just as God saw (and sees) people.   God sees us.  God sees you.  God sees me.  Our unique identities are not lost in this dumbed-down, homogenized and  franchised world!

If God sees people just as they are (and without the judge’s scorecard!) then for us to pray appropriately we need to see people too…just as they are, without judgment, without condemnation.  Just see them.

When we do that another of Jesus’ words will crack open like an egg, a word that specifically addresses preparation for prayer.  “Lift up your eyes and look! “  (I’ll stop the quote there.  That’s a plenty.)  Before you pray, lift up your eyes and look.  Think about that.  Why would Jesus tell his disciples to lift up their eyes?

I suspect he told them that because, like most of us, they had their eyes cast down just enough to see themselves.  I believe he is calling them out of their self-absorbing downward gaze to the whole world of folks before them.   “Lift up your eyes!”  What do you see?  The anonymous mass or people in various conditions of being people?

Why did he tell them to look?  Well, I guess because he noticed that they weren’t.   As Yogi Berra quipped: “You can see a lot just by looking…”  “Look!”  Not with judgment.  Not with the comparative eye.  Not on the surfaces.  If anything, try to read the surfaces as expressions of the depths.

 If each person’s dress, posture, expression, hair style, ornaments, and pace were works of art, what message would the artist be conveying?  Joy? Rebellion? Fatigue? Hopelessness?

We can retreat in prayer.  We can close our eyes.  We can go to the inward chamber.  That’s all well and good.

But every now and then we really should go out into the light of day, pray for the eyes of God and just look before we pray.

During my exploratory foray into the corporate world, I had a boss who would  walk by my desk with some memo or email detailing some difficult Human Resource matter and issue his favorite command: "Deal with this.  Sooner is better than later."

When he did that, I felt my stomach twist into a square knot.   How was I supposed to "deal with it?"  What made for "dealing with it?"  How would I know when I had effectively "dealt with it?"   And what did "sooner rather than later" mean?  

The problem was that I did not trust this boss and these orders always felt like a set up to me.  He seemed to leave himself in the position of setting the standard of what made for "dealing with it" and what "sooner rather than later" meant while purposefully concealing his meaning.

I  learned the hard way that you could never do anything "soon enough" and that you could never do an adequate job of "dealing with it."

Yes...my boss was a sadistic crazy person...bless his heart. (In the South, you can say anything about anyone as long as you follow it with "bless his/her heart."   It cancels out all that stuff Jesus said about speaking ill of others.  Can you imagine Peter raising his hand after Jesus taught them not to call their neighbor "Raca" and asking, "Can we call them Raca if we follow it with 'bless his heart'?"  But I digress....)

Back to my boss....My point is that I came to believe that my boss, through the use of vague language, was more interested in exercising power than he was in resolving issues.  

I thought about that boss this morning as I thought about one of the vaguest expressions we use in prayer.   That phrase is "be with..." 

We have all said it: "Lord, sister J- is sick.  We pray that you 'be with her.'"   I remember as a kid in church hearing us all pray: "God, 'be with' the missionaries in the foreign fields." or  "Lord, 'be with' the sick and the shut-ins." (When I was a kid, I didn't know what a 'shut-in' was but figured it wouldn't hurt for the Lord to 'be with' them.  As an adult, I"ve come to realize that we are pretty adept at making God a 'shut-in.'  But I digress..again...bless my heart.)

What's the problem with asking the Lord to "be with" someone?   From the Lord's side there may be no problem at all.  After all, God knows what the subject of our prayers need before we even ask. 

I think the problem is not the Lord's, the problem is ours.  I think the phrase "be with"- unless it names the form of how we want God to 'be with' others- is vague, lazy, and thoughtless. 

When we ask God to 'be with' someone (and from henceforth I mean that as the extent of our intercession for the other) we usually don't have a clue what we mean.  

Is God not 'with' another until we ask God to 'be with' him or her?

What if God suddenly spoke from the heavens and asked: "And what should I do when I am 'with' them?" 

"Lord, be with the shut-in missionaries in the foreign fields..."

"And what should I do when I am with them?"

"Uhh...whatever they need you to do???"

I think that maybe we say 'be with' these other folks because we haven't given enough thought to their situation; we have not tried to learn about them; we have not taken time to enter into their world and empathetically experience their situations. We haven't asked God to help us see our neighbor as God sees our neighbor.

In other words, we haven't given attention or taken time- we have not laid down our hours- so we say "be with."

Why don't we just pray: "Lord, deal with this.  Sooner is better than later?"

I think the story of the Good Samaritan is instructive on this point.  You know a man went down onto the Jericho road where he fell among thieves and was beaten, robbed and left for dead.

A priest and a Levite passed him by.  (I bet they muttered: "Can't stop Lord.  In a hurry.  Dare not be made unclean.  Be with him.  Deal with it.  By the looks of it, sooner would be better than later.  Bless his heart. Amen")

This outcast Samaritan came along the Jericho road. He saw the battered man.  He stopped.  He attended to him.  He took time with him.  He took responsibility for him.  He took 'ownership' of him and cared for him.

I wonder how our neighbor would be affected and how we would be affected if we prayed like that Samaritan acted.   What if, rather than rushing through our prayer list with a few 'be withs', we took the same sort of time and offered the same quality of attention that the Samaritan did?  How would our prayers, how would our lives and the lives of our neighbors be affected?

Now I know...we sometimes say 'be with' because we don't know what else to say.  If we are praying for a parent who has lost a child and we have not had that experience we certainly do not know what to say. 

However, I think we can imagine.  We can ask.  We can read and research.   And we can offer up even our faulty and inadequate prayers for them trusting that the Spirit will intercede for us since we do not know how to pray.

I would encourage us all to drop "be with" from our prayer vocabularies...at least for a while.  If nothing else, we may find that one of the by-products of our prayers for others is that we are becoming more compassionate and thoughtful ourselves.

Not long ago I wrote a bit about what a "praying church" might look like.  I received several thought-provoking emails and comments.  You can scroll down and read some of those in other blog posts.

One comment in particular set me to thinking about whether it is more important for a church to have a reputation as a "praying church" or whether it is more important for a church to have a reputation for a quality of life and ministry that could only be accounted for by the fact that they pray. 

An analogy that came to my mind as I thought about the question is the analogy of a great hitter in baseball.  Such a hitter is known not for the hours and hours of practice he puts in but for how he performs at the plate.  His performance at the plate is the evidence of the hours of practice.  If he somehow practiced and practiced but failed at the plate he would not become known as a great hitter even though he put in hours of practice.

I guess the point is that it is conceivable that a church could put in hours of prayer but fail to bear fruit, especially if the hours of prayer somehow became a competitive event.  (One commentator spoke of visiting a church that is known as a "praying church" and found the prayer meeting to be something of a competitive sport.  Who could pray the most passionately?  Who could pray the most breathlessly?  Who could pray the longest or the most eloquently?   When we allow ourselves to get into that, we would do well to remember Jesus' words concerning doing things for show versus doing things in secret and remember under what conditions it is that we "receive our reward." )

Prayer is part of the fabric of our relationship with God.  Prayer is not a competitive sport or a self-aggrandizing performance.  Just as verbal and non-verbal communication is part of the fabric of a friendship or a marriage, so prayer is part of the fabric of our friendship with God.

In such prayer we may express our praise, our wonder or our thanksgiving.  However, in the context of that friendship we may also make requests, offer petitions and intercede.  In any case, prayer is a God-appointed practice that builds and expresses friendship with God. 

Like everyone else I have had the horrible events at Virginia Tech on my mind all week.  This morning I sat down and wrote a little piece on intercessory prayer.  While it does not speak directly to what happened at Virginia Tech, I hope it does remind us that there really is nothing more loving than to pray for those who are suffering.  I hope you find it helpful.  If you do, please feel free to pass this page link on to others who may also find it helpful.  Thank you for reading my blog.  I do appreciate your many kind and encouraging words to me.

Jim

The Most Loving Thing You Can Do

“This is the very best way to love: lay down your life for your friends.”  -Jesus

            I confess that for a few moments I stopped entering into prayer with my friends and observed what was going on.  I listened as each one prayed his or her prayers of praise and thanksgiving and confession.  I listened as each one named the concerns of friends and strangers who stood in need of prayer and I asked myself: “What can be more loving than this?  What can be more loving than to ask the God of all might and power to act on behalf of one who is not even present and who may even be unknown to us?”

            As the calming rhythms of prayer ascended to the Father, I gave free reign to my imagination.  I thought of the simplicity of the moment, of how these kind people gave their time to close their eyes and bow their heads and humbly approach the throne of grace on behalf of those who were not present.  I listened as they prayed for the suffering, the grieving, the dying, and the lost.  I heard them lift up the names of the unemployed, the unhappy, and the uninspired.  I watched their prayers span the globe on behalf of the strange and the stranger and ascend like the smoke of incense to the presence of the Creator God who makes all things new.

            I thought about those for whom they prayed.  Some of them had scribbled their requests on a Prayer Concern Card and dropped the card into the offering basket on Sunday.  Some had emailed their concerns to the virtual prayer box.  Some had requested prayer face to face.  Some concerns had simply crossed our paths.

             I wondered how many of those who made requests gave another thought to the subject of their concern after making their request.  I know some did. (I recalled the request I made to the gathered when my granddaughter was born with a health problem that could affect the rest of her life and how comforted I felt in knowing that the people to whom I made my request known would actually pray.)

            I wondered how many of those who made requests remembered that there would be those who would “lay down their lives” for a couple of hours on Monday night for no other reason than to pray for the very matter they had brought to the church.  “Were they praying too?”  I wondered.  “Were they genuinely appreciative that others took time to pray?”

            As I listened to the prayers I thought about all of the times I had failed to pray for people who had asked me to pray even though I had assured them that I would pray.  I also thought of the many requests I had uttered and then forgotten.  I thought about how often I had failed to appreciate those who laid down their hours for me and my concerns.

            An odd memory crossed my mind.   When I was a rock musician standing on a stage for the thousandth time while aimless crowds danced the night away, I sometimes pretended that there was no music, no pounding rhythm, no heavy beat on 2 and 4.  I would secretly smile as I imagined that these folks had just suddenly burst into rhythmic gyrations for no apparent reason.  Dancing looks funny when there is no music.

            “What if there is no God?”  I heard myself asking as I listened to the prayers.  “What if there really is no God to hear our prayers?  Would this moment of be like those moments in those dark clubs when I imagined there was no music and people engaged in spontaneous group gyration.  Would this be the ultimate absurdity….people with closed eyes and bowed heads believing that their words ascended to God while in truth they only climbed to the ceiling and bounced back down as empty as when they rose?  Would that be as funny as spontaneous group gyration?"

            I decided that prayer even in the absence of God would not be funny or absurd.  Even without God, prayer would be among the kindest things we could do.  To remember the suffering of others, to call it to consciousness and to name it out loud would conceivably be an act of simple kindness even in a Godless world.  If nothing else it would serve to remind us…

            My mind turned to a profound moment in my life when I lay flat on my back for the eleventh day in a hospital bed.  I remembered hitting the bottom as I wondered whether my ragged heart would ever stop with its fibrillation and tachycardia.  I remembered how there came the sweet and reassuring word that not only is there God but that “God is love” and that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God we find in Christ Jesus our Lord.  I remembered the assurance I received that day when I realized that whether I lived or died I would do so into the love of God. 

            We pray to God who lives, who loves, who is love, and who holds us in the palm of His mighty hand.  Our prayers arise to God on the fragrance of praise and thanksgiving.  Our prayers arise to the God who not only hears but leans forward to listen to the word spoken, the word unspoken, the word unspeakable.

            When we pray to God about the suffering and concerns of others- whether friend, foe or foreign- we do one of the kindest things we can.  We lay down our minutes and hours – we lay down our lives- for them and we lift them up to the loving grace of the infinitely compassionate God.

            What can be more loving than that?

 

 

 

           

           

I came across this wonderful statement by theologian Walter Wink not long ago.  It's from his book, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. 

The statement is worth pondering again and again.   On the heels of Enlightenment and modernist thinking many people questioned the value of intercession.  All petitionary prayer was seen as a throw back to a more primitive way of thinking. 

For them, the true aim of prayer- if there was any point at all- was to come into communion with God or to simply remind oneself of what one should be doing.   Prayer became a form of mood music for the divine encounter or simply a mental Post-It Note to go do some good for someone.  For many, prayer became so much superstition.

Walter Wink reminds us that intercession matters.  As disciples of Jesus, we are called to envision God's future, receive it,  pray for it and live into it today.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand.  Our intercessory prayers are, as the late Stanley Grenz has written, a "cry for the kingdom."  We live the not (completely) yet, in the already and pray for the coming fullness that God has promised.

I've been re-reading Pete Greig's and David Roberts' book Red Moon Rising.  I read it last year and am repeating it.  I'll write a little review later.  However, I just noticed that Pete Grieg has a new book called God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer.  I haven't read that but I bet it's great. 

Pete is a founder of the 24-7 Prayer movement and Red Moon Rising is about that.   His new book is about his and his wife's struggle with her severe epilepsy following the removal of a brain tumor.  

I'm passing along a podcast interview of Pete Grieg conducted by Mel Lawrenz, Senior Pastor of Elmbrook Church.  It's an interesting interview.  I look forward to reading the book.

For several weeks now I have had a phrase repeating itself in my mind: "The enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called."   That thought entered my mind as I prepared a sermon on Acts 1:14.   That text speaks to the response of the 120 disciples in Jerusalem as they waited for the promise of the Holy Spirit to be fulfilled.  

Jesus had taught this group- some had denied him, some of them had fled at the moment of His arrest, some had hidden out- concerning the coming of the Kingdom.  He had called them to mission and ministry and told them that they would be His witnesses in familiar and unfamiliar places both near and far away.  He had told them to wait on the Spirit of God who would clothe them in power.

And there they gathered...an inadequate people facing an enormous calling.

They did not flee this time.  They did not scatter.  They did not deny what he had said.

They prayed, all of them, together with the women.

The phrase rolled through my mind again last night as I listened to the news about what had happened at Virginia Tech.  Having spent a number of years ministering and teaching on college campuses, I could just imagine the trauma that the students, staff and faculty must have endured (and will endure for some time...for some even a lifetime.)

I wondered yet again about the state of our world.  And I wondered about the state of the church.

I asked myself: "What ought we be doing differently as the church that could help stem the tide of violence in our society?"

The answer I heard in my own heart and mind was that we need to do a better job of equipping one another for ministry out in the day to day world.

I wondered how the world might change if all Christians were better equipped to listen to people who are lost and in pain.  I imagined an army of people wearing t-shirts or buttons that said: "If you need to talk, I will listen."

I thought about those Kleenex commercials with the guy who sits in a chair and listens to a person sitting on a couch in the middle of a downtown sidewalk.  I thought about how that might be one way of going about being the church...be willing and able to pull up a chair and just listen to someone lost and in pain.

Not long ago I was talking to a couple of guys who are on the staff of a large church.  I asked them about a particular ministry in their church and they replied: "All they do is listen to people; they never get around to ministry."

Hmmm.....

Yesterday I was reading a book on prayer. (I am reading several right now)  The author reminded me that prayer is a 2-way street.  God initiates prayer.  We pray.  God listens.  God speaks.  We listen.

Prayer is listening.

I'm rambling....

It just seems to me that the world might be a different place if all of Jesus' disciples made listening one of their central ministries.

And maybe...just maybe...the best place to start such a ministry is in prayer where we speak to God but also listen to God... especially as we contemplate the "enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called."

I appreciate all of the responses I have received with regard to my question as to what a praying church might look like. 

One thing I wanted to clarify: when I asked what a church might be doing to become known as a praying church, I didn't mean that in a "branding" sense.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am pretty hesitant about adopting into the church marketing strategies appropriate to business.

If I recall correctly (and that may be a stretch), I was thinking along a couple of lines.  First, it seems to me that nowadays churches are known by their size (as in "mega" or "small"), their denominational affiliation, or by their level of perceived activity.  (as in "such and such a church is a dynamic church")   Perhaps there are other ways by which churches are "known" but those seem to me to be the most popular ways of characterizing churches.

That in and of itself ought to give us pause.   Does it suggest that churches have become so homogenized that they are not known for anything in particular? 

Second, I believe I was thinking in terms of how a church might distinguish itself from the non-church social/ cultural context in which it finds itself.  It seems to me that sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish Christian folks from other good, moral non-Christian folks.  (Of course, that assumes that Christian folks are good and moral.) 

In thinking about a "praying church", I don't mean to suggest that of all the marks of congregational character a church should pick and choose their "mark of choice" and only become that.  We haven't gained anything if we only retreat into our safe walls and pray prayers that are deaf to the cries of the suffering. 

There may be a bit of irony here.  It may turn out that a truly praying church is not so much known as a praying church.  Rather, such a church, while praying, may be known for how it takes the gospel into the larger community. 

In other words, such a church may be known more by its fruits than by its prayers.

Please keep thinking with me.  Drop me an email through my contact link or just comment below.  (Remember...you have to register to comment to my blog posts.  It's easy)

A while back I taught a class at Emmanuel School of Religion in Johnson City, TN on what the care of the hurting might look like in a missional church.  The more I studied the missional church literature the more it seemed to me that prayer must be central to the missional church.   (For a good idea of what the missional church is, check out this link.)

After I got back, I read the first four chapters of Acts (for the umpteenth time) and it struck me that within the first chapter that the earliest disciples were placed in a spot that I describe as the tension between "the enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called."

Some of these folks had fled and denied during the trial and crucifixion crisis.  Even after they had been taught by the risen Lord, they still didn't quite get it.  ("Are you going to establish the kingdom now?") And here Jesus was telling them they would be His witnesses to the uttermost parts of the world. 

When confronted with the "enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called" the church prayed...hard...constantly...together.

During the past couple of months you might say I've been convicted and convinced as to the importance of prayer.    

The call is the same and we are still as doofy as ever.   The world is in a mess and we have constructed the best churches that good management can build.

But where's the power? 

I just don't see how the well-managed, highly programmized church is in any way adequate to the calling.  (Not that God- thank God- doesn't use our meager efforts!)

It seems to me that if our calling is to follow the God who is on mission, that if we are to discern how God is moving in our midst and join God in God's mission, that if we are to be a resurrected community of the resurrected Lord,  and that if our call is to reach out to lost, suffering, broken, breaking, hurting people we had better pray.

All of that has set me to thinking about what a praying church might look like.  

I've put the question to some of our prayer warriors at North River.  I've asked them to respond to questions like this:

What would a church be doing to become known as a praying church?

If being a praying church was a crime, what evidence would exist that we are guilty? 

I'd love to hear from anyone who reads this blog...

How would you answer those questions?

What would you be observing in a church that is becoming known as a praying church?  

Help me think about this, please.   You can comment below (you have to join first) or you can just drop me an email.

I'm not kidding...help me out.  Thanks.