Lord, Teach Me To Pray

I have often pondered what prayer actually does.  In my personal prayers, I pray for many people who are sick in body, mind or estate – including myself.  But what am I asking God to actually do?  Do I want God to hear my prayer requests and decide He/She/It will respond to my request?  On one level that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.  If God is all good and all powerful, wouldn’t God do it anyway?  God shouldn’t need my urging to act.  I end my prayers with the caveat – “You know our needs better than we know them ourselves.  Fulfill these requests and petitions as may be best for us.”  However, deep in my heart I hope God’s will and mine line up and are in sync.

 There are stories in the Bible of people changing God’s mind.  In one case Abraham bargains with God about the number of righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah to change God’s mind and not destroy the city (Genesis 18).  Abraham negotiated the number of righteous men required down to 10.  The bible has other instances where God had a change of mind (heart?)  However, in today’s times there are many prayers in which God doesn’t seem to answer them.  If God did there would be many people alive today who were stuck down before what seemed to be their time.  There would be many fewer displaced and injured innocent people in war zones.  I could go on but I’m sure you get the point. 

There is the case of Gretta Vosper, a United Church of Canada ordained minister who is a declared atheist.   She declares that she changed her belief about God because her daughter’s beloved teacher was ill and died despite her and her daughter’s prayers.  From what I read; Vosper believes in a God but not one that intervenes in human affairs in any way.  In the United Church congregation where she is minister, she has eliminated the Lord’s Prayer and probably other prayers of intercession.  The question remains: what do I believe about prayer?  I have prayed for people who have not been healed and returned to health and wholeness.  Some I have prayed for have recovered from sickness in body or mind or estate.  But is that because of prayers by me and/or others?  I have found Richard Rohr to be very helpful in all this. He writes:

I believe prayer is a symbiotic relationship with life and with God, a synergy which creates a result larger than the exchange itself. We ask not to change God, but to change ourselves. We pray to form a living relationship, not to get things done. (That is why Jesus says all prayers are answered, which does not appear to be true, according to the evidence!) God knows that we need to pray to keep the symbiotic relationship moving and growing. Prayer is not a way to try to control God, or even to get what we want.  

Prayers of intercession or petition are one way of situating our life within total honesty and structural truth. We are all forever beggars before God and the universe. We can never engineer or guide our own transformation or conversion. If we try, don’t it will be a self-centered and well-controlled version of conversion, with most of our preferences and addictions still fully in place, but now well-disguised.  Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation July 21, 2024

For me this is a good reason to pray.  I cannot say if prayers of intercession work in the way that people want them to i.e. with the results they pray for.  We do have the example of Jesus Christ who did prayer and taught his disciples and us how to pray.  However, I also believe that prayer changes the person who prays. That is more than enough reason to continue to pray.     

May you be blessed to pray and be prayed for on your journey.

 

Putting the Passion in the Palms

Sunday was officially The Sunday of the Passion with the Liturgy of the Palms in the Church Year .  The events of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to the adulation of the crowd waving palm branches and crying Hosanna in the highest were contrasted with the events of Good Friday and the passion of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. 

When I was growing up, I can remember that these two events were ‘celebrated’ on different days.  Palm Sunday recounted the entry into Jerusalem and the passion of Christ was marked on Good Friday – which it still is today.  I attended the United Church of Canada in the first part of my life and in my memory, Palm Sunday was reserved to mark the events of the entry into Jerusalem.  When I started attending an Anglican Church at the mid-point in my life – as I measure it at this point – I was surprized that the two events of Palm Sunday and the Passion were celebrated together and then the Passion was marked on Good Friday – where, to my mind, it rightly belongs. 

I must confess that, in the years that followed which included my formal theological training, I did not explore, what seemed to me, a strange convergence of the two Gospel narratives.  The issue was never addressed and I also did not raise it.  However, I have always thought that it made more sense to keep them separate as I had experienced it in my earlier life.  Well, with circumstances being what they are this year i.e. churches being closed due to the COVID -19 pandemic and with us being thrown on our own devices for worship albeit with lots of material available on-line and other places – ironically there is an embarrassment of riches in this context -  I decided to make the best of the opportunity and investigate how this came about in the current liturgy of our church.

It says in scripture, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened, I sought and knocked on Google’s door and it did open.  I came across an article from the United Methodist Church in the United States which addressed this issue. The author is not named but it is under the publication Discipleship Ministries https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/why-palmpassion-sunday-and-not-just-palm-sunday.   The author notes that he or she was one of the representatives of their denomination that was involved with the change which came about with the development of the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) which is used today in most churches.  The article puts to rest the rather common belief that this change was made so that church goers who perhaps were lax in their attendance on Good Friday worship services would hear the Passion story.   The reader is assured that this was not the case.  Rather, it was to address the perceived need to re-establish the dual event as a connection between Lent and Holy Week:

As a result of all this work by all these Christians, worldwide, over all this time, we are where we are now -- with a recovered Palm/Passion Sunday as the hinge between a recovered Lent and a more intense Holy Week.

Behind this was the goal of re-establishing and addressing the need to strengthening the discipleship of the followers of Jesus Christ by building on the Lenten observances and the foundational events of Holy Week:

The recovery of Lent was not simply about re-syncing our current calendars with more ancient ones. Instead, it was primarily about recovering the church's mission of discipling people in the way of Jesus, and realigning our worship practices to support that mission.

These are very lofty goals; however, I believe that something vital has been lost as a result.  By binding the two events inexorably together it does not enable the worshiper to experience the full impact and importance of the events of that triumphal entry of Jesus who was fulfilling the scriptural role of Messiah or king riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9).  We need to have the full effect of being one of the crowed massed along the route hoping against hope that here is the long-awaited saviour who will address all the wrongs we have suffered in our lives.  Here is the anointed one who will make right all the wrongs in our lives and magically give us a new creation, a New Jerusalem.

Unless we have that experience as fully as possible, we will not have the full impact of being one of the masses that will turn on that failed saviour with the rage of our disappointment when those unrealistic expectations are unfulfilled.  We will never have at least a taste of the experience being part of the crowd that cries “crucify him”. 

If we are honest with ourselves will we admit that each of us would be with that crowd; or perhaps we would “only” be with Peter and would deny knowing him when push come to shove.

Blessings on your journey this Holy Week.

How can I keep From Praying

I recently received the gift of a book on prayer.  It is entitled Men Pray and is a collection of prayers and reflections by many of the ‘big names’ is theology and spirituality.  I don’t mean this to be disparaging in any way.  The writers include such diverse people as modern writers C.S. Lewis, Nelson Mandala, Wendell Berry as well as ones in the classic canon such as Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Ignatius of Loyola, Francis of Assisi, and Tagore.  There are even some surprizing entries by people not normally considered in the field such as General Douglas MacArthur.  It also introduced me to people I am not familiar with such as Ted Loder and Jay Marshall.  It also has entries by that most prolific of writers, author unknown. It is a treasure that I can delve into for a long time to come and be the source of much contemplation as each entry can be something to meditate on at length. 

However, this morning I want to reflect on the introduction to the book which is written by Brian D. McLaren.  This is something of a synchronistic event as the McLaren was one of the presenters at the Haden Dream and Spirituality Conference I attended at the end of May.  I had not been familiar with this person or his writing previously so it is, I believe, a “significant coincident” that I received this book shortly after.  I was quite impressed by McLaren from his presentations at the Conference and I bought his most recent book, A New Kind of Christianity, which I am currently reading.  I have found the writing  of McLaren to be an excellent expression of many of the issues I have been exploring for many years in my personal theology  (of course I therefore think his theology is right on which needs to be balanced by some counter arguments). 

One part of the introduction by McLaren particularly spoke to me.  He was speaking of his grandfather’s approach to prayer:

My grandfather didn’t  seem  to be bothered by all those theological questions of how prayer functions, of what prayer accomplishes, of how the prayers of one person interacts with the free will of another or with “the sovereign will of God “ or “the law of nature”.  He didn’t seem to type to question why prayer should be necessary, why an all benevolent God would need to be invited or coaxed into doing the right thing. Somehow, he flew above or below the altitude at which those questions buss and bother.

This sums up eloquently in a few words the journey I have been on for many years in regard to prayer and why I should pray.  I have had many debates with myself along those lines about prayer and if and how I should pray. 

I contrast this approach to that of Gretta Vosper, a United Church of Canada minister who is a self-declared atheist.  I wrote about Vosper a while ago and my criticism of her stance.  She expounded in her writings, which are extensive, about her epiphany which brought her to her current understanding (misunderstanding in my view) about God.  The episode involved the death of the much beloved elementary school teacher of her daughter.  Her daughter had prayed fervently that the teacher would be healed of the condition that eventually killed her.  Vosper could not answer her daughter’s questions about how a loving God could allow such a beloved person to die.  In my understanding, this led her to her current belief that there is no God.  Since then Vosper has been on a crusade to convert the United Church to her form of Christianity, or rather, into an organization which is more in line with a secular service club.

My journey has brought me to a point in life in which prayer plays an important part.  It has brought me to the place where I know and believe that prayer is necessary for my salvation and the salvation of the world.  I pray because I know it is necessary for me and for the world regardless of those theological questions which can be voiced by me within or by others such as Vosper on the outside.

Blessings on your journey. 

Gretta and me

Recently I have re-encountered Gretta Vosper—not directly but on the radio and in the news.  Gretta Vosper is something of a well-known personality.  For those of you who are not familiar with her, she is a United Church of Canada ordained minister who has declared herself to be an atheist.  She has written a number of popular books including: With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. 

I became aware of the Rev. Vosper a few years ago when I heard her interviewed on that wonderful CBC radio program Tapestry with Mary Hynes.  I was somewhat troubled by what I heard at the time but I guess not enough to follow up on what I heard.  I re-encountered the Rev. Vosper last week when I heard a rebroadcast of the program while driving in my car.  That was followed by a Canadian Press news item on Huffington Post that stated Vosper was undergoing a process in the United Church that could lead to her being defrocked.  The article notes, “An ordained United Church of Canada minister who believes in neither God nor Bible said Wednesday she is prepared to fight an unprecedented attempt to boot her from the pulpit for her beliefs”. 

My reaction to hearing the broadcast and the news item was quite visceral—indeed I was surprized by how charged it was.  It caused me to investigate and examine her beliefs in more detail to help me understand my reaction more fully.  My initial reaction (which probably many people have) to hearing about Vosper was, “if she is an atheist and no longer believes in God (the definition of an atheist), why is she still an active United Church minister leading a congregation in The United Church?”  I felt I needed to understand more fully where she was coming from and where she was going in the church.

Vosper “came out” and revealed her atheism in a sermon in 2001.  The lay leaders of the congregation agreed to walk with her in the new path she was exploring which was, I presume, the bringing about a non-religious church in a non-religious time.  However, there were apparently, and not surprisingly, many of the members of the congregation who could not make that journey with her and left her flock.  As she describes in the interview, worship looks very much like a typical United Church worship service with hymns and prayers and a sermon. However, there is a distinct difference.  They no longer use scripture passages; they have rewritten hymns to take out any reference to God; indeed they no-longer is the G** word in any in most context.  If there is a reference to God they always state, “By God I mean…”  

Vosper noted in the interview that she came to the point of “coming out” when she had to deal with the devastation of her daughter who was mourning the loss of a beloved teacher to cancer. The daughter had, unknown to Vosper, prayer for God to heal her teacher.  Vosper could not reconcile the devastation of her daughter  and her non-belief in an interventionist personal God who answered prayer for which she had no satisfactory answer to comfort her daughter.    She decided to stay in her position as a minister due to the pastoral relationship she had with her flock. 

My next question is, why Vosper doesn’t join the Unitarian Church (as one on-line commenter noted) where she would fit in with no problem doctrinal?  Vosper holds the United Church to be the most progressing denomination in the world and is comfortable staying in the church.  As she states on her web site:

My congregation belongs to The United Church of Canada, probably the most progressive Christian denomination in the world. It ordained women over seventy years ago and has been ordaining openly LGBTQ leaders for decades. But theologically it remains in the closet about the human construction of religion and all its trapping. I couldn’t stay in that closet.

I have concluded that Vosper doesn’t want to leave the United Church to join the Unitarians or perhaps lead an independent secular humanist “church” because she would not be able to make an impact on the church.  She believe that the church needs to be converted to an organization that does not believe in a supernatural being in the sky who intervenes in human affairs for better or worse—a belief that, in her mind, has caused so many problems in the world. 

As noted above, Vosper does not usually use “God” in her worship—but when she does she qualifies if with, “by God I mean…”  This seemed to imply that she does believe in some form of higher power.  I had hoped to discover what Vosper does actually believe in which could be considered a higher power.  Unfortunately in the interview she did not specify what she might mean by God.  My investigation to date has not born much fruit.  I have not read any of her books.  However, the blurb for her book, With or Without God on her web site states:

Envisioning a future in which the Christian church plays a viable and transformative role in shaping society, Gretta Vosper argues that if the church is to survive at all, the heart of faith must undergo a radical change. Vosper, founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity and a minister in Toronto, believes that what will save the church is an emphasis on just and compassionate living—a new and wholly humanistic (my emphasis) approach to religion.

What then are the conclusions I have reached at this point in my investigation?  First, I must say that I admire Vosper for having the courage to say and stand by what she believes—even if I believe that she is wrong—and I certainly do.  I do not believe that she is wrong about wanting the church to move beyond the belief in God as a supernatural person in the sky who is arbitrary and can be bribed (she didn’t say that last part directly, as far as I know, but I extrapolated  from what she has said).  That has been called succinctly “God the Butler” who is called up to serve us on demand.   I believe that the church must change.  However, if all that the church is going to become is another place to gather together to be a supportive community and do good works—which are undoubtedly a vital part of being church—how is that different from any secular group such as Rotary already in existence?  If we Christians do not believe in God—a higher power who calls us to be more than we are and shows us how we can be that—then that is not Christian. 

May the God, who Gretta Vosper apparently does not believe in, bless her and keep her.  I wish Gretta Vosper well in her future endeavours however, I hope and pray (to that same God) she will pursues those endeavours in place where atheists have a home: that in my view is not the Christian church.