ARE YOUR PRAYERS AN ATTEMPT TO GET GOD OR YOU TO CHANGE?

 

Lord, teach us to pray!

Luke: 11:1-13

I own a lot of books, even though I have culled through them several times over the years, especially when it comes to moving from one house to the next! Most of them, I rarely look at, even though I go digging through them for something every now and them. There are, however, a few books, maybe 10 in all,  that I would really hate to lose, books that have changed my life in one way or another. One of those books is a fifty-five year old book by Louis Evely entitled Our Prayer. It was the book that helped me really understand what prayer is all about! I turn to it often, especially when I talk to groups about the role of prayer in their lives! It’s out of print! I would really hate to lose it!

The insight I got from that book changed my prayer life and helped me make sense of the purpose of prayer.  I had prayed all my life, but I didn’t feel that it was doing all that much good.  I was like that old farmer in one of my former parishes who said that he never prayed for rain because “God’s goina do what God’s goina do anyway!” No matter how much I prayed, it has always seemed to me to that “God was goina’ do what God was goina’ do anyway.” That old book helped me discover that, even though I believed in Jesus and I believed in prayer, I was actually praying like a pagan! 

How do pagans pray?  They whine, beg, cringe and bribe their moody, mean and reluctant gods to loosen up and give them what they want! Their prayers are attempts to inform their gods of things that need to be done and how and when they should be done! Their prayers are attempts to get their gods to wake up and pay attention! Their prayers are an attempt to get their gods to change their minds and moods and do what they want through bribery! Pagan prayer has been portrayed best in those old TV jungle movies. It was almost always the same. The poor people lived at the foot of an active volcano where their god lived! Their volcano god was moody and unpredictable and often blew his top, killing hundreds of their people. To get this god to be good to them, they lived in fear of him and their prayer was basically bribes to keep him at bay and do their bidding. Their sadistic god loved pain, especially pain that involved the shedding of blood.  So if you cut yourself  or whipped yourself till you bled, you had a better chance of getting a favor out of him. If that didn’t work, you threw the prettiest virgin in town into the bubbling lava!  Pagan prayer was always an effort to get the god to change his mind or change his sadistic behaviors or his indifference toward humans.

I used to pray like a pagan. My prayer was more about telling God what I wanted him to hear, rather than listening to God tell me what I needed to hear. I thought prayer was about informing God about what needed to be done in my life and in the world around me. I believed that I needed to work on God if I ever had a chance of getting him to do what I wanted! I felt that I had a better chance of getting what I wanted if I pleaded and begged and cried and starved and deprived myself. I offered bribes: I would light a 30 day candle instead of one of those cheap two hour candles. I would say 50 rosaries instead of one. I would do a 7 day novena instead of a simple silent prayer. I would promise to make a big contribution to charity if my wish was granted. I would attend an all night vigil instead of a few quiet moments during the day.  I probably would have pushed a virgin into a volcano, but there was a shortage of virgins in my town! Pagan prayer is all about getting the attention of a cold, distant, cruel and aggravated god and persuading him to alter his behavior  through bribery and sadism. That is no way for Christians to pray!

One of my favorite readings about prayer is the story of the wise and famous King Solomon’s prayer. We are told that God “appeared to Solomon in a dream one night,” “inviting him to ask for something in prayer.” Solomon points out to God that he had chosen him to be king of a huge nation, even though he was young and inexperienced, and asks him simply for what he needed to do all that God wanted him to do: “an understanding heart” and “the wisdom to know right from wrong.” God was impressed with his prayer and answered it, noting that he could have asked for selfish needs: a long life, riches or vengeance on his enemies!  Solomon teaches us the real meat of all prayer: to do well what God wants us to do! Solomon teaches us the purpose of all prayer: to have us be changed by God, rather than having God be changed by us, as pagans try to do to their gods!  The perfect prayer, as Solomon knew, is to know our calls and to ask only for the “daily bread” we need to live them out!

My friends, the difference between the way pagans pray and the way Christians ought to pray is very different. Pagans pray to persuade their gods to change. Christians pray that God will change them. We do not have a moody, disinterested or stingy God who needs to be bribed or woken up or persuaded to give us what we ask. Our God already wants to give us what is good for us. Our God simply wants us to open ourselves to receive the good he already desires for us. The perfect Christian prayer is a prayer of openness and gratitude. The perfect Christian prayer is the prayer of Mary, “Thy will be done!” The perfect Christian prayer is the prayer of Solomon, “Give me what I need to do the job you have given me!”  The perfect Christian prayer is the pray of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, “Your will, not mine, be done!”  God does not need to change, be instructed or be informed. We do! We need to change and want what God wants for us because what God wants for us is always best for us! 

For my conclusion today, I turn to “bumper sticker theology.”  We are all familiar with the bumper sticker that says, “prayer changes things.” There is another bumper sticker that, I believe, is more accurate. It says, “prayer changes people and people change things!”