Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Wrestle with God,
if you must, hold fast throughout the night, and when morning comes don’t be
surprised that you come up wounded from the battle. One does not prevail against God and remain
unscathed. Yet cling to the promise,
nevertheless.
When I went into
ministry, one of my biggest concerns was prayer.
I had idealized
notions of what prayer was all about, and very overwhelming sense that other
people’s piety afforded them a prayer life that I simply didn’t have.
My sense was that
my father, for example, was richly blessed with an ability to pray that escaped
me.
He would pray as
though God was just around the corner in the next room. Raise your voice a little, which he did, and
God will hear you.
I had heard
others talk about their lives of prayer and devotion, and it often seemed like
they had an admirable ability to be in conversation with God as though God was
their best friend. The words just
flowed.
This struggle
remained with me throughout my years in ministry.
Of all the questions
I’ve been asked during interviews by call committees, the one that gave me the
most trouble was “Tell us about your personal life of prayer.”
If I had to tell
you about it in an interview it was no longer my personal life of
prayer.
That was one
objection.
But the other was
a sense of inadequacy.
I wish I could
pray like my father.
But I can’t.
It’s not that I
don’t pray. I do. You know that.
I’ve prayed with
people from birth to the grave.
Sometimes my
prayers are eloquent.
Sometimes they
are labored and cumbersome.
Still, at other
times I’ve felt inspired to pray.
At one such time
I composed this prayer, which remains my favorite:
Hold me tight, most precious Lord,
That
I might follow you.
Grant me grace to live each day,
May
I be born anew.
Lift me up whenever I fall,
And
never let me fade
From the grace filled light
Of
your own sight
That
turns the night to day.
Yet prayer
remains a struggle.
One of the issues
I’ve had to deal with is the philosophical one.
I’ve questioned
as a philosopher, the effectiveness of prayer.
My struggles
philosophically with prayer are similar to the “problem of evil” that
philosophers debate.
If God is all
loving, and God is all powerful, then why is there evil?
Evil continues,
so either God is not all loving, or God simply isn’t able to stop it.
That’s the
problem of evil for philosophers.
My philosophical
problem with prayer was similar.
When we pray for
something good, like a cure from a deadly disease, and the person we are
praying for dies anyway, then we ask why.
Perhaps we didn’t
pray ‘right’. It’s our fault for not
praying as we ought. But what a burden
that is for us to bear. I’ve prayed with
moms and dads whose children were dying, and they did die. Do I really want to believe that the reason
they died was because of my inadequacy in prayer??? That if I had just been better at it, they
would have lived??? That’s it’s my
fault???
Maybe God just
doesn’t hear our prayers.
You know, God has
a lot on his mind, what with being the Lord of the Universe and all. Perhaps he just doesn’t have time to worry
about my surgery next week.
Well, if God
doesn’t have time to listen, why pray?
Or perhaps, God
does care and listen to our prayers, but he just can’t do anything about it.
Babies will die.
Tragedies will
happen in spite of our prayers, because God can’t or won’t intervene.
That’s a
philosophical problem with prayer. And
it eats away at our faith.
But then there
are other times when prayer seems to work like magic.
Healing happens.
Doors open.
It’s just a clear
as day.
And when it’s all
over everyone involved just really senses that the hand of God was all over it.
As a bishop of
mine once said:
“Dave, this is a
God thing.”
Sometimes, you
just know that.
As I’ve struggled
with prayer over the years there are two passages from the Bible that have
become most dear to me.
The first is from
Romans 8:
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our
weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit
intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart,
knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the
saints according to the will of God.
Over the years, I’ve
prayed eloquent prayers, and not so eloquent prayers. Sometimes I’ve know just what to say and how
to say it. At other times I searched for
the right words.
But more times
than not, I’ve learned to sigh.
“Sighs to deep for words” has become for
me a model for prayer.
And as I sigh, I
also cling to the promise that the Spirit is helping me in my weakness and that
those deeply felt sighs are actually the Spirit’s own intercessions.
The second
passage is today’s Old Testament lesson.
4Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled
with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against
Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as
he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But
Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27So he said to him,
“What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28Then the man said, “You shall no longer
be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and
have prevailed.”
There may be a
lot of things I haven’t done well with respect to prayer.
But, I can tell
you this much, I have spent many a sleepless night wrestling with God.
This story about
Jacob is amazing.
He wrestled all
night. All night.
And it was not
just another man with whom he struggled, but God.
And having
prevailed against God throughout the night he received God’s blessing at the
break of day.
With a catch.
A dislocated hip.
Gimpy.
He prevailed in
his struggles with God, but was left with a limp when it was all over. It took its toll.
Jacob had feared
for his life as he anticipated meeting up with his brother Esau the next day.
You remember the
story.
He had cheated
Esau out of his birthright, and had been on the run ever since.
Now was the day
of reckoning.
Jacob had tricked
his father Isaac into giving him Esau’s blessing, and now he had the audacity
to wrestle with God until God blessed him as well.
Jacob often is
looked upon as a despicable character, a cheat.
Yet there is
another dimension to him.
A faithful dimension.
As evidenced by
his wrestling through the night and prevailing, Jacob had a persistent,
resilient, and unwavering faith.
He wrestled
through the night and prevailed, and for that, God blessed him.
In today’s Gospel
lesson Jesus tells us as his disciples to “pray always and not to lose heart.”
And he tells the
parable about the woman who persisted in her appeals to the judge for justice,
and finally was granted her wish because of that persistence.
A stubborn,
persistent, demanding even, faith.
Do not lose
heart.
Do not give up.
Wrestle through
the night but never let go.
Never let go of
God.
Wrestle with God,
struggle with God, but hold fast to God and the promise of his blessing.
That’s the
epitome of faith.
To struggle
through the night, and to prevail until morning when the promise is fulfilled.
The struggle may
not be easy.
We may come up
limping as a result.
But in the end God
will be faithful to his promise.
Amen
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