Hopeless prayers

 

Psalm 23
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
April 21, 2024

Slightly out of focus photo of a green and blue-hued cup with a golden rim being filled with hot tea, with shadows in the foreground and light shining in the background.

Recently, a colleague and friend posted about what she called her “schizophrenic” prayer life. We really need to stop using that word or the word “crazy” as a synonym for the neurotypical experience of feeling disconnected or disjointed, when we feel like our inner life is all over the place. What she described, though, is probably how many of us feel when we pray. We watch or listen to the news. We scroll through our feeds on social media and read about what’s going in the lives friends and loved ones, in the lives of those working for change, in the lives of those suffering from devastating violence, oppression, and hunger, and if we have any sympathy or empathy, we can’t help but pray, shout, cry, stumble over our thoughts and feelings. We beg and plead, we shake our fists, we make deals and bargains, we take deep breaths, try to meditate and achieve some kind of calm or peace.



And yet if we have done any work on ourselves, if we have even the slightest self-awareness of our privilege and how we benefit from the world as it is, right alongside our guilt, we also give deep thanks for what we have. We want everyone to have shelter and enough food, access to health care and education, to know what it means to live in community and to be able to enjoy this beautiful world we live in. We pray for wisdom, knowledge, and courage to be able to do something, to be a part of the solution, to make a material difference in the lives of others.



Much as we want God to fix everything, we also know that if anything changes, it is through human hearts, human minds, humanity’s capacity for both good and evil, creation and destruction. As much as we are anxious about the bad actors and how evil persists, we pray to remind ourselves of all those who are working for justice, healing, and wholeness. We question if our prayers matter at all; do they affect the universe in any way? How do our prayers affect our life and the lives of those around us?



My friend’s post received many comments from people who felt similarly, people who struggle with their own prayers and feelings of powerlessness, and expressed their solidarity of hope that things can be better than this. One person suggested a book on prayer by Ernest Holmes, that once we learn what she called affirmative prayer, our prayers are what Holmes considered more effective.



Ernest Holmes was the founder of the Science of Mind philosophy, a positive, supportive approach to life. He believed that all prayers can be answered, as long as the person praying knew how to pray correctly, in a way that connects us more deeply with the Divine. Holmes affirmed that we already live in a perfect universe; it is our perception, our minds that need to be attuned to it before we can experience it. In effect, we can think better and thus think our way into a better life.



Can you see the potential problem with this line of thinking? How can one learn to experience abundance when there is a system designed to ensure there will be impoverished people? How can one learn to experience a good health outcome when there is a system that still operates with White, able-bodied, neurotypical, cisgender men as the default? How can we learn how to experience peace and safety when there are whole industries that profit from incarceration, violence and war?



I know there are millions of people who will say that they have benefited greatly from this philosophy, that they have found power in this kind of prayer, and that it has changed their lives, and I believe that. I also believe that it probably works more in your favor if you already have some kind of privilege.



Much of the Bible and the Psalms in particular were written by people who were not privileged, who were on the losing side of history, who knew all too well what it meant to live in the shadow of death. They were not written by people like us. David may have been a king who broke God’s laws, but he was also aware that God was his shepherd, not himself, and that God’s goodness and mercy came to him not because of who he was but because of who God is.



What we learn from the psalms about how to pray is that we can say anything to God. We can be hopeful, thankful, confident, but we can also be vengeful, selfish, and hopeless. We can be our authentic selves, all of who we are, in the presence of the Divine.



Our God is not a good-vibes only God. The resurrection wasn’t a silver lining to Jesus’ death on the cross. God did not raise Jesus so we could be resilient in the face of suffering and oppression but so we could face the powers behind suffering and oppression head-on. Powers like White Christian nationalism but also our own racism and implicit bias. Powers like patriarchy but also our own comfort within that system. Powers like empire and unfettered capitalism and greed but also our desire to keep what we have.



We need to give voice to our hopeless prayers, the ones we’re not sure are heard or make sense or have a ghost of chance of happening, to express our feelings of powerlessness. Powerlessness is part of the human condition, but it is only a place to begin. What if when we gave thanks for all that we have, we also prayed to be shown how to let go of some of it? What if when we pray for peace in Gaza and Ukraine, in Yemen and in Sudan and Haiti, we also pray to be shown how violence is enshrined in White supremacy? What if when we affirmed that everything will work out, we also prayed not only to be shown how we can be a part of the solution but how we have gotten in the way? What if when we ask God to fix it, we then prayed, “Here I am, Lord, send me”?



God is my shepherd
My spiritual 2 x 4
I have everything I need
And a lot of stuff that I don’t
I take too much for granted
They make me lie down in green pastures
(When was the last time I laid down in the grass?)
They lead me beside still waters
(My water is clean)
They restore my soul
(I have time to rest)
They lead me on the right path
For their name’s sake
(I am because they are)
Even though I try to do all kinds of hard things alone
Sometimes stupid, sometimes foolhardy, sometimes vain
I’d like to think I fear no evil
When really I’m in denial
Your rod of climate change
Your staff of human hubris
They offer strange comfort
Because there is always something we can do
You invite us to eat at the table of industrial food production
species extinction, soil erosion, water rights
And yet you shower us with abundance
May our neighbor’s cup overflow before ours
Surely goodness and mercy are for all your children
Especially the most vulnerable
And may we all dwell safely together
In this house we call Earth

Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


Go forth shepherded by the Compassion of the Living God,
who dreams with us of a world
free from the evil of oppression
where all beings may rest in pastures of abundance
by streams of wonderful mercy. Amen.