Today’s Gospel continues the theme of prayer. Last Sunday our Gospel raised for us the issue, which Mother Sarah addressed in her sermon, of what we think is accomplished by intercessory prayer. And when prayer is discussed it is usually framed in those terms of “does it make a difference on outcomes?”. Every now and then some study will be covered in the media of how 10 sick people were prayed for and another 10 left unprayed for and their progress is monitored by impartial scientists. The focus is always, does God do anything when we pray and does it effect outcomes?
Whether of not such studies are very helpful, it strikes me that what is neglected in thinking about prayer is the significance of the process of praying itself. Suppose we think of prayer as a three-way dynamic in which the three poles are us, God and the object of our prayer (in the broadest sense, the World). We think primarily about what God is doing in relation to the object of our prayer what difference will our prayers make to it? But what about the two other sides of the triangle? What about how God is forming us in that relationship of prayer? And what about how the life of prayer is forming our relationship with what we pray for our relationship with the world?
Perhaps part of the problem is that we think of prayer as an activity where we speak and God changes things. But what if we think of prayer more as the cultivation of a time and space in our life where God speaks and we are changed changed in ourselves and in our relationship with what is outside of ourselves?
We’ve got some clues for thinking about this in this parable that Jesus tells about prayer. There are two people: one who thinks he’s very good at prayer and isn’t and one who thinks he isn’t very good at prayer and is. So the Pharisee prays in the middle of the Temple, in what we can imagine was probably something of a stage whisper, “God I thank you that I am not like other men robbers, evildoers, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” So what’s wrong with that? Well if he’s telling the truth he’s certainly doing all the right things in his life religious observance in fasting and generous giving of his wealth. But the clue is in Jesus’ words that the Pharisee “stood up and prayed about himself”. God doesn’t get a look in. All he is doing is presenting God with various illusions about his own righteousness. And, as if betraying his own insecurity about those illusions he has to point out to God various other people who fall well below his high standard. His prayer as become a monologue of boasting in which he thanks God that he isn’t like those other people but he clearly attributes that fact to his own pious endeavours.
And although he sounds like a bit of a caricature, we can recognise how, the triangle of prayer can be distorted when the love that we receive from God in our faith is turned onto an idolatrous self-love. The reality is that those of us who pray regularly are a tiny minority in Western society today, so even doing it at all can give you a slight buzz of self-righteousness and the more our ego is enhanced within prayer then the more we close ourselves off to God as the driver and source of our prayers. As our ego swells and we push God out of the triangle, the objects of our prayer can become, as for this Pharisee, objects of our judgement. When we pray for the conversion of unbelievers we pat ourselves on the head for knowing the truth. When we pray for peace in the world we thank God that we’re not violent people who could possibly do anything to hurt others, and so on. So the triangle collapses into just me… and I wait for God to keep up his end of the bargain by doing what I’ve asked…
So what is going on in the prayer life of the tax collector? Because on the face of it, it doesn’t seem very attractive! “God have mercy on me, a sinner” mumbled under the breath of a despised person whose exploitation of others through the Roman tax system has brought him such shame that he can’t even lift his face towards heaven. But this prayer is a breakthrough the breakthrough of a man who is giving up on illusions about himself, on the pretence that he can hide behind others to justify himself before God. This is the breakthrough, or the breaking-in of God. The triangle is beginning to be formed.
The life of prayer, particularly private prayer, is fundamentally about the giving up of illusions about ourselves. On a day-to-day basis illusions can be pretty easy to sustain, especially once they have been well built-up. There are illusions of respectability, of self-importance, of moral superiority, of self-achieved status. There were the illusions of the Pharisees and, if we are honest, we don’t need to be one of Hampstead’s hundred’s of psychotherapists to realise that, to a greater or lesser extent, they are the illusions of all of us. And that’s what makes prayer such a risky business. It’s why prayer can even be frightening. Because when we are quiet and still and we allow ourselves to acknowledge that we are in the presence of another the Other who is the loving source of all that we experience and claim to have some control over it is in that place that our illusions are exposed. When prayer is as it should be God sees through all that we construct and protect ourselves with. In short, prayer is the place where we learn humility, where we learn what it means to be a creature of the Creator.
Prayer is a surrender, the abandonment of the secure self established by false ties to a self that acknowledges its dependence on God and whose future feels unknown and potentially frightening. But the good news is that this kind of prayer is merely the beginning of the journey. The tax collector’s acknowledgement of his sinfulness is not where God will leave him. It’s like when Peter first meets Jesus and cries “Go away from me Lord for I am a sinful man” but then goes on to lead the other disciples and become the very head of the Church. It is like the darkness into which St Paul is plunged on the Damascus road before his sight is restored and he goes on to preach the Gospel throughout the Mediterranean.
So in prayer we need to embrace our darkness. We need to learn humility by becoming fully conscious of our brokenness before God in order to grow in discipleship. And if that sounds rather frightening or depressing or if that makes the human heart and mind sound like a bleak and wretched kind of place, then Teresa of Avila has a wonderful image for us about the interior life of prayer. She wrote:
Let us imagine that within us is an extremely rich palace, built entirely of gold and precious stones; in sum, built for a lord such as this. Imagine, too, as is indeed so, that you have a part to play in order for the palace to be so beautiful; for there is no edifice as beautiful as is a soul pure and full of virtues… Imagine, also, that in this palace dwells this mighty King who has been gracious enough to become your Father; and that he is seated upon an extremely valuable throne, which is your heart. If St Teresa is right and the life of prayer is about furnishing a place within us for Christ himself to dwell, then the tax collector’s beating of his breast and our own embracing of our brokenness in the dark night of prayer, is in fact the making of a space within us for the Cross of Christ. Our vulnerability as frail, fallible, screwed- up mortals in prayer is taken up by God in the vulnerability and abandonment of God hanging on the Cross.
And just as God took that moment of absolute desolation at Calvary and made it into a revelation of glory and new life, so God can take us in prayer, once we have shed all our illusions about who we pretend to be and make us ciphers of the God’s glory for the world.
Here that triangle starts to take shape because once we acknowledge that this fundamental transformation of our selves is taking place in prayer, then we don’t just sit back and wait for God to answer our list of requests. Just as God has transformed our relationship with God in embracing the love of Christ within us, so our relationship with the rest of the world for which we pray is slowly transformed into one of love and interdependence and commitment and responsibility. So often in my prayer life I have found that God is calling me out of passivity into becoming an agent, insofar as I can be, in the situations for which I pray. That is rarely a quick-fix answer, and its not the kind of answer to prayer that can be the subject of scientific enquiry, but perhaps it is a bit more of how we are meant to understand prayer than the firing off of requests to God for him to deal with. Teresa of Avila married her contemplation with a kind of prayerful activism when she wrote:
Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours Yours are the eyes through which He looks compassion on this world Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
So make space in your week for silent prayer and don’t just speak to God but make it an opportunity for God to enter into the palace which you are preparing for him. Drop your illusions about who you are and offer yourself to God in your brokenness. Because its in that state that the crucified Christ can be enthroned in our hearts and make us partners in the engagement with the world of his glorious risen life.