I wonder
what you might come up with if you were asked to tell a story that encapsulates
your image of prayer. I think that could actually be a really interesting
spiritual exercise, especially for people who naturally like to make up and
tell stories, to think through what story you would tell if wanted to talk
about prayer through a narrative. It could be something from your life, a story
from the life of a saint, or a completely made up story that nonetheless is
deeply true. To maybe spark your imagination, and I hope not to shut it down,
Exodus and Jesus’ parable in Luke give us two such stories, or maybe, actually,
three, and I’ll get to why I think there are three stories there later
Let’s start
with Exodus. This story happens reasonably soon after the Israelites have
marched free of slavery in Egypt, through the Red Sea. Right before this the
people had struggled with thirst, and God had brought forth a miraculous spring
of water from a rock. That’s one model of prayer right there: I’m thirsty,
needy; I ask for God’s help; God gives thirst-quenching water. That’s not a bad
model of prayer. But no model can capture everything about prayer, and that one
doesn’t. The story we actually heard from Exodus gives us a slightly different
one. The Israelites’ next struggle, after the thirst, was the Amelekites who attack
them. And the Israelites fight back; led by Joshua, they defend themselves. But
Moses stands back. He’s not an old man at this point (in forty years’ time he will
be, so not yet). But, he stands back, and he prays. And he uses his entire body
to pray, lifting up his hands, lifting up the staff that God had given him when
He first called him. And he gets tired. So, luckily, he has two people to help
him, and they hold up his hands while he keeps praying. And then there is no
miracle, the Amalekites don’t turn into mist, God doesn’t send lightning bolts
or angels, but he supports the Israelites in their struggle and, with God’s
aid, cooperating with God’s grace, they are victorious.
What
does this story tell us about prayer? It tells us that we pray with our bodies.
Posture, gesture matter. They allow us to speak on a deeper level than words in
our head. It tells us that we pray with stuff. No lack of stuff can ever rob us
of our ability to pray, but physical stuff matters, as does the ways it can
remind us of times of grace in our lives. For many of you, a wedding ring might
be the profoundest bit of stuff you might pray with. For me, I have my cross
and anchors pendant, that I, along with my classmates, received at the
conclusion of my novitiate in Holy Cross, and each morning I kiss it as I put it
on, and that’s often my first prayer of the day. At the end, is a small image
of Our Lady of Guadalupe that I bought while on placement in Mexico, that
reminds me of the graces of that placement.
It also
tells us that prayer can be tiring. Imagine Moses’ fear, that the people he’d
labored to free might be mowed down. Imagine the exhaustion. Many of us, I’m
sure, don’t need to imagine to hard, but can just remember, times when prayer has
been exhausting because of the weight, not of the stuff we’ve held, but of the
needs that have weighed upon our hearts. It tells us that we need people around
us to help carry those prayers. We can’t do it on our own, and we need help.
The prayer line here at Holy Infant can be a great resource if you don’t know
who to reach out to. So can asking for a Mass to be offered for a particular
intention.
One last
thing to draw out from this story is that it reminds us that prayer doesn’t
generally lead to a lightning bolt from heaven. More normally it’s a way of
asking God to join us in our struggle. It’s great when the former happens, but
the latter, in my experience, is more common. As much as I love the gospel
stories about Jesus stilling a storm for the disciples, I wish there was
another story in which he’d noticed how bad the weather was and just helped
them row. Because I can think of times in my life when Jesus has just stilled a
storm, but I can think of a lot more when I’ve known the intimacy of feeling
him beside me, rowing. This Exodus story gives us a good sense of that.
That
brings me to Jesus’ parable, which Luke tells us was about the need to pray
always. That encourages us to think of ourselves as the widow, and God as the
judge. And if we concentrate on ourselves as the widow, it works well. Just as
she was ceaseless in calling out for justice, so should we be. Just as she had
to wait, so will we. Just as she was finally answered, so will we be. And that’s
great too, as an image of prayer.
But,
when we start to think of God as this judge, things get… uncomfortable. This
judge isn’t necessarily corrupt, but he is lazy. He doesn’t want to issue
judgments, and he only does because he’s worried that the widow is going to
come and give him a black eye! I don’t think that’s helpful as an image of God!
So, that’s why I think there are three stories of prayer here. Because reading
this parable with ourselves as the widow is helpful, up to a point, but what
would happen if we read it understanding ourselves as the judge, and God as the
widow? We end up having to examine our lack of justice, our lack of action. We
picture God crying out and crying out to us, to act. We’re reminded that prayer
is not just about asking, but also about listening. We ask through whom God’s
call is coming at the moment. Through the inconvenient, the awkward, the frightening?
And maybe we’re roused.
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