‘Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me.’
Mark 10:47
C.S.Lewis wrote a book called ‘Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer,’ which is exactly what it says. What sort of book like that would be helpful to you, or what would you write to a friend? I want to address such questions, but in a roundabout way. First I want to note something remarkable, why God in his wisdom put some of the books we have in the Bible? Ecclesiastes airs Solomon’s doubts, and give us permission to do the same before God. Job does the same for our complaints to Him concerning how unfair life is. Song of Songs shocks in a different way, by focusing on our desires, which are not always aetherial, though they always do have covertly to do with really wanting God. Finally Proverbs is often practical and brass-tacks. My point is simply that we are given permission, even a mandate, to make our prayer so as well. Another way to say this is that we are bringing ourselves, just as we are, before the one from whom, says the opening Collect for Purity, nothing is hid, which is the first of many things which are unsettling about prayer.
What would be in your book of letters to a friend, chiefly on prayer? To bring ourselves before God, all of us, is a struggle in pursuit of blessed rest. To explain how, consider this verse from St. Paul’s second letter to the Church in Thessloniki- ‘
--Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
How is that a struggle? First, because, obviously, not everything is a cause for rejoicing. The same idea is found in our communion prayer- that we should give thanks always and everywhere. The hospital waiting room? The moment I learned I lost my job?
Secondly prayer all the time is not impossible. Sleeping? Distracted? Driving on I-35? Such praying may be God’s will for us in Christ, though our wills waver- how so? You can see how prayer is a place where the very personal and the wholly theological intersect.
Let’s zero in now- pray without ceasing! In the history of the Church the verse has been taken as a call to turn your very life into a prayer, as if something as basic as breathing could become prayer. This was the origin of the tradition in eastern Christianity of the Jesus Prayer, which was the saying of the words of blind Bartimaeus, in sync with one’s breathing, over and over again. Inhale- Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, exhale, In the book called ‘the way of the pilgrim,’ the young convert recites the prayer thousands of times, we are told until his tongue went numb, but more importantly until he ceased his striving, As the prayer descended from his dead to his heart, he received the divine gift of love. But the idea that prayer should be as embedded as breathing remained. (I might add that the Jesus Prayer became popular in the revival of traditional spirituality in the 70’s, when I was in seminary and was warned by an old priest/ director to make sure that thinking about my breathing not become disruptive, since fervor and neurosis are sometimes not far apart).
This leads to the next obvious stumbling block in prayer, confusing our efforts and God’s. Here the New Testament gives us advice that seems to conflict, although in truth the two bits of counsel fit together, and need each other. First we are told to strive, not in order to earn anything, but because Jesus admires chutzpah! Knock, seek, ask! Be like that importuning widow who wears the Lord out with her knocking at the door. That persistence is consistent with faith, and with the confidence that He is ultimately merciful and attentive toward us. And on the other hand, realize your powerlessness. Remember how Paul says in Romans 8 that we don’t really know how to pray, nonetheless to worry- in our weakness the Holy Spirit is praying through us, even as we can do no more than groan. Praying as banging on the door, and prayer as groaning! Hold the two together, as different as they are.
But sometimes, for all this, we hear- slience. We wait and wait, till we wonder, at the end of our patience, as he forgotten us? Are we like that dead man out of mind in the psalms? Here the New Testament gives us bracing encouragement, that one day to him is a thousand years (II Peter) So how can you know what will be answered, and when, and what being answered will look like? Frankly, we can’t. So even if the crops all fail, says the prophet Habakkuk at the end of his book, even so will I bless the Lord in my prayer, and I will seal up the scroll of my prayers, like Isaiah, in the expectation that the answer may come I know not when or how, in a way, centuries later, as strange as a poor child, soon to be a refugee, born in a stable. We complain, we question. Then we are reduced to sackcloth and ashes like Job, even as we recall that Job the complainer was also silenced, but then blessed. So are we in prayer, impertinent, impatient, speechless, silenced, blessed.
We are thinking about praying, but we are Episcopalians doing so. By this I mean that alongside these questions of why and when are more practical questions of how, the kind of questions a pragmatic book like Proverbs was game to answer. There are no hard and fast laws here, but a kind of practical wisdom that is honest about what we are like. Good intentions without a standard, a regular practice, will fall by the wayside as fast as New Year’s resolutions. So make yourself rules, and make them pliable too.
This of course brings us back to Bartimaeus, unlikely patron saint of prayer, though he is not to be found in the Temple of synagogue. He’s in the street, and he needs help. He is a good reminder for us proper Churchmen and women, since his prayer is a cry, its purpose a tangible human need. He shared with rabbi Jesus a preference for short prayers! Lord help! And in this cry is summarized much of our faith, in that single loaded sentence. In the praying is found the believing, as we in our tradition are often reminded.
Today’s Gospel is about praying, though all its interest is in the One prayed to. That is what the New Testament is interested in, and so too should we be. What prayer as response should be depends entirely on what the One addressed is like. He is Jesus, the brother, the man of sorrows, who is also Adonai, the Lord of eternity. He is on his way to Jerusalem, but ready to stop at the plea of this blind man, at the plea of yours and mine. His attention is defined by mercy. And the cry is urgent, which means that all of Bartimaeus is in it. And Jesus turns to him, and His attention is the beginning and end of healing. His turn in love to us, as disabled as Bartimaeus, though we be, is salvation. The ‘toward whom’ of prayer is everything. And yes, sometimes the Church is like the disciples, too busy, too preoccupied with the minutiae, to slow down and let the blind man approach. But in spite of ourselves, in our midst walks Jesus, whose name means salvation, who, in turning to us, is our peace. He is sure to turn to us, though the healing is not the end of the story. He then sets Bartimaeus, you, me, on the road, to follow him, continuing to pray along the way. Amen
