In the wake of a recent school shooting in Georgia, Dennis looks at the role of prayer and why Mainline/Progressive Christians should take the act of calling out to God more seriously.
Show Notes:
“Our expressed opinion is an essential pole of the process of God’s decision-making” by Jason Micheli
No Thing- by Chris Owen
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[0:15] Music. Hello and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in seeing where faith, politics, and culture intersect. I'm Den Sanders, your host. So today is a solo podcast, and I wanted to talk a little bit about the role of prayer, especially in our public life. This past week, I am recording this on Saturday, September 7th. Earlier this week, we had another other school shooting. This took place in Georgia. It's always interesting how we respond, especially as Christians, and especially, I think, as mainline and progressive Christians, to these events, and how we seemingly discount prayer. And I will get into a little bit more about prayer. And I understand sometimes Sometimes people can use prayer really as a way of not really dealing with issues.
[0:24] We'll be right back.
[0:43] Thank you.
[2:01] But I also think that sometimes... We give prayer a short shrift because in some ways we really don't believe God's going to handle this. So I wanted to share something. This is actually based on a sermon that I wrote earlier this year. But I've added a few things and also sharing from my own experience. And, as I said, sharing about some of the recent events. So I want to start it off with a memory, and it's a memory from the fall of 2001. That was, I started my clinical pastoral education that year, or that fall. This was kind of the last thing I had to do before ordination, and I had just graduated from seminary that spring, and I was just starting clinical pastoral education. And I did it at a transitional care unit here in Minneapolis. That was really a memorable time in my life, and especially that event was memorable.
[3:16] Working at a transitional care unit is a little bit different than what people normally do when they do kind of a practicum of clinical pastoral education. Because a lot of people, if they're doing that for their requirement for ordination, they may do it in a hospital and usually an emergency.
[3:37] And so that's always high drama. And here it's not as much high drama. It's a lot more subtle, but that subtlety can get you because I can remember entering into a room, talking with someone, maybe even praying with them, and then discover a few days later that person died. Um, now usually in a transitional care unit, people are going to go, um, to assisted living or to a nursing home or back to their own home. But sometimes transitional care is where the journey ends. And that was the case sometimes. Um, and one of my first times in CPE, I remember being summoned to a room that was on the first floor and, um, there was a family gathered around this man, this man who was unresponsive. He was sitting in a bed, looked like he was bald. I don't know if his head was shaved or just naturally that way. He looked middle-aged, and I remember that his head was rather swollen, which looked weird. And then this woman started to speak to me, and it turned out that she was the wife of this man. And I found out that he had brain cancer, and she was asking for prayer.
[4:58] And then she added something that really surprised me. She really hoped that this man could receive some physical therapy and that he would get better. Now, one thing you should know about me is that I am terrible at projecting a poker face. So I was trying very, very hard to conceal my amazement at what she just said. Now, I'm not a doctor, but I was looking at this man. He had brain cancer. He was currently unresponsive. I was pretty sure that a little bit of physical therapy was not going to make him any better.
[5:42] I was nervous because I didn't know what to pray. I did not want to pray something that was going to preach false hope. And I have no idea what I said. I know I was trying to be careful. Um, but all I could do was offer some words, but I was pretty sure this guy was going to die. Um, And I had no idea what I was going to try to say to this woman who was desperately, desperately clinging on to some sense of hope. Now, I do know that sometime later, the family kind of realized physical therapy wasn't going to make him any better. I have no idea if they accepted that he was going to die, if he went to hospice or not. All I know is that they had come to that point. And I still wonder now, it's been over nearly 25 years, and I don't know, how should I have responded?
[6:45] I was trained to not preach a false hope, and I still believe you should do that, that you try not to cause any harm. But I'm left with this question, what was the good news to this family? This family was in grief, maybe some denial. What was the good news for Jesus at that time? And what was the role of prayer in that desperate situation?
[7:15] I think that prayer is one of the things that we still do, but especially in, I think, mainline and progressive congregations, sometimes it feels, or at least we look at prayer like an appendix. It was something that we think once had use, but we no longer know what it's there for, nor if it even has a use anymore. A friend of mine, a Methodist pastor, David Watson, has said that in light of the things like the Holocaust and nuclear bombs, it's really hard to believe in a God that can and kind of work outside of our world. We have a hard time believing in the supernatural.
[8:04] We kind of live in what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls the imminent frame, which means that we live in a time when we don't really expect miracles. We don't expect that God even acts in our world. We believe that it's all on us, really. In some ways, what we are are functional atheists. Now, going back to that dying man that I saw, I was really kind of taught in some ways, I don't think it was always said in so many words, but that we shouldn't pray that this person actually would be healed, physically healed.
[8:50] And I wonder about that. Why do we think this way? Why don't we think that prayer actually can change something? Why don't we think that God could actually heal this man? I mean, it's interesting. We read all of these stories in the Bible of Jesus healing people. Do we actually believe that Jesus healed these people? people. Now, I don't want to think that we should just say that people are never going to get ill, or if they're getting ill, that they will always be healed. Obviously, there were lots of people in Jesus' time that were ill and they didn't get healed. But why don't we believe that God is present and that God might be able to do something that is amazing. The thing about that woman that I met nearly a quarter century ago is that, sure, she might have been in denial of her husband dying, but at the very least, she believed that God could act outside of everyday life.
[10:10] The Methodist pastor and theologian Jason Michelli wrote something interesting recently that I will put into show notes, really about prayer and how we really don't really believe that God can actually heal and answer prayer. We don't think that we can petition God or that God will listen to our petitions. He shares something about his cancer diagnosis. He lives with cancer, and he was observing how people responded, and this is something that he said, quote, When I first got cancer several years ago, I was astonished at the apparent unbelief in prayer by those who do it. Every person was sincere. It just goes to show how little sincerity has to do with discipleship. I'll pray that God gives you strength, people would tell me. I'm praying that God will give your doctors wisdom, pastors told me. You are in my thoughts, far too many Christians told me. Your thoughts? What in the hell good are your thoughts going to do? I'm dying. Why don't you pray for God to make it not so? Why don't you attempt to persuade God to heal me?
[11:31] Some did so pray. and I am grateful for their prayers. Unquote.
[11:44] Excuse me.
[11:51] There was also another prayer that he had with theologian Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas is kind of a cantankerous old coot. And there was a case where he was just not well. He was kind of ill, and he was asked to pray. And Michele was getting ready to pray. and he gets there. He's going to start praying before he even opens his mouth. He said it was interesting what Harwas said and I am actually looking for find out what he said because I have lost that page. But I think it's important that you hear it. So hold on here.
[12:46] This is what he says. This is basically what Harawas says. If you're not going to pray for God to heal me, then hell, just hang up the phone right now already. And of course, Michele did pray for him. But Harawas was right. He wanted God to heal him. He wanted God to make a difference. Now, I said earlier that this was something based on a sermon that I wrote back in January, actually, of this year. Some of you may know, back earlier this year, actually, back in the summer of last year, my mom suffered a stroke. And especially the last maybe two or three months were pretty hard. She was in a lot of pain.
[13:48] And this sermon was written maybe about a month before she died. And I actually kind of remember looking and I actually sometimes write down my prayers. It was just praying for her to feel better, to get better. And I remember even one evening or one morning kind of sitting down with tears, just praying that she would get better. Um, I wasn't praying that she was in my thoughts. I wasn't praying for healing other than actual healing. I was actually praying for her to get better, to be healed.
[14:38] Now, in late February, my mom died. And God not answering prayers is actually something for another essay for another day. But the thing that was important was that at that moment, it was important for me to not just pray for nice little things. I was actually praying for God to do something. thing. And that really leads me to, um, thinking about the school shootings from this week. One of the things that I think we talk about a lot, you know, whenever there is a school shooting, especially among some of the, um, more progressive folk is just kind of anger and kind of ridiculing thoughts and prayers. And obviously, as you heard from Michele, thoughts just don't mean a whole lot.
[15:44] But it's also interesting because I think what I hear sometimes is almost a sense that prayer doesn't do anything. That prayer is just basically a way of stalling. It's not really trying to focus on making political change.
[16:06] Now, I'm not saying that things like that shouldn't be done, but why don't we believe that prayer can do something? Why don't we believe that prayer can make a difference when we're dealing with things like gun violence? Why have we just told ourselves that prayer is just a way of not dealing with the problem And instead, all that we can do is get angry on social media and maybe join in some protests. But obviously, we don't think that the God of the universe, the God that heals, the God that can make a difference, maybe can make a difference here.
[17:00] Now, the point of this is not to advocate for a certain policy. Uh, it's not here to try to say, this is what we should be doing. Here is a certain idea we should be doing when it comes concerns, uh, problems with school shootings. That's probably for another, uh, podcast. What I'm talking about here is why don't we see prayer as one of a tool, one of many things of a way of calling on God to work. It doesn't have to be all on us it's not all on us.
[17:42] If we believe if we say that we believe in a God, then maybe we should act like it because if not then maybe we should just stop pretending and you know maybe not get up on a Sunday morning and waste our time, You know, one of the problems with the modern church is that we don't know who we are.
[18:14] And we don't know who Jesus is. In the first chapter of Mark, there is the scene where Jesus, and kind of early on in his ministry, he's actually in a synagogue, and he is kind of teaching the people. The people are just kind of amazed, and they talk about the fact that he is teaching with authority. Then out of nowhere, they hear this shriek. They turn around, they see that There is this guy, a guy probably that they have seen in town who has a demon.
[18:48] And this guy is shrieking and Jesus comes up to him. And the demon tries to call Jesus out and says, I know who you are. You're the Holy One, the Son of God. Now, that was kind of maybe a stalling tactic. And Jesus isn't having any of that. So, he tells the demon to shut up and get out of the man, which he does, and people are amazed. And what's interesting about that text is the demons understood who Jesus was. They understood that Jesus' power, what Jesus could do. If the demons can do that, why in the hell can't we as Christians, modern Christians, do that? Why can't we believe in a God that can do the impossible?
[19:56] Chris Owen, who is a pastor, wrote a while back in Comment Magazine that churches have lost their voice. We've basically kind of become so assimilated to this world of ours that we don't have a sultaness anymore, and we don't have anything really to say to the world. I would probably add we're so acclimated to what Charles Taylor calls the eminent frame, we just don't believe that God is really there. He says, Chris Owens says, a thoroughly assimilated church has nothing to add to public conversations. Because a thoroughly assimilated church simply echoes what's already being said. that. Perhaps adding a theological riff here or moral language there, like parsley garnish on a breakfast plate at Denny's. Useless.
[21:02] I think that right now, in 2024, we're a world that is gripped in fear. And I think that this is a world that is possessed by spirits, evil spirits. And this is a place for the church to act. And sometimes I think we don't know how to act, or we feel helpless in how we should act.
[21:34] The dark spirits of this world, The ones that are wreaking havoc in our neighborhoods, in our cities, among our loved ones, know who Jesus is. Do we? And I go back, again, to the issue at hand with gun violence. We're always talking about maybe that if we vote for the right person or do this thing, this will solve the problem. But have you ever thought that maybe praying can do something? Now, if we pray and we don't do anything else, that's a problem. But why can't we pray and believe that God can change hearts and God can help troubled souls? Why don't we believe that?
[22:31] I think that it's time for us again to know who we are as Christians, as followers of Jesus. We have to be willing to be able to speak, believing in a God that makes a difference, believing in a God that can heal, a God that can offer hope. Because frankly, in the world that we live in right now, in 2024, in this time that we're living in, is a world that needs it. Our prayers are not just about something that has nothing to do with the news of the day. In fact, prayer has everything to do with the news of the day. This podcast, what I try to do is to see where our faith and the wider culture of the world intersect. And I can think of no better way of where they intersect than with prayer. I recently taped an episode with a friend of mine, Doug Skinner, who's been on the podcast before, and you'll be hearing this episode soon. But he talked a little bit about praying for our leaders, regardless of who they are.
[23:47] And he actually even shared something just recently about that. And I've decided that I want to try to do that, especially, um, to pray for those people running for president. Many of you know that, um, I am what they would call a never Trumper. And, um, It means a lot that I have to, and I am, going to pray for Donald Trump. Doesn't mean I agree with him. I do not. But I believe that it is time for us to pray. To pray not just for the leaders that we agree with, but even the ones that we don't agree with. Because I believe in the power of prayer. and I believe in a God that can do anything. It doesn't mean that God will always answer every prayer that I have. As I said earlier, the prayer for mom's healing didn't happen, at least not in the way that I would have liked. But that doesn't mean that prayer doesn't do anything, that God doesn't hear our prayers.
[25:03] So as we enter into another work week but also as we enter in and and uh come from our places of worship i really pray that we take prayer a lot more seriously that we believe maybe in that audacious faith that maybe that woman that I met 25 years ago who's believed that somehow her husband would get better yeah I think she was a little off, but maybe she wasn't wrong maybe she built it she actually believed in the God that could make a difference, the building where that TCU is what used to be has been torn down I have no idea where that family went I know that that man that I met in September in in of two in the fall of 20 of 2001 is not among the living anymore.
[26:09] I wish that I had offered that man a little bit more of a word of hope. Maybe I couldn't say that he would be healed, but maybe I could. But I could at least pray boldly in faith that God could do the impossible. That maybe I could match the impossible faith of that man's wife. And maybe today, all of us can match that faith as we deal with many problems in our country and believe in an impossible faith from a God that majors in the impossible.
[27:03] Well, that is it for this episode, a solo episode of Church and Maine. I'd love to know what you're thinking about this conversation. Feel free to drop me a line at churchandmaineatsubstack.com if you have any questions, comments. I will put some links, especially to Jason Michelli's article. The other article from Chris Owen in the show notes. You can listen to past episodes by going to churchandmainalloneword.org. And also consider donating. You can donate on the website. And I hope that you will consider doing that. That actually helps me be able to continue to put out episodes. And remember to rate and review this episode on your favorite podcast app. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Thank you so much for listening. Take care, everyone. Godspeed, and I'll see you very soon.
[28:06] Music.
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