When not praying is prayer

Author Margaret Feinberg has been blogging during this season of Lent about what she's given up during the 40-day observance. No, not chocolate or facebook. She's given up prayer. 

Her provocatively-titled vow is really more about getting out of the habit of talking at God than it is abandoning communication (and communion!) with him. 

It triggered a memory of one of my own journeys - yes, the plural is meant to be there - through prayerlessness. Mine had to do more with fear of engagement than a need to filter myself, but the end result was the same. I learned to pray by not praying. 

Go figure.

Here's my story:

The parking lot was nearly empty. I turned off my car’s engine and sat statue-still in the darkness, listening to the steady rush of traffic on the nearby highway. Eventually, I tried breaking the silence inside the vehicle with a flurry of words, but it seemed each syllable plastered itself to the roof over my head. After waiting for forty-five minutes for some sort of breakthrough, I shook my head in frustration, turned the key and headed toward home. Nothing had changed.

I came to the vacant lot hoping I could discover a re-entry ramp to the prayer life that had sustained and guided me throughout a half a lifetime of following Christ. I’d gradually stopped communicating with God a few months before my parking lot showdown. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my self-imposed prayer exile was actually leading me toward a more mature, healthy relationship with God than I’d had to that point. 

A painful family crisis had marked the start of this months-long, thick silence between God and I. In shock, I’d let the intercession of others carry me during the early days of the emergency. As the dust settled, prayer was a painful reminder of all that had changed in the situation…and in me. In hopes of staunching the pain, I gradually stopped praying. I sensed that if were to draw near to God, I would again be called into a battle I had no energy to continue fighting.

What drew me to the parking lot that night was my growing awareness that I’d gotten a little too comfortable with wearing a hypocrite’s mask. Accountability wasn’t the issue for me. I had trusted friends with whom I could be honest if I’d chosen to do so. The truth of the matter was that I simply didn’t want their intervention.

I continued to talk about God with others the way I always had B.C. – before the crisis. In fact, I found it a little eerie how easy it was to talk about God, even though I hadn’t spoken with Him in months. I continued to participate in church life, though faking my way through a worship service had become the longest hour or so of my week. 

I didn’t want to fake it anymore. But as I left the parking lot that night, I felt that my prayerless prayer life was intact.

Or was it?

As I drove home, I realized there was no express lane “on ramp” back into the kind of prayer life I once cherished. I couldn’t go back. It occurred to me that the act of showing up in the parking lot was itself a kind of prayer, a wobbly first step forward after months of stagnation.

I’d been toying with the idea of walking away from the Christian life in order to put an end to my own hypocrisy, but Peter’s famous question/answer kept me from bolting entirely: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”. I couldn’t leave Him, even though I wasn’t doing any communicating with Him.

My former prayer life was defined by working my way through prayer lists, attending church prayer meetings, and by on-the-fly cries for God’s help and wisdom. These habits hadn’t carried me through a life-altering trial. The grief I felt as I mourned the loss of my comfortable past had soaked deeply into what was, to that point, my relatively-untested faith.

Acknowledging that I’d been encamped in grief’s shadowy valley brought a bit of clarity to my silence. The theological truth I’d known intellectually began to gain a bit of traction in my prayerless soul: Nothing I did could make God love me more…or less.

I didn’t have to pray. He loved me anyway. 

I’d spent years building the discipline of prayer into my life – a wise pursuit. But I’d quietly injected little doses of pride at my ability to maintain the discipline into the equation. Pride in my own performance had been silently eroding my prayer life long before I stopped praying.

The crisis shattered some of that pride. And my months of broadcast silence served to further strip my reliance on what I could do for God. I realized He was not impressed by my effort or earnestness. Those efforts had not stopped the trial from coming into my life.

I’d harbored some unspoken and childish ideas about what was supposed to happen when I prayed. I’d frequently treated prayer as a spiritual bank account. If I deposited enough of the right sort of words, God would fix my problems and bless my life. 

The book of Job offered me a bracing counterpoint to that stinkin’ thinkin’. Job had his livelihood, family and health stripped from him without warning. He had friends and even his own wife all pouring words like acid onto his broken heart as he struggled to understand why his life had taken such a terrible turn.

Job didn’t curse God. He didn’t walk away. And He didn’t retreat into silence. Job’s raw, feisty responses to those around him were drawn from the same place deep within him from which his lifetime of worship had come. His trust was not in God’s blessings, but in God Himself.  

My trials were not Job’s trials, nor was my trust Job’s trust. But God was doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. Christ was interceding for me. “Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them”. His perfect sacrifice covered each moment of my life, whether it was a moment filled with faith-filled words or doubt-filled silence. 

After that frustrating experience in the parking lot, I considered that though I was silent, He was not. “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will” . He was communicating with the Father with love for me that far exceeded what language could contain.

My prayerlessness was punctuated with His efforts to translate those groans into syllables I could comprehend: a song written by a friend, the words of which mirrored my struggle; a sense of God’s company during the lonely hours I often spent awake in the middle of the night; a phone call from an old friend who’d experienced the same sort of crisis my family had. Even in the midst of my silence, I was not alone.

My prayerlessness served to unmask my sinful hypocrisy and show me the truth about my self-congratulatory efforts at prayer. Ironically, though my family crisis made me question God’s love for me, the months of prayerlessness that followed helped me experience God’s relentless, patient love for me. Though not praying would never make it into anyone’s suggested toolkit to nurture spiritual growth, God used my silence with Him to coax me toward a more mature understanding of prayer.

After my parking lot showdown, I did choose to confess my ongoing struggle to a couple of close friends. Thankfully, they didn’t rush in and try to solve my problem.  They listened, and one of them prayed a simple prayer for all of us:

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

I realized that that’s exactly what He had been doing when I wasn’t praying.

Looking in the mirror at high noon

I had one of those slap-upside-the-head Bible reading moments a couple of days ago. The ones where you're reading words out of habit, and suddenly, blam-o! The Hound of Heaven ambushes you, and with no warning, you're having a holy "have a good look in the mirror at high noon" moment.

I was reading Romans 16, which is mostly a list of personal greetings from Paul and team to the Church in Rome. There are some instructions and a beautiful benediction in the chapter, but the bulk of the language here is of the "Say hi to Jimmy and Tracy and Debbie for me." Well, that's how I'd always read the words, anyway. This was the part of the letter where I always felt like I was reading someone else's mail. From an academic standpoint, I appreciated the fact that so many of Paul's greetings here were directed to women who'd helped to shape the life of the infant congregation, but that was about as far as my connection with this passage ever went.

This time, however, I couldn't zip past the things that Paul mentioned about each of his far-away friends:

• She's a benefactor to many.
• The pair put their lives on the line other believers.
• He was the first convert in his area.
• She worked hard to benefit others.
• These fellow Jews were apostles who'd been imprisoned for the sake of the gospel; he and she each demonstrated outstanding character and perseverance.
• He's my dear friend.
• He's my co-worker in the Lord.
• He's been faithful to Christ through fierce testing.
• He's my fellow Jew - and brother in faith.
• There are entire households full of beloved believers.
• She's a woman who really works hard in the Lord.
• He's chosen in the Lord.
• She's been like a mother to me.

Most of his letter is given to instruction, but in the end, these closing words move Paul from leader-teacher to friend. There is nothing in this list that reflects the brilliance and intensity we usually ascribe to Paul. There is, simply, deep affection and a palpable sense of longing for each person. He wrote here like a proud parent who pulls out a wallet packed with pictures of his kids and inflicts anecdotes about each one on uninterested bystanders. Paul was gobsmacked by the character and commitment of each of these individuals - and what he saw was important enough to become a part of the canon of Scripture.

My moment in the mirror here? My mind often goes toward the negative in others, or I focus on their appearance or performance. I cherish too little and carp too much. 

Lord, forgive me. And help me truly, deeply see (and verbalize!) what is truly beautiful to you.   
   

Not what you think it means

A few posts ago, I reviewed a book about Communion. I just received another volume on the topic that I'll be reviewing for Englewood Review of Books. And in the midst of it all, I wrote a short devotional about the Lord's Supper for the next Caspari Center newsletter. I'm reposting it here with a prayer that it will give you a fresh understanding of the Communion word "Remember",

Remember…

There were about 25 teenagers chattering with one another in the activity room of the church, but they fell silent for a moment as I walked a bicycle into the room and propped the bike’s kickstand into place. As soon as I did, their questions flew like confetti: 

   

“Whose bike is that?”

“Why did you bring a bike in here?”

“Are you giving it away?”

“Are you going to ride it?”

I’d been asked to talk with the church youth group about communion, and was counting on the bike to help the teens think about the Lord’s Supper in a new way. I asked if any of them knew what the term ‘muscle memory’ meant (they didn’t), so I told them that there was a formal name for a phenomenon they’d all experienced. “If you regularly practice a specific motor skill like typing, throwing a ball, or playing an instrument, the movement becomes embedded in your long-term memory and you can do it without thinking about it.”

“Like riding a bike!” one young man laughed.

I nodded, and told them about something I’d done throughout my growing-up years that had become a part of my spiritual ‘muscle memory’ – my Jewish family’s yearly Passover Seder. The ceremonial meal recounting God’s miraculous deliverance of my people from generations of slavery in Egypt was both ritual and feast. My grandfather insisted on reading every passage in the Haggadah, the booklet guiding the recounting of the Exodus story. The symbols of water, egg, parsley, saltwater, bitter horseradish, sweet charoset (an apple-cinnamon-wine-nut mixture), lamb shank bone, wine and matzo (unleaved bread) were the centerpiece of the table, living illustrations of a true story that had been passed down for generations in obedience to God’s command to remember and retell (Ex. 13:8). The Seder meant active participation for everyone as we sang, prayed, ate and remembered.  

This sort of active, participatory remembrance was captured in the Apostle Paul’s familiar words in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

“When we hear the word ‘remember’, most of us think of recalling information – recollecting the information for a test, or trying to think of where you left your house key,” I told the teens. “But the word ‘remember’ in this passage is a deep kind of muscle memory remembering, like riding a bike. It goes far, far beyond simply remembering the facts about what Jesus did for us.”

I reminded them that communion was rooted in Yeshua’s final Seder meal with his friends, and that remembering him at communion means bringing to active remembrance the context in which this sacrament was given us.

   

Then I flicked the kickstand up and climbed onto the bike. I hadn’t ridden a bike for nearly thirty years, but was betting that the skill was so deeply embedded in my muscle memory that I would still be able to do it. “How many of you think I’m not going to be able to ride this bike since I haven’t been on one for three decades?” The room erupted into laughter. They all were certain I’d fall or crash into something.

I was wobbly, but I successfully pedaled a couple of laps around the room’s perimeter. I simply had to bring that my long-dormant skill to active remembrance in order to do it. (I hoped that the image of me pedaling around the room would not be what the teens would remember the next time they took communion!)

Jesus infused new meaning into the cup and the unleavened bread at the final Seder he shared with his friends when he told them that these familiar symbols proclaimed the deliverance and new life he came to bring each one of us.  

   

All we must do is receive his gift…and remember.

What's that dirt on your head?

Though Lent is a somber forty-day period of the Christian year given to fasting, reflection and acts of charity, here's a story that will probably give you a smile - and serve as a reminder that those observing Lent need to interpret the practice to a watching, wondering world:

I was immersed into Gentile culture for the first time in eighth grade after growing up prior to that in a predominately Jewish neighborhood. In the hallway at school on Ash Wednesday, I noticed that a friend had "dirt" smudged on her forehead, and reached over to wipe it off. She jumped away from my spit bath ministration, and shrieked, "That's not dirt! It's ashes I got at church this morning!" She walked away from me laughing.

I'd never heard of Ash Wednesday or Lent, and her laughter made me feel ashamed that I didn't know about the smudge. Throughout the rest of the day, I noticed that lots of kids walking through the hallways that day had the mysterious smudge on their heads. I had no idea what kind of religion would insist that people get dirt on their heads. Several years passed (including some where I was a follower of Jesus) before I learned what Ash Wednesday and Lent were all about.

Most kids in middle school may not be emotionally and spiritually ready to do much more than respond like my horrified friend did, but the rest of us window of time to be able to serve as interpreters - not of any practices we may engage in or abstain from in order to cultivate repentance in our lives and 'prepare the way of the Lord' - but, as quickly and winsomely as possible, to point those around us toward the life of Jesus. In popular culture, the season is marked by the annual return of McDonald's commercials featuring the Filet O' Fish sandwich, but we can do much better than greasy deep-fried fish fast food - or mocking laughter.

For those who are observing Lent beginning today, may this period draw you and those you know nearer to the One who gave all to bring you into unbroken relationship with himself.

Book review: The Sacred Meal

A few weeks ago, I reviewed a book about spiritual pilgrimage from Thomas Nelson's Ancient Practices series. Thanks to Nelson's blogger review program (which they've dubbed "Booksneeze", a cringe-worthy name if ever there was one), I had the opportunity to read another title in the series. This time, it was Nora Gallagher's The Sacred Meal, focusing on the sacrament of the Lord's supper.

Gallagher, a lay minister in the Episcopal church as well as a noted author, brings her powers of observation in her very personal exploration of one of the core identifying practices of the church. Those from low church backgrounds, those who believe that communion is strictly memorial, will likely find some of the discussion in this book a little baffling. She is writing from her Episcopal/Anglican experience - the liturgy and practices around the weekly Table are miles away from the "first Sunday of the month" addendum found in many evangelical congregations. She also places a heavy emphasis on the effect the Eucharist has on those who share it together, which is another foreign concept to many evangelicals:

Instead of thinking of that Communion as a ghoulish eating of human flesh, think of those who gather at Communion as the body of Jesus. We are the body given for each other. This is my body, he said. Look around you. 


When we all show up and do our parts, we are the sacrament, the body of Christ. Do this to remember me. Do this to remember who you were with me. Do this to remember who you are. 


A practice is meant to connect you with what is deeply alive, to stir in you the same kind of aliveness that the disciples of Jesus must have felt around him...A practice is not about finding exactly the right set of rules that will make you 'good' but is instead meant to establish a habit of connection to the world that is both tenuous and surprising, outside of time and in it.   

Gallagher's eleven chapters have a free-wheeling, off-the-cuff tone, but the mark of a good writer is that the impromptu, blog-like vibe of her words is actually a mark of her skill. Gallagher is a very good writer. Just when her words threaten to wander, she brings readers back to her thesis - that the practice of communion has been essential in shaping her faith journey, and it can be just as defining for each one of us.

I didn't always agree with Gallagher's ideas (she assigns a higher value to the mystery of our humanity coming together around the Table than I do, for instance), but the book isn't meant to be a work of theological precision as much as it is an exploration of her deeply personal reflections of the practice:  "Mostly, you find my story, which is the only story I can truthfully tell. My practice of taking Communion goes on; sometimes it is for me a perfectly ordinary event; sometimes it's as if the floor dropped out from underneath my feet. I show up, again and again, a miracle in itself." The Sacred Meal is an invitation to do the same - interact with Gallagher's words and our experience of both Word and Sacrament so we are more more in touch with the reality that we are indeed hungry, thirsty people.