Friday morning prayer
10/05/13 05:39
My routines haven’t always been this way, but in my current phase of life Friday is the day when I write pastoral prayers. We work our way through the order of liturgy and the music we will use by noon on Tuesday and barring some last minute changes, our worship bulletins are printed on Thursday. Friday is our Administrative Colleague’s day off and I typically start my day by doing a few small weekly chores, writing up worship notes for the lay liturgist, preparing the slides for the televisions in the entry way and fellowship that serve as greeting and announcement kiosks, and writing out a pastoral prayer.
Many heartfelt and meaningful prayers are never written. God does not require perfect poetry, measured meter, or complete sentences. God does not even require that prayers have words. Some of the deepest prayers are simply, “Thank you!” or “Glory!” or “Help!” And corporate worship is only one venue of prayer. I speak prayers when visiting individuals in homes and hospitals and other places. I pray privately in my own space every day. Increasingly I am honing my skills at offering prayers over the telephone because I do more an more pastoral counseling with that device, though It is not very natural for me or my preferred way to stay in contact with people.
The pastoral prayer, however, is a unique opportunity for a pastor. Each week, within the context of communal worship, we offer prayers together. For some individuals some weeks the quiet prayers are the most deeply worshipful. We simply sit without words for a while and listen. For others a litany or set of words we say together can be very worshipful. And sometimes, I am blessed to find the right words to express a communal sense. The pastoral prayer is occasionally a traditional prayer of our people, chosen from the psalms, a prayer book or another source. Occasionally, I adapt a prayer written by another faithful person and published. Most weeks, I feel that our setting and community demands a unique prayer that reflects what I know of the aspirations and situations of the people of our particular group of Christians.
Increasingly, I am trying to teach myself the art of poetry. It is not an easy study. I tolerated poetry when it was taught in school. But as I age, I have developed an increasing appreciation for the ability of poetry to less instead of more words. I keep a copy of the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson close by my desk and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is a small volume often tucked in my briefcase. This year I have been reading one poem by Rainer Maria Rilke each day. And the Bible is filled with poetry. We think of the Psalms as the poetry book of the Bible and many of the Psalms stand alone as both great poetry and great prayer. The tradition of reading or singing a Psalm as a response in worship is long standing and deeply meaningful. But there is a lot more poetry than just the psalms. The great prophets were also great poets. When standing up for justice in the face of societal trends to the contrary and calling for Israel to return to its covenant with God, the prophets had to employ more than impassioned rhetoric. They went beyond prose to the power of great poetry. Great art is often required to move the hearts and consciences of the people.
Poetry, however, cannot be forced. It comes in its own way, in its own time. There may be some gifted poets somewhere who can sit down and write a poem on demand. I am not among their ranks. I can sit at my computer or with a paper journal at the assigned time, determined to write a great poem/prayer and the words do not come. I keep a little journal of prayer requests and concerns and I can take it out and read the notes there and my mind is flooded with the stories of the people I serve and know. I find tales of diseases and concerned families, of grief and loss, of sorrow and separation. I find broken promises and hurt feelings and tales of when things did not go as planned. I discover unemployment and injustice and hunger and thirst. There are also notes of celebration: births and anniversaries and the simple joys of being with those who love you. There are tragedies that cannot be stopped and joys that cannot be contained. Reading the list sometimes produces sentences of prayer. Sometimes it does not. The list is always changing and it always gets longer. Old prayers do not go away simply becomes something more urgent takes precedence in my thoughts. Grief is enduring.
Solomon said to Abiathar the priest, “Go back to your fields in Anathoth. You deserve to die, but I will not put you to death now, because you carried the ark of the Lord God before my father David, and because you shared all my father’s hardships.” That is reported in 1 Kings 2:26. I’m sure that the priest and his family prayed prayers of lament over their banishment away from Jerusalem. I’m sure that they questioned the wisdom of the king and cried out for justice. I’m sure that they watched the subsequent acquisition of wealth and power and women and influence and knowledge by the Solomon administration and questioned it. Their prayers, however, took time.
We don’t hear of the prayers of those banished at Anathoth in our Bible until over three centuries later, when we read of “The words of Jeremiah son of Hikiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin.” (Jeremiah 1:1)
Prayers don’t always arise on schedule. They don’t always come in our time – sometimes not even in our generation. This enterprise of a relationship with God is much bigger than one pastor sitting at a messy desk in one church.
So I will try to write a prayer. I will try to find words to put to the cries of the people I serve. I will try to fashion something remotely poetic.
And I may once again discover that the deepest prayers we pray don’t involve any words at all.