The other night I was watching a religious broadcast and listened as my "colleague" in ministry offered prayers of healing for members of his flock. His words were something to the effect of: "Lord, we pray that you will heal ------, because they are a faithful person and deserving of this ..." My jaw dropped and my blood pressure rose ... I thought - "what an a-- !!! What kind of prayer is that??"
Then the next morning I opened my lectionary stuff for Sunday's (today's) service and read the texts from Job 42 and Mark 10, and thought - "Hmmm, I see a connection here ..."
Let me take a moment to share a story about when I realized that prayers for healing are seldom neutral and sometimes set up a no-win scenario ...
A few years ago we had a young child in our community in need of a transplant for their survival. They needed a major organ transplant that was available only upon the death of the donor ... When we prayed for the recovery of the young child, we were asking for the death of another child ...
I had and still have a problem with such things ... This is not a prayer I'm comfortable offering ...
It's NOT that I am against organ transplants. I am all in favour of them. If someone can live because my organs are put to use after my death - I'm all for it. BUT, I can not as a minister of the Gospel utter a prayer asking for the successful surgery and recovery and healing of someone when the entire premise is based on the death of another human being.
Yet, how often do such prayer roll thoughtlessly off the tongues of clergy and pastors???
"Oh Lord," they plea, "be with dear Stan as he awaits his liver transplant, and let that surgery be successful and let him recover to be back again with us and his family ..." As offensive and absurd as it may sound, I've heard prayers uttered thus.
I hope that God is able to hear our intent rather than what has actually uttered by our lips ... Too often we approach prayer in a selfish way. Using it as a divine "I want" list ... asking God for miracles and special gifts, rather then seeing it as a means of opening our selves to the presence of the Holy in our lives.
Moreover, if we are foolish enough to pray for the recovery of a loved one, or a friend, and they subsequently die, what does that say about our faith?? We they not faithful enough? Were we NOT faithful enough? Did God not hear us? Did God not care? Why didn't that prayer get answered? And on and on the theological reflection can go ...
I think how we pray says alot about how we live our faith ...
Prayer is a wonderful gift. It is not, and never should be about asking God for special consideration or healing ... Perhaps the better approach in the face of loss, illness and suffering, is to use prayer as a means of reinforcing the presence of the Holy by simply saying to God as we understand God, "Hi - I'm here, and I know you're here too ..." and maybe that's enough to bolster us to face the day ...
Prayer to be effective must be more then a selfish "Gimme" list ... too bad too many of my colleagues haven't realized that yet ...
Prayer to be effective must be an active process of opening ourselves to the presence of the Holy in our lives ... and sometimes that's more then enough ...
(For more on this - head over to the Minnedosa United Blog: http://minnedosaunited.blogspot.com/ for today's sermon)
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