James insists that prayer is 'effective' and 'powerful' (James 5.17). Do we share his perception, or really understand his concept of prayer?
This week's news
Prayer in the face of tragedy is in the news this week. So is a big national event simply to encourage and celebrate people coming together for prayer and praise. So also is a story of the healing power of two very secular communities drawing together in better understanding. Is what James has to say at the end of Chapter 5 relevant to parts or all of this?
Saturday 29 September will see a huge prayer event at Wembley. On Tuesday, forty police colleagues walked in silence from their station to the scene of the Manchester murders and some four hundred people joined them to attend a memorial service for the two dead police women. Prayers focused on supporting families ‘in shock and grief’ and an address drew attention to the importance of community solidarity in bringing about healing. On Saturday 22 September a football match between Manchester United and Liverpool saw shared respect for the tragedies in the pasts of both teams banish, at least temporarily, a historic culture of mutual abuse. How can our understanding of prayer be deepened by considering all these happenings in the light of James’ comments.
Reflection
What is prayer? The context, intention and, presumably, outcomes of these recent events are, or will be, very different. The Wembley event is exuberantly Christian and explicitly dedicated to Christian prayer and praise (5.13b). The Manchester vigil was expected to attract people of many faiths and none, seeking quiet reflection in grief (cf. v.13a). The news footage of football fans singing ‘You’ll never walk alone’ in a spirit of respectful tribute suggested that something very much akin to prayer had worked there (cf. 5.16). Can the term ‘prayer’ be used of any mental discipline – reflection, meditation, contemplation, empathy – that helps us to reach out beyond ourselves?
What counts as effective? The special BBC Songs of Praise programme for the week before the Wembley event gave various examples where Christian prayer, both individual and communal, had accomplished change. But the changes were subjective and often subtle, experiences of communities drawing together, or individuals feeling refreshed or strengthened. Should we be looking for more dramatic answers to prayer?
Religious people have been mocked for seeking change by the ‘magic’ of prayer rather than by hard work or moral effort. The charge has been resisted by insisting that ‘work is prayer’, an aphorism attributed to St Benedict. A refutation of this on the Benedictine Order’s website points to a life of prayer as the better alternative to the workaholic life-style. Tangible achievement should not become our main reason for existing. How important to us is prayer as the discipline that gives us permission to rest in God?
‘The land of spices, something understood’ is how George Herbert concludes his poem ‘Prayer 1’ in The Temple, 1633. Does this characterisation capture something important? Prayer at once opens the mind to the vast spaces and enticing destinations of the imagination and enables us to home in on the most basic truths about ourselves.
Prayer
An introduction to a time of prayer of any kind
How do you see prayer?
Is it a vehicle, a hoist, for heaving our petitions up into the divine presence?
Is it a channel to lead the sweet waters of divine compassion down into a suffering world?
Are we pulling on a rope?
Or opening wide a well-oiled door?
Are the words the broken gasps of an exhausted soul?
Or the lucid rapture of a soul at rest?
Are we eavesdropping on pain, or sharing delight when we pray together?
Do we lean on one another, or help one another to rise?
Lord, all these are possible, sometimes all together,
in the mysterious alchemy of prayer.
Give us the grace to share our strengths and our vulnerabilities,
to enjoy what is easy and familiar, and to meet what is new and challenging.
Let your Church be filled with the hope of answered prayer,
reinforced with the assurance of confident prayer,
and running over with the grace of your continued presence.
Amen.
Questions
- How do you like to pray? Alone, or in a group? Aloud or silently? Extempore or using carefully crafted words?
- Can you think of any one particular occasion when your prayer was answered?
Action
Try a different way of praying this week. If you are an extempore prayer person, try crafting in words. Do a George Herbert: read his poem through and see if you can come up with a little three or four word phrase that sums up some facet of the richness of the prayer tradition. A group of worshippers might then like to put their phrases together as Herbert did.
Young People
It’s the harvest festival season! Prayers of praise and thanksgiving are often the easiest to produce and are used to encourage children in prayer writing. With older children and young people, move right away from harvest but still encourage positive attitudes. Suggest a wider-ranging theme for a prayer of thanksgiving – what I want to thank God for about school, or about my family, or my friends, or about my community.
Brenda Vance is a URC elder and retired university teacher of English.
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