I was a rookie pastor the first time it struck me what is at stake in a prayer request. You know how the phone tree works. Someone in my little congregation in New Jersey knew someone whose neighbor’s child had just been in a car accident. The family did not have a church home. So Irma— my organist, lay leader, and custodian— rang my flip phone.
“You hustle on over there,” Irma ordered me. “They need prayer. And later, they’re going to need a preacher.”
Despite what you may think, I tend to do what I’m asked to do and so about fifteen minutes after getting the call I hustled off campus and drove the short distance to Princeton Hospital. Darrien was a senior in high school. When I got there I saw that his dark skin was broken across his temple. They were a poor family with little money and no airbag. The ER stall was filled with family members and hospital staff whose laggard motions told me it was just a matter of time.
I had worn my newly-purchased collar to minimize introductions and explanations.
When Darrien’s mother saw me, she brooked no time for pleasantries. She pointed a long manicured finger at me. She did not ask. She demanded.
“You pray for him right now. You get God to mend him. You tell God to let me keep my baby.”
I prayed just as bluntly as she had registered her request. Afterwards, I held Darrien’s mother’s hand when I wasn’t letting her cling to me like a rescue buoy. I kept vigil with them. When they moved Darrien to a room in the critical care unit, I left them with a promise to return the next day. His vitals had proved more resilient than initially expected, a turn of events his mother and family attributed to my talismanic power of prayer.
Just so, they were anxious for me to return.
The next morning I knocked on the glass, pulled the sliding door open, and stepped through the curtain. The monitors were quiet and blank. And Darrien’s body was still, waiting now for the resurrection. When I approached the bed, his mother smacked me so hard she knocked crumbs of toast out of my mouth.
Then she broke the silence with an agonized peal, “Your prayer didn’t work! You didn’t do it right! What kind of preacher are you?! God didn’t answer!”
I wrapped my arms around her.
She muttered it into my shoulder over and again, “It didn’t work. It didn’t work. You didn’t do it right.”
Here is my question.
Did it?
Did my prayer not work?
Did God elect not to answer my petition?
This past week I received a prayer request of sorts from a woman who was a youth in my first confirmation class over twenty years ago.
She wrote to me:
“Pray for my dad and for me. Pray for our relationship. I have been praying for months— years even— that Donald Trump would not return to the White House. And I have been praying not because I am especially interested or invested in politics; I have been praying because politics has kidnapped my father. When he is not watching cable news shows or listening to podcasts, he is on the internet. It has become his church. His cruel jokes and dismissive barbs— it is not him. At first, we just could not discuss current events or political issues with one another. But now, we cannot speak to one another at all. There is not hostility between us exactly. It is more like there is this absence between us. I could have put holes in the rug I have prayed so hard and so often that the course of things not lead here. So I guess I am asking you to pray, Jason, because obviously— though you are the one who taught me— I do not know how to do it. I cannot think of a single one of my prayers that have been answered. I have stopped trying. And I do not know if I would consider myself a believer anymore.”
Here is another question.
Is it possible for prayer to fail?
A couple of year ago, I was driving to the office when the theologian Stanley Hauerwas called me. He had been ill and had undergone surgery in England, and I had left him a message inquiring about his health and spirit.
That morning on the way to church, he called me back and before I could even say hello, his gravely Texas accent barked out, “Jason I can’t piss, and it’s just so damn painful.”
As I pulled into the church parking lot, he described all the complications he’d suffered following what should have been a routine procedure. I listened. But I knew that Stanley is not the sort of Christian to be satisfied with a preacher who offers nothing but active listening.
So I said to him, “I will pray for you, Stanley.”
“You damn well better do it now,” he grumbled, “I’m miserable, in agony.”
I cleared my throat and was about to begin praying when Stanley interrupted me.
“And Jason?”
“Yes, Stanley?”
“If you’re not going to pray for God to heal me, then, hell, just hang up the phone right now already.”
I did pray for God to heal him.
And Stanley did heal.
Does that mean my prayer worked?
For that matter, if God is beyond all grasping, is it even right to speak of prayer as working?
Here is yet another question.
What is the difference between prayer and magic?
What is the difference between me and Dumbledore?
In the Book of Samuel, after David is anointed king first over the house of Judah and later over Israel in the north, the LORD makes a covenant with the shepherd boy from Bethlehem. “He shall build a house for my name,” God pledges, “And I will establish his throne forever…my steadfast love will never depart from him.”
And in response to God’s unconditional promise, David prays. David goes into the tabernacle to sit before the LORD. And David speaks to God.
He utters praise:
“Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my house, that you have brought me to this place in life? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O LORD God…Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness, to make your servant know it.”
You have brought me to this place in life.
In other words, David’s praise acknowledges that it could have been otherwise. The LORD could have led David in another direction. God could have elected to bring his life to a different place.
“My life could have been otherwise,” David professes to the Will behind all the happenings that happen.
David repeats this same acknowledgement in the twenty-third psalm, “He leads me in faithful tracks for his name’s sake.”
On Thursday I met with a team of oncologists at Johns Hopkins for a second opinion on my cancer recurrence and course of treatment. With a soft Dutch-Afrikaans accent, the lead doctor introduced himself to me by saying, “First things first, Mr. Micheli. Medicine makes amazing advances all the time, but— remember— there is no cure for mortality.”
I nodded.
“I get it,” I said, “That’s sort of my line of work too.”
He did not inquire about the particulars of my vocation but instead he sat down and hurried to the matter at hand, reviewing two alternative regimens in exhaustive, jargon-laden detail. After thirty minutes, he recommended I remain on my present course of treatment. He then brushed his palms on his thighs, stood up from his round stool, and held out his hand to me.
“It was very nice to meet you,” he said.
“Those two,” I said, still trying to process his debrief, “Those are the only other alternatives?”
He stopped. He turned away from the door. And he faced me.
After a beat or two, he broke the pregnant silence, “You could pray.”
“Pray?” the surprise in my voice surprised me, “I guess that is significantly more affordable than the other alternatives.”
“Yes,” he said flatly, not catching the joke.
“Pray?” I repeated.
“Yes,” he said, “You could pray. Tell me, are you not religious?”
“Uh, sort of,” I replied, “I just did not expect to receive a second opinion on prayer.”
A heavy seriousness immediately settled over his face like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. He put a warm hand on my elbow. He leaned towards me. And looking me straight in the eyes, his soft voice became but a whisper.
“If prayer is not possible…,” he said, and with his hands he gestured towards all the monitors and computers and examination equipment in the room.
“If prayer is not possible, what is the point? If there is not One to whom we can pray, if there is not One who holds the future in his hands, then there is no future. There may be tomorrow and the next day and so forth, but there is no Future. And if there is no future, what is the point? Everything is meaningless— your life is meaningless.”
“I bet you have got quite the bedside manner.”
He smiled.
“So that is your prescription?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, “It is not a prescription. It is not a prescription because there is no guaranteed outcome. And the reason there can be no guaranteed outcome is not because there is no God. The reason there can be no guarantee is because God is real. And because he is real, he is free. Good day to you, sir.”
“He leads me in faithful tracks for his name’s sake.”
By “faithful tracks” David does not mean the LORD has set him on a path to faithfulness. Nor does David praise God for steering him towards righteous deeds or works of justice. Rather David is extolling the LORD’s own faithfulness.
As the Old Testament scholar John Goldingay comments on verse three:
“The psalm is not introducing a moral note and asking to be led to live the right kind of life. Faithful tracks are paths consistent with the divine shepherd's faithfulness. David's confession corresponds to the declaration in the Song of Moses that Yahweh is leading Israel with commitment. Thus does “for his "name's sake" restate the previous clause. Yahweh is a God characterized by faithfulness. In a sense, that is the meaning of the name "Yahweh." So acting in faithfulness demonstrates that the name is a true reflection of the character.”
“Faithful tracks” are paths consistent with God’s faithfulness.
Hence, wherever the LORD leads you in life, he does so in a manner consistent with his steadfast love. Which is to say, whatever life brings you, nevertheless God is shepherding you pursuant to his faithfulness. Your path is always congruent with his commitment to you. No matter what befalls you, it is leading somewhere. And he is never not ahead of you. That is, no matter what transpires in your present, regardless of what betided in your past, your future will vindicate the Father whose name is faithfulness.
No matter the place life has brought you, it is leading somewhere good.
Maggie Ross is a Anglican solitary in Oxford, England. From her vowed life of silence a number of books on the Christian spiritual life have emerged. In her book Writing the Icon of the Heart, Ross unravels the distinction between praying to God in order for our prayers to work and praying to the Father as the Bride of his Beloved Son. The former attempts to force a divine intervention. The latter yields to a trusted lover. The former hardens our hearts and deadens our faith. The latter makes us as human as God.
As Maggie Ross writes:
“If theology has forgotten it, Einstein reminds us that there are many futures. Prayer, especially intercessory prayer, is opening to this possibility of many futures. Magic wishes to limit us to only one future. Magic tries to exert total short-term control over a single, narrowly focused aspect of life, heedless of the long-term consequences or ripple effect on others’ lives.
In our desperation to pray for a loved one in crisis, we often feel strongly about what the best outcome should be, and we frame our prayers (and sometimes fill them with bribes) toward this end. In reality it is impossible for us to know what will work for the highest good, and unless our prayer is underpinned and ringed about with “Thy will be done” it is no better than magic. By contrast, true prayer tries to gather what needs attention and let go of it in the love of God.
Weeping is often a sign of relinquishing of our efforts to control the future. Weeping is a sign of our letting go of power so that God’s power can move through us. It is the sign of transfiguration, of new creation. The difference between prayer and magic is an attitude toward the future.”
In other words, to pray is simply to entrust your future to the LORD.
Or as Robert Jenson says, “Amen— let it be so— is faith’s biggest word.”
Look—
Not to make it about me, but: Exhibit A.
I was first diagnosed with this rare, allegedly incurable cancer ten years ago. Since then, I have known that the median time to relapse for my disease is seven years. Do the math, for the last three years every day has felt like Ash Wednesday. For the past three years, I have waited, knowing each passing day was another grain of sand slipping through the hourglass.
From dust I came and to dust I shall return.
I did not want what science calls my fate to be my future.
And so I have prayed.
And prayed.
And prayed.
I pleaded and petitioned.
I did not want to be here.
Nevertheless, this is the place where he has shepherded me.
And truly, it’s grassy pastures and still waters.
I am at peace because I trust that even this path will prove to be a faithful track by which God will justify his name. Even at this tipping point between my living and my dying, I can speak faith’s biggest word.
Amen.
Let it be so.
I say all this not to present myself in a sanctified light. I say all this to point you to what I know in my bones— literally, in my bones— to be true. There is no prayer that falls on deaf ears. There is no petition that fails receipt. Every uttered word works. No plea or praise spoken to the LORD are sunk costs. On account of the Son, the Father has promised to hear you. To hear you out as one of his children. And he will do so by grace not according to your merit or demerit. Therefore, all your prayers are heard and heeded.
Church:
The LORD heard your prayers for Mike Moser.
The LORD heard your prayers for Gary Sherfey.
The LORD heard your prayers for Steve Reynolds.
The LORD hears your prayers…
For me, for Laura Kallal and her family, for your marriage, for your divorce, for your kids, for your jobs, for your health, for the nation.
It is not that God ignores your intercessions. It is that you can trust him with your future. He can be entrusted with your future, even if, especially if, it is not the future you requested. And you can entrust your future to the LORD because— back to David— any place the LORD leads you in life and every path he sets before you, they are all “faithful tracks.” That is, they are all points from which the LORD can lead you to a future that will not only vindicate his name, Faithfulness, but also will vindicate his Son who was crucified for your sins and raised for your justification.
Admittedly, getting to Amen on such an affirmation is faith’s biggest leap.
But then again, the scriptures make clear that faith is not an accomplishment.
Or rather, faith is God’s accomplishment in you.
My cheek was still bruised from the blow Darrien’s mother had struck when she wandered into church for the first time. Not knowing better, she arrived early that Sunday, bringing her elderly father and her adolescent daughter with her. I was in the narthex, tying the cincture on my robe. Irma was wheezing out some asthmatic chords on the ancient, dusty organ. Darrien’s mother was the opposite of how I’d seen her in the hospital, all decked out in Sunday-best.
She pointed at my face, “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over us.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said, “I guess I should’ve invited you. I’m new at this. I haven’t even been a Christian all that long.”
“Your prayer may not have worked,” she explained, “but I can’t stand the thought that that day wasn’t leading somewhere. That that was…it.”
I nodded, too young and far out of my depth.
“I’m terrified,” she said, “by the notion that God isn’t. I need to know he is— that’s why we’re here.”
“Well, that’s easy,” I replied.
And she looked at me funny.
So I took a step back and gestured to the gap between us.
“God exists,” I said, “Jesus is the Word. That means God occupies every space in between someone who makes a promise in his name and someone who receives his word of promise. So God is right here when I promise you that because Jesus lives, your future is with Darrien. That day is leading somewhere.”
She chewed on it, didn’t reply, and then led her family to find a place in the pews. It took a couple of months of Sundays, I noticed, before she could add her voice to the Body and respond to the promise of the gospel with faith’s biggest word, “Amen!”
To pray is to entrust your future, the future, the future of someone you love to the LORD. But here’s the rub. You can only trust someone you have come to know. Just so, for you to trust God you must encounter him. Which is a miracle, but it’s incredibly easy and ordinary. I may have been a rookie pastor, but I was not wrong. It’s the Reformation. God exists— no. The LORD occupies this space. God occupies this space between me and you, in the transmittance of a promise, handed over on the basis of the gospel.
For example—
Wherever you are in life, whatever path you’ve gotten lost on, no matter what has befallen you, the LORD Jesus Christ will turn it into a faithful track. The story of the life you call you, the sum of it, will give glory to his name.
There—
You wonder where God is?
God just did God to you.
You can only entrust your future to someone you know, someone who has made a promise to you and given of himself to you.
Therefore, come to the table.
And don’t let the loaf and the cup fool you.
God is here, in the promise, “This is my blood…for you.”
Come to the table.
And I dare you—
Taking the bread, receiving the cup…say “Amen.”
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