‘I
only pray to God when I need a favour’ - Prayer
Trinity
18 - James 5.13-20; Mark 9.38-50
I know this will surprise you all, but I have finally got
to that age where I can no longer listen to Radio 1. Radio 2 occasionally
replaces it in my eclectic soundwave selection, but even that can be a
struggle. More often than not, it is talk radio that grabs my attention, a
combination of Times Radio, LBC, Radio 4 or Radio 5. Sometimes, when I need to
chill, it’s Classic FM, but to even my surprise, I have recently become a
convert of Country Music. When all else fails to hit the spot, I find myself
listening to Smooth Country. I know, right! Mid-life crisis or what?
Now, there is a modern Country artist whose name, I kid you
not, is Jelly Roll (though, I doubt that is the name he was christened with).
The other day, as a turned the radio on, Jelly Roll was singing a song called
‘Need a Favour’, and this song’s lyrics are fascinating. It goes something like
this: ‘I only talk to God when I need a favour. And I only pray when I ain’t
got a prayer. So, who the hell am I to expect a Saviour? Oh, I only talk to God
when I need a favour. But God I need a favour!’[1]
These catchy lyrics are really clever. They cut right to
the bone of what, I’m guessing, is so many people’s experience of prayer – it
is certainly mine, all too often.
How many of us leave prayer to the last minute or as a last
resort? How many of us only really return to prayer as a final straw, once we
have exhausted all other options?
In the fifth chapter of his letter, St James is trying to
encourage in us a different approach. ‘Are any among you suffering? They should
pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you
sick? They should call the elders (priests) of the church and have them pray
over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord…’[2]
In any given situation, our own endeavours can only take us
so far. Sooner or later, it is only prayer that can bring the kind of holistic
resolution of goodness that we crave.
As St James continues: ‘The prayer of faith will save the
sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will
be forgiven’.[3]
As some of you know, the Parker-McGee’s had a rather
tumultuous year last year. 2023 was probably one of the most taxing our family
has known to date. In our darkest moments, one thing kept us strong – your
prayers. I know that can sound like a platitude, but it is true. When we had
exhausted all of our own abilities, it was then that we felt both mystically
and tangibly held in the most profound way by the prayers of the Diocese, the
Monastery, and of these parishes. I can’t explain it, yet it was certainly
true. And all of us in the family felt it. So Thank you – your prayers really
work!
I have a strong faith. I ordinarily feel a close connection
to God in most situations and I have always been an advocate for saying that
prayer works. I have seen it often enough in others. Be this as it may, our
experience last year was on a completely different level - as though we were
being carried by countless invisible wings of angels yet unseen.
Perhaps this reveals something else about prayer that we
sometimes misunderstand. In the Gospel of St John, Jesus says “Remain in me and
I will remain in you”.[4] Too often, we consider
prayer to be of our making, in our control. Prayer only happens when we pray,
right? Wrong!
We often approach prayer as though it were a shopping list
of things for God to do, as though he needed reminding and isn’t already on the
case. How silly of us. God already knows what needs doing and he is working
that out for the best, not in the limited way our unimaginative agendas would
have things go, but in infinitely better divine proportions. We come with our
list of items to be bought cheaply from Aldi, when God is already filling his
trolley at Waitrose (other premium supermarkets are available!). So perhaps we
need to think again about what prayer really is.
To properly understand prayer, it’s helpful for us to go
all the way back to the story of creation, to that period when God creates all
things into being.
But, first a caveat. Now, this may sound somewhat
controversial, but its important. When reading the creation narratives in the
first few chapters of Genesis, we have to ask ourselves what is literal fact
and what is allegorical device to help with deeper meaning and understanding.
For instance, when the author speaks of the ‘days’ of creation, do they really
mean periods of 24 hours or are they referring instead to less precise but
nonetheless clearly discernible stages in the process of creation? We might ask, for example, how can there be a
day of 24 hours, before a day is even created? Is it plausible that the ‘first
day’ actually refers to a discernible period of change which may have taken
many years in our present understanding of time? Might the association of this
period to a day be a textual construct employed by the author of the text to
help the reader better understand? Just a thought!
Anyway, casting our minds to those narratives, how does
Genesis tell us creation took place? Well, God spoke the universe into being
and he breathed the Holy Spirit over it to give it life. God spoke with divine
breath. That is fundamentally what prayer is – divine communication. It is that
same divine communication that continues to keep all things moving in the right
direction, bringing light out of darkness, good out of evil and life out of
death. It is in God that we have our life and our being.
Our all-loving and caring God is constantly speaking words
of love into creation. Love is always creative. It builds up and enables things
to thrive. It overcomes darkness and brings light, just like the formation of
the sun at the beginning of time. God does this through his divine
communication. Properly understood, when we pray, we are simply stepping into
that divine communication.
The English Bishop and Theologian, John V. Taylor, use to
think of mission as ‘finding out what God is up to and joining in’.[5] To be truly engaged in
mission, then, is to be deeply rooted in prayer, not activity. When we are consciously praying, we become
intimately and corporately swept up in the creative power of God’s divine
communication and are carried along on the breeze of what God is up to. To pray
is to live life as it is meant to be lived.
This means that we do not need the right words or phrases.
We can simply step into it at any moment. All we need is a little
intentionality – to switch our focus from the material to the mystical – to
invite God into our focus. To step into the stillness of the divine presence
and allow him to take control.
This is how we access the divine power of which Jesus
speaks of in today’s Gospel reading.[6] ‘No-one’, he says, ‘who
does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of
me. Whoever is not against us is for us’.[7]
So, not to contradict the inestimable Jelly Roll, although
it is not ideal to ‘only pray when we need a favour’, we all have to start
somewhere, and there is never a time when we ‘haven’t got a prayer’ because the
divine communication of God is always ongoing. All we need do is find the
headspace to join in.
Prayer is about more than just the words we use. It is the
place where our head is at. If we can, more and more, connect with that prayer
that is already ongoing as the divine communication of God and the lifeforce of
the world, then our lives and the world itself will be far better place for it.
Amen.
R.T. Parker-McGee 2024
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