Does prayer change God’s mind? When we pray about something does it alter the plan of God in some way? We know we’re supposed to pray. Jesus told us “to ask, to seek, to knock.” St. Paul said we should “pray without ceasing.” St. Luke in the gospel for today talks about “the necessity to pray always without becoming weary.” Is our prayer meant to impact what God is planning to do? That certainly seems implied in the parable of the Unjust Judge and the Widow. Her badgering him caused the judge to decide in her favor. Will that work with God? If we storm heaven with prayer to cure the sick, to end the war, to solve our family problems will it be effective? Are we to treat God the way a teenager does her skeptical parents: “Oh, please, please, please let me go to the dance. I’ll make my bed, I’ll take out the trash, I’ll floss my teeth. I won’t hang around with the fast crowd. I’ll be home by ten. Please, please, please.” What exactly is going on when we pray?
If you think about it, in prayer we really shouldn’t want to change God’s mind. God is not like the Unjust Judge needing to be coerced into doing the right thing. God is righteousness itself. God is certainly smarter than we are. God figured out how to make the sun to shine and spun the stars of heaven so I guess God can figure out what to do with me. God loves us completely and unconditionally. How could our plan be better than the divine will! Maybe the best way to say it, in prayer it is not so much that we want to change God’s mind; rather, we seek to change our minds. We change our minds to trust in the love God has for us. We need to believe that “his eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.” We must have confidence that in God’s time all will be well, all manner of things will be well. That is why, for me, the ideal prayer is that of Jesus in Gethsemane. You remember it, right? “Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me but not my will but thine be done.” Jesus, like all of us, had his preferences about how things should go. He wanted to avoid the cup of suffering and he said so in his prayer. Because he was leaning on the everlasting arms he could make the leap of putting himself in God’s hands wherever they would lead.
Just a quick side glance at parable of the Unjust Judge and the Widow. Even though St. Luke frames the parable as being about persistent prayer the story itself seems to have a different theme: about the ability of those who seem to be weak, who have no power, to produce change for the better from those who have power. Widows in both Jewish and Roman society were symbols of powerlessness. Her “bothering” the structures of injustice and oppression would seem futile but, as Jesus tells the story, she wore down those in authority by her persistence. Remember the school children in Birmingham defying Bull Connor’s water hoses and attack dogs in 1963 to change a segregationist city? They seemed powerless but their persistence brought about greater justice. We might feel helpless in the face of racism, economic disparity and environmental exploitation but by persisting in resisting change is going to come.
Back to reflecting on prayer. Of course, asking God for something, prayers of petition, is not the only type of prayer. One of my favorite authors, Anne LeMott, wrote a book about prayer entitled Help, Thanks, Wow. (If I were writing the book I would have named it “Help, Thanks, Sorry, Wow.”) We say our prayers of petition, our cries of help in order to establish our connection with God. We know that we are in need and we trust that there is Someone who can respond to that need. Our cry for help is actually about creating a relationship. Like a child curling in her mother’s lap seeking consolation for a boo-boo, we turn to God when we need help because by doing so we are taking our rightful place as a child of God.
The second prayer in her reckoning, “Thanks,” actually flows from the cry of help. We realize that all that we have, all that we are, is a gift. We didn’t ask to be born – we can only be thankful for the gift of life. Every move we make, every breath we take is a gift. Putting two feet on the ground this morning is a gift. In fact, despite a societal expectation that we have to earn it, the reality is that all the most important things – family, home, wisdom, love — come as gifts. No wonder we must create in our prayer an attitude of gratitude.
I added to Anne’s list, a prayer of “sorry.” We who have been so blessed mess up pretty consistently. We are mean-spirited, selfish, greedy, anger-prone, resentful, impatient, and, at times, just hateful. We who have been given everything refuse to extend ourselves in generosity toward others. We have to say, “sorry, God,” over and over as we strive to do better.
The final prayer: “Wow.” God is made manifest in many different forms and we are made speechless as we experience wonder and can just say, “wow.” The curl of the ear in a new born baby. Wow. The panorama of the Grand Teton Mountains. Wow. The leaves changing to red, orange and yellow in the fall. Wow. Wow Prayer is not so much something that we schedule for one hour in the morning as we read from our liturgical book but a new sense of seeing the world. Like Dorothy moving from black and white to Technicolor we see reality with fresh eyes. Our God gives us crashing waves and a mockingbird’s song, gives us a mother’s embrace and a child’s laughter, gives us beauty, truth, life, love. Wow, just wow.
