When you search for images of someone praying, you see a lot of this: person with hands folded, head bowed, eyes closed, on their knees, with a Bible. Interestingly, their mouths are usually closed. However, conversing with the Creator is so much more than the standard pictures suggest.
I recently finished Eugene Peterson's book, Tell It Slant. In the latter half of the volume, he deals with the prayers of Jesus. As I was reading, I realized that for much of my life, I have seen prayer as a task, a responsibility, a job, a burden, a required discipline for all who claim to follow Jesus. But Jesus never presents prayer like that. When his disciples make the request, "Teach us to pray," Jesus starts off with, "Our Father..." He makes use of the inclusive pronouns "us" and "we." Instead of giving the disciples a task, Jesus invites them to join him in what he is doing: communing with the Father. Perhaps prayer is not so much a spiritual discipline to master as it is an invitation to accompany Jesus as he lives in constant nearness to the Creator, the Originator, the Father.
Part of my problem with prayer is that I tend to pray one way, sticking with what I know and what is familiar. That's not a bad thing, but it means that my "prayer vocabulary" remains quite small, as does my view of prayer. In Jesus's prayers, there is a broadness which encompasses all of life's situations, and he utilizes many different approaches. I started to make a list and came up with eight ways we can pray with Jesus. The list is by no means exhaustive, but, hopefully, it gives us a sense of how near God is to us and how we can be near to God in every part of life. Come, let us join with Jesus in prayer.
1. Prayers of incarnation. These prayers recognize the presence of God in all of creation. As we pray, we are able to see the image of God in all people, especially the unlikely ones, and we notice the glory of God in creatures great and small, in a lonely tree and bent blade of grass. The incarnation story features many people who recognized the presence of the divine in ways which were both ordinary and extraordinary. They sang songs and prayed and gave glory to God because they experienced the nearness of God in the mundane aspects of life. Prayers of incarnation are prayers of noticing and prayers of gratitude. These prayers awaken us to the glory of God in our midst. Jesus prayed: "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do" (Matthew 11:25-26, NIV). When we pray with Jesus, our eyes are opened to the pervasive nearness of God.
2. Prayers for healing and wholeness. These are prayers of compassion, concerned with justice and mercy. In Luke 5, we read about a paralyzed man who wanted to get to Jesus. The house where Jesus was visiting was crowded, making it hard for anyone to get near him. The man's friends got creative and lowered the paralyzed man through the roof. When Jesus saw the sick man, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven." The religious leaders were appalled at this declaration of forgiveness, for only God could forgive sins. Jesus responded: "Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk?' But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." So Jesus healed the man from his paralysis and told him to take up his mat and go home. And the man did exactly that, praising God as he went. Jesus healed many people of their physical ailments, but many times, he showed more concern for their guilt and shame, their broken spirits, and their strained relationship with the community. Healing is not just a physical thing. When we pray for the sick, the outcast, the needy, the broken, we bring the whole person before Jesus. We don't need to be forceful when praying for healing; we need to be faithfully present to Jesus and to the person. When we pray with Jesus, we pray with compassion. And when we speak to the person, we start with "Friend..."
3. Prayers that proclaim the good news of God's love. Our prayers should be good news. In our everyday life, good news generally elicits a joyful, physical response from the hearer. Does our telling of the gospel (good news) have this effect on people? In the sermon on the mount, Jesus proclaimed some very good news to people who were used to receiving a lot of bad news. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:3-5)." Most of us think of these words as part of a sermon, but these are also prayers of blessing. Jesus was proclaiming the favour of God, inviting people to receive the nearness of YHWH, to step into the kingdom of heaven, to know that they were not discarded or rejected, but children of a loving and caring Father. Jesus, the beloved, proclaimed the good news of God's love. When we pray with Jesus, we, also the beloved, proclaim good news for the downtrodden.
4. Prayers in the midst of suffering and pain. Not all of Jesus's prayers were glowing with victory and positivity. When his death was drawing near, he articulated his agony and apprehension. "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will. ... My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done" (Matthew 26:39, 42). On the cross, Jesus uttered words which revealed a growing sense of isolation. He cited Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He also made mention of his increasing physical discomfort: "I thirst" (John 19:28). About 40 percent of the Psalms are some form of lament, and yet our prayers (especially in the affluent West) often shy away from these raw expressions of suffering and pain. Jesus did not. In the midst of his most intense agony, he cried out to God. When we pray with Jesus, we are invited not only to bring our own pain, but to enter into the suffering of the world.
5. Prayers of letting go. Once more, the prayers of Jesus on the cross guide us: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. ... Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:34, 46). "Letting go" prayers are not just deathbed utterances; they are prayers which we can pray every day. These prayers acknowledge our innate desire to control and dominate, to have things go the way we want them to go. Prayers of "letting go" free us from this impossible task and, instead, situate us in surrender and forgiveness. We like to play god, to enforce our agenda, but through Jesus we see that God dwells in the unlikely realms of surrender and forgiveness. When we pray with Jesus, we let go, trusting that our lives are in the hands of a loving Father.
6. Prayers of waiting and silence. Reading through the gospels, we note that Jesus had a habit of taking time away from the crowds to pray, many times alone. Also, we never see Jesus in a hurry. He was not afraid of waiting, not afraid of extended times of silence. "After [Jesus] had dismissed [the crowds], he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was [still] there alone" (Matthew 14:23). Prayers are so much more that the words we utter. Praying with Jesus means that we spend time away from the busyness of life, from the pressures of society and work and other people. Prayers of waiting and silence counter our need for agendas, productivity, and efficiency. These prayers invite us to simply be with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in communion.
7. Prayers which celebrate life and renewal (resurrection). Jesus went to the tomb of his dear friend, Lazarus, and wept. Then he prayed: "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, they they may believe that you sent me. ... Lazarus, come out!" And the dead man came out, still wrapped in grave clothes (John 11:41-43). Earlier, Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25). When Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, he was inviting his friend to get a taste of what it means for love to be stronger than death. Jesus was calling Lazarus to share in his life with the Father. When we pray with Jesus, we, too, seek to participate in the life-giving love of the Trinity, and in doing so, awaken dead things to life. This is the prayer of redemption, of transformation, of salvation, of creation, of renewal. This prayer relies on the work of the Spirit to breathe life into that which is dust.
8. Prayers for unity and maturity. In John 17, Jesus prayed a lengthy prayer for his disciples. It is a rife with references to unity, glory, and love. In the past, the disciples had argued, vied for position, misunderstood what Jesus was trying to say, and treated people badly. Jesus prayed that they would be truly sanctified, set apart to share in his life with the Father. He prayed that they would learn how to live in harmony, how to be less impetuous, fickle, and selfish. This is Jesus's prayer for all who follow him: that they would be one with the Father as he is one with the Father. We, as the church, are a far cry from this kind of unity and maturity, but when we pray with Jesus, we pray for ourselves and for our communities and for the world: that we might become the unified body of Christ. Jesus prayed: "I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one - I in them and you in me - so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:22-23).
Looking at these eight ways of praying with Jesus, I notice that I spend a lot of time in one or two of them, and I really need to practice others more (letting go!). Perhaps you noticed something similar. When I look at the prayers of Jesus, I see that a life of prayer is not narrow; it is wide. The vocabulary is virtually unlimited. When we pray with Jesus, there is no pressure to produce prayers that are worthy or profound or even effective. Jesus simply invites us to stand with him as he intercedes, to be with him in silence, to delight in his life and love, and to join in his compassion for the world. Prayer is not learning how to say the right words at the right time so that God does what we want. When we pray with Jesus, we simply adopt a posture of "being with." And then we do what Jesus does.
Eugene Peterson writes: "I want to knock down the fences that keep prayer confined to religious settings and religious subjects. I want to enlarge the field of prayer – exponentially if I am able – to take in the entire creation and the whole of history, our entire lives gathered in intention before God, leaving nothing and no one out. I want my prayers, and the prayers of my friends, to ricochet off the rock faces of mountains, reverberate down the corridors of shopping malls, sound ocean deeps, water arid deserts, find a foothold in fetid swamps, encounter poets as they search for the accurate word, mingle their fragrance with the wildflowers in alpine meadows, sing with the loons on Canadian lakes. I will continue, of course, to pray in sanctuaries and prayer closets and at deathbeds. But I want far more. I want to participate in prayers that don’t sound like prayers. Prayers that in the praying aren’t identified as prayers. Prayers without ceasing. I don’t mean to say that all our words and silences are in themselves, prayer, only that they can be." [1]
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1. Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2008), 268, emphasis mine.
Image: Praying in the Desert by Hari Mitrushi
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