Last Sunday's Thought: Only the suffering God can help

For Dietrich Bonhoeffer the suffering God was not only a consolation in his own suffering. He also discovered that we are called ‘to share in the suffering of God in the world. Christians stand with God in God’s suffering’.

Christians sometimes make poor evangelists for a number of reasons, including excessive modesty and hesitancy or not knowing precisely what to say in response to questioners. Strictly speaking this response is incorrect, because Jesus tells us that when challenged by opponents we will not be left short of the right arguments (‘do not be anxious how or what you will speak, for it will be given to you…’ Matthew 10:19; ‘I will give you the right words and such wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to reply…’: Luke 21:15).

Nevertheless, it is always prudent to have prepared your answers in advance. I thought that by taking Selwyn Hughes, What to say when people need help. A short guide (repr. 2009), I would be able to provide brief summary answers in booklet form. Little did I realize the challenge I was taking on, for much depends on where one is coming from in terms of churchmanship and spirituality; but there is also the question of whether the words that one might offer are likely to do more harm than good. Prayer before each meeting with an individual needing help of whatever kind is indispensable: ‘O God, give me the power to use words that you would wish for, not those which I might blurt out’ – or words to this effect – are in order. 

But there are also issues which we are likely to be questioned about which are deeply controversial in the church: ‘I am attracted to members of the same sex.’ Christians are divided on this point. We each can only offer such advice as is morally consistent with our own position as Christians. How would we deal with a family member who declares his or her homosexuality? There is no case for espousing a principle which we would not apply in practice in such circumstances.

One question is perhaps the most challenging of all: why does God allow so much suffering? In a philosophical sense (theodicy), there is no definitive answer to this question, one which causes many people a great deal of personal anguish. The only answer that works for Christians is the answer of faith. In John 8:32-36, Jesus teaches us that ‘those who sin are slaves to their sin whether they realize it or not’ and ‘they cannot break away from their sin’. Paul takes the argument a stage further, and argues in Romans 6:17-22 that to be ‘set free from sin’, we have to ‘become slaves of righteousness’. Unlike real slaves, however, we do so ‘willingly, joyfully, naturally’, and not by coercion. In Jesus’ words, ‘you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’ (John 8:32).

This does not mean that we will not encounter evil or suffering in this world; but we will be better able to deal with that we encounter. If Christians know anything about God from the cross, it is that the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Corinthians 1:25). The cross does not make God a helpless victim of evil, but is the secret of his power and his triumph over evil (Richard Bauckham). This why, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from Nazi prison, ‘only the suffering God can help’ us.

Jürgen Moltmann writes: ‘The encounter with the suffering God in Christ is a great consolation in our personal life when we are losing beloved ones and have to mourn at their graves. The pain of grief lies in the feeling of losing someone and of being lost oneself. The consolation therefore lies in the experience of indestructible community with God. This is, however, only possible when the Godhead is not an unfeeling, indifferent heavenly power named “fate”, but rather the eternal love who feels and suffers with us. That makes it possible for us to experience in our sorrow, also God’s sorrow and in the pain of our love, God’s pain present. God loves with those who love, God weeps with those who weep, God sorrows with the sorrowful…’

Last Sunday's Thought: Pray without ceasing

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Tonight’s second Lent meeting concerns prayer, which concerns both our private prayer life and our prayer life as a Church. Some time ago we took as a maxim that it was by improving the quality of our prayer life as individuals that our prayer life as a Church would be improved. This maxim holds true. The desert fathers used to ask one another not about their health or anything else, but rather about their prayer life, asking ‘How is your prayer?’ ‘If prayer is right, everything is right’ was the conclusion they drew. We might say that this holds true for us during Lent. We should be asking each not how we are, but ‘how is your Lent?’ And also, to return to last week’s theme for the Lent meeting, ‘how is your worship?’ – particularly if we take that broader definition of worship which states that ‘worship is the attitude that acknowledges God’s presence at every moment in our daily lives, sometimes moving us to tears, sometimes to great joy, to repentance, to humility, to gratitude, to hard work, to commitment, to compassion, to love’ [What Christians believe at a Glance (Rose Bible Basics, 2010), 105.]

         Some time ago, we considered the importance of Leslie D. Weatherhead’s A Private House of Prayer which in many respects is a traditional, mainstream approach to the subject of prayer. And none the worse for that. Weatherhead’s was very much a psychological approach to how we pray. He understood that there are always likely to be obstacles. His task was to create a prayer routine that meant that through a familiar rhythm of prayer we might overcome such obstacles or ‘spiritual dryness’.

         Yet his by no means the only approach to prayer (I distinguish here between approaches to prayer and types of prayer such as Celtic prayer, Ignatian prayer and so on which arise from different spiritual traditions). Another approach is provided by Henri Nouwen in his many writings. [These are well introduced in Deidre LaNoue’s The Spiritual Legacy of Henri Nouwen (2000).] At its best, our prayer life is not self-obsessed but concerned fundamentally about others. Our relationship to others and our relationship to God should not be in contradiction but in a virtuous harmony. Prayer is about ‘soul work’: it can make us whole through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. It becomes the bridge between who a person really is and who he or she needs to be. It reveals to us all how Christians are to be ‘in the world but not of it’. Nouwen did not believe that the individual Christian is called to save the world, to solve all its problems, or even to help all people. We need to listen to the voice of God calling us to our particular vocation, to clarify for us how we are to ‘be a witness of God’s love’ in obedience to him. We need to live out that vocation in joy in his service.

         The relationship we establish with God must be one of ruthless honesty, for God will not permit it any other way. Our prayer is good, we affirm: but how long do we pray for, without our minds wandering off into other directions? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Is it long enough to confess to God frankly those deeply entrenched attitudes and prejudices that we scarcely wish to acknowledge to ourselves. ‘…your Father knows what you need before you ask him’, Jesus affirms in chapter six of Matthew’s gospel (6:8). We may delude others; we may delude ourselves; but we are incapable of deluding God. Prayer is about honesty. This is one aspect of prayer which is frightening and in the true sense of the word ‘awesome’. We are accountable to God not just at some distant moment in the future – the settlement of accounts – but here and now, every day in our prayer. Nouwen distinguishes between ‘head knowledge’ and ‘heart knowledge’: ‘heart knowledge’ allows the truths to transform and change us from our inner core, as he terms it, ‘the inner wellspring from which life flows’. Prayer requires us to operate sometimes in silence and in solitude. The psalmist pronounces: ‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10). Silence is necessary for the purpose of listening to God, but, if we make Jesus the centre of our everyday life, ‘there is a solitude of the heart that can be maintained at all times’ (Richard Foster). A true relationship with God requires a willingness to wait on him in anticipation that his timing and his response can be trusted. Ultimately our prayers will receive a response, but in God’s time, not ours. In The Intercessions Handbook (p. 26), John Pritchard suggests a suitable ending for our prayers: ‘Lord, we thank you for hearing our prayers with the attentiveness of a loving parent. We ask you take each need and answer each prayer in your own time and in your own way, for we know you to be just and true, and that we have asked in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

        

         Ultimately, too much can be made of the difficulty of prayer and the obstacles to prayer. Prayer is our innocent and simple conversation with God. How do we follow in practice, in our busy lives, St Paul’s maxim that we should ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17)? A group of ministers met to discuss the point and decided that they needed a learned paper on the subject for their next meeting, because there was a problem, since by definition they were extremely busy. The tea lady expressed her surprise. ‘What? A whole month to tell the meaning of that text? Why it is one of easiest and best texts in the Bible!’, she pronounced. One of the ministers asked her how this could be so. ‘Why, sir, the more I have to do, the more I can pray!’ ‘Indeed’, he replied, ‘Well, Mary, let us know how it is. Most of us think the answer is otherwise.’ ‘Well, sir’, she said, ‘when I first open my eyes in the morning, I pray “Lord, open the eyes of my understanding”; and while I am dressing, I pray that I may be clothed with the robes of righteousness; when I wash, I ask for the washing of regeneration; as I work, I pray that I may have the strength equal to my day; as I sweep out the house, I pray that my heart may be cleansed from all impurities; while preparing and eating of breakfast, I pray to be fed with the hidden manna and the sincere milk of the Word; as I am busy with the little children, I ask God to make me become as a child; and so on, all day. Everything I do furnishes me with a thought for prayer.’ 

Jesus tells us that ‘unless [we] change and become like little children, [we] will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 18:3). Surely it is in our prayer life that Jesus’ words are most clearly evident. We can become so hung up with the difficulties and obstacles, or with the need for a discipline and a method for prayer, that the essential naturalness of a private conversation with a loving father is lost. ‘…when you pray’, Jesus tells us, ‘do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven…”’


Postscript. In 1992, Richard J. Foster published a book entitled Prayer: Finding the heart’s true home in which he defined 21 forms of prayer within three kinds or direction: (1) inward, resulting in our personal transformation; (2) upward, deepening our intimacy with God; and (3) outward, empowering our ministry for the sake of God’s world. These became the organizing sections of his book. The first form of prayer he mentions is simple prayer: ‘God receives us just as we are and accepts our prayers just as they are.’ ‘Simple prayer involves ordinary people bringing ordinary concerns to a loving and compassionate Father. There is no pretence in simple prayer…’ ‘When we pray, genuinely pray, the real condition of our heart is revealed… This is when God truly begins to work with us. The adventure is just beginning.’ ‘We should feel perfectly free to complain to God, or argue with God, or yell at God’ as did the Prophet Jeremiah. ‘God is perfectly capable of handling our anger and frustration and disappointment.’ ‘Wondrously and mysteriously God moves from the periphery of our prayer experience to the centre. A conversion of the heart takes place, a transformation of the spirit. This wonderful work of Divine Grace’ is the focus of Foster’s book.

Foster’s book begins and ends with God’s love. ‘Two millennia ago at an early-morning breakfast by the Sea of Tiberias Jesus had only question for Peter: “Simon son of John, do you love me?” (John 21). Jesus did not ask him about his effectiveness, or his skill, or anything but his love. Three times Jesus asked, “Simon, do you love me?” Peter struggled for an adequate answer to that probing query. Finally, he blurted out, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Assured of his heart, Jesus gave Peter work to do: “Feed my lambs.” The same question is asked of us. The same work is given to us.’