How We Pray

I Samuel 1:4-20; Hebrews 10:11-25

Hebrews 10:11-25

{11} And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. {12} But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” {13} and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” {14} For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

{15} And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, {16} “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,” {17} he also adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” {18} Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

{19} Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, {20} by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), {21} and since we have a great priest over the house of God, {22} let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. {23} Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. {24} And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, {25} not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

I Samuel 1:4-18 (selected)

⁴ On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, [his wife] Hannah wept and would not eat. ⁸ Her husband Elkanah said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad?...”

⁹ After [this], Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord . Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord . ¹⁰ She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord , and wept bitterly. ¹¹ She made this vow: “O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.”

¹² As she continued praying before the Lord , Eli observed her mouth. ¹³ Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. ¹⁴ So Eli said to her, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.” ¹⁵ But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord . ¹⁶ Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.”

¹⁷ Then Eli answered, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.” ¹⁸ And she said, “Let your servant find favor in your sight.” Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.

The Sermon

It’s spoken of as a simple thing, but for many of us, it’s neither easy nor simple.

How do you pray?

O God,

I have a thousand things I want to ask for— sometimes trivial things that would make my life a little easier, sometimes profound hopes for the world and its survival.

If I thought you were Santa Claus, or some Great Insurance Policy in the Sky, I would go on asking for every whim that comes into my mind.

But I have heard the story of the man, Jesus, who was your embodiment in human flesh, and I feel that I have come to know you—or at least to know something of you—that is much more real than that.

I believe that in Jesus Christ, you were reconciling the world to yourself—that, in a sense, we had grown apart from you, and like the father of the prodigal son, you never stopped looking for us to come back; like a mother hen, you never stopped wanting to gather us under you wings. And finally you sent your Son, Jesus, to come and find us where we were—though I know you knew where we were, but like sheep lost from a herd or like a coin that goes missing in a house, when you uncovered us from our own hiddenness, you—the Creator of the Universe!—rejoiced.

Sometimes, though, God, I get going on things that keep me preoccupied—responsibilities to family, to kids, to parents, to my work, to my own physical needs as well as my mental and emotional needs, and all these responsibilities seem like they have to take first place.

Sometimes I find myself mistaking your infinite vastness for distance from me. But you are not distant from me. You are right here, in this room, listening to me and hearing me before I say a word, closer than the air I breathe and even more sustaining.

But, my God, I want you to know: sometimes, I have no idea how I am supposed to pray.

Be with us, O God, and help us to learn; teach me your ways and your will, and you will be our God, and we will be your people. Amen.

She was praying so hard, she looked like she was drunk. Eli, the priest, a wise man whom you might have thought ought to know better, watched Hannah in the same way I used to look at people who would come in off the street to the town center church I helped out with once a week when I lived in England 20 years ago.

Some of those people were suffering mental illness; some were maybe just a little “different.” There was one older lady who was convinced that the only decent man in the world was the priest, Father Nicholas, and the rest of us—she delighted in telling me personally—were all “disgusting; you’re all disgusting.” I didn’t take it personally.

But in quiet hours alone, when I thought about it, I could barely imagine what must have happened to her to lead her to such a conclusion.

And there was the woman who may have been the kind that Eli had probably seen before, stumbling into the sanctuary in the middle of the afternoon, muttering an incoherent prayer, and then hollering, to no one in particular, “It’s all too beautiful!” and, on seeing no response from either me or any of the other volunteers wordlessly milling around the sanctuary and offices, who were used to this sort of thing, quietly drifted back out the same way she had come in.

But Eli was wrong about Hannah, and maybe if you or I have ever been startled by someone’s appearance or behavior in church, maybe we were wrong about that person, too. Hannah was a desperate woman—desperately tired of the abuse heaped on her by a rival; desperate with the frustration known fully only to those who want to have a child and cannot; maybe desperate to get out of a situation where good, faithful, religious people, who worshiped the same God we do, thought a man ought to have several wives and make the best physical use of them for his own purposes. (This is one of the stories that makes me wince whenever anyone mentions “Biblical family values.”)

There are a number of prayers in the Bible which we are privileged to overhear. Even when Jesus prays in the garden just before he is arrested, no disciple or scribe or anyone else is there to record his words, but we hear them. But here, we hear only some of Hannah’s prayer. Most of it is lifted up in silence. There is a part which you and I will never know, when Hannah’s prayer is silent to everyone else but God.

I always have respect for someone who does that, whom you might see dining alone in a restaurant, a quick, stolen moment for private devotion in a public place. A young woman next to me on a plane one time crossed herself just before takeoff, and somehow I myself felt a little better.

But sometimes it’s hard for people to know: how am I supposed to pray?

My fellow geniuses and I, recent seminary graduates or people who were well into seminary training, were part of a course called Clinical Pastoral Education, which involves serving in a chaplaincy role and periodically meeting to critique each other’s thoughts or technique—it’s about as fun as it sounds—and occasionally sit for a “didactic,” a moment when someone with much more wisdom speaks, and we who have much to learn listen.

Ann Letson was the leader of our program, and one day in a lesson on prayer, she posed a question. Let’s say you’re keeping the overnight shift in the emergency room, which by this point we had all done. A woman comes in with her daughter who’s been in a terrible accident. This too was a tragic scenario that some of us had tearfully seen unfold.

The doctor has already told you, privately, that there is no chance that the girl is going to survive. Now the woman comes to you and asks you to pray fervently with her that her daughter will live. You know what you’ve been told, definitively, by the doctor. What do you do?

Well, we were unanimous. What if you go through the motions of that prayer, when you know full well that the ER doctors have given zero chance of survival, and then their sad prediction proves correct? What will that do to this woman’s faith? No, we said: knowing what we knew, we could not in good conscience pray that prayer.

Our director had obviously seen this magnitude of pastoral brilliance before, and let the hammer fall hard: “If that’s the case,” she said, “you’d better not be anywhere near the emergency room when I come in with my daughter.”

And suddenly we felt very, very small. She was exactly right. And we had been entirely wrong.

If it takes a miracle, ask for a miracle.

Of course, most of the time, it isn’t so dramatic (thank God); it’s usually much simpler. I have a collection called Children’s Letters to God [1] which is now 35 years old but still seems relevant to a little kid’s world.

“Dear God, please send me a pony. I never asked for anything before, you can look it up.”

“Remember when the snow was so deep there was no school. Could we have it again.”

“Dear Sir, Can you show me how paint comes off?”

“How did you know you were God?”

“Dear God, I know you are supposed to love thy neighbor but if Mark keeps taking my other skate he’s going to get it.”

“Dear God, I read your book. I like it very much.”

“Dear God, do you hear us pray to you? It must drive you crazy.”

For a long time as a young man, I had myself convinced that if all of my life was a prayer, then the channel is always open. And if the channel is always open, then it’s not necessary to start and stop what most of us consider “prayers.” So I could live my life as a faithful person without ever having to stop to offer a prayer.

The problem with that philosophy is that it immediately becomes an excuse at best to forget about God; at worst, to take God, and all that God is, and all that God has done, for granted.

They say that there are no Atheists in foxholes; maybe that’s true. And I quickly found, not that I have ever endured he horror of war for myself, but when I was in the figurative trenches, that “channel-is-always-open-so-why-bother” philosophy had robbed me of a very important relationship.

We believe in a mighty God, the depth of whose love for us becomes even more astounding when we consider that God doesn’t need any one of us to exist in order for God to be whole or, for that matter, to have a perfectly good universe.

But even God knows what it’s like to pine for a son or daughter who went away wrapped up in selfishness, particularly after all that God has done, and has sacrificed, for you and for me.

My Dear Child,

How are you? I am fine. I hope you are well. I know this finds you busy, and I hope you are having fun. I miss you. But I know you have a lot to do.

I have always appreciated that you have a wonderful independent streak that gives you your sense of purpose; I hope it also gives you a sense of self-worth and of your value to the world and those around you.

I also know you are a little less self-assured than you let on.

When you were born, we were all very excited about the things that you would be doing. When you were very small, I used to see you playing, and sometimes I’d see the people who looked after you turn away, because the look of wonder and fun and innocent creativity in your eyes made happy tears come into theirs. That used to make me cry a little, too. Your future was so important to all of us, and while we could have watched you as a child forever, we also couldn’t wait to see the things you would do as you grew.

It may come to you as a surprise, but I must tell you I have not been disappointed.

Of course, I knew your parents before you were born, and you may not know it, but I know that a part of you will always exist in them, even as they have given you a part of themselves, even if that seems hard to believe, the way some things have turned out.

You have some relatives here and of course they are always proud to see your accomplishments from afar, and they will one day see you again, but in the meantime it is necessary for you to continue where you are, and complete your full course of work, and in due time all of you will be reunited, and that day will be a day of tremendous celebration.

But that’s for much later. For now, I’ll simply say, don’t ever forget that I am always happy to hear from you; I am immensely proud of you, even when you are feeling humiliated and disgusted with yourself and angry at the world; and I hope that you will think of me from time to time, and remember all the good times, and trust and know that there are going to be plenty more. Do let me know how you are getting along, even if it seems like there’s not much to tell; and if you ever need anything, or just want someone to talk to, I am always more than eager to have that conversation.

Always,

Faithfully,

Sincerely yours.

“Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the way that Jesus opened for us, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for the One who has promised is faithful.

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

[1] Marshall & Hample, eds., New York: Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster), 1975.