To pray is nothing more than to invite Jesus into our need. To pray is to give Jesus permission to employ God’s powers in the alleviation of our distress. To pray is to let Jesus glorify God’s name in the midst of our own vulnerability. The results of prayer are, therefore, not dependent upon the powers of the one who prays. Neither intense will nor fervent emotion will guarantee a specific answer because the results of prayer, praise God, are not dependent on such human things. To pray is nothing more than to leave open the door, giving Jesus access to your distress and permitting him to exercise God’s own power in dealing with your troubles. The one who gave us the benefit of prayer knows us very well. God simultaneously knows our physical forms and remembers from having made us that we are in one sense just dust but for the Spirit’s gift. And God designed prayer in such a way that even the most vulnerable among us can still make use of it. For to pray is to leave open in faith a connection for God’s use and this requires nothing from us, but a little time. Will we invite Jesus into our need? This remains the one great question about prayer—Hallesby, Norwegian theologian, 1879-1961.
Season’s greetings. Christmas isn’t Easter, but much of the significance of Christmas rests on the importance of Christ’s adult ministry as well as his death, resurrection and ascension; part of what we wait for every advent is the arrival of Jesus in both senses: the first being our retrospective memorializing of God’s incarnation as baby Jesus, but the second is our longing for Christ’s promised return in glory when our faith will become this glorious truth beyond any argument. And so as with much of Christian spirituality my own understanding of Christmas remains this mix of thankfulness and anxious watchful waiting in faithful curiosity. It’s an engaged Advent to be sure. The above passage by Hallesby on prayer came to me from a Lutheran devotional reader I regularly use; it first struck me as odd how much Hallesby views Prayer as the act of granting Christ access to our hearts as well as our surrendering all our troubles and limitations to Jesus in acknowledgement of a kind of complete spiritual dependence in faith.
It’s not that Hallesby’s model doesn’t jibe with standard Christian theology, it’s just that I’ve rarely read anything about prayer that was so committed to Jesus as it’s active focus or central agency. Yet maybe I had, and I’d just forgotten this aspect of Christ’s legacy during all our seasonal hoopla and traditional blood debt focused atonement theory commemorating. So, what if Hallesby’s model is not an either/or but a both/and proposition. Within this model of prayer is no challenge to atonement theory, so Christ still comes and dies to suffer for the world’s brokenness in some sort of cosmic balance restorative sense. What the model does also gently suggest, however, is that Christ’s promise of oneness with the Father and advocacy on our behalf means that we no longer need any other form of spiritual mediator, yeah. Jesus doesn’t replace the law, but Christ’s very incarnation begins a spiritual reaction that speeds up the law and makes for a more dynamic all occasions kind of faith. Consider, when praying to Jesus we are praying to God and without Christmas there would be no one to initiate us in this practice of legitimate non-temple bound prayer. Christmas comes to usher in so much; and one of its gifts is to remind us as members of creation that within time we can talk and unburden ourselves to God in Christ whenever and wherever we wish. The private nature of prayer should be a strong prohibition against judging others spiritual fidelity. Prayer exists in time, but it’s composed of spiritual dialogue from a posture of openness and vulnerability. Our pride quotients may hinder or degrade the connection of our petitioning, but God in Christ promises to love us and reward our true surrenders with release and grace. Surely this very different kind of informal unburdening Christian prayer with no economy or metric of atonement is the great revolution that started and begins each year anew in Christmas. It is the rarest and best gift of this season still and throughout all time. Hallesby’s question, however, still hovers and looms over this feast and its festival: Will we invite Jesus into our need and our vulnerability; can we allow ourselves to empty our spirits to make room for God? I pray we can and will. And with God, after all, all things are possible.
Prayers your way until I write you again in the New Year
Pastor Rich
Cell:608-604-1613; call or text this number as needed, please.