A Year of Prayer

No it’s not a one-sided talk with God. He listens when He thinks it’s necessary to listen (listening in the Christian world is actually doing what you’re being told/asked to do, which is what I mean here) but most of the time He hears us out. He lets us tire ourselves out of our anger or sadness or whatever emotion you bring to your prayer time. Paul tells us to pray unceasingly in 1 Thessalonians. And it’s naïve that he tells us that. Pray about what and all the time? He places a lot of good heart and good judgment into the hands of his original reading community and he messed up there.

People suck. People are petty to no end.

This year off taught me too many things. And the biggest thing is that people are unceasingly petty. Have you heard some of the dumb stuff that people pray for when they’re just in an emotional rage? People pray for getting a good parking spot because they don’t want to walk too far in this heat, people pray for not sleeping in so that they’re not late to work again for the fourth time in a month, people pray for a good test grade (I KNOW YOU’VE PRAYED FOR THIS ONE DON’T EVEN TRY AND HIDE IT) when they barely studied, and the list is endless. People are as selfish and as childish as they can get away with and it doesn’t change when we pray. We pray out of our humanity. As you grow older you quickly learn that the adults you thought had those answers you’re trying to find on your own actually are as clueless as you and I. And if you’ve grown up in church and a religious household like I did you learn prayers are repetitive among people groups and it tells me that stupidity is infectious. If you think you praying for “Let your will be done, Lord” when you behave like you could give less of a rat’s ass about God’s plan and you’re somehow hiding it because you’re praying for it to happen then Jonah has Nineveh and a big fish to sell to you.

Now, as Christians we believe that one day we will stand before justice incarnate and answer to Him about everything we’ve ever said and done. When you pray you’re calling God down to your moment and getting His attention for what is on your mind at that point in time. That’s a lot of power. You have the creator of the universe on speed dial and He always picks up the phone. But as we know with every phone number we dial there is a log somewhere in the NSA’s building that has it completely recorded. I have to answer for every prayer that carelessly fell out of my word hole. Why pray and bring God into something that He isn’t involved in from the start? If I pray to God that I don’t have to deal with a coworker that I don’t want to show the love of Christ to that day, or ever, then not only do I have to drag God into this but I have to explain to Him why I just prayed the dumbest prayer on the planet. Prayers are meant to be a reflection of a God that is active in you. They should (the operative term here) reflect what He wants to do through His church and through the body of Christ. A prayer that doesn’t fall in line with that can sound wasteful and I don’t know about you but I already have enough things to answer for so I don’t need to make that list any bigger than I need to.

Jonah: "I don't want to go to Nineveh. Just destroy all of them."

YHWH: "i DoNt wANT tO gO t0 NiNeVeH." (for those of you who don't get the meme, read this in a mocking tone.)

This is how God gets when we pray something absolutely stupid.

I’m really going to drive this point home as much as I can. Have you ever met a person who tries to pray the gay out of someone? It’s the dumbest thing you can find someone doing on a daily basis. These people who try to pray the gay out of someone not only make a person even more disillusioned towards a church that is on the decline but these people, wrought with conviction that you can actually pray the gay away, have to explain to God how they sincerely thought that a prayer that calls this person, to them confused in their sexuality (but still somehow made in God’s image), is a prayer gifted to them from the heart of God for them to pray.

Let me get even clearer. A prayer that isn’t rooted in the heart of God is proof to Heaven that you don’t really know who God is at all.

Prayers, while seemingly entrenched in levels of unchanging selfishness and idiocy, thankfully, change. If you’ve been praying the same prayer for months or years then you haven’t been growing. Prayers are rooted to the moment they’re being uttered. Moments change. Circumstances change. Our prayers are meant to reflect that change in life scenery. And if we find ourselves caring about what God wants for us then our prayers are meant to change us too. Like all things in Christianity, prayer is a process that is sewed together with salvation. Salvation is a process. We aren’t saved. We’re on the way to becoming saved. We’re never going to be saved from sin and our human wants until we get to Heaven. Jesus had to undergo that process too (Luke 2:52). When salvation began its cleansing process within us then we gave permission for prayer to aid the process. I’m glad I haven’t been praying the same prayer for too long of a time. A new prayer you can pray is a sign that God hasn’t given up on you. And that’s the best news I think we can ever hear.

At the tail end of February 2017 I did a fast from cursing for 28 days.

Yes you read that right…..Okay stop laughing. I can wait.

Are you done? Good. Jackass.

Why would I do something so stupid? It felt like the right thing to do at the time. Why force a fast? You wouldn’t be invested in it if you forced it to happen. So for 28 days I kept a PG mouth but thoughts that only Jesus should be allowed to see. Thoughts that are proof that I need wild grace. And the best prayer is change. And there was a moment that hit me across the face harder than Juan Manuel Marquez’s overhand right hit Pacquiao’s face (for those who don’t watch boxing, look up Pacquiao-Marquez IV and just cringe at that punch, you’ll know which one when it happens) and it’s a moment that I’ll keep with me into the far future. If I tried to forget that moment then I’m sure in some ways that it would be my way of saying I regret fasting. A middle finger to God, and I don’t think I’m okay with that. And it was a moment where I was praying in my nonchalant manner and I remember sounding so stupid and hearing myself and I went “You’re being an idiot.” But it was clearer than most times I tell myself that. Which isn’t a secondary result of prayer’s nature yet it is prayer’s strongest feature due to us having to hear ourselves bear our hearts to God. And our hearts are stupid as hell sometimes. A meditative function where God really doesn’t have to do anything but let us wear ourselves down and figure out our problems on our own and He watches us slowly but surely become the people He wants us to be without Him having to intervene. Which makes the transformation sincere.

And that’s the functional goal of prayer: Sincere transformation.

Thanks Methodist Jesus

Back when I graduated from undergrad I made the decision to attend another church/attempt to attend another church. After graduating I knew I had a disdain for church because I didn’t like Pentecostalism. It was the only thing I had known for what had been a decade. And honestly the people left me jaded. I wanted out and I felt as though that when I graduated from undergrad that it would have been as good a time as any to make the life change fall in place with every other life change that was going on at the time. If I wanted to walk to the Methodist church that I lived by then I could do so. I don’t think I would want to do that but it is an option. The day I walked into the church for the first time ever, and it being my first time ever being in a UMC location, I knew I had to try out something entirely new. The contemporary worship music was replaced with worn hymnals, pages aged with fingerprints of saints and sinners past and present. Removable seats replaced with pews whose wood was held up with the faith of the people that sat in them. The pews all placed to where the altar can be clearly seen and the speakers there can be clearly heard. It is a large church and as it turns out it is a very different congregation as well. I only ever knew church through people my age. I don’t know what it’s like to not go to a service with people my age (four kids I went to youth group with are my best friends now). This congregation has memories of Jimmy Carter’s first day in office. At the time I was 22. Needless to say there was a gap that I couldn’t traverse. I didn’t know how to do so then and I still don’t know how to do so now. The intergenerational gap is intimidating and pretty disheartening but through no fault of their own. I made it that way, for better and worse I think.

I had just begun a job with Fedex at the airport (because being on airplanes is actually pretty fun once you get past waking up at 3am too regularly for your own good) and I work early on Sunday mornings. It’s exhausting some days and then you clock out and right after your shift is when the service starts. I’d usually have to go to work with only me changing my shoes out sometimes. Small and nagging cuts from brushing against loose pieces of metal on the containers we move on the planes, bruises everywhere you can be bruised because you bump mindlessly into thing that you forgot existed because you’re too tired to think, dirt on your hands and clothing because that’s the nature of the job, and there’s always someone bitching about something so you’re annoyed or feeling bummed because you want to do a good job but someone is always bitching about something absolutely miniscule and it’s not even your boss that does the bitching but someone else who is either the same position as you or still not your boss. And then you go to church. Tired, hungry, discouraged, easily irritated, dirty, injuries building up in your joints and tendons because everything you move is heavy, wearing clothing that Goodwill won’t take, and then you sit in the pews. They’re supposed to be the great equalizer. They’re not.

This congregation is located in a city (Cary) that is upper middle class. Nice cars are in the parking spaces and everyone is wearing clean clothing and their appearance doesn’t make you think they work a job like mine, families together, and then there’s me. The odd one out. While you may not make much out of the whole socioeconomic gap that exists in church then you’re not being intellectually honest with yourself. I always pictured Anglicanism and Episcopalianism and Methodists as white collar Jesus, Baptists and Lutherans and Pentecostals as blue collar Jesus, and Catholics and Orthodox as wild card Jesus because they can be rich or poor depending on the list of circumstances present there. I shouldn’t be able to draw lines in church based on how much money you make. The body of Christ wasn’t supposed to be divided by income tax bracket. But He is and we’re in that system and I hate it because these people probably don’t have to worry about the things I’ve worried about. They don’t have to wake up as early as I do to make a paycheck that will probably leave my hands as soon as it goes into my hands. They have the cars I can only dream of getting and probably live in the houses I think look amazing and have all the stories that I want to tell one day to people that don’t care enough to listen. I’m not in their shoes and I know they sure as hell don’t want to be in mine.

This sermon was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It was raining and I had actually sacrificed time to go back home and go change into something that was comfortable (not soaked in rain and exhaustion). I get to church late and miss the liturgy which by the way I still don’t know how to maneuver through a hymnal. I sit in the very back because I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I don’t recognize the face of the minister but that’s nothing new because I just don’t recognize faces in this church for some reason. And he goes something like this:

“What’s the biggest difference between the Saturday and Sunday liturgy? (he goes off on a quip about how one of the fellow ministers will say “there’s 200 differences between the two” and refer you to dozens of different authors but said minister isn’t here today) The main difference is gratitude.”

Now keep in mind I’m writing this in June 2017 when this happened in November 2016 so I’m going to do my best to paraphrase as accurately as I can here. When he said the word “gratitude” I did the Protestant shuffle. I crossed my right leg over my left, leaned forward in my seat, and narrowed my eyes (You know the look). It’s the shuffle every Protestant does when they know they’re going to hear something they believe is going to be good.

“You’re going to be around your tables this coming Thursday. The right people somehow never make it at the right time or at all. The wrong people somehow always make it. But when you’re at the table with the family members who wear the Clinton-Kaine hat or the Trump-Pence hat or that weird uncle with the Johnson-Weld hat, put the differences aside....We do communion here every week. A lot of the other churches, when we meet together for the general assembly (or whatever Methodists call it) the other churches ask “Why do you do communion every week? That’s so uncommon.” Because being grateful isn’t something that we do it’s who we are. That every prayer of thanksgiving is an extension of the prayer Christ gave over the elements; that every table is an extension of the table where He ate with His disciples. When He gave thanks and gave the bread He gave His disciples a job. ‘Take this. Now go do the same.’”

After this sermon, I wasn't Mike Tyson. I was that poor man's chin.

“The right people somehow never make it at the right time or at all.” The voices that filled the house and the voices you look forward to hearing when you were younger aren’t there anymore. For whatever reason, good or bad, there’s always a spot at the table or in the kitchen (I’m Hispanic so there’s literally always someone in the kitchen doing something and it’s almost always washing dishes) that is vacant. But then there’s those people you wish didn’t show up for whatever reason, good or bad. But even in that being grateful isn’t action but agency. It’s what we’re supposed to be. 

And that following month at work was the most exhausted I had been in years. It’s hard to want to be thankful when you’re waking up at hours unsuitable for reasonable people. When you’re broke or rich you’re called to be thankful. So yes I’ve tried to go “well I have this thing (whatever the hell it is) for now, so I’ll try and be thankful”. I’m not convinced that God is calling someone to be thankful and sincere with it. God isn’t an idiot. He’s well aware that we say things to hopefully put us into the sphere of being the thing we’re talking about. Just because I say thank you doesn’t mean I’m thankful. But it’s a start in the right direction. And it’s the best this sermon told me that I can do.