A classmate of mine taught Sunday School this past week. She's been doing this "Prayer through the Centuries" theme, and Sunday it was Friedrich Schleiermacher's turn. Who knew that Schleiermacher had anything to say about prayer? Not I; I got my MDiv at Columbia, where Schleiermacher was the enemy.
Once you weed whack your way through the horrible dead German theologian syntax, the content is quite good. He says that true Christian prayer is that which one prays in the mind of the whole Christian Church.
This makes sense, especially when we're praying about a personal crisis. The whole body of Christ has seen a lot more people die too soon and some not die soon enough than any one of us. The whole body is more likely to have the wisdom to know the difference between those things we need to have courage to change, and those things we need serenity to accept.
My dad died of cancer twenty years ago this weekend. I think I've blogged about this before, but the whole time he was sick I took comfort from that parable about the widow who finally got justice from the unjust judge because of her persistence. I decided that no matter how bad the prognosis was, if I just kept plugging away, dad would defy the doctors.
Well, he didn't. And he knew he wouldn't. I told him once about the parable of the unjust judge and how I was praying for him, and he looked at me with a mixture of kindness and pity and said, "Pray that when it's time for me to go I'll be ready to."
That was a downer. But my dad knew his own body better than I did. He knew better than a 19-year-old that we all wind up in the grave one day or the other. And he knew that there is life after the death of a parent. Both his parents were dead.
Unfortunately I wasn't in a place where I could honor his request, but I think he was OK without my prayers. He married my mother later in life and became a father for the third time when most men his age were sending their kids off to college. There had been a brief and ill-fated first marriage which we kids only found about shortly before he died, and between that and meeting my mother, from what I gather, there was a long period of assuming that he'd wind up dying alone in some VA hospital. Listening to him talk that last week of his life, I think he was astonished that his life had turned out as well as it had.
So that's a long way of saying that when it comes to prayer, Schleiermacher is right. It's good to take a broad and long view of the situation.
At Duke, Schliermacher was the enemy also. In fact, we read one of his books in a Christian history class simply to bash him (though after reading him, I can see why). Thank you for this reflection - I was surprised as well.
Posted by: Pastor Mack | 26 March 2010 at 09:14 AM