Speak Up


Dear Kate,

What is prayer but a laundry list of to-do items for God, we think, usually with supporting "facts," many numbers statistically and, more so, emotionally significant to us, and socioeconomic analysis (thanks to Marx) of how the "facts" should be interpreted and how God should act.

What God wants must be what we want, on par with our state-of-the-art moral sensitivity, to be carried out technocratically, as long as our bottom-line is secured, enhanced.  When there is no action there is no result; when there is no result there is no hope.  We align our will with God's as He aligns his with ours.  Insofar you can say we are selfless.  In just as far you can say we are self-possessed.

I wonder, when the first Christians made the claims they made, didn't they know nothing has yet changed since the death and the (purported) resurrection of Jesus, and not much is about to change?  Didn't they know slavery would go on for as far as they could see, that there was, just as we are still claiming now, no "gender equality," a lack of "freedom," and rampant miscarriage of justice, probably perpetual?

Yet what did they claim?

From the get-go, Christians claimed cosmic significance, that they had a worldwide mission (Matt 28:19; Acts 1:8), that the world belonged to them (1 Cor 3:22-23), that they were to judge it (1 Cor 6:2) and their faith to triumph over it (1 John 5:4).  They claimed to have changed from the life conditions of slavery, sin, and, yes, death, to the conditions of life, faith, and freedom (Gal 3-5).  They spoke about this "change" in terms of salvation, redemption, and reconciliation, all of them not only a hope for the future, but the new, true reality of their very here and now.

What have you done for us lately? we ask God in our prayer, as if nothing has been done.  What we see is what we get, and we are getting tired and sick and desperate of it all.  If we can get ourselves to laugh, it would be good for our "mental health," we suppose; and if we can cry a little, we cry for no one but our shriveling self.  With "no end in sight," we long for "light at the end" of our "tunnel."

"We could never speak human if we don't speak to God": this is not a statement about the exclusive privilege or power of religious language.

What is it then, this tongue of prayer?

Yours, Alex

PS. The picture of Rowan Williams above is the new screensaver for my phone.  I need to look into the eyes of Saints first thing in the morning to look up and speak up.

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