Prayer as Play:
A Reflection on Romans 8
Given at Calvary Baptist Church in Hopewell, NJ on July 30th, 2023
In one of my classes this spring, we read an article titled “stop trying to pray.” When I first saw that tittle, I was shocked. Stop trying to pray?! But isn’t praying like one of the main things we, as Christians, do. And aren’t we supposed to pray without ceasing? How can we pray without ceasing if we don’t pray?! Just the tittle alone sent me into a conniption. Given that the class was the next day, I had to put my existential crisis aside for a minute and actually read it. I was expecting all kinds of nonsense in this article, but that’s not what I found. Believe it or not, the article was incredibly interesting.
In the article, Wesley Ellis, a UCC pastor in San Diego, writes about his and his congregations’ conflicted feelings about prayer. When he asked about their prayer lives, folks would often sheepishly say that it could be better. one woman even said “I’m praying, but I sure wish God would listen more.”
I don’t know about you all, but both of these sentiments resonated with me. Like Pastor Wesley and his church community, I also often find it hard to pray. For one thing, I have adhd and my mind constantly wonders. I worry I’m not doing it right and I get discouraged. Or even, in my most trying moments, I don’t think it’ll change or do anything.
And it’s this very kind of thinking that Ellis writes about in his article. He explains that our attitude toward prayer is unhelpful. In fact, it may actually be hurting us. He writes that our fast paced, production-oriented way of life has impacted even our spiritual lives. In general, our understanding of how the world operates is that if our work or discipline doesn’t produce something, it’s useless. If we don’t have “something to show for it” it was a waste of both our time and energy. So if we don’t feel closer to God or have our requests answered, we’ve failed at praying. Not only have we failed, but we’ve also wasted precious minutes of our precious lives. So on the report card of spirituality, we would get a big fat F at prayer, probably have to take the class again, and not even get a participation award.
Since this is the way we all are generally taught to see and understand prayer, it’s no wonder that it’s hard for so many of us. This is the water we swim in, and it’s kind of toxic.
After pointing out this problem, Ellis invites his readers to embrace a new way of thinking about prayer—a new, more life-giving paradigm. Ellis writes,
“We can position ourselves to receive God’s self-disclosure, just like we can position ourselves to fall asleep, but it will always only be received as a gift. It cannot be taken; you cannot have it or control it. You can only receive it”
So instead of seeing prayer as something to be controlled and mastered, we can see it as a mystery we get to participate in. It’s something that’s already happening that we get to join in on. It’s a gift we get to be clothed in.
Lamar Hardwick, the lead pastor at Tri-Cities Church in East Point, Georgia, also says something similar to Ellis. In one of his sermons, Pastor Lamar talks about how for him, as an autistic person, it’s difficult for him to pay attention while he prays. But he says that Romans 8: 26 has helped him to understand prayer differently.
Verse 26 says, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the spirit herself intercedes for us with wordless groans.”
The most important part of that verse is the underlying truth that God is intent on hearing our prayers. Even when we don’t know what to pray for, God hears us. God is intent on hearing us and all of our mixed up, complicated, and often contradictory feelings, our half-baked thoughts, and the inklings of intuition we get in the pit of our stomach.
Just like we read a book, the spirit reads our bodies and reveals our thoughts and feelings to God. As pastor Lamar says, no matter if we’re standing, sitting, walking, running, skipping, crying, or laughing, the spirit responds to our bodies—not just our minds—and shares all of it to God.
This means that prayer doesn’t work because of us. Prayer works because God is intent on listening to us and to all of creation. Because God is intent on hearing us, God doesn’t expect us to perform perfectly. In fact, God doesn’t expect us to even to perform at all. Instead God invites us to faithfully live a life with God. God invites us participate in what’s already happening—to receive the work of the Spirit.
But what does this mean? What do we do if it’s not on us to make prayer “happen” ? What do we do knowing that there’s actually no right way to “perform” prayer because it’s not even about us or what we do. What do we now knowing that God listens to the feelings of our bodies and thoughts of our minds that are too big, complex, or hard to name? And what does it mean to participate in prayer? To receive what God is already doing?
For me, knowing that prayer is not dependent on us means we can release the pressure we’ve put on ourselves. We can stop being our own judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to prayer. We no longer have to be constantly turned inward, analyzing ourselves, wondering and worrying if we’re praying correctly. Worrying about positioning our body in a certain way and using all our best, most formal, most SAT worthy words.
And since we have been released from that pressure and expectation around prayer, we can stop seeing it as work. We no longer have to see it as a task that must be accomplished. instead it means we can open ourself up to the world around us—to all its beauty and messiness and sorrow and wonder.
When we no longer see prayer as something to check off on our to-do list, we can embrace it like we turn to our favorite hobbies. We can begin to truly understand that not all worthwhile things in life provide some kind of product. The things that make life worth living rarely add another line to our resume.
While it might seem absolutely wild, we can embrace the fact that Prayer is impractical. It’s a waste of time. And it rarely leads to some kind of quantifiable outcome. And at the same time it’s so incredibly wonderful and profound.
And most importantly it means, prayer can become play. When prayer becomes play we are free to revel in God’s goodness, mercy and love. We are able to joyfully participate in the work God is doing here and now. We are free to roll around in it like a pile of just-out-of-the-dryer clothes, to jump into it like a ball pit, or to tightly embrace it like an old friend. And all the while, we can know that each smile, guffa, embrace, and leap is seen and heard by God as a prayer of thanks and exaltation. Each moment of embracing joy is our own life’s psalm of gratitude for all of the goodness of God’s creation and for the good God who made it all.
And like we lounge and bask in the sun’s warm rays at the beach, we are able to lounge and bask in God’s presence. We are able to revel in the truth that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Thanks be to God. Amen