A Power Not Our Own

A Power Not Our Own--July 18, 2018

"Beloved, pray for us." [1 Thessalonians 5:25]

Jerry Seinfeld used to have a bit about how writing a check wasn't a very macho way of paying for something.  He would say that writing a check is essentially like telling someone, "I don't have any actual money on me--but if you contact these people at my bank, they'll give you some money to cover this."  And from Jerry Seinfeld's perspective that was the singular reason that check-writing is a bad choice--it shows weakness, because it is an admission of being dependent on someone else to get what you want.  It is, in effect, an admission that the only power you have access to comes from outside yourself.

For Christians, however, this is the source of our greatest strength.  Not check-writing, of course, but something equally dependent on Another to move and to act when we cannot.  The Christian revolution, the movement of the followers of Jesus, is driven by prayer, which is, at bottom, an admission that we do not have power ourselves, and yet that we have a living connection with the Maker of the universe, whose gracious will keeps the world together moment by moment.

That is what is so compelling to me about the simple, stand-alone sentence, "Beloved, pray for us."  This is what makes the Christian movement so radically different from the many other revolutions that ended up in the dustbin of history--at our most faithful, we have never lived in the illusion that we operate under our own power. (At the church's worst and least faithful moments, of course, we have sold out and traded our beautiful, gracious peculiarity for access to the halls of power.  But in our most faithful moments we have been wiser than that.)  We pray for one another, a move which puts each of us twice dependent on someone outside ourselves--both on the God to whom we pray, and on the people we ask to pray for us.

Plenty of revolutionaries ask for financial support from their followers; plenty of other movements or causes recruit more members.  But Christians have this way of asking for prayer--of admitting, "I've got nothing. I need God's power to bring me through this next challenge," and of compelling those who will pray to admit that the most they can offer is prayer, too!  In a sense, before prayer is about "getting" something, prayer is first about an honest assessment of what is beyond our power, and an often much-needed puncturing of our over-inflated egos.  Only when I am able to admit I do not have power to "fix" the world to my liking will I be able to get over myself enough to seek help--help from others... help from Christ... help from the Christ who works through others.

For us, praying to God on behalf of someone else is very much like writing a check--it is essentially saying, "I don't have any actual power to fix this situation--or at best. Whatever power I do have is spent and inadequate on its own.  But this God of mine has the power to cover this."  See, the world sees that kind of action and thinks it is a sign of weakness.  We Christians do not disagree--we just think it is better to be honest about our weakness than to pretend we can solve all the world's problems by our sheer willpower and muscle.  A quick survey of world history will quickly reveal how well that approach turns out.  We don't deny, we Christians, that we are weak (not at our most honest and faithful).  We just do not see our weakness as an obstacle to getting things done--it is, in fact, the best channel we have for getting anything done!  By praying, we simultaneously let ourselves be humbled and get our egos out of the way of a situation, and we invoke the power of a mighty God who does move in our history and in our lives.

But something else happens wonderfully in our act of praying--we followers of Jesus are drawn closer together into communion and connection.  God surely could just go around fixing world problems without our prayers, pulling levers and pushing buttons to keep the universe in constant balance without needing us to bother with putting our needs into words on behalf of someone else.  But God, clever as God is, has found a way for us to be bound together and knit into a tighter community as we ask in prayer.  In other words, it is certainly not the most efficient way available for God to accomplish things in the world to be depend on prayer.  God could (and surely reserves the right to) act without our praying.  And yet by leading us to pray, and to ask on behalf of one another, God gets a two-for.  God is both able to be glorified in the weakness of our asking, but also brings us closer into relationships of caring for one another as we carry each other's burdens and joys to God in prayer.  It is one more sign of how clever God is, and how beautifully strange and compelling the Christian revolution really is.  Rather than being one more cause convinced it has the man-power or money or polling support to change the world, we are a people who openly admit our neediness and find that to be the key to how God turns the world around and mends what is broken.

Today, let us keep being a part of that revolution in two ways--by praying for someone else who is on your heart today, and by letting someone else pray for you.  Both are powerful, revolutionary acts--and yet both will look surprisingly weak to the watching world.  Be a part of that kind of surprise today--beloved, pray for us.

Lord God, wherever your people are in need, provide for them.  Correct us in our error, deflate us in our pride, strengthen us in our broken places, comfort us in our pains, and bless us where we are faithfully serving as your hands and feet.  We ask it in the name of Jesus, who both taught us to pray for one another and who himself keeps on praying for us.