In God's Company--December 22, 2021

 

In God's Company--December 22, 2021

If I asked you, "What's the purpose of language?" what might you answer?

Think about it for a moment.  Why do humans go through with this curious thing called speech, which takes sounds in the air or squiggles on paper and turns them into meaning--almost like it's magic?  Why do we bother with the trouble of learning which sounds to make at what times, or teaching our children the rules we have invented, called "grammar," for directing which words go in which orders at which times?  What's the goal in all of it?

If that seems like a pretty broad and unwieldy question, good--I think it is supposed to be.  If I came up with a short and shallow answer to "Why do humans communicate?" you'd be virtually certain it was wrong.

If I just said, "The purpose of language is so we can ask for stuff from each other," that would somehow seem oversimplified.  If I just said, "The point of communication is always about giving new factual information to people who don't have it yet," you would be quick to point out that some of our most important sentences as humans are not new information when they are said, but reiterating what everyone always knows.  They are sentences like, "I love you," or "We will get through this," or "I am here with you."

In other words, it seems like the point of language isn't reducible to soliciting favors or making requests, nor can words be boiled down only to conveying facts.  Maybe even deeper, language is about being present with others.  

I guess it's right there in the other word we sometimes use for it:  "communication."  To communicate is to use words as a bridge to "commune" with others, to create "community."  Language is something that connects us to one another, even when there are no new ideas being passed or updated facts to be received.  Language is far richer than only asking things from other people, even if it also includes things like petitions for help or needs to be addressed.

Language--this funny and sometimes frustrating phenomenon that human beings keep using--seems to be about being-together with one another.  Language is a way of being more fully in each other's company.

Now, take that last sentence and replace the word "language" with "prayer."  I think that's not too bad a place to start with understanding what praying most deeply is:  being more fully in God's company.  Before we get into our own personal wish-lists, requests for answers, complaints, or attempts to give God information we seem to think God does not have (this is not true, mind you), praying is about being more fully in the presence of God.  

To be sure, you can find plenty of books by Respectable Religious Professionals about how to "make your prayers heard," or "how to pray effectively," or "how to pray the kind of prayer that God answers," as well as ones not-so-subtly hinting that the "correct" kind of prayer will get you more wealth, a better job, a happy romance, or whatever else is on your wish-list like it's a matter of mastering technique.  But with all due respect, that kind of thinking (and those kinds of books) are a load of dingoes' kidneys.

Prayer can't be reduced to "how to get what you want from God" or "giving God new factual information" any more than all of human language can be reduced to "getting stuff from other people."  It has to be, at a more fundamental level, about connection first.  Prayer, like language in general, is about communion more than commerce.

In other words, praying is contemplative and relational--it is about entering more intentionally into the company of God.  While we are always in the presence of God, the open question is whether we engage God's presence or ignore it, much like you can be sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office with other people and still not have any connection with them until someone strikes up a conversation.  Praying starts when we realize we are in God's presence and try to deepen our connection.  That means it's not ultimately about "getting stuff" from God as it is about knowing and relating to this God who is already in the room.

So now I want to take our conversation a step further.  I want to suggest, too, that praying--at least in this deeper sense of communing with God rather than treating prayer like a cosmic drive-thru speaker into which we obnoxiously shout our orders--is also quite similar to what happened at Christmas.  The coming of Christ--what we sometimes call the Incarnation--is again, about God's choice to enter into our midst and share our company.  It is about God's choice to be present with us, more fully and richly than just sending stone tablets or burning bushes.  It is God's way of communing with us--of being in our presence intentionally.  Jesus, you could say, is what it looks like when God chooses to share our company, rather than just being in the same waiting room with us in silence.

All of that said, then, there is something we can learn from taking the time for contemplative prayer, something that brings us into deeper connection with God, much as the coming of Christ has brought God into deeper connection with humanity.  This kind of praying isn't obsessed with "getting the words right," and sometimes feels like a strange mix of silent listening and bursts of rambling speech.  It is about simply being intentional about recognizing that God is already present in this moment, and then intentionally inviting God's participation in this moment as well.  It is about letting our prayer deepen our relationship with God, even if no specific requests come up or no new answers are given.  Sure, there will be times we ask for things, or raise the concerns on our hearts--but those happen with the wider and deeper relationship we have with God, rather than being the only times we come to God.

The coming of Jesus can't be reduced to items checked off God's to-do list--there is more to it than God needing to answer a certain number of human questions or solve a certain number of human problems.  If that were it, we would have had an already-adult Jesus beam down, leave a book of answers and a jar of miraculous pixie dust, and then beam back up into heaven.  Instead, we have been given an infant who grew up in the midst of human beings, lived through childhood, and ate, drank, wept, laughed, walked, and bled with people in adulthood.  We got a God who communes with us, not merely a genie who grants wishes.  That's important.

Today, take the time to pause from "doing" for simply being in the presence of God.  Whether there are discrete words or grammatically correct complete sentence or not is immaterial.  The question is how we will look up from our magazines in the waiting room and enter into the company of the God who shares this space with us.  And whatever comes of that communing will make us more fully alive.

Lord Jesus, we know you are already here in this moment and this place with us, but we invite you to share the day in front of us, to be a part of our lives in it, and to walk through this day's journey together.  Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.