Prayer in the Pandemic

         How can we pray in such times as these? It is not always easy. We are feeling so many things, including a sense of powerlessness. The Psalmist can be our guide.

There is intercessory prayer, as we pray for those we love, for all in danger, for all in need of God’s help.

         The former Arch-Bishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said that intercessory prayer is, at its base, thinking of someone or something in the presence of God. So our hearts cry out for so many these days.

         All prayer is a way of bringing our whole selves before God, in the presence of God.

         The Psalms, of course, lead us in prayers of praise, even when praise seems far away. Praise for who God is, full of majesty and mercy. “How majestic is thy name in all the earth.”

         And there are prayers of Thanksgiving for gratitude is our home in the presence of God. Gratitude for every gift of goodness in our lives, large and small. Even in these times we can give thanks as we open our eyes to life’s goodness. “Sing unto the Lord a new song”, the psalmist says, a song we may not be able to sing yesterday.

         But there are other kinds of Psalms and other kinds of prayers we need these days. There are the psalms of lament, prayers voicing the terrible sadness we feel over the way things are, sorrow over all the lives lost, over the cruelty and injustice of the world. We cry out, “How long O Lord!”

         There are the Psalms of trust which can settle our souls, none better than Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd.” We are given the faith to sing with the hymn, “Though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”

         There are prayers of abandonment when we feel the absence of God more than God’s presence. As Jesus prayed, quoting a psalm, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.”

         And there are the prayers of relinquishment, when we offer our lives into the hands of God. As Jesus prayed on the cross, again using a psalm: “Abba, Into Thy hands I commit my spirit”. We yield our live into God’s hands as a letting go of the things that need letting go.

         And there are the Psalms of rage. Imprecatory psalms they are called, and we rarely read them because we are taught never to be angry. Psalm 109 is a classic. Agonizing over great harm done to him, even by those who profess to love him, and over the ways the powerful and wicked oppress the weak, he lets loose his rage:

“May his days be few; may another seize his position.
May his children be left orphans and his wife a widow.
May his children wander around and beg.
May the creditor seize all he has.
For he did not remember to show kindness
but pursued the poor and needy
and the broken-hearted to their death.”

Whoah! I have sometimes read this psalm with a person who has come to me filled with rage, unable to get over it and guilty of their fierce anger. As we read the psalm together we laughed and cried. The Psalmist knew our frame.

         But then, the Psalmist rounds a corner, turns and relinquished his rage into the hands of God. “But you, O Lord, my Lord”, he prays, “act in my behalf….Help me, O God, save me according to Thy steadfast love.”

         The Psalmist has owned his rage, and now relinquishes it into the hands of God, for only in God’s hands is justice sure and everywhere mixed with mercy.

         Such prayer can slow our desire to take vengeance and return harm. St. Augustine warned us of thinking that believes “That our enemy can do more damage than our enmity.”

         There are, of course, redemptive uses of rage, rage that gives us the energy to fight evil and injustice. But first we do our inner work so that we do not become the evil we are trying to defeat.

         The great Reformer John Calvin called the Psalms, “The anatomy of all parts of the soul.” God is ready to receive all parts of our souls so they can be used for our wholeness and the well-being of the world.

         The rabbis tell this story. There was a young rabbinical student who had traveled far from home to go to rabbinical school. One day he came to the master rabbi and said, “Rabbi, back home everything was simple and everything was clear. I studied and prayed. But now nothing is simple and nothing is clear. I am lost. I cannot study, I cannot pray. All I have is my sorrow and my tears.”

         The rabbi paused, then said: “Perhaps God does not want your study and your prayers. Perhaps, God prefers you sorrow and your tears.”

         Of course, on one level this is not true. God would not prefer our sorrow and tears. But if sorrow and tears are all we this day have to offer, God wants us to offer these.

         So come, bring all parts of yourself to God. Pour them out, all your feelings, bright and troubled. This is the way forward, the way forward with God in this time.