Whistling in the Dark

Dear Beloveds,

A week ago, I was able to take a Reading Week. Study weeks for pastors are a time to --yes-- study, or go on retreats, conferences, take a class or seminar; it is a time to fill our hearts and heads with the knowledge and wisdom that God asks of us, a time to pray for our people, and to ask God to refresh and renew our vision for serving.

When I started my reading week, I chose six particular books as a goal to read. After my first day, I realized that I had bitten off more than I could chew, but I did my best each day. Most of my books I had chosen were for textbooks for pastoral care and spiritual formation, but I took a break one day to read one of my favorite theologians, Frederick Buechner, who passed away just recently. I have to admit, I was a bit heartbroken when I heard the news. He was an amazing author and brilliant theologian, and was instrumental in my spiritual formation as a young person.

Part of the week for me was devoted to deep prayer, and so I sought his wisdom for this. I would like to share with you what he wrote in his book Whistling in the Dark, because I would not be able to express his thoughts as well and as eloquently to you:

In the Episcopal order of worship, the priest sometimes introduces the Lord's Prayer with the words, "Now, as our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to say..." The word bold is worth thinking about. We do well not to pray the prayer lightly. It takes guts to pray it at all. We can pray it in the unthinking and perfunctory way we usually do only by disregarding what we are saying.

"Thy will be done" is what we are saying. That is the climax of the first half of the prayer. We are asking God to be God. We are asking God to do not what we want but what God wants. We are asking God to make manifest the holiness that is now mostly hidden, to set free in all its terrible splendor the devastating power that is now mostly under restraint. "Thy kingdom come . . . on earth" is what we are saying. And if that were suddenly to happen, what then? What would stand and what would fall? Who would be welcomed in and who would be thrown the Hell out? Which if any of our most precious visions of what God is and of what human beings are would prove to be more or less on the mark and which would turn out to be phony as three-dollar bills? Boldness indeed. To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.

You need to be bold in another way to speak the second half. Give us. Forgive us. Don't test us. Deliver us. If it takes guts to face the omnipotence that is God's, it takes perhaps no less to face the impotence that is ours. We can do nothing without God. We can have nothing without God. Without God we are nothing. It is only the words "Our Father" that make the prayer bearable. If God is indeed something like a father, then as something like children maybe we can risk approaching him anyway.

Dear ones, I pray that we would all have the boldness to know that God is listening, and to know that God is waiting for us to pray.

With great love for you,

Pastor Grace