unanswered prayers and the only thing we know they mean for certain
A pastoral reflection + a glimpse into the Book of Blessing+ the most beautiful thing I saw + the best chocolate chip cookies
Recently, I thought a major prayer in my life had been answered in a resounding way. Words simply wouldn’t do, I laughed like Sarah, at the promise of the book of Isaac. A breakthrough we had been waiting on, it seemed, had come. But when I read the proverbial fine print, I realized the reality was that this was only a half-baked miracle. A sign of provision, but still with a lot of uncertainty for the days ahead. The mirage evaporated and the wilderness again reared its sneering face of sand and desolation. I was frustrated with God, angry.
Any time I speak of prayer as a pastor, I know that the undercurrent of the subject is the “scandal” of unanswered prayers. How do I speak confidently and urgently of the need for bold, intercessory prayers when I and so many others carry the weight of good things prayed for and yet unreceived? When I know we’re talking the most tender, painful stuff of life? The loss of a child or the inability to conceive. A marriage dissolved or the pain of not finding someone. The death of a dream.
When Jesus speaks of prayer, he often speaks of a stubborn insistence—ask, seek, knock (Luke 11). He tells the story of an unjust judge who is moved to action not by argument or by evidence by but by being thoroughly annoyed by a woman who would not give up. Luke tells us plainly in the introduction to this story that this is a “parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” (Luke 18v1). In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples, ask me for anything and it will be given to you (John 15v7).
Ask persistently. Ask for anything.
And many of you have. And still nothing.
Over the slowly accumulating years of my following Jesus, I have learned a few things. One of the main lessons that I often have to revisit is that my frustration are not something I need to conceal in holy decorum. God isn’t looking for a polished veneer of devotion. He’s looking for me. And in his great love and unending pursuit of you and me, he placed a prayer book of poetry at the heart of the scriptures that is dripping with the joy, testimony, beauty, worship that you might expect to find in a holy text; but is also accompanied by bitter disappointment, seething anger, and dark nights of the soul. The Psalms.
The psalms are not a handbook for proper etiquette in the presence of the king of the universe, they are an invitation to be human, an invitation to an integrated life. The psalms give me all the warrant I need to be angry (or disappointed, or lukewarm, etc.) with God, to know that he sees the true depths of my anger, and instead of simply lashing out with its volcanic rage or repressing it into a smoldering furnace within, to offer it to God—in worship.
There are many major threads that run throughout the scriptures. One of the most beautiful and consistent is God making his home with us. From garden, to promise, to exodus, to wilderness, to temple, to exile, to the incarnation of his son, to the cross and grave, to the giving of the spirit of God, and ultimately to the eternal city that is itself, the holy of holies of God’s unmediated presence. God stops at nothing to be God with us. The psalms are the first glimpse into the glorious promise that we see realized in the word made flesh (John 1v14) and Jesus pouring out his spirit , that our experience with God will not just be something external, a location that we go to, or an event we attend. Rather, God will take up residence within the confines of our hearts. That we are being fashioned into living temples of the living God (1 Corinthians 6v9).
To furnish us as a place he can dwell, God will undertake a great process of renovation, glorification, what followers of Jesus throughout the ages have called sanctification. The scriptures use all these metaphors for a life transformed by God’s love—a tree, a work of art, a temple—because mere description fails in the face of the beauty of what will become of human lives in his gracious hands. As humans, we are easily and rightfully in awe of the majesty of the Giant Sequoia, or the radiant horizon cascading over the shoreline at dawn. And the story of the gospel is that the glory of our human souls and bodies redeemed will outshine this sort of beauty, as C.S. Lewis points out that if we saw what God was going to make of people over the scale of eternity we would “be tempted to fall down in worship” (The Weight of Glory).
God initiates his creation of the world through his word. The first creation with his powerful, generative word, and the second, redeemed creation as that word becomes flesh. Hans urs von Balthasar points out that all of our self-disclosure to God has its root in God’s self-disclosure, his revelation, to us. God speaks fully and freely not in such a way that exhausts all the mystery of life or that we can comprehend God totally but in such a way that we glimpse in Jesus we know
“so that we may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2vv2-3).
He labels this God’s parrhesia (related to the words parousia- coming and epiphany- revealing) and demonstrates how the pattern of the scriptures invite us into a reciprocal parrhesia.
Von Balthasar writes in his book Prayer:
This parhessia on our part is the open, unconstrained and childlike approach to the Father, neither ashamed nor fearing shame. We come to him with heads held high, as those who have an innate right to be there and to speak. We may look into the Father’s face without fear; we do not have to approach him as if he were an aloof monarch, with downcast eyes and obsequious gestures, within the confines of strict ceremonial and a prescribed form of address. The door stands open, and wherever the child of God may be, there too is that open door.
Jesus invites us into a relationship filled with asking, pleading, crying out, anger, disappointment. I know that when we talk about unanswered prayers, the goal is usually some sort of settled conclusion: God did not answer this prayer in this way for these reasons. But the fact is, I don’t know why God answers some prayers and doesn’t seem to answer others (and you probably don’t either). But what we can know, in Jesus’ invitation to pray is that the asking, the showing up, the pleading is a vital part of a relationship with God.
J. Richard Middleton, in his groundbreaking book, “Abraham’s Silence,” contrasts the responses of Abraham and Job in the scriptures. Abraham, is called, or so it seems, to sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22). The classic reading of this passage paints Abraham as the epitome of faith and trust in God. He doesn’t even offer any protest. Interestingly, as Middleton points out when God determines to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham is a quick and keen intercessor. But not here. In contrast, when Job loses everything, Job is defiant, both to his friends and to the heavens. Job will not accept easy answers to his questions of suffering and God’s providence and he lobs them at anyone who will listen, including God. Again, one reading of Job would suggest that when God shows up at the end of the extended parable, that God puts Job in his place. But Middleton offers a convicting reading that Job is actually praised by God for understanding that to know God is to challenge God, to love him is to bring our full selves before him, without edit and without filter. That Job understands that God is not looking for passive obedience but rather real relationship with all of its conflict, misunderstanding, and passion.1
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Fake Plastic Trees
For the season of Lent, I bought two fake, plastic olive trees for our church. The trees are a condensed symbol for the season of lent. We invited people to pin written prayers to the branches as a sign of trust, of turning to God, of crying out to him in places of desperation and confusion. And the response has been powerful. I have a bag filled with these pieces of cardboard, with anonymous pleas for deliverance, direction, salvation for family and friends, healing, for provision. Daily I open them up to read through them and to join my prayers with the authors’. And I have been struck by absolutely precious this little quart-sized ziplock bag is to me. Reading through them is incredibly sacred, it stirs in me a longing for testimonies of immediate, miraculous resolutions, of bodies healed and family members and friends coming to faith. And I know that my fleeting glimpse of pastoral responsibility is only a fraction of how sacredly, how tenderly God holds these prayers. I love what Brennan Manning says about the best of parental love as a lens into the heart and care of God:
If you took the love of all the best mothers and fathers who have lived in the course of human history, all their goodness, kindness, patience, fidelity, wisdom, tenderness, strength, and love and united all those qualities in a single person, that person’s love would only be a faint shadow of the furious love and mercy in the heart of God the Father addressed to you and me at this moment.
-Brennan Manning, The Furious Longing Of God
Revelation tells us that the Lamb of God, reigning on the throne right now, is surrounded by the prayers of his people, being poured out as offerings of worship.
Revelation 5v8 When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
The persistent prayer in the book of Revelation from the saints is, “How long?” In a way this prayer has gone yet unanswered. “Still longer” has been the response from the victorious lamb in the patience of our God. But in another way, Revelation reveals that this prayer has been answered decisively on the cross: “It is finished.” This place of tension is our home as the people of God. We are called into relationship, to cry out to God on behalf of the poor in our midst, our sick loved ones, the lost friends, co-workers, and family members in our lives, to call down the judgment of heaven on systemic evils. But it’s not just these large scale moments that capture our prayers. We also pray for tests and presentations, and for raises, for safe travels and parking spaces when we arrive.
I would find it much easier, when I talk about prayer as a pastor, to be able to provide an easy map for how to get prayers answered. I would also find it much simpler to be able to chalk every unanswered prayer to God’s will. But either road is an overreach and an abdication of my pastoral duty. I cannot promise more than Jesus’ promise to be with us always. And I cannot explain from the vantage of earth what only heaven knows. But I can obey what I know here and now. Jesus usually does not explain the delta between answered and “unanswered” prayers. He just says, keep asking, keep knocking, keep seeking. So I will keep crying out in trust to God. I may be crazy. I may have deluded myself. I may be asking for things that aren’t good for me. I may be undignified before God in my frustration and bitterness.
But that, as far as I can understand, is what grace is for. Frederick Buechner urges us to “go where your best prayers take you.” Sometimes our best prayers are the ones filled with our worst impulses and most visceral vocabulary. But as the Psalms remind us, even these take us to God’s presence. So don’t lose heart, don’t stop knocking, he is with you always.
the most beautiful thing I saw this week
I have been listening to Nick Cave’s memoir conversation with Sean O’ Hagan, Faith, Hope, and Carnage as a part of my lenten practice. If you don’t know anything about Nick Cave, he has much of the classic drug-addled rockstar story in his past. But recently, has gotten sober and tragically, lost his son Arthur to a fall near their home. The book is an extended reflection of the intersection of grief, loss, faith, and beauty. This clip is a glimpse into the book, the album Ghosteen which Cave says in an album he made after Arthur’s death as a “world that he could live in.” Cave sings on the title track Ghosteen:
If I could move the night I would
And I would turn the world round if I could
There’s nothing wrong with holding something you can’t hold in your hand
a tribute to anthony bourdain and robert farrer capon
Chocolate Chip Cookies
There are a million variations of chocolate chip cookies. Everybody should have their own or their family’s version. This is ours. We riff off of this. During Easter, I’ll take Cadbury mini eggs and smash them up and put them in the dough. Our oldest daughter will add white chocolate or marshmallows.
Ingredients
1 cup butter softened or browned
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
2.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups of flour
8 oz. milk chocolate
8 oz. semi-sweet chocolate
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Two options with the butter. Either take two sticks of butter and put them on the counter a few hours of when you plan to make these. Or put them in a sauce pan over medium heat and melt the butter. When the butter turns brown, remove the butter from the heat and let cool for an hour.
Once you have your butter to your liking, cream together the sugars with the butter. Kitchenaid mixer with the paddle works great for this but you can do it by hand. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix remaining dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda) together.
In bowl with butter and sugar, mix in eggs and vanilla extract. Now add in dry ingredients. Mix all together until dough forms into a large bowl. If your dough has a lot of flour keep mixing. It should firm up to where its not too wet but has the feel of play-dough.
Form dough into small balls and place on baking sheet (parchment paper makes cleanup even easier). This makes a lot of dough which is great for a crowd but if you’re not needing all of it, wrap the remaining dough in parchment paper, place in a large ziplock bag and put in the fridge or freezer depending on when you think you might use it!
Bake cookies for 13 minutes at 350 degrees. Enjoy!
Middleton’s book-length treatment is much more thorough and poignant than I have space to deal with here. He deals with the relevant arguments from church history, the rabbinical readings of the text, and cross-references in places like Hebrews. I highly recommend this book!