Sunday, April 28, 2013

No More Mr. Nice Revelation: the Last Word on Prayer (Revelation 8:1-6)



1When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. 2And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. 3 Another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar; he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. 4And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. 5Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. 6 Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. ~ Revelation 8:1-6

 Wildfire seen from space

A New Song

So far we’ve been learning that apocalyptic literature aims to help us see, to unmask the reality of what often appears to be benign. We’ve been studying how the book of Revelation is not the Mad Hatter’s day planner but a poetic vision which sets the issue of worship at the heart and purpose of the universe – in this context, I argued, the mall and consumerism take on cosmic significance. But, today John’s vision does more than unmask the things that long for our worship, he exposes a good thing that strikes many of us as pointless, harmless, immaterial, even forgettable. He points out the one apocalyptic thing that really does have to do with time and our day planners, that is truly dangerous – prayer. And whatever baggage you might carry about prayer – the unanswered wounds, the painful silences, the haunted feelings of failed words for a loved one. John tells us that prayer is a game changer, a thunderous event, a shaking thing, the only thing that can silence heaven.

            1.      Prayer is the dignifying hush of heaven

I’m not sure that I can imagine a text that does more for the promotion of prayer than Revelation 8. I can’t think of a scripture that does more to insist that prayer does not take place in vain, that it matters. I would even be willing to hazard the potentially preposterous suggestion that in the book of Revelation there is no more dignifying gesture granted to human beings than this truth - the God of heaven and earth, the One on the throne, the One who is, who was, and who is to come, surrounded by worship, worthy of praise, this God silences heaven to listen to us. Revelation 8 is the equivalent of a divine “Shut-up!” but not to us to heaven. And God doesn’t need to hear us in order to be informed, to be affirmed, to be convinced, or even to win. So why does He do it? Why does he stop the beautiful music? Why does this God listen so intently? What motivates this God? Revelation reveals a vision of prayer that a silent God is not an absent God but an attentive one, a listening God, not simply all eyes but all ears for the likes of us. And it’s not work, wit, or songs, which silence all of heaven; it is their prayers. There is something almost playful in the text of silence for “about half an hour.”  I imagine God on all fours listening to us like a parent to a small child. It reminded me of Bill Cosby talking about his children fighting in his house (explain – 3 yr. old taking stuff that’s not theirs and shouting “mine”). He then quips once “Parents are not interested in justice — they want QUIET!” Many of us think of God like that – this disgruntled, tired parent who tells us to shut up, stop messing around, and quit jumping on the bed. Revelation, however, reveals to us that God demands quiet so that he can grant justice so that our prayers might join with his will, that we might participate in His amazing plan “on earth as it is in heaven.” To be honest, maybe the most frightening vision of Revelation is not the beast, the locusts, the blood and fire, but the image of a God who truly pays attention, that God believes that what we pray matters, that our words are mixed with the thunder, lightning, and earthquake.

Silence (10 seconds) – Prayer #921, Hymnal



Lord, call us into the church.
Call us in often,
            And teach us the old words and old songs
            with their new meanings.
Lord, give us new words for the words we wear out.
Give us new songs for those that have lost their spirit.
Give us new reasons for coming in and for going out,
            into our streets and to our homes.
As the house of the Lord once moved
            like a tent through the wilderness,
            so keep our church from becoming rigid.
Make our congregation alive and free.
Give us ideas we never had before,
            so that allelulia and gloria and amen
            are like the experiences we know in daily living.
Allelulia! O Lord, be praised!
In worship and in work, be praised! Amen.
 




            2.      In Revelation prayer is the vision. It’s curious that John doesn’t hear the prayers – he sees them like smoke rising, a sacrifice to God. The point is that prayer is a way of seeing the world, a practice that makes us a people who refuse to settle for appearances. Prayer reveals us to be those who believe that there’s more going on in the world than meets the eye. 

Yet, we are not easily reduced to prayer, it can be difficult to see the point. There just seem to be so many more important things to do, so many more powerful tasks. This can even be true of the most thoughtful and professional of religious teachers, pastors, and theologians. I randomly looked at two large introductory books on theology for seminary students– whose combined pages totaled 1,918 pages purporting to discuss all manner of theological intricacies like innerancy, patripassianism, socinianism, and apophatic language, to name a few examples. And how many pages on prayer do these two well respected texts allocate? Of the 1,918 pages I found two. Now less we find ourselves judgmental, if minutes where the pages of your life and each day was its own book (1,440 pages), how many pages on prayer would you have? Why don’t we pray? It’s not that our theology is bad, its that we lack the proper vision, it’s that we can’t see or that we believe we can without it. We need the corrective vision of John to remind us that God hears and sees our prayer. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus repeatedly asserts that we can have confidence in God because He sees, he knows. So we pray and God sees, and we pray to see. 

Prayer is a practiced way of seeing what we were made for, and so our most natural posture – now, I have not experienced this to be true. Prayer still for me is a struggle of Herculean proportions. BUT I take comfort from two woman who were giants in the world of prayer. The first was Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) who admitted to often shaking the sand in her hourglass to make the time of prayer go faster. The second woman, however, lived in a time much more like the world of Revelation - Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish, atheist, woman living in occupied Holland who during the Nazi regime and the horrors of the Holocaust came to believe and devout her life to God. She writes of her experience of prayer, “It is as if my body had been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge . . . a gesture embedded in my body, needing to be expressed . . . When I write these things down I still feel a little ashamed, as if I were writing about the most intimate of intimate matters. Much more bashful than if I had to write about my love life. But is there indeed anything as intimate as a [person’s] relationship to God?” On another occasion she refers to herself as a “kneeler in training” and the act of praying she states “cannot be put into words . . . except by a poet.” Prayer, according to John the poet, is a visual splendor of silent smoke and incense. It was prayer, Etty claimed, that allowed her to see that the real enemy were not Nazi soldiers but hate. Because she prayed, she discovered, she simply could not hate them.

Silence (10 seconds) – Prayer #923, Hymnal



Jesus, our Master,
            whose heart was moved with compassion
            toward the weak and the oppressed,
            and who was more willing to serve than be served;
we pray for all conditions of people:
            for those lacking food, shelter, or clothing;
            for the sick and all who are wasting away by disease;
            for the blind, deaf, and lame;
            for prisoners;
            for those oppressed by injustice;
            for those who have lost their way in society;
            for the corrupted and fallen;
            for the lonely and depressed;
            for the worried and anxious;
            for all living faithfully in obscurity
            for those fighting bravely in unpopular causes;
            for all who are serving diligently and dependably;
            for those who stand in the valley of indecision;
for those who are suffering the consequences of misdeeds repented of;
            for all family circles broken by abuse or death;
            for those faced by tasks too great for their powers.
Let the power of Jesus’ spirit be strong within us,
            and those for whom we pray. Amen
 



            3.      Finally, Revelation offers us a vision that prayer is not mere escapism but bold engagement with God for the whole world. 

John’s vision tells us that prayer is not for our own sake but for the sake of the whole earth. That nothing within the cosmos is out of the reach of prayer. So the angel takes prayers and mixes them with the fire of God’s altar and hurls them to earth where prayer becomes thunder, lightning, and earthquake. That’s not how I think of prayer. I realized that my vision of prayer is more like hmmm, hmmmm (clearing the throat sound). It’s not thunder but more caveat. It’s not lightning but more being nice. It’s not earthquake but more being polite. It’s a sort of . . “If it’s not too much trouble, if you don’t mind, sorry to bother you but . . .” John’s vision invokes in me a deep awareness that my prayers are often too safe, too small, too careful, and too tame.

It reminds us that some of the best prayers and best pray-ers are the impertinent, fiery ones.  In Luke 18 Jesus describes the best pray-er as an ornery widow, sick of injustice, who refuses to stop coming before a judge. Such a vision reveals that prayer can be the “courage of despair” – to face suffering unflinchingly and by doing so rob it of its power to control your end. In the book of Revelation, the last prayer before chapter 8 comes from the martyrs who demand, “How long, O LORD”

Revelation helps us see that more of us should pray like the Abolitionist leader Sojourner Truth, who had no problem praying what was on her mind. When her son fell ill she prayed, “Oh, God, you know how much I am distressed, for I have told you again and again. Now, God, help me get my son. If you were in trouble, as I am, and I could help you, as you can me, think I wouldn’t do it? Yes, God, you know I would do it.”

So let it fly, let it rise, let it go. He can take it. He will take it. He will listen, He will see, there will be silence and fire.

And then the earth will tremble because . . .  Silence (10 seconds) – the Lord’s Prayer

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