Answered Prayers And Other Idle Tales

April 20, 2019

The Great Vigil of Easter

My first introduction to the world of internet trolls was on the day we opened the London School of Economics Faith Centre five years ago. I tweeted a picture of our beautiful new campus facility with the comment that it was a “fantastic space for worship, dialogue and prayer”. And the first response I got within a matter of seconds was somebody tweeting back that “Prayer is just futile babbling to an imaginary friend.” There’s always someone on the internet just waiting to rain on your parade!

But the attitude is not uncommon. If there is no God, prayer is a waste of time and we are pretty foolish people. The most smug and derisory critiques are usually directed at prayer perceived as transactional petition – prayers where we just ask God for things – as if praying was nothing more than a letter to Santa Claus that we hope will be granted if we’ve been good.

There is very much more to prayer than that, as I hope we’ve begun to see this week. We began last Sunday by thinking how prayer is the cultivation of inner courage and resolve in a volatile and fragmented world. Monday through Wednesday we explored how prayer is a training in generosity, a shedding of self-deception, and a deepening of intimacy with God. On Thursday we reflected how inseparable is true prayer from loving action in the world. And before the cross yesterday we saw how prayer is the deepening of our desire for the God who deeply desires us.

But even as our understanding of prayer expands, the atheist challenge remains. Is there power in prayer, or is it empty words? Does prayer change the world or is it a delusional hope? As we reflect again on the meaning of this Easter Feast, we need to ask, are our prayers dead or alive?

The dismissing of prayer as “futile babbling” is wonderfully reminiscent of the response of the male disciples to the women who share their first testimony of the resurrection. “These words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” The greatest moment in human history, the most powerful cosmic truth of all time, is dismissed as the babbling of delusional women.

Are our prayers dead or alive? Is Jesus dead or alive? It seems that there is a certain kind of mindset that can only see death. The promise of life is dismissed as futile babble or an idle tale. A flat self-absorbed rationalism is never going to see the point of prayer. It is never going to comprehend the meaning of the empty tomb. And there does seem to be some gender dimension to this – I’m guessing my internet troll was a man too!

This suggests that Easter is more than just an invitation to believe in a strange historical event. It’s an invitation to look at the world differently, to recognize the life that is at work that we do not see. It is call to believe in the power of prayer and in the power of the resurrection in the world around us.

We’ve just sat through a retelling of some of the highlights of salvation history stretching right back to the Garden of Eden. And the reason we do that is because the real message of Easter is not just that one man has risen from the dead like some party trick. Easter is a bigger realization – and we will hear the first Christians comprehend this over the coming weeks as we read the Book of Acts – a bigger realization of what God has always been doing through history and what God continues to do today.

We could summarize it like this. In the Book of Deuteronomy in the Torah, God lays before humanity the way of life and prosperity or the way of death and destruction. “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses,” says the Lord, “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”

But time and time again humanity chose death – the death of selfishness and greed, the death of idolatry and denial of God. But God does not give up on us. In the covenant with Noah, in the sparing of Isaac, in the Passover from Egypt, in the raising of dry bones in Ezekiel, God is bringing forth life in the face of our death.

And all this culminates with God becoming human in Jesus Christ and walking the way of death in order to make the way of life victorious. We failed to choose life, so God chose death, that the path of life might always be present, and powerful, and eternal in our lives.

All of this tells us that our prayers are not dead. Every time we pray we are tapping into the energy of the universe that is God’s eternal resurrecting of life from death. Every prayer is a sharing in the resurrection. Prayer is power because it is the choosing of life that is God over the death of the world.

And tonight we celebrate particularly with these baptism and confirmation candidates who are choosing that resurrection life of prayer. They are entering with the rest of us into this Easter power that is, as St Paul says to the Romans, a participation in the death of Jesus so that we will be dead to sin and alive forever to God in Jesus Christ. And our daily prayers are a sign of that life, the power of the resurrection within us.

This is the great feast of life over death. It is the confirmation of the power of prayer. So whenever you say your prayers, as I hope this week has encouraged you to do, know that you are not babbling at an imaginary friend, you are not looking for the living among the dead. The stone has been rolled away, and the power of the resurrection is yours.