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Ascension Sunday, May 2021
What’re you lookin’ at?
Why do we pray? What is prayer? Is it a wish? Does it DO anything? Why do so many prayers go unanswered?
I have prayed so fervently about people and events in the past. Like Job, I’ve screamed at the sky and demanded answers. Unlike Job, I got silence. And it make me a bit envious of Job. Just a bit.
Jesus on the cross prays, “My father, why have you forsaken me?” And he gets… silence.
In the Garden of Gethsemane – “Father, take away this cup of poison! If it be your will,” and… silence.
And yet, with prayers to the same God, Jesus heals, resurrects the dead, feeds thousands with next to nothing, and expels evil influences over people.
What is this thing – prayer? It seems to be found in every religion in the world. It seems to radically change things and do nothing at all.
I am here before you today because of prayer.
I’m pretty scientifically minded. Sit me down with a theoretical article on quarks and I’m a pretty happy clam. 4-H drilled into me the scientific method. Hypothesis. Experimentation. Record of results. Revise hypothesis, repeat.
Prayer utterly refuses to comply with the scientific method.
Job isn’t the only one who notes how seemingly unfair God is, life is, prayer is. Jesus, too, points out that one person tragically dies in a tower collapse but another does not. He asks, “Is it because one of their parents sinned and another did not? No.” So did one die because they sinned and another did not? No. “It rains on the just and unjust alike.” Most of Ecclesiastes is on this topic.
Science has been able to poke at the brains of people who pray. There, we can see in SPECT scans that people who pray have increased frontal lobe activity – intense thoughts – and decrease in parietal lobes – which control our sense of self and otherhood. So in prayer we feel ourselves a part of the larger picture, the bigger whole, united with others… and something is happening in the front of our minds that takes intense concentration and focus.
Obviously, we can’t see thoughts. Just that activity is happening in the brain in a different way when we pray versus when we don’t pray. And the more someone prays, the stronger this difference is noticed.
Prayer changes our brains. So that’s one effect.
Changed brains change our deeds. Changed deeds change the world. That’s a major effect.
And yet… there is more… not only do we feel more united through prayer… we have something in the front of our brain science can’t measure happening.
Most people who pray say that prayer is the conversation with the divine. A conversation. A time of speaking, and a time of listening. Sometimes giving words and intent, and sometimes receiving.
I say I am here because I once was praying – giving – and I was shocked to receive an answer back. A voice. A sensation. A healing. A feeling of being united with more love than I can describe…
… and that’s the crux. I can’t describe what happened. I can’t repeat it. I can barely find the words for it. Science is only the knowledge we have gathered in an agreed upon method. There is so much more in the world still yet unexplained, unknown, and unpredictable.
It shook me so much that my whole life changed. Decades later, here I am, still without answers to my experience. But a whole lot wiser that I’m not alone.
Sometimes, without cause, without predictability, without repeatable results… prayers are miraculously attended to.
It’s a sell out to my scientific side to say God is a mystery. It is a comfort to my theological side that in the millennia of recorded interacts with God we still haven’t figured God all the way out. God remains more. Grander. Wiser. Bigger than what a human can wholly comprehend.
In our readings today, Jesus is praying. He prays for us. He prays we know the joy he knows when communing with God. He prays we become one with one another, in him, as he is one with our Holy Father. He prays we are protected from evil while wandering in this world that so often rejects the love of God. He prays for us.
When Jesus ascends into heaven, the Holy Spirit of God comes as our advocate. She baptizes us in the out-side-of-science intuition and insights that lead us to deeper love, deeper wisdom, deeper mercy. Specifically, we’re told it is the Spirit that causes us to be able to speak, one heart to another.
A bit like… it is the Spirit that helps translate what we are praying — in words, in sighs, in deeds — to lower those defensive walls in our brains to help us all become one.
What are your experiences with prayer? Feel free to share with someone near you, in the chat online, or by contacting me. How do you pray? … When do you pray? … Have you ever had a prayer answered? … Have you ever had a prayer unanswered? …
Sometimes, I feel like my prayers go unanswered in disasters. I have felt like the world’s prayers for Covid-19 are not enough. “Thoughts and prayers” we know is an insult – it means, I’ll do nothing tangible for you. The thoughts and prayers too are a lie. I am feeling powerless watching the Israli genocide against Palestine.
“Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” the two men in white robes ask the stunned disciplines. “What cha lookin’ at?”
This — all this — our complete powerlessness. How we can’t do a thing. Where do we go from here? What do we do? How do we even begin to live life after losing someone?
The two angelic men awaken the disciples that this is not the end of the story. This is intermission. Act 2 is beginning. The Spirit is coming to give the disciples the power to work miracles. It reminds me of Mr. Roger’s words…
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers ― so many caring people in this world.”
Look for the helpers. Look for where the Spirit is active. Look for the caring people. Look for the people praying; and the prayer leading to loving, helpful lives. Look not up to the sky – but look to one another and see how Jesus is still among us.
This is one of the powers of prayer: to name the helpers. To focus us. To see God in our midst. Amen.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 