“If you choose, you can make me clean”, says the leper in the Gospel reading (Mark 1.40-45). One of the most direct, no-nonsense, and most humble prayers in the Bible. Naaman, on the other hand, in the OT reading (2 Kings 5.1-14), doesn’t compare well. Naaman also suffers with leprosy, and he’s also desperate for a cure, but he goes to the King of Israel first, with fabulous gifts. Of course the king doesn’t have a cure, so Naaman is sent on to the prophet Elisha’s little house. He rumbles up with his train of horses and chariots and demands to see the prophet. Only, the prophet won’t come out; Naaman gets Elisha’s servant instead, who tells him to do something so simple that Naaman feels insulted – wash in the local river 7 times. Naaman storms off in a pompous rage, and it takes some straight talking from one of his own servants to get him to see sense.
Two men suffering from a similar condition then. One a model of humility, the other of pomposity. Which am I most like, I wonder? I hope you’ll tell me when I’m pompous. Only, I’m aware that it’s one of those things easy to detect in others – like Naaman – but very hard to see in yourself. Beware pomposity then – it’s invisible, to you at least! But to Naaman’s credit, he realises this. He climbs down before his servants, and performs an act of humility by doing the 7 straightforward dips in the local river, rather than the difficult and risky task which he thought his status demanded. So he’s healed.
But it seems to me that pomposity, this invisible and invidious vice, gets in the way of a lot of our prayers. We make them a whole lot more difficult and risky than they need to be. Perhaps we think we ought to use convoluted, high-blown language in order to pray properly. Or that we’re not praying right unless we’re really working at it – concentrating hard, praying until it hurts, through gritted teeth.
Let me read you a well-known poem by Wendy Cope:
When I went out shopping, / I said a little prayer:
‘Jesus, help me park the car/ For you are everywhere.’
Jesus, in His goodness and grace, / Jesus found me a parking space
In a very convenient place. / Sound the horn and praise Him!
His eternal car-park / Is hidden from our eyes.
Trust in Him and you will have / A space beyond the skies.
Jesus, in His goodness and grace, / Wants to find you a parking space.
Ask Him now to reserve a place. / Sound the horn and praise Him!
It’s easy to laugh (smile?) at this. There’s the idea of praying about trivial, everyday things like parking spaces, for one, and then getting over-excited when it seems that God has answered them. I suspect that most of us pray about completely trivial things, but we probably don’t admit it, and we don’t get publicly excited when they turn out right! There’s a simplicity or a naivety here in our everyday prayers which we probably wouldn’t want to own up to. If so, we’re showing that invisible pomposity again – prayer is for serious things we think, like world peace and the poor of the world, not random little moments in our everyday lives. And what can be more random than whether a parking place turns up at the right time or not? And yet, if your faith recognises it, even trivial, everyday random things can speak of God’s grace, this poem seems to suggest. What’s random to one person is revelation to another. And it’s just the same with miracles like healings from leprosy. A believer claims a miracle, a sceptic explains it away. For instance, Naaman wasn’t cured miraculously of leprosy, a sceptic might say. It was all psychosomatic, a stress-induced skin condition. He just needed to chill out, and sure enough it would go, and so it did. That would be a sceptical response to Naaman’s healing. The upshot? It’s very difficult to explain what a miracle is. It depends on your faith. One person’s miracle is another person’s convenient but random parking space.
So the Wendy Cope poem does make the tradition of praying about everyday concerns a bit ridiculous, but it’s something which Christians are strongly encouraged to do. You only have to turn to the Gospels to see this. There’s the parable of a man who hammers on his friends’ door in the middle of the night wanting some bread, and he keeps on hammering until he gets what he wants. And then there’s the child who asks for something to eat. A parent will give the child exactly what it wants, says Jesus, not something scary like a snake or a scorpion. And so will God give you what you want if you ask in faith is the message. “Ask and it will be given you; search and you will find…for everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds”, says Jesus.
Only, we often don’t seem to get what we ask for in prayer, do we? Our prayers aren’t answered. Is it because we’re not praying hard enough, or not using the right words, or is it because we don’t have enough faith? (Note, this is Naaman’s pomposity all over again – I need to do difficult and worthy things before I’ll get what I want). Well I’ve noticed two interesting things in my life as a Christian. First, prayer isn’t something I do, so much as something which God does – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the inner communication of God. And by God’s immense generosity – God’s grace – I’m allowed to join in, in my own halting, stumbling way. Second, I’ve noticed that, although it often seems at the time that my prayers aren’t answered, yet looking back, say a year further on, or 10 years even, there was an answer, invariably, only it was completely different to the answer I was looking for. My prayers are always answered, I’ve discovered, when I look back with the eyes of faith. Only I don’t realise at the time. My faith isn’t open-minded enough.
So I’ve actually become more open-minded about prayers for parking spaces (although I myself don’t drive!). There was a time when I was very hard-headed about prayer, and I used to look down on simple prayers like that – very pompous. I’ve think I’ve realised that it’s more important just to pray, than to worry about what you’re praying for. It’s more important to join in with God’s inner communication than to stand outside, unsure. Especially, I’ve realised, it’s important to get into the habit of praying everywhere and about everything. The Jewish tradition of prayer is very good on this, because if you’re expecting prayer to change things…well it does, according to Judaism – it changes you. In fact, the Hebrew word for “to pray” doesn’t mean “to request” or to “to beg” or “to plead” but “to judge yourself”. Prayer makes us examine ourselves: we realise our dependence on God for all our needs, the trivial and the mundane as much as the important.
Some words of great sense from Herbert McCabe:
When you pray, consider what you want and need and never mind how vulgar or childish it might appear. If you want very much to pass that exam…[or meet Mr Right] that is what you should pray for. You could let world peace rest for a while. You may not be ready to want that passionately…In true prayer you must meet God and meet yourself where you really are, for it is just by this that God will move you on…If you pray and acknowledge your most infantile desires, there is every danger that you may grow up a bit, that God will grow you up.
I hope then that I will continue in all honesty, and without pomposity, to acknowledge my infantile desires to God, as an infant of God, bringing my serious prayers alongside my trivial prayers, warts and all. “If you choose, you can make me clean”.
