As a minister every now and then I receive an invitation to come along and offer a prayer. Usually the invitation sounds something like, “Pastor, I was wondering if you’d be willing to say a little prayer.” It’s important to understand that it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re standing inside or outside the church’s four walls when the question is asked, the intent of those asking it seems to be the same. “Just a little prayer — could you say one?”
Inside the church it can come just as easily before a potluck dinner as before some major decision to drop $50,000 to renovate the sanctuary, like these are both somehow similar acts of humanity before God. Granted, I don’t necessarily see these two things as being very different from each other. Our prayer should be no less with one over the other. They sound very different, I know. $50,000 to hire a construction crew and get a building permit sounds like a lot more capital than $8.00 for a box of macaroni and a large jar of Ragu. But it’s not. In fact, if we 
had to say that one is a weightier decision in need of prayer, it should be the prayer we offer before the potluck (and if you’ve ever been to a church potluck then you know why)! Simple daily gratitude for the profound gift of food can never be overdone. We can’t think too much about our gratitude and how best to express it. In Jewish homes, before any meal, snack, or morsel is consumed the family prays, “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe.” From this follows a list of whatever is being eaten. “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe for the barley, the oats, the water that made them grow, and the dirt that warmly and safely nurtured them to life. Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe for the fruit of the vine.”
There is a story about an eighteenth-century Jew whose daily work was to slaughter animals. Each morning he said a tearful goodbye to his wife and children before setting off to meet his destiny. He felt, every morning, that he might never see them again, that as he stood, knife in hand and prayer on lips, “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe,” that God might notice and destroy him before he had time also to utter, “Have mercy.”
The fact is, this is not a little prayer. This is an earth-shattering prayer. One can’t just say this prayer on a whim. If you’re going to make your gratitude count you have to think long and hard about what ultimately makes your gratitude even possible. “For the food we are about to eat and the drink we are about to drink, we didn’t do anything to make it appear. It comes from you, the King of the Universe, who obviously loves and cares about us.” Yes, we have a part to play in its distribution. Have we walked the earth carefully, making sure not to trample on the cabbage and to kick up the apple seeds? For there are hungry people. Have we made sure to sell the food at a fair and honorable price? For there are poor people. In this we also honor the King of the Universe, for without the King we’d all be poor and hungry. It’s not a little potluck prayer.
Author Annie Dillard once observed that, “Outside of the catacombs, Christians are not sufficiently sensible to the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may awake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
It’s not a little prayer. Indeed, it is never a little thing to pray. And yet when the question was asked of me one day last week, “Pastor, I was wondering if you’d be willing to come and say a little prayer?” I so blithely said yes. It was to be an annual meeting for a local charitable organization. Most, if not all, of their benefactors and beneficiaries would be there and breakfast was going to be served.
On the day prior to the meeting I sat down to consider my prayer and that’s when it hit me: I had no idea what I was doing. What was I supposed to pray? No one had told me. For that matter, why were we going to pray at all? It didn’t seem like a bad idea to me. I suppose we can pray with a dirt-filled heart of mean motives and selfish pursuits. I suppose we can pray stupidly. We can pray an “I don’t really care let’s just get it over with” kind of prayer. We can pray in such a way that it may, and probably should, get us struck down by lightning. We can pray without ever saying, “God, have mercy,” but it doesn’t change the fact that God will. So it didn’t seem like a bad idea to me that we would pray. But what was I to pray for a gathering of benefactors and beneficiaries? Our whole reason for showing up was to make known what we had already done. This one sheltered the homeless for 250 nights. That one ran a free clinic for battered women and children. This one gave all the money for the clinic. That one gave enough for a clinic and 20 new beds at the shelter. What more could we stand to give and receive? Let’s say a little prayer and eat! The eggs are getting cold.
Tragically, this is more or less how it all went. I stood to pray, sat down, and a circus of self-congratulations began. One by one each group sent their president forward to receive a plaque and to have their picture taken with the mayor while the audience went ooh and ah. We clapped so much that after a while I found myself clapping before the names were even announced. When, after a while, there were no more names to call, it was decided that we all could leave. But first, “Pastor, would you come back up and close us with a little prayer?”
I got up and fumbled my way back to the microphone. I wasn’t sure if I didn’t hear some rumblings still, not of the crowd but of thunder. What was I supposed to pray again? Not even “God, have mercy” seemed right. How do we pray for mercy and not come off like we’re praying for everyone but ourselves, when the truth is, the need for mercy starts with me.
“Let us pray,” I invited. For about a minute all was silent. No one said anything. We just sat there doing the one thing that makes us all the same: breathing. Finally it sounded like we were praying.
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Great God, some would call what we are doing a strange thing — praying. We are not gathered here to be religious. This is not a church or a synagogue or a mosque or a place for quiet meditation. Is it because of where live that we pray? Is it because we’ve heard it’s the thing conservatives do, or maybe it’s liberals? Do we just want to be known as upstanding, morally good citizens? Why do we pray? We don’t even all believe in the same God or believe in the same way about God. We don’t all call you by the same name. Why do we pray? Could it be because we see how divided we’ve become, that we see how easily we slap labels on one another and pass unfair judgment, but we are yearning for unity? Is it that we are desperate to see each other differently, as brothers ,sisters, neighbors, and we pray because we believe this is how you see us and we need you to help us be more like you? Why do we pray? Could it be that we share a common concern for our world and its needs and we know the concerns are big and the needs greater than what any one of us, and maybe even all of us together, can meet? 
Could it be that we know our world has become so troubled and the only explanation for it lies beyond this world? So we pray. We place our hope and faith on the line and we proclaim with one voice that things can be better and we are united to make it so. We look beyond ourselves while also looking around ourselves. We see how much we have and how much we have to give and we say thank you for both. Great God, in this world there are some who have love but no food and some who have food but no love. Open our eyes to see how easily both have come to us in this moment and give us the courage and wisdom to want less so others may have more. We ask all of this for the sake of love and in the name of the One who is love, amen.
PleaseGrace 