December 14, 2005
Answer
Maybe the season now upon us is a time when more people pray than usual. Maybe not. Maybe if they do, some might wonder whether prayer is ever “answered” and what an answer would look like if ever it came. What would be the evidence? Where’s the beef?
Jesus prayed a lot. At least once out there in that garden and up there on that cross, he prayed hard, and he felt major betrayal and abandonment, a kind of answer in itself. Some of us have felt that way from time to time, perhaps not as earthshaking, but enough to know something not all that comfortable was going on.
John took note in his gospel of another prayer Jesus apparently felt mighty serious about (Jn 17). It was when he more or less recounted before God what you might call his resumé, all the things he’d done with his life with and for us and the world. He was concerned enough about us in that prayer to ask God to protect us from all the flack he was sure we’d get if we’d followed him. It was up to God to answer that part.
Then he prayed that we might have as close a walk with God as had he, and that we might be one as he and God had been and were now. And then he sort of let it go and, as they say, let God. And, of course, let us. Whether we are one in that God-Jesus way seems pretty much up to us. For better or worse, that’s the kind of freedom God gives us and, of course, the grace to go with it, but even that, we have to reach out and take.
Now, whether or not prayer is answered, we ask? This big Jesus prayer John tells us about, nobody can answer, not God, for sure, but only us. Are we going to be one, or not? Is prayer answered? Well, it all depends on the evidence on what you mean by “answer.” Even though Christmas is moving in on us, it doesn’t look all that promising, does it?