“God’s Word, the voice of the
church, and our prayer belong together. So we must now speak of prayer together…There
is no part of daily worship together that causes us such serious difficulties
and trouble as does common prayer, for here we ourselves are supposed to speak…this
prayer must really be our word, our prayer – for this day, for our work,
for our community, for the particular needs and sins that commonly oppress us,
for the persons who are committed to our care.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress Press, 2015
(Reader’s Edition), page 42.
“As good and useful as our
scruples may be about keeping our prayer pure and biblical, they must
nevertheless not stifle the free prayer itself that is so necessary, for it has
been endowed with great promise by Jesus Christ,” (page 43).
Bonhoeffer begins his
reflections on prayer by focusing on communal prayer (assuming I understand him
on this point). He then moves on to prayer offered by one person on behalf of the
congregation, then he addresses “set prayers”, and then “special communities”
of prayer (groups within congregations).
He links his comment about “serious
difficulties” with “here we ourselves are supposed to speak,” emphasizing that
the prayer must be “ours”. For some it is not a problem to speak our own words
in our own way, expressing our own thoughts and feelings; but for many others
this is difficult. The difficulty may lay in shyness, in uncertainty about what
to say and how to say it, in thinking that prayers must use certain words and
be spoken certain ways; it may also lay in not trusting those around us with
our thoughts and feelings – we may fear being judged and critiqued.
Bonhoeffer’s warning that we
must not stifle free prayer encourages us to nurture an atmosphere of
acceptance in prayer in life together
– after all, our brothers and sisters are speaking to God and (hopefully) not
to us. When he writes that such prayer “has been endowed with great promise by
Jesus Christ,” I think of passages such as Matthew 7:7 – 11, were Jesus teaches
that we are to ask and seek and knock and concludes with, “If you then, being
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your
Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?” We are children
speaking to our Father and we are not to judge the words of our siblings as
they speak to our Father – we each have our own way of speaking to Him and He
speaks to others within His relationship to them, not within His relationship
to me. Yes, we share a communal relationship with our Father and He speaks to
us as His family, but He also speaks to us as individual sons and daughters. I
must give others relational room to pray – I am not the mediator between God
and man, only Jesus Christ is our mediator. We can trust our Father to care for
our siblings; after all, we do not know the hearts of others.
On the other end of the
spectrum of difficulties and problems in communal prayer we have those who pray
preachy prayers and gossipy prayers – prayers in which the audience is not God
but man. Perhaps the best we can do here is to instruct communities in prayer
and to model it…and above all to be patient and longsuffering. We are not the
focus of prayer, we are not the conductors of the orchestra, our Father is well
able to accomplish His will within His family. Of course, for the sake of the
community we must be ready to gently counsel those who use communal prayer as a
speaking platform; our own attitudes and prayers will
do more to foster prayer in our life
together than anything else. Let us encourage others to find their voice in prayer and let us give them
plenty of room to express themselves and grow.
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