You’re in my prayers.
I say that often, and perhaps you do, too.
After all, when a friend is sick, or facing a challenge, suffering a loss – or anticipating a joy – I want to bring that need or hope to God, trusting that God’s resources are greater than our own, and can bring support and healing and grace to my friend beyond my own resources.
So many people are in my thoughts and prayers, so often.
And then there are the times when that seems like it can’t possibly be enough. That thought and prayer is wildly inadequate. When the complicated family situation seems impossible to solve. When the diagnosis is stark and bitter. When the longed-for joy seems impossible. When tragedy strikes and hits hard.
This week, for example.
I have several families, several friends, in tragic or unsolvable situations, on my heart already this month. I’m praying for the victims and survivors and community in Buffalo, and Laguna Beach...
And then the world just shatters all over again as 19 children and two teachers are murdered in Texas, their classmates and colleagues shot and wounded and traumatized, a community’s trust broken in multiple ways.
And even the most sincere, whole-hearted, soul deep prayers feel weak and inadequate.
And there are plenty of people who will tell you so.
Public figures condemning thoughts and prayers as hypocrisy, along with half of the users of social media. Survivors of previous gun massacres, grieving relatives, communities who have personally felt that loss, telling us that “thoughts and prayers” are almost an insult – certainly an insult if offered in place of action.
And it’s true that if our prayers don’t strengthen us to act, in any way we can, to relieve and prevent the suffering that prompts our prayers, it’s not enough.
Praying for a friend’s healing, for example, should help us notice ways to help – and then I’ll offer to pick up prescriptions, wash the dishes, spend half an hour on hold to help schedule a delivery of medical equipment for a friend who can’t sit up that long, take over a responsibility for a while, or just be present when things get lonely.
And as we pray for the victims and survivors of Uvalde this week, and Buffalo and Laguna Beach last week, and everywhere else all those other weeks, we should never let any option for action to protect current, future, or past victims of violence go undone. Never feel like we’ve exhausted our options to protect children once we have prayed that God would do something.
I know that for many of us, it feels like nothing we’ve tried to do works. I know that for many of us, anything we do do or say feels loaded with politics and danger. I know that some of us are exhausted and numb, and some of us are utterly broken by grief, last week, or this week, or every time.
If this were easy, we’d have solved it already, and we’d just be praying for nice weather this holiday weekend, and I’d be preaching a sermon about the curiosities of Paul and Silas’s adventures in Philippi.
Even if our actions so far haven’t ended violence, domestic terrorism, or gun massacres yet, we can still march, write, vote, or take up difficult conversations with people who disagree with us so that we can find common ground, and respect, and a way forward. We can still speak up, and act. And pray.
Because while we do all that, Jesus is praying for us.
This morning we listened to Jesus praying for his disciples. Praying that they share in his own glory, in the glory of God eternal, and that they may be one – united deeply and completely, the way Jesus himself is united with the whole fullness of God, while walking among us as one of us.
Jesus prays that his followers – you and I – may be one of God.
And not just for his followers gathered to listen then or now. Jesus prays also for everyone else, everyone who encounters Jesus, encounters God, through the word or action of one of those disciples.
That’s us – you and me, today – since we depend on the word, the stories, the actions of those who knew Jesus before we did – who wrote the gospels, who taught friends, who taught their friends…. And we are also hearing Jesus pray for those who will encounter Jesus through us, through your words and actions, and mine.
Jesus doesn’t pray without action, of course. All his actions – miracles of healing, the details and persistence of his teaching, the arguments he gets into and the ones he avoids, the ways he engages powerful and public figures, are related to his prayer that we will be more closely and gloriously united to God. All his prayer is part of his action of becoming one of us, so that we can become one of God.
That can be true for us, too. In many cases, the actions we take to help in healing or protection, or to keep someone else from feeling alone, especially when we act on things we know we cannot solve by ourselves – those actions are prayer. Are part of our expression of hope and trust and longing that God will bring the fullness of healing, protection, unity and transformation.
And our prayer is part of our action. I know that when I write a letter, run an errand, take a public stand, open a difficult conversation, I feel myself actively praying, inviting God into the action, to take it further than I ever can.
And I can do that, you can do that, we can do that – we can act and pray in the face of private disasters and public tragedies, act and pray for personal joys and universal transformation – because Jesus is praying for us – and for those who will be touched by our faithful action, and our prayer.
For the disciples gathered round a table with him before he died, for you and me, and for those who will meet Jesus through us, and through others, Jesus keeps praying. Praying that we will be united with each other, united with him. That we – you specifically, me specifically, will be one of God, as God has been one of us.
That unity which Jesus prays for doesn’t mean perfect agreement on all details. It means that when someone else is hurt, we hurt; when someone else is healed, we are healed; when we are joyful, when we lament, those who are one with us in God also rejoice and weep.
And when we are one with God, we may begin to see the world through God’s eyes – to see possibilities for transformation, for love, for glory, for healing and unity, that don’t seem real or reasonable from a human perspective. And that makes it possible for us to act, to live as though what touches one of us touches all of us, to act every day as if unity and transformation and glory not only can, but must be the everyday reality for the children of Uvalde, for shoppers in Buffalo, for survivors and bystanders and the leaders of this nation and your neighbors and yourself. For every one of God’s beloved children.
You are in my prayers, my friends.
In this week of tragedy, in the daily struggles and joys and hopes and challenges, the tragedies and the transformations that don’t make the news, in all your actions for hope and justice and healing, you are in my prayers.
But more than that, you are in Jesus’ prayers.
And so are all the people your life and prayers will touch.
And that changes everything.
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