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Praying for the Impossible
John 17: 20 – 26 |
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Summary
Praying for the Impossible The names some churches bear hint at a story. That’s especially the case for those that have the word “New” in their name, such as New Hope, New Beginnings, New Covenant, New Life, New Blessing, New Horizons. While “new” seems to imply something bright and shiny, it often means that in reality, something older has been left behind. As one person put it, “Whenever you see a church named New Hope, there’s an old hope out there somewhere.” In other words, some of those congregations started because of a split or disagreement in another congregation. It is also a fact that most denominations started as a break-off from another Christian group. These congregational and denominational splits highlight the seemingly impossible nature of Jesus’ prayer request right before his betrayal and arrest. Jesus prays to the Father that not only his immediate disciples, but also all who would come to believe in him, “may all be one.” In fact, not just one in a sort of “we’re all in this together” way, but one in the way Jesus and the Father are one. And the purpose of this oneness is not for camaraderie, but that the rest of the world may know that Jesus was sent by God and may come to believe as well. From what we know about the history of the original apostles they all spent the rest of their lives spreading the Gospel, they probably came as close to oneness as any Christians since. Given the assortment of denominations and independent or non-denominational congregations the church has broken into since it is pretty clear that what Jesus prayed for the night before he was crucified has not come true across the body of Christian believers. So that leads us to ask whether Jesus expected his prayer to be fulfilled. Jesus had a divine perspective, but even as a human being, Jesus had an acute understanding of what makes people tick and was exactly right on in his diagnosis of the human condition. So, it is hard to imagine that Jesus thought the church would march on smoothly as one unbroken line of unity after his ascension. Yet here in these verses he prays to the Father that “they may be one, as we are one.” The impossible And that leads to the broader question: Should we pray for the impossible? Now let me explain what I mean by “the impossible.” We hear people talk about God doing the impossible in their lives as an answer to prayer, but when we look at the details, we see that they are talking about something that was unlikely to occur, not something impossible. For example, I read the testimony of a woman whose son had to have back surgery, but he also wanted to play football. To her, that seemed impossible, so she prayed about it and encouraged her son to pray as well. Eventually, after the surgery, he was strong enough and had recovered enough to play football. As far as that mother was concerned, that was God answering a prayer for the impossible. She published her testimony on the Web, and even titled it “Praying for the impossible: Don’t give up!” I also found a book titled Praying for the Impossible, and in it, the author tells a story from his own life about needing money for his Bible publishing business, more money than the bank was willing to loan him. And so he prayed about it, and circumstances worked out that he got the needed funds. Both of those are good things, and were answers to prayer, but I don’t know that they were impossible things. Young people do recover from surgery, and some recover strongly. People do find sources of funds beyond the banking industry. In both of those situations, the eventual outcomes may have seemed unlikely, but I don’t know that they were impossible. What I’m talking about are outcomes that are beyond the realm of reality as we know it. When, in the history of Christianity, have we ever all been on the same page? I have to confess, a lot of times I think about impossibility when, I pray for peace in this world. Every time I do, there is this little voice inside of me that says, “Yeah, right that is not going to happen, not in this world. It never has and never will.” How about your prayers? Do you ever pray for what you really would like to see happen but know it never will? Why? Or, do you simply pray only for the things that you believe are possible? What God wants One of the reasons that we are sometimes urged to pray for what seems impossible is because those prayers stretch us and put before us the things that we should work on as people of faith. In that way of thinking, we should pray for world peace because it reminds us that even if complete world peace is not possible, there are still some conflicts that may be able to be headed off because someone was motivated enough to look for peaceful resolutions. We could even think of such prayers as like those of Martin Luther King Jr.’s great “I have a dream” speech that set out goals for bringing equal treatment and opportunity for everyone, regardless of their race. I doubt that even the most optimistic observer would say that everything King talked about in the speech has become a reality, but more of it has than probably anybody ever expected at the time, and the speech was an event that helped to bring about that change. But because we are talking about prayer, about communicating and fellowshipping with God, it is honestly not enough to think of prayer as simply setting out our goals for humankind, no matter how noble and even Christian those goals may be. Our prayers are addressed to God, and so it should be more about what God wants than about what we want. And in that regard, it is helpful to remember that as people who follow Jesus, we have a leader who talked about impossibilities, and that should make us question our assumptions about what things are, in fact, impossible. There is the incident in Matthew where the disciples of Jesus were unable to cure a boy with epilepsy, and so Jesus healed him. Afterward, the disciples asked Jesus why they had been unable to do it, and Jesus said, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” We need to be careful, however, what conclusions we draw from what Jesus said on that occasion. The conclusion that seems to jump out is that the reason the things we pray for don’t happen is because we don’t have enough faith, that we have even less faith than a mustard seed. A better conclusion, however, is that faith is not the power that accomplishes miracles, God is. And, as one biblical commentator points out, in Matthew, faith “is always not a quality of the one praying, but a relationship of practical trust with the one to whom the prayer is offered.” So if we believe God is all-powerful, praying for the impossible makes sense only if we also believe that God wants things to be different than they are. We cannot by ourselves bring about world peace, end racial discrimination and make all Christians one as Jesus and the Father are one. We may be able to accomplish some small parts of those things, but only God can make them happen in any kind of complete way. Mustard-seed faith What we do know, however, is this: In praying for everyone who follows him to be united and to be one, Jesus asked for the seemingly impossible. When he taught his disciples the prayer we call “The Lord’s Prayer,” he included the petition, “Thy will be done,” which is another seemingly impossible thing when applied to the population as a whole. If Jesus prayed for the impossible, is there then any reason that we who follow him should not? Is not the act of praying for the impossible an expression of that mustard-seed faith that Jesus said was crucial? Is it not, in the end, a way of saying that we believe that whatever happens, ultimately we are in the loving hands of God? You see, if we believe that possibilities are limited and that boundaries are set, then praying for the impossible makes no sense. At minimum it is wasted effort, but even more, it is evidence of how ridiculous we are. But if we believe in God and in his power, his love and his goodness then our prayer may be in cooperation with his will. It may even be that our prayer, which is a new element in the situation, will be part of the means by which God’s will is done. |
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