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 January 21, 2008
Praying for Unity
by the Rev. Daniel J. Earheart-Brown, President
Memphis Theological Seminary
Theologians argued for much of the twentieth century about the purpose and efficacy of prayer. Does prayer change events in the world? Or does it merely change the people who pray? What good is prayer, in a world torn by wars and poverty and violence and disaster?
While some Christians use prayer as a means to “claim a blessing” from a God who lavishes prosperity on the faithful, others question the naiveté of devout Christians praying in their comfortable sanctuaries while the powers and principalities do their work of destroying the earth and its people. On the one hand, prayer is trivialized into a technique for gaining personal wealth. On the other, prayer is seen as an impotent waste of time.
For anyone who has been deeply involved in the modern ecumenical movement, it would not be hard to wonder whether all the prayers are worth the effort, when we seem scarcely closer to Christian unity today than we were at the opening of the twentieth century. Today, Christian divisions often focus around social and political views as much as denominational loyalties, and yet the divisions persist. In spite of those divisions, Christians continue to gather each January to pray the prayer Jesus prayed, that all who trust in him may be one.
In 2008, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity marks its centennial celebration. During the week, many Christians in the United States will also begin events around Martin Luther King Day commemorating the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis. Perhaps we Christians can learn something significant from Dr. King’s example for our work of fostering deeper and richer unity among all who share a common faith in Jesus Christ.
In Paul’s final admonition to the Christians of Thessalonica, he urges them to work and pray toward the coming Day of the Lord, the eschatological fulfillment of all God’s purposes for humankind. As with Jesus’ example, Paul’s recommended ethic makes no distinction between the importance of work and prayer. The two are deeply linked, mutually reinforcing activities: prayer for the coming reign of God, and work on behalf of that reign. Either one without the other would be incomplete. Those studied practitioners of Christian prayer have always found confirmed in their experience the truth of the Benedictine motto: “To pray is to work; to work is to pray.”
Perhaps because he was a product of liberal Protestant education, Dr. King never wrote much about prayer. His life was devoted to action, protest, organization, work for civil rights, human rights, an end to the Vietnam War, and in his later days, the campaign against poverty. He even warned against what he termed the “callous misuse of prayer” as a substitute for struggle against injustice.
“I am certain,” he wrote, “we need to pray for God’s help and guidance in this integration struggle, but we are gravely misled if we think the struggle will be won only by prayer.” This caution was a response to those who said the time is not right for integration. It was a rebuke to those who thought Dr. King and other “trouble makers” needed to go back home and pray and stop agitating. Dr. King knew that such an approach to the social ills of the day was not possible for any who would be faithful to the way of Jesus 1.
But such caution does not mean that Dr. King was not a man of prayer. After his death, Coretta Scott King, wrote that prayer was “a daily source of courage and strength” that gave Dr. King the courage to carry on in the struggle for human rights. Mrs. King retold the story of one particular time, in the midst of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when prayer played a pivotal role in her husband’s life.
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I remember one very difficult day when he came home bone-weary from the stress that came with his leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In the middle of that night, he was awakened by a threatening and abusive phone call, one of many we received throughout the movement. On this particular occasion, however, Martin had had enough.
After the call, he got up from bed and made himself some coffee. He began to worry about his family, and all of the burdens that came with our movement weighed heavily on his soul. With his head in his hands, Martin bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud to God: "Lord, I am taking a stand for what I believe is right. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I have nothing left. I have come to the point where I can't face it alone.
Later he told me, "At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. It seemed as though I could hear a voice saying: 'Stand up for righteousness; stand up for truth; and God will be at our side forever.'" When Martin stood up from the table, he was imbued with a new sense of confidence, and he was ready to face anything 2. |
The great marches of the American civil rights struggle were usually begun in a church, with hymns and prayers to God, for strength to endure the brutality and hatred marchers expected from those who clung to the segregationist past. The prayers and the work were mutually reinforcing, and set the movement within a larger context of divine history.
As we gather to pray for Christian unity, we do so knowing that such unity is still an elusive dream. Yet it is one we long for, struggle toward, pray for, confident that the promise of God will come to fulfillment. In the end, the unity we seek is not something accomplished by human effort, but a gift from the God who has claimed us in Jesus Christ. It is an eschatological reality into which we live, in spite of our brokenness and division. We can pray without ceasing because in faith we see the promised land of Christian unity, know that it will come to pass, and need God’s strength and courage to keep the faith.
In the end, authentic Christian prayer is neither a means of manipulating God, nor is it withdrawal from the hard work before us. In prayer, we place ourselves and our work in the context of God’s purposes, and in so doing, we receive strength for the journey toward true Christian unity. And so we pray without ceasing, we pray with conviction, we pray together, that God’s reign may come, God’s will be done, on earth, in us, through us, in spite of us, even as it is done in heaven. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
1. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 122.
2. Coretta Scott King, Foreward, Standing in the Need of Prayer (New York: The Free Press, 2003).
(Dr. Earheart-Brown is President of Memphis
Theological Seminary. He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree
from Bethel College. He continued his studies for a Master
of Divinity from Memphis Theological Seminary and later received
a Ph.D., Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. In addition
to his duties as seminary president he also serves as Professor
of Theology).
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