Madre's Missives

Inadvertent and Occasionally Intentional Thoughts

Can I Pray for You?

Posted On: January 20th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

"This is probably a little unprofessional, but I've been working on this prayer for a really long time and, well... would you mind if I prayed it for you?"

I smiled and bowed my head, not sure what to expect. We had already established in conversation that the waiter was a Lutheran, and he had already asked repeatedly to pray with my friends and I who were out to lunch. It would've been rude to say no at this point.

As I sat, staring at the remaining bit of crust from the really tasty shrimp BLT I had for lunch, the blond-haired, blue-eyed waiter from Wisconsin transformed into a beat-boxing booty-shaking boy from the 'hood.

I don't even remember most of the content of his "prayer." Truthfully, I was too busy concentrating on not making any strange faces at the absurdity of the situation. He was actually performing his "prayer" like he was on stage. When he was done, I honestly didn't know if I was supposed to say "Amen" or applaud.

This event exemplifies a larger problem - worship as performance. Lutherans are a strange group, in that we believe the highest form of worship is to receive gifts from God. Nearly all other Christians understand worship as primarily our giving gifts to God . Not only was this post-lunchtime prayer a performance presumably for God, it was a performance for us to enjoy like a concert.

A pastor of mine once taught me that Christians pray because we know from Whom all good gifts come. That's really profound. According to the Small Catechism, we know that in Christ we have a God who "...would thereby tenderly urge us to believe that He is our true Father, and that we are His true children, so that we may ask Him confidently with all assurance, as dear children ask their dear father."

We pray because we can, and because we have a Father who can't wait to give us good gifts. He hasn't kept any good thing from us and has even given the life of His own Son for our sakes. He doesn't need our prayers to know what's going on in our lives, our fears, our joys, our needs, etc. He's God and knows all that stuff already. He knows far better than we could possibly imagine what we truly need even without our prayer, but because He's our Father, we can ask for the things we think we need too.

And if we're going to perform a little ditty for our friends and family and random strangers at a restaurant, we should just call it that and not put some sort of spiritual veneer over it, pretending it's a prayer.

Edited on: January 20th, 2008 10:47 pm