The Case For Spiritual PTO

a sermon on John the Baptist, Prayer and wishing I'd mentioned Powerball

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” - John 11

Sermon starts at 22:20 - click above to watch or listen…preaching is a spoken act and so much of the meaning comes in the hearing of it.

The Treasury

Over the last two weeks as I sat in worship here at the cathedral, I heard my name read during the intercessions for the sick. I hadn’t know I was on your prayer list and it was quite touching to hear my name and I just want to thank you for that.

I am still recovering, But early detection and treatment is a modern day miracle so I have an excellent prognosis, for which I am deeply grateful. I promise I’m ok.

Earlier this year I could not have even vaguely imagined what these last 5 months of my life ended up looking like…This past Summer I believed myself to be in perfect health and in fact, as some of you know, I was on tour and hosted big events in 21 different states across the country before having to cancel them for health reasons.

And here’s the crazy thing about that: all year long, at each of these religious revivals, my preaching included the following words: “At some point we all will have the stones of our own temples quietly crumble beneath us. There will be times when everything in our lives goes from hashtag blessed to hashtag screwed. Maybe there are some here tonight who are silently managing a cancer diagnosis, or bankruptcy, or divorce and the ground on which you stand has gone from solid to shaky.”

Honest to God, for months I said those exact words at every revival I hosted until August when I got my own diagnosis I thought… why didn’t I say “Maybe some here tonight are silently managing having won PowerBall”!! What a missed opportunity.

Recently a friend asked me a question I was not prepared for. Namely, what my experience of God felt like over the last several months, and without even giving it a thought I said, “Honestly…like, non-existent” and then I thought some more and added …”and yet also ever-present”.

It’s a lot of pressure - being a so called spiritual leader who just went through a medically induced automated car wash of the soul. The great mystics all seem to have had something terribly wrong with their bodies, physical suffering has produced some pretty great wisdom over the years. But I guess my own experience was too brief and not acute enough to have opened some sort of portal to the divine. So, I wish I could say that I have emerged from this with an inspiring message from The Almighty. But honestly I only prayed a few times and only then because I realized I hadn’t even thought about God for days and I felt bad about it. So, sorry, but no stone tablets or visions of the seventh heaven here.

But over the last week, as I meditated on our Gospel reading for today, I became less bothered by my own uninspiringly bland faith during illness.

Because today when we meet John the Baptist, he isn’t raving about repentance. He’s sitting in a cold jail cell with nothing but disappointment and his own dark thoughts for company. Gone are the sold out crowds at the Jordon. The wild‑eyed prophet preparing the way of the Lord seems nowhere in sight.

In fact, from his prison cell, John the Baptist does not incite a revolt. He does not preach. He does not sing like Paul and Silas. He does what many of us do.

He gets twitchy.

He takes his current circumstance and extrapolates an entire story about it. So much so that the very guy it was foretold would prepare the way of the Lord, sends his guys to go ask Jesus “are you the Lord?”

I cannot tell you what comfort this brings me.

Because I don’t think John is doubting Jesus because John has weak moral character. He’s not weak, he’s just alone and suffering and time has slowed down enough for his thoughts to get cruel, that’s all.

He’s just doubting because when life take a devastating turn, nothing makes sense anymore and so we try and force it to by coming up with our own twisted conclusions.

Look, I wish to God I understood the distributed math of human suffering, why it’s not ever really doled out in equal measure or with any kind of fairness. All I know is that none of us get out unscathed. And I’m not trying to be a bummer during Advent, but if you’re not in a time of trouble, one is coming or one has just ended. I’m so sorry about that, I just respect you too much to pretend otherwise.

And when troubles come, there’s very little point in trying to make the math of it all work out in our heads. It’s not a solvable problem. It’s just the reality we live in.

And some of us, when in the dark night of our own souls, do find our prayer strengthened, and our faith revived, and our peace increased.

But others are the opposite. In the midst of our struggles our faith sort of goes sour or just goes AWOL.

And while that difference is interesting, it is not actually of great importance.

I mean, I know it feels important if you’re like, “mad at God” or have “lost your faith” and can’t manage to pray, but just know it represents a zero sum loss to faith itself… sometimes we all need others to pray for us—and not only pray on our behalf, but also in our stead.

Because the spiritual physics of it is this: when your ability to believe evaporates, it just collects above and rains back down in the prayers of others. The total amount of faith in the world is sort of like the total amount of water on the planet: there is the same amount there has always been. If Earth’s gravity wasn’t holding it all down, the oceans would have drifted off into space long ago.

Which is why I’d like to argue that John the Baptist, in his inability to muster up faith sufficient enough to overcome his circumstances in prison, was still preparing the way of the Lord. He was making the path straight for the Lord to send help. Because even the greatest among us, when isolated and suffering can became an unreliable narrator.

It’s important to notice that Jesus doesn’t shame him for his doubts, nor does Jesus spiritually bypass John’s despair by offering him some sort of positive vibes only nonsense.

Jesus just sends messengers to tell John what they see and hear. Even John the Baptist, in his own bleak midwinter of the soul, needed the faith others.

Martin Luther called this the mutual consolation of the saints.

I wonder if this is maybe what Jesus was up to all along when he called us his friends. He was using a sort of gravity to bind us to himself—and to one another, binding us even to those we have never met because he knew we were gonna have to take turns at this faith thing.

In John 16 when praying for his disciples, Jesus said “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one”.

In other words, we are on Jesus’ prayer list.

So, friends of Jesus - maybe we are all carried in this life and into the next by the faith and prayers of others.

And so, yes I am grateful for your prayers, but I’m also convinced that one cannot feather one’s own spiritual nest simply because a prayer bear one’s name. Prayer is not a popularity contest and whoever gets the most wins the prize of having them answered.

Jesus’ prayer on our behalf, and all the prayers we and everyone else throughout time have added to his—even when they name a particular person—belong also to those who have no one praying for them. I believe this is God’s prayer economy. Think less: an individual savings account and more: treasury.

Because somehow, somehow, our prayers are stitched together by the hands of God in order to hold this world up even when our own walls silently feel like they are closing in.

And every word of it is needed.

Especially today when we are more isolated than ever, while also having all the worst news delivered to us twenty-four hours a day. It’s easy to start believing that whatever I am experiencing right now, or whatever the glowing screen in my hand is telling me about the world right now—is the whole world. So maybe we all could use some messengers to tell us otherwise.

So in these last days of Advent, the nights are getting darker and the light from those glowing screens we hold in our hands are trying even harder to convince us everything is horrible, we don’t need each other, and that “thoughts and prayers” are a joke. And you might be tempted to start coming up with your own conclusions.

Don’t fall for it.

Any prayer we can muster for other people matters. So make up your own or recite the old ones. Speak a name, light a candle, send a blessing. And trust that God will gather them up and make the very best use of them because the world needs it, I need it, those who have no one to pray for them need it. And if you cannot pray, know that you are covered by spiritual PTO because we belong to each other and Jesus’ own prayers are still raining down and I promise it is enough for us all. Amen.