Eavesdropping: Learning to pray from those who talked to Jesus by Henry Martin (sample)

E AVESDROPPING Learning to pray from those who talked to Jesus

HENRY MARTIN

First published in 2019 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd 1 Spencer Court 140–142 Wandsworth High Street London SW18 4JJ © 2019 Henry Martin The right of Henry Martin to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover image: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Flower and Starlit Sky, 1895, gouache on paper, Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation, Mänttä, Finland.

Photograph: Studio Tomi Aho. ISBN 978-0-232-53389-7 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Designed and produced by Judy Linard Printed and bound in Great Britain by Short Run Press Ltd, Exeter

For David Thomas

Contents

Preface

13

Shrove Tuesday and the introduction to this book

‘They have no more wine.’ John 2:2

15

PART ONE – ‘This is so much more than we imagined.’

Ash Wednesday ‘Lord, teach us how to pray, as John taught

23

his disciples.’ Luke 11:1

Thursday

‘There is a boy who has five barley loaves and 28 two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ John 6:9

Friday

‘It is a ghost!’ Matthew 14:26

32

Saturday

‘Lord, save me!’ Matthew 14:30

36

The First Sunday ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ 40 in Lent Mark 5:28 Monday

Tuesday

‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher 44 any further?’ Mark 5:35 ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when 48 the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’

John 5:7

7

Eavesdropping

Wednesday

‘My teacher, let me see again.’ Mark 10:51

Thursday

‘Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.’ 57 Luke 5:12

Friday

52

‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son 61 of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.’ Luke 8:28

Saturday

‘Thank you!’ Luke 17:16

66

The Second Sunday ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living 70 in Lent God.’ Matthew 16:16 Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

‘He is worthy of having you do this for him, 74 for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.’ Luke 7:4 ‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not 78 worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.’

Luke 7:6-7

‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the 82 children’s crumbs.’ Mark 7:28

Thursday

‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ Mark 9:24

Friday

‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the 90 words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’ John 6:68-69

8

86

Contents

PART TWO – ‘This is not what we came here for.’

Saturday

‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful 97 man!’ Luke 5:8

The Third Sunday ‘Teacher, what must I do to inherit 100 in Lent eternal life?’ Luke 10:25 Monday

‘And who is my neighbour?’ Luke 10:29

Tuesday

‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.’ 109 Matthew 12:38

Wednesday

Thursday

‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ Luke 12:13

104

113

‘Lord do you not care that my sister has left 117 me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ Luke 10:40

Friday

‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ Luke 9:56 122

Saturday

‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very 127 act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women.

Now what do you say?’ John 8:4

The Fourth Sunday ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are in Lent – standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’

Mothering Sunday Matthew 12:47

131

PART THREE – More Questions Monday

‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but 137 your disciples do not fast?’ Matthew 9:14

9

Eavesdropping

Tuesday

Wednesday

‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, 142 that he was born blind?’ John 9:2 ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins 146 against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Matthew 18:21

Thursday

‘What must we do to perform the works of 152 God?’ John 6:28

Friday

Saturday

‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for 157 any cause?’ Matthew 19:3 ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s 160 brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children; and the second married the widow and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be?

For the seven had married her.’ Mark 12:19-23

PART FOUR – On the Road to Jerusalem

The Fifth Sunday ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants 167 of Lent (Passion to kill you.’ Luke 13:31 Sunday) Monday

‘Teacher we want you to do whatever we ask 171 of you.’ Mark 10:35

Tuesday

‘God forbid, Lord this must never happen to 175 you!’ Matthew 16:22

10

Contents

Wednesday

‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the 179 sign of your coming and of the end of the age.’

Matthew 24:3

Thursday

‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come 183 down from heaven and consume them?’ Luke 9:54

Friday

‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ John 11:3

Saturday

‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would 192 not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’

John 11:21-22

187

PART FIVE – Holy Week and Easter Palm Sunday

‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’

Luke 19:39

199

Monday in Holy Week

‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what 205 large buildings!’ Mark 13:1

Tuesday in Holy ‘Why was the ointment wasted in this way? 210 Week

For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.’ Mark 14:4-5

Wednesday in Holy Week

‘Even though all become deserters, I will not.’ 215 Mark 14:29

Maundy Thursday ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’

220

John 13:6

Good Friday

‘You who would destroy he temple and build it 224 in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’ Matthew 27:40

11

Eavesdropping

Holy Saturday

‘Jesus, remember me when you come into 229 your kingdom.’ Luke 23:42

Easter Sunday

‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me 233

where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ John 20:15

Monday in Easter Week

‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who 237 does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ Luke 24:18

Acknowledgements

240

12

Preface

‘Lord I believe, help my unbelief!’ is something we might say when praying. We know that it is not original. Someone else said it long before we were born. We picked it up, while eavesdropping on a conversation in the Gospels. This is a line from a worried dad speaking to Jesus, who responded by healing his son. It delighted Jesus then, so we adopt and adapt it for our own needs, as we pray now.

Every day in Lent this book eavesdrops on a different 2000-year-old conversation asking what can be gleaned from then, which might enrich our praying now. Each chapter begins with words said to Jesus; a question, a comment, a demand, an instruction or even an insult. Some were well received, others not so. We consider Jesus’ responses then and return to the present by asking, ‘How does this help us with prayer today?’

In some cases, I have included an exercise, but only where this seemed natural.

All Bible quotations come from the NRSV (Anglicised version).

13

Shrove Tuesday and the introduction to this book ‘They have no more wine.’ John 2:2

I know that Lent books should begin tomorrow on Ash Wednesday, but somehow a story about an abundance of rich wine seemed better suited to Shrove Tuesday. Many people will be planning to give up some treat or other for Lent, and if that is you, a story about an unexpected gift of delicious wine, might not be the thing for Day 1 of your fast.

This book will not help with fasting. It offers no advice on what not to consume, in the run up to Easter. Lent for me is this simple, it is a season for us to draw closer to God. The important questions are, ‘Who is God?’ and then, ‘Why and how do we pray?’ If we need more time for God, we can stop doing something, but ‘What should I give up for Lent?’ is very much a secondary question. Lent is primarily for us to be with God a bit more than usual. If wine hinders this, give up wine. If social media drains all your spare time, switch it off until after Easter… you know best what distracts you the most. And be creative. I heard of people using Lent to switch to Fairtrade food. One friend sent 40 handwritten postcards, renewing contact and sending love. Another lived on the minimum wage from the start of Lent until Easter. I love these kinds of disciplines, because they meet the purpose of Lent. They lead to a greater awareness of God’s love in our world.

I recently had a pre-Lent chat with a younger man. I

15

Eavesdropping witnessed a revelation dawning upon him. His eyes lit up. He smiled and said, ‘I see what you’re saying to me. You’re telling me I need to do a food fast for forty days! And you know what?

I’m totally going for it and I’m going to do it.’ My heart sank, as this was exactly what I was trying to steer him away from. For him Lent had suddenly become a Tough Mudder/Iron Man for the soul endurance challenge. And at the end he would have an Achievement-To-Be-Proud-Of. This is fine and has a place, but it is not the point of Lent. My young friend will now be focusing on himself, how he is coping, how far he still has to go and how much respect he is earning from his onlookers.

If he succeeds I will be genuinely fascinated to find out, if his titanic efforts have deepened his relationship with God. By contrast Mary, the mother of Jesus, seems quite content with a far less ambitious achievement. She is at a wedding. Her role is to be a small, but vital cog in a much larger machine. She sees a situation, she tells her son, she leaves the rest to him.

The wedding is in the town of Cana in Galilee and this is around about the time when Jesus is preparing to make himself known to the world. The wedding is going well, for the moment, but a disaster is looming. Either more wedding guests than expected turn up, or they are far thirstier than the drink budget predicted. Whatever the reason, the wine is about to run out. The steward, who is responsible for avoiding exactly this sort of thing, is doomed. From this day forwards he will always be the guy who ruined the wedding. Who will ever forget this party? They will say, ‘Which party?’

‘You know, that party, the one that ran dry.’

‘Oh, that one!’

And, to the families’ enduring shame, this is how their children’s wedding will stick in local folklore.

Mary notices. She appreciates the implications, both for the steward and for the couple. She goes to Jesus and simply says to him, ‘They have no more wine.’

16

Shrove Tuesday and the introduction to this book This book is going to eavesdrop on many comments and questions like this, hearing how people spoke to Jesus and how he responded. Some requests delighted him, others did not.

Some he answered willingly, some unexpectedly and to some he gave a plain ‘no’. Of course, things have changed. The soles of Jesus’ feet are no longer treading this soil, so we cannot see, hear and touch him, as the people in these stories could. He has died, he is risen and ascended. But he is the same person, and my plan is that this eavesdropping, on their exchanges then, will help us as we speak with him now.

So back to Cana. Mary simply brings a problem to Jesus and then leaves it with him. She offers no solutions, nor asks him to do anything. Her job is to alert Jesus and then trust that whatever he does next will be good. She is not deterred by his rather abrupt reply (‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come’), and she goes straight to the servants and says to them, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Soon the party is awash with new wine and the steward is astonished, because this wine is far better than the supposedly good stuff that he had served at the start.

So how does this help us with prayer?

Praying is often far more simple than we make it. We can babble away with lots of words when just a few well-chosen ones would do. I grew up in prayer groups that had a lot of the ‘Father, Father, we just really, want to really, just ask you, Father, Father …’ type of prayers. I was used to torrents of words, few of them premeditated and all guaranteed to fill any awkward silences. My first encounter with this ‘prayer’ of Mary came as both revelation and challenge. Could prayer really be so simple? And were our many words a substitute for trust, trust that God was already listening? Maybe God does not need a clamour to catch his attention.

‘Our solutions’ could damage our praying. Sometimes we bring not only our problem to God, but also some quite specific

17

Eavesdropping directions for him, on his best way to proceed. Mary does not fall into this trap. She sees. She tells Jesus. She leaves the rest to him. We might think she would need to do something larger, more dramatic in the face of this crisis. Mary plays her small role to perfection and does not embellish it with her own solutions. She could have taken charge and ordered her son to nip out and find more wine from whichever shops were open. That would be both sensible and practical, but Mary already knows her son’s ability to think outside the box. She sees. She tells him. She trusts him. On this occasion, it is that simple. Clearly, we are missing a catalogue of unwritten stories that gave her this trust in his creativity. We miss out further when we are too prescriptive with our solutions. God is free to answer us in ways far beyond our imagining. If we are so fixed just on our one outcome we might fail to notice that God is answering our prayer, but in a way far beyond our imagining.

If offering God solutions to problems is a key part of our praying, we might not pray at all in some truly awful situations.

If we can see no way forward, we might feel we have nothing to say. When I first saw the Separation Wall around Bethlehem I found myself stumped for prayers. I could not take in the enormity of this structure, in both its brutal physicality and its impact on the town’s inhabitants. My head was already swimming with all I was learning about the ongoing situation.

In truth, ‘drowning’ would be a more accurate word than ‘swimming’. Eventually I realised that I was not praying, and some honest reflection revealed why I was holding back; I could see no solution and had therefore decided I could not pray. Mary’s ‘praying’ helped and I adapted her words, ‘God, there is an ugly wall here.’ These small words seemed totally inadequate. Many more words will need to be said and prayed about this wall and all that it symbolises, but for me, I had found my start.

The worst prayers are those we never pray. Mary could have ignored the situation around her. She could have stood

18

Shrove Tuesday and the introduction to this book back and watched the wine run out and the disaster unfold.

It was, after all, someone else’s problem and not hers. But she intervenes, not for personal gain, but because she sees others at risk, the steward, the bride, the groom and their families and all who would be shamed by a party that ran dry.

The God we pray to is the joy-giver and not a kill-joy. His son averts a disaster. He brings a lavish gift of rich wine. He sets the steward free from anxiety. On this day, he saves both those who are aware of his acts and those who are not.

An exercise Try praying today by simply telling God what you see, however big or small. Resist the urge to offer any suggestions or solutions about God’s next best course of action and try to keep each prayer to a single sentence, just as Mary did when she said to Jesus, ‘They have no more wine.’

‘God there’s an ambulance struggling through the traffic.’

‘My friend needs a new home.’

‘There is a war that seems to have no end.’

‘He really hates his job.’

‘There is not enough to go around.’

Keep your observations simple and keep your eyes and ears open for whatever God might do next.

19

PART ONE ‘This is so much more than we imagined.’

Ash Wednesday ‘Lord, teach us how to pray, as John taught his disciples.’

Luke 11:1

I never liked the song ‘From a Distance’, not even when Bette Midler released her version of it in 1990. I think it is the insistence that God is always watching us, but only, well, as the title says, from a distance. I preferred Joan Osborne’s 1995 song, ‘One of Us’, asking how it would be if God were human, like you and me and what on earth that would look like. She imagines a face-to-face encounter with God and challenges us as to what our question to God would be, if we were allowed only one.

The disciples of Jesus have the opportunity to ask him as many questions as they want. Some of his answers blow their minds or reveal things they would rather keep hidden. Often, they blather away about trivial matters, as if they are unaware who stands before them. And then at other times they ask the kind of thing that we might, if we knew we could only have one question.

On this day, they are near to Jesus while he prays and when he finishes, they approach him and say, ‘Lord, teach us how to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ Jesus replies not with a lecture course, a reading list, a parable or even a series of exercises.

He simply gives them the perfect prayer, which in turn they have handed on to us as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. I wonder if they recognise, in that moment, the enormity of the gift they are receiving or whether it takes them a while to appreciate how Jesus’ answer is so much more than they hoped for.

23

Eavesdropping This could be a very short book. The disciples want to know about speaking to God. They ask Jesus. Jesus gives them the perfect answer. He teaches them a prayer that, with a few simple brushstrokes, paints an astonishing picture of how things can be between us and God. This is the essence of everything we need to say to God. There are breakfast bars that purport to contain in a couple of bites all we need to keep us going for the whole morning. The marketing spin is as sugar-coated as the product is sugar-saturated. In contrast, Jesus’ prayer really does offer us all we need, a way of bringing ourselves completely to God in one small prayer.

God according to Jesus is a loving parent, to be honoured and closely trusted. This is where Bette Midler loses it for me.

In her song, God views the world as a perfect blue green planet, but he is too far away to see the guns, bombs and disease. We can see them, because we are here on the ground. But God is comfortable with his distance and he enjoys a sanitized view of harmony, eagles and love. This is not how Jesus speaks of God. He teaches his disciples that God is intimately involved, he is ‘Dad’, ‘Abba’, building his Kingdom right here among us on earth. He provides for us, pardons, teaches, guides and protects us. And the disciples come to believe that Jesus is, God with us, ‘one of us’.

It is also good to see what Jesus does not say in his lesson on prayer. He makes no mention of location, times of day, frequency, mind-set or posture. In childhood the answer to the question, ‘How do I pray?’ was, ‘Before you go to sleep, you have to kneel down by your bed, bow your head, and place the palms of your hands together,’ We might even be shown Dürer’s famous painting of praying hands. Young George Arthur had clearly been taught that this was the way to say his prayers. He is the timid new schoolboy entrusted to Tom Brown’s care in Tom Brown’s Schooldays. On his first night in a public school dormitory, he asks permission to wash his face and then changes with great hesitation into his nightgown. The

24

Ash Wednesday dormitory is a noisy awkward place, but George Arthur knows that he has a duty to perform.

‘It was a trying moment for the poor little lonely boy; however, this time he didn’t ask Tom what he might or might not do, but dropped on his knees by his bedside, as he had done every day from his childhood, to open his heart to Him who heareth the cry and beareth the sorrows of the tender child, and the strong man in agony.’ 1 Not surprisingly there are some in the dormitory who find this demonstration of piety amusing and the one who sneers the loudest gets Tom Brown’s boot thrown into his face. This makes for a sweet moral story about the duty of older boys to protect the vulnerable, but I cannot help but feel that George Arthur had been over-instructed in his lessons on prayer. No one could deny his courage, but this story tells us more about nineteenth-century British society than it does about how we speak to God. Certain key points, not found in Jesus’ lesson, clearly have been drummed into young George Arthur.

I needed chapter and verse on this story, so I typed, ‘Tom Brown - Prayer’ and Google offered up an article called, ‘How to Get Your Prayers Answered, by Tom Brown’. A modern-day Pastor Tom gives guidance on the best ways get the answers we need from our prayers. He has a list, the first being that we should find the correct scriptural verse to support our request.

Then we must be very specific in our request, making sure we ask and believe that the thing we want is on its way. Thirdly, we should thank God before it arrives, as a mark of faith. And finally, he encourages us to be entirely positive, shielding our minds from all negative thoughts about the outcome of our prayer. There is quite some distance here from the lesson Jesus gives to his disciples. Jesus teaches that God is paramount and God’s will and God’s kingdom are to be sought before our own. This is not about us getting the right deal for ourselves 1

Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes, Part 2, Chapter 1

25

Eavesdropping by following a prescribed formula, which, if said correctly, will twist God’s arm into acceding to our requests.

I once walked to the home of an inspirational woman. She was dependent on her wheelchair for even the most routine of household tasks. Her courage and determination floored me. However, as we sat drinking tea in her specially-adapted bungalow, I started to feel uneasy. She told me that she was, in fact, already healed. My eyebrows must have twitched or maybe she was already anticipating my reaction. She launched into a fuller explanation about how God had already given her full healing and mobility, but the problem was that she had not truly received this gift, and this was because she did not fully believe. Once she sorted out her own faith issues, she would become ‘normal’ as God intended her to be. I did not know what to say. I have, pretty much, taken walking for granted and as such I realised I was not best placed to instruct her on how to interpret her experiences (at least not on our first meeting). We prayed together, and she asked for God’s blessing to fall on me. As I made my way home I recognised a welt of anger growing within me at the additional burden that had been added to her. She had been taught that her faith was somehow inadequate and that for some bizarre motive she was withholding from herself, God’s generous healing.

Why God heals some and not others, remains a profound mystery to me, however I feel certain that this woman has no need of self-reproach for the quality of her faith. She could instead question those who were teaching her about prayer and healing.

Jesus does not insist that his disciples come to prayer with an entirely positive frame of mind. He teaches no procedure or posture or mental state that will guarantee our desired outcome when we pray. He gives us the Lord’s Prayer, which teaches us to trust God for all that we need (but not necessarily all we want) and that God’s will is to be sought over all else.

26

Ash Wednesday

So how does this help us with prayer?

Prayer is something we can learn. We will never learn everything there is to know. The act of praying is almost as mysterious as the God who we meet in prayer. Apart from Jesus himself, there are no experts in this art. There are only learners and some with a bit more experience than others. Those green L-plates, that new drivers display, are something we should wear as we pray, knowing that we will never shed them, because we will always be beginners, at least in this lifetime.

Prayer can be taught. And we have the same teacher that the disciples had. If prayer is hard going, fruitless, dry or seems pointless, ask for guidance. There are people around us who can help, or we can borrow the disciple’s words and ask God directly, ‘Lord, teach us how to pray.’

If we can think of nothing else to say to God, the Lord’s Prayer is our fall back. When my praying is stuck, I will try to say this one prayer each day. And if that is all I manage, then it is enough.

This book is not a quest to sift through everything said to Jesus in the hope of distilling a perfect prayer blueprint and so guarantee we get the exact answer we want. There are numerous sites on the internet that will do this for us, if that is what we want to hear. Some are well-meaning, and others are just utter bilge. As we go through Lent we will eavesdrop on many requests and statements made to Jesus. Some of these are well worth mimicking or at least lend themselves to adaption for our own needs, but there is no magic formula. There is no one way of praying which presses some red button that God must answer. A disciple says, ‘Teach us how to pray,’ and Jesus answers by revealing the most succinct, rich and enduring prayer in history.

27

Thursday ‘There is a boy who has five barley loaves and two fish.

But what are they among so many people?’ John 6:9

There is a cartoon of a solitary figure standing on a hill shaking his fist in frustration. He shouts at God, who is hidden in the clouds. In one large speech bubble, he lists the wrongs of the world, famines, climate change, inequality, waste, greed and so on ending with the impassioned plea, ‘WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING!’. And God answers by simply tweaking the pointy bit of the speech bubble so that it is now coming from within the clouds and everything said is now repeated back to the figure on the hill, verbatim.

A toddler sitting in a mess of paper, glue, crayons, glitter, stickers and plastic toys might try saying, ‘Mummy, clean it up!’ at which point Mummy will empower her child to realise their own ability to engage in creative problem solving and say, ‘No, we can clean it up together - any ideas where we should start?’

Shrove Tuesday’s request involved a situation that was beyond Mary’s power to resolve. Today’s request looks similar in that the disciples face a problem whose solution lies beyond their resources. They look out and see five thousand people who will soon be hungry. They cannot help. Even if there were shops nearby they would not have the money to buy enough food. The need is so great and clearly beyond human help.

Therefore, it is down to God to intervene. Surely?

Our ‘prayer’ today comes from Andrew. But Jesus has already asked Philip for ideas about how to feed the crowd.

28

Thursday He clearly expects his disciples to do something. Philip does the maths and despairs. Andrew, for want of anything better, offers what is to hand, but his hopes are not high. He says, ‘There is a boy who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ Jesus takes this picnic, gives thanks to God, sends it out into the crowd and soon there is food enough for everyone.

The first version I learnt of this story followed a fairly male line of interpretation. Not all males, but certainly many, believe in the ‘miracle of the socks’. This miracle happens on a daily basis and is too commonplace to attract much attention. This is how it works. Dirty socks left on the bedroom floor, by some mysterious process, vanish and reappear, laundered, paired and warmly folded in the correct drawer. If this ‘logic’ is brought to the feeding of the five thousand, then we can only conclude that Jesus did something far beyond human understanding as somehow, under his power, one small picnic became enough to feed five thousand people, with several baskets of scraps left over. I am not saying this is impossible or necessarily unlikely.

Jesus can do what he wants. If I can believe he walked on the surface of a lake and turned water into wine, then multiplying food is surely not beyond his power. And in many ways, this is such an enjoyable interpretation. Harry Potter has taken the world by storm, precisely because we like stories about fantastic things, that are beyond our normal experience. There is even a spell, the Geminio Curse or Doubling Charm, that means whenever Harry picks up one item, its replacement appears where the original was just seconds before. (This spell could work well with food and money, but not with dirty socks.)

But there is another way of looking at this miraculous feeding. And this begins with a question, ‘Out of five thousand people, do you seriously think that only one small boy had the foresight to bring some supplies with him?’ It seems unlikely.

Men (again, sorry) can be amazed by food that seemingly appears out of thin air, not having been aware of their wives or mothers

29

Eavesdropping getting up a bit earlier and doing some preparation. Women are much more likely to plan ahead and pack up something to eat, if they think their families might be out all day. I believe that if women had been the earliest interpreters of this event, it would still have been recorded as a miracle, but of a different sort.

It would be the miracle of human cooperation, the miracle of human hearts choosing generosity over self-interest. John Bell from the Iona Community once asked a group of young people what they would do if they were presented with a nearly empty tray of food. They answered that, they if they had any food of their own, they would contribute some of it. Jesus takes a risk as he carries a near empty plate out into the crowd.

Some take but more give and soon it becomes clear that within the crowd there was already enough food for everyone.

Which miracle does the world need most? The miracle where Jesus conjures food from nowhere? Or the miracle where the food we already have, is generously and fairly shared? We need God for both, but especially for the second interpretation. If this miracle is to be continued, we need to learn an ever-deepening dependence on God. We can only play our part if we live and work with the God in whom Jesus believed, building the kind of character which will encourage others to join with us. The five thousand full bellies do not cease to be miraculous. It is still God’s work, but if the second interpretation is the actual miracle, we find that God is giving us a much larger role to play.

A group of people stand on a hill, looking up towards the clouds. ‘Lord,’ they say, ‘every year mountains of good vegetables are ploughed back into the soil, because they are not cosmetically pleasing. Food is flown all around the globe to the detriment of the climate. Much of the food bought by supermarkets is discarded unsold because it has passed its sellby-date. Half of the food sold to the public is thrown away uneaten. Over a billion animals are slaughtered each week for human consumption. And at the same time there are millions

30

Thursday of people STARVING! Lord, this is a phenomenal mess. And it is of our own making. And we can only untangle it with your wisdom and direction. Please help us. Amen.’ And there was silence from heaven. Not the silence of neglect, but the silence of expectation, that a prayer has been heard and that people will have to work together to make God’s answers work.

So how does this help us with prayer?

It is extremely unlikely that we will ever find ourselves in a situation where we will pray verbatim, ‘There is a boy who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ However, there are times when we will ask for God’s miraculous provision. God might tell us that his answers are already in human hands and our job is not to wait for manna from heaven, but rather to work together to share what we have already been given.

It is never wrong to ask, and we should resist any sense of shame if our request is returned to us, because we already have the answer. Ultimately, we can do nothing of lasting value by ourselves. Even simple things, such as finding daily bread, involve God and are no less miraculous for being commonplace. Life is about discerning God’s will in all things.

In prayer, we learn both the depth of our dependence on God and his invitation for us to be so much more than passive onlookers. We can try the ‘Mummy-clean-it-up-prayers’ but our hopes should not be high. God not our personal genie who instantly sorts everything with a click of his fingers. Equally we should never say, ‘It’s clearly our mess. God expects us to deal with it alone’. God invites us to a far greater privilege, he offers us the status of being his co-workers as he brings his Kingdom to earth.

And finally, we can learn the wonder of a small boy who gave away his picnic and found that with Jesus, a little, generously given, goes an unexpectedly long way.

31

Friday ‘It is a ghost!’ Matthew 14:26

‘Jesus is coming! Look busy!’ say the T-shirt and the bumper sticker. Back in the 1980s there was a sketch on the TV puppet show, Spitting Image, where a Cardinal interrupts the Pope who is playing his banjo to the crowds out of a Vatican window.

The Cardinal tells him that ‘Big J’ has arrived. Once the Pope realises that this means Jesus (and not Mick Jagger) he goes into a meltdown, panicking about the tidiness of his apartments and the state of his furniture. The Cardinal is more worried about the swollen bank accounts inside the Vatican and the starving peasants outside. They move into a last-minute Bible swotting session (the criminal released instead of Jesus was Barabbas not Kirk Douglas) before the Cardinal reveals it is all an early April Fool’s joke. He gets sent to a leper colony.

The terror the ‘Pope’ felt is instantly recognisable to anyone who misbehaved at school when their teacher left the classroom. The trick is twofold; to be more daring, obnoxious and outrageous than the rest of the class and also to be seated and studious-looking before the door opens as the teacher returns. Ideally at this point someone else would still be clowning around at the front, unaware that the teacher is now behind them. They are the one who missed the whispered warning, ‘Teacher’s coming! Look busy!’

Jesus’ unexpected arrival brought panic to the disciples on a couple of memorable occasions. On the first ever Easter Sunday Jesus appears to them, having risen from the dead. They are

32

Friday alarmed, understandably. He reassures them that he is not a ghost by letting them feel the warmth of his breath and by sharing their food. On another occasion, it is night and the disciples are in a boat out on the Sea of Galilee. They set out, leaving Jesus behind so that he can pray by himself. In the early evening a storm hits them. They battle against the waves until the small hours of the morning, when in a state of exhaustion, they see a figure walking towards them, walking on the water. This boosts their fear levels from ‘panicked distress’ to ‘white-knuckle terror’.

They are not scared of being in trouble, like naughty schoolboys, they are simply terrified of drowning and the sight of this approaching ‘ghost’ does nothing to calm their fears.

We know it was Jesus all along, but they did not, and we would be foolish to imagine that we would necessarily fare better.

This is one of those situations where hindsight makes all the difference. The unknown has a tendency to be more scary. They had no idea who or what this was. Either it did not occur to them that this might be Jesus, or maybe seeing him like this was just too freaky. So, they fumbled for the explanation that made the most sense in that moment and cried out, ‘It’s a ghost!’

As we pray today we meet a God who remains largely unknown to us. God is simply too, well … ‘God’ for us to comprehensively understand. If our minds were capable of fully encapsulating God, then we would not be looking at God, but at some lesser creation of our own. We can claim to know some things about God, but only a fool would insist they hold the whole picture. And given that the unknown can be scary, maybe it is not surprising that we can find this unknown God to be a frightening figure. Priests and spiritual directors spend a great deal of time in pastoral work untangling assumptions about God that do not come from God, but rather from our experiences of authority figures: the unpredictably angry headteacher, the bullying PE teacher, the emotionally detached parent or the stern high court judge. Such characters delight in exposing our wrongdoings and are vindictive in their

33

Eavesdropping punishments. God has as much in common with them as Jesus has with a ghost, but it is as easy for us, as it was for the disciples, to mistake him for something he is not.

The Bible does not help when it gives us the phrase ‘the fear of God’ as a translation for words intended to carry a sense of awestruck wonder and respect. When fear is terror, it produces no good fruit in us.

Jesus illustrates this point in a parable about a man with two sons.2 The younger son has a poor view of his dad, treating him as the ghost of a parent who has already died and left him a nice pile of cash. He disappears and blows the lot on frivolities until he has nothing left. His elder brother, who stays at home, mistakenly gets sympathy for his lot in the story. After all he works hard and stays loyal, but his own words reveal that he is just as guilty as his younger brother when it comes to carrying a false image of dad. To him his father is a ghoulish slave driver to be fearfully, dutifully and resentfully obeyed. Neither son has any worthwhile respect for their dad, that is until the youngest staggers home and is welcomed with exceptional grace and forgiveness. He learns that he has both misunderstood and underestimated dad all along.

Whether his older brother learns this, remains untold, just as it is uncertain how the Pharisees on hearing this parable, will respond to the Kingdom of Heaven. The story ends with the elder brother refusing to come home, publicly shunning his dad’s invitation to join the party. If he relents he might find that dad has never been an ogre. One of the more humbling insights from this parable is that we are capable, against all sense, of preferring our monstrous, ghostly images of God rather than admitting our mistakes and finding the embracing arms of the Truth.

So how does this help us with prayer?

The important thing about prayer is not prayer itself, but who we are praying to. If in our prayers, we think we are meeting a ghost, a slave driver or any other kind of terror-merchant, we 2

Luke 15:11-31

34

Friday will do ourselves harm. Human souls often carry false images of God, that need to be dethroned, as we invite the true God in.

Prayer is the setting for good decision making. St Ignatius commends decisions which are made in consolation and not in desolation. Decisions made in terror of any ghost are not to be trusted, in direct contrast with those made in the presence of Jesus who says, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’

We do not need to be in a good place to pray. Jesus can meet us wherever we are. In fact, he can only meet us where we are and never where we think we should be. He can walk towards us even though we may be caught in a storm at sea, in a controlling and abusive relationship, or behind prison bars.

In prayer, our terrors of the unknown can be laid aside. In Jesus, the unknown God comes to us as a person. German has two words for ‘know’: wissen and kennen. A scholar may read and eventually know much about God (wissen). Anyone who prays will meet him and know him (kennen). The new believer who first truly prayed only five minutes ago knows Jesus more healthily than a professor who has amassed volumes of knowledge about Christology but has never responded to him.

35

Saturday ‘Lord, save me!’ Matthew 14:30

It is so easy to make prayer too complicated. And if we have a weighty request, then surely, we are going to need some suitably impressive words to carry it to God? Maybe we fear that a couple of words or just one line will be overlooked. And then there is the argument that if we cannot be bothered to create a memorable request, then whatever we are asking cannot be all that important after all.

My friend, Stefan, bought me a ticket to a Bruce Springsteen concert. Until this point, Bruce had not made much of an impact on me and so I went as a novice, thrust into a crowd of seriously devoted fans. I had got a copy of The River and given it a few listens to warm myself up, but this was peanuts, compared to how others were preparing. On the chilly, rainy evening as we walked along the canal, from the city to the stadium, Stef continued my initiation. He told me how I would see grown men crying like they were teenagers at an X-Factor finale, and how the truly dedicated fans had already been queuing outside the venue for two days. They were hoping for one, of a limited number of places, at the very front of the stage. Many of them had made elaborate banners with requests for Bruce to sing their favourite songs. Once we were inside and Bruce had worked through the first few on his list, he started to pay attention to the banners. These had been made, working from the principle that only the biggest and most colourful would catch The Boss’s eye. And throughout

36

Saturday the concert he departed from his script and sang something unplanned. A couple of petitioners even got invited up onto the stage to sing alongside their idol. The first of these was a man dressed as Father Christmas (it was May and so he stood out) and accompanied Bruce singing, ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’.

This is the way the world works. If you want attention for yourself and your requests you need to make a song and dance, carry a big banner and wear an outstanding costume.

This truth is found throughout creation. In a garden, flowers vie with one another, each seeking to be brighter and better scented to attract the bees.

So, it is intuitive to employ this same principle as we bring our requests to God. Surely for God we will need to do something truly impressive to catch his attention, something even more outstanding than donning a bright red Santa Claus costume on a dank May Manchester evening. God, after all, has planets to spin and universes to expand.

Jesus’ teaching utterly contradicts this. His starting point is an unparalleled understanding of God’s love for us. God knows us more deeply than we can imagine, so Jesus warns against babbling away in prayer, imagining that wonderful displays of long complicated words, delicately refined statements or inane repetitions might somehow ‘do the trick’. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V reputedly said, ‘I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.’

But Jesus did not have a special language set aside for talking to God. He valued simplicity and directness and he trusted that God was already listening. He told his disciples to call God, ‘Abba’, which the church has made into the rather starchier, ‘Our Father’, but, ‘Abba’ is simply the name that any Hebrew child uses for ‘Daddy’. He encourages us to open our hearts and with a childlike trust, approach our God. An earthly parent may be impressed by a child’s correct use of complex vocabulary, but God does not require us to be

37

Eavesdropping so eloquent or erudite. That said, there is a place for carefully chosen, poetic words in our prayers. Sometimes a psalm or someone else’s written prayer can frame the desire for which we had no words of our own. But at other times we will need to search for our own words. But the key is this: prayer need never be a performance to catch God’s attention. We already have that, so we can skip the banner-making stage. Our words must come from the heart. And so, the everyday language that comes most naturally to us is usually our best bet when speaking to God. Imagine the scene that follows directly from yesterday’s prayer. Peter, along with the rest of the disciples, now knows that the figure walking towards them, on the water, is not a ghost, but Jesus himself. Peter asks Jesus for an invitation to join him on the water and Jesus replies ‘Come.’ Peter then climbs out of the boat. I would love to know what the other disciples are thinking. I am guessing that some would be impressed by Peter’s nerve, whilst others might mutter, ‘Good grief, Peter, was the spotlight off you for a whole minute?’

Anyway, Peter starts off well and looking to Jesus he walks successfully on the water towards him. However, things go wrong when Peter switches his focus to the wind, the waves and the entire implausibility of his situation. The moment his attention is no longer on Jesus, his ability to remain on top of the water disappears and he starts to sink.

At this point he cannot make a banner and is in no place to devise a song and dance routine. He has no time for eloquence, ‘Oh Lord, in thine bounteous and boundless mercy, I, unworthy as I am, dare to beseech thee … etc.’. Or ‘I offer you the highest praises for your bountiful gift of water, which cleanses, refreshes and sustains all life, but am now fully respectful of its power to endanger as well as nurture life. I myself …’ and so on. Peter needs Jesus’ attention and he needs it now. He simply lets out a heartfelt cry, ‘Lord, save me.’ And Jesus does. Jesus hears his simple three-word prayer and this is

38

Saturday enough. He answers by pulling Peter up out of the water and returning him to the boat.

So how does this help us with prayer?

‘Save me!’ is a good thing for Peter to say as he drowns and a good thing for us to pray, at many points in our lives.

Jesus taught, ‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.’3 We do not need flowery words, sparkly costumes or anything else to attract God’s best attention. We already have this. God hears the cries of our hearts. We can pray anywhere and at any time and with the minimum of words.

This kind of prayer is not a replacement for a daily pattern of praying. In fact, without a healthy discipline of prayer, we are far less likely to call to on God when a crisis hits. We forget God with alarming ease. Peter was with Jesus almost around the clock at this point in his life and so it was entirely natural that he should ask Jesus for help as he sank. We likewise are more likely to remember God on a bad day if we are already in regular contact throughout the rest of our week.

An exercise Try praying using Peter’s ‘Lord, save me’ as a template. Pray this in any number of situations today; when you hear a distressing item on the news, witness two friends falling out or discern something disturbing within your soul. Pray immediately, pray simply and pray trusting that you already have God’s full attention.

3

Matthew 6:7

39

The First Sunday in Lent ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Mark 5:28

This is a request which is not actually spoken to Jesus. These are the words a desperate woman speaks to herself, for her own encouragement. Her words carry her deepest desire, which is to be well again. Jesus somehow, overhears her, understands this as a ‘prayer’ and responds.

This woman, exhausted from twelve years of illness and bankrupt from the doctor’s bills, is convinced that Jesus will be able to help her. She has an unstoppable bleed. Her culture has taught her that this is shameful and so she has striven to keep it secret.

Jesus’ arrival in town puts her in a terrible quandary.

She might, at last, find healing, but the very act of seeking this, necessarily exposes her condition; she has no chance of attracting Jesus’ attention without also attracting the attention of the whole crowd. Given that the crowd is made up of her neighbours, years of gossip will be confirmed all over town before teatime. But Jesus is only here for such a very short time and so if she does not do something now, she might never get well and then be forced to add regret to her sufferings.

If Jesus’ disciples are on bodyguard duty that day, they are failing. Jesus is in the middle of a scrummage, being jostled, pushed and pawed. And whilst this is uncomfortable for him and embarrassing for the disciples, it opens an opportunity for this woman. If she could wiggle her way through the crowd, she might be able to touch him and siphon off some of his

40