O Lord, we beseech you mercifully to hear the prayers of your people who call upon you;
and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect for the 16th Sunday after Trinity
(Common Worship)
This reflection draws on the SIFT method of hermeneutics: sensing, intuition, feeling, and thinking (see Leslie J. Francis and Andrew Village: Preaching with All our Soul, Continuum, 2008).
AS SENSING people, listen carefully to the prayers of God’s people.
Go into a quiet church where there is a prayer board, and read the prayers that are posted there. Read them and pray for them; for that is why they have been written.
Mingled with the well-crafted collects of professional theologians are the ordinary prayers of ordinary people doing ordinary theology in their own way. Here are heartfelt cries of pain, anger, sadness, and confusion. Here are deeply experienced proclamations of faith, and personal commitment to the will of God.
Listen carefully to the prayers of God’s people, and beseech God to hear them, too.
As intuitive people, pick up a set of four stones to represent the four parts of prayer: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.
Hold the stone of adoration, and allow yourself to become lost in the profound words that celebrate God’s wondrous being: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God almighty.” Pray God hears your prayer of adoration.
Hold the stone of confession, and allow yourself to be open and honest before the Lord your God. Pray God hears your prayer of confession.
Hold the stone of thanksgiving, and allow yourself to rehearse all those good things God does for you, day in and day out. Pray God hears your prayer of thanksgiving.
Hold the stone of supplication, and allow yourself to long for God’s will to be done, for God’s reign to be recognised. Pray God hears your prayer of supplication.
As feeling people, open your heart to those people around you who are caught in indecision. There is the indecision of youth, caught in the choice of career, the choice of lifestyle, the choice of world-view, the choice of partner. There is the indecision of mid-life, caught in the choice of continuing in the tracks already set, or of making new beginnings. There is the indecision of old age, caught in the choices of new opportunities and of new challenges.
Open your heart to those people around you who are caught in indecision. Pray that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them.
As thinking people, face the theological problem of intercessory prayer. In what kind of God do you believe, and what do you expect as the outcome of your prayer?
The first of a series of double-blind clinical trials was published in the Southern Medical Journal in 1988. Like many other clinical trials, this one was designed to test whether a specific intervention proved therapeutic. In this trial, however, the intervention was intercessory prayer.
The findings suggested that cardiac patients who received intercessory prayer had a significantly better outcome than cardiac patients who did not receive prayer. As a double-blind trial, neither the patients nor the medical staff knew who was in the prayer group and who was not.
So, in what kind of God do you believe, and what do you expect as the outcome of your intercessory prayer?
The Revd Dr Leslie J. Francis is Professor of Religions and Education, University of Warwick, and Canon Theologian of Bangor Cathedral. |
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