Intercession
1988 (Year B), 23 October /
Pentecost 22
Holy Trinity Dalston
Many years ago, at theological college we used to have a daily Eucharist. As you might expect each Eucharist had a time set aside for Intercessions and every week one particular group of students was responsible for putting the service together. When my group’s turn came round we had a marvellous idea. It all depended getting everything timed to perfection. What happened was that when the president read out the words, ‘Let us pray for the church and all people according to their needs,’ or whatever the words were then, someone turned a radio on very loudly and a voice said, ‘Here is the eight o’clock news’, for whatever day it was.
On another occasion the intercessions seemed to go on for ever. Towards the end there was an exceedingly long silence broken at last by a member of college who asked again in a very loud voice that we might pray for all who were finding all this so amazingly boring.
The result of both these events was that the college went ballistic. People were angry. They were hurt. Some said they were devastated. Great apologies were expected and when they weren’t forthcoming it caused even more hurt. And I tell you that now not for you to pity those who had to endure it all, nor even to laugh at that who were so affronted but just to show, if you didn’t already know, just how important this little section of the Eucharist is. A woman at St Peter’s during the miner’s strike some years ago prayed for all the miners who didn’t come out on strike. If my arms could’ve reached round her neck I would cheerfully have throttled her.
Intercessions are incredibly important. At least they are to us. Sometimes I think they might even be to God, although not as often as we would imagine.
We all know when they’re bad. When whoever is leading them starts trying to preach a second sermon we feel abused at being drawn into their little prejudices. When they go on for ever and they’re joined together by, ‘We just want to thank you Lord’. When they’re not properly prepared or if they upset our sensibilities by always praying for ‘men’. When whoever is leading them believes that unless they actually mention something by name nothing will happen. This results in a magical mystery tour of all the wars in the world spurred on I guess by the belief that God will be so impressed by the breadth of our reading and knowledge that our prayer can’t fail to be granted.
When I arrived at St. Peter’s the period of intercession was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was rounded off by a great long list of the sick. It seemed to go on for ever. Nobody got any worse. They didn’t seem to die, so maybe the prayers were working, but certainly nobody appeared to get any better. Nobody managed to get off this list. Sometimes when I couldn’t stand it anymore I jiggled the list up and down; swapped the names round a bit; but that only helped for a little while. I was bored with them, so were most of the congregation and I hazard a guess that God was too.
So the question is what makes Intercessory Prayer work, and what’s happening when it does seem to work well. What we did at St. Peter’s to that great long list, is that we just took it away. We told people that they either had to pray silently for the people and things that were of concern to them or they could say them out loud. What they couldn’t rely on was someone doing it for them. The result was that for a few weeks there was this amazing silence. A really profound silence. You could almost cut it with a knife. It was the kind that you just know that people are working hard at. Then slowly people began to say things hesitantly at first, but eventually they did begin to engage with what was going on.
Now I haven’t come over the road this morning, to tell you how good St. Peter’s is at Intercessory Prayer. That would be a tactical error of enormous proportions and anyway it just wouldn’t be true. But here are one or two thoughts, and they apply not only to the intercessions which are said week by week here in church and to the ones we manage to say on our own.
They should flow. There should be silence and there should be rhythm and above all they should engage us, particularly our imagination. If they’re in church then they should be audible. After all it’s only when we’re touched by the words; when we’re invited in by them, that we become involved in the prayer. What the Prayer says becomes ours and we pray as a congregation rather than a collection of individuals. At that point our imaginations are set free and we take off in prayer. Still linked by the Prayer. Still part of a praying congregation, yet encouraged to pray ourselves. Above all we should be allowed into the prayer and enabled to pray. When it happens it really is a time of grace and the Prayer is giving us an amazing gift. We should be very thankful.
They should be well constructed. And I don’t mean by this that all Intercessions should be as well constructed as a Shakespearean sonnet. That would mean that nobody here would ever be able to utter a prayer at all. But they should be prepared as well as we possibly can. They should be significant to the Prayer. There’s nothing worse than someone just bouncing through a great jumble of words that you know in your heart means absolutely nothing to the person who’s mouthing them.
Now I know that I’m leaving out great issues about Intercessory prayer. You might follow some of them up later. I’m not even wondering why, if so many people have been praying for peace in Northern Ireland for so long, why nothing has happened yet. I’m really not thinking about what you do on your own or wondering if we don’t pray about Afghanistan today does it mean that nothing will happen for a week or so?
What I am here to say, and this is crucial, is that whether we’re praying on our own or together we have to recognise that perhaps prayer isn’t changing things but what is happening is that we’re putting ourselves on the side of the angels. We’re asking for the eyes and vision of God to see what the divine would have us do. We’re engaging with God and we’re saying that we’re seeking to determine his will.
If intercessions mean anything to me it means that a group of believers come together and voice the concerns of that community of believers. It may be for the sick, it may be joyful hymn of thanks. It may be that there is some common problem facing them all. I don’t believe that things will just get better if we pray for them, sometimes they might, often they don’t. What we are doing in the end, in Intercessory Prayer, is joining in what people have done since the beginning of time; we are calling to mind in the presence of God some of our most basic needs and concerns. Long may it continue. AMEN