Intercessory Prayer

I’ve recently been rereading a book I had sort of read earlier in fits and starts. It’s a book by Margaret Guenther called The Practice of Prayer. It’s part of the newest version of the Episcopal Church’s Teaching Series, a whole series of books dealing with the basics of the Christian faith. I find a lot of this book very helpful and very thought provoking and I want to share some of it with you. This does not directly relate to this morning’s Scripture readings, but prayer is always a topic worthy of discussion. Especially as Lent approaches and many of us resolve to be more diligent and intentional in our praying.

Guenther points out again and again that there is really no wrong way to pray and also that any sort of categorization of prayer is artificial. And I emphatically agree. Nonetheless, her exploration of the five traditional categories of prayer is very helpful. Adoration: "In adoration, God’s majesty takes our breath away". Thanksgiving: "Prayers of adoration often lead naturally to thanksgiving, for awareness of God’s presence and action in our lives invites gratitude." Confession: "In a way confession is the opposite side of the coin from thanksgiving, for we are acknowledging our limitation and sinfulness over against God’s perfection." Petition: "Petition, entreating on our own behalf, is the most common kind of prayer, the form that comes most easily and unbidden."

And Intercession. Amongst the five categories, it’s intercession I want to focus on today. Intercessory Prayer.  Praying on behalf of others.  "Prayers of intercession," she writes "move us beyond ourselves into community." Prayers of intercession move us beyond ourselves into community. "Mistakenly," Guenther continues," we often tend to group intercession with petition, but in intercession we are not really asking God for anything. Pushed back to its Latin roots (intercedere), the word simply means ‘to stand between’ or ‘to stand in the midst.’" In intercessory prayers, we are not asking God for something; we are moving ourselves to a place standing in between. "When we intercede, whether in prayer or in everyday life, we place ourselves before authority on behalf of another. It is no surprise that Mary has been invoked as intercessor over the centuries; what mother has not, perhaps wrong-headedly and irrationally, interceded on behalf of her child with an irate father, an exasperated classroom teacher, or the parole board of the state prison? Mary and her kindly (and apocryphal) mother Anne can be counted on to intercede for the least worthy among us." As so many turn to Mary, it comes from our own need or desire to have an intercessor.

"Since we are all made in the image of God, united in our sinfulness and our glory, intercession is a democratic kind of prayer: we can all intercede for one another. We can name before God those in any need or trouble, known to us or unknown. This is the prayer of the family of believers, praying through Christ in the company of the faithful." In intercessory prayer, we become the intercessors on behalf of others.

Guenther gives us a lot to think about in just those short paragraphs. Intercessory prayer is not so much a request as an action. When we pray in intercession, we join ourselves with the company of the faithful. We join in the community’s vocation to stand between the world’s need and God. One hand reaching out to those in need of prayer, and one hand reaching out to the holy presence of God. We are the link. We are the ones doing the interceding. And all of us are qualified; all of us are called. None are more skilled or more privileged as intercessors.  We can all intercede for one another.  We are the intercessors before God for the child starving in the Sudan. We (you!) are the faithful saints who bring the needs of our government… the President and all others in civil authority… to God. Everytime we say the Prayers of the People (and much of those prayers is intercessory prayer), everyone in this holy space of worship joins together to intercede, to stand between the sick and God, and to speak on their behalf… we stand between the President of the United States and God… we stand between the Bishop of Chicago and God, we stand between the needs of all of the church’s members and its mission and offer our faith, as a community, on their behalf.  Intercession.

A bit more Guenther: "When we pray our intercessions, we are not bargaining with God, nor are we engaged in magical thinking. It is important to remember that we cannot pray people well, even though we all know situations where the effects of intercession have been palpable. At the same time, we all know situations where the most fervent prayers seemed to go unheard or were answered in a way that we cannot understand. It is cheap comfort to pretend that any amount of prayer" (and the effectiveness of prayer is not cumulative!) "can magically make everything all right, bring swift comfort to the grieving, and ease the pain of the suffering. It is excruciating to watch at the foot of the cross…"

And "praying for others [in intercession] is not a means of making ourselves feel better…. Because ultimately we cannot accomplish anything by our prayers, intercession is a small experience of watching at the foot of the cross."

Intercessory prayer is the experience of watching at the foot of the cross. To pray in intercession, whether in a common worship service or in the privacy of your own bedroom or the privacy of your own thoughts… to pray in intercession is to join with the company of faithful at the foot of the cross. It is to be a part of the experience of the crucifixion. It is to move to the place where the suffering, brokenness and pain of the world are starkly real and where that suffering, brokenness and pain are joined with the presence of God.

When we pray in intercession, if we put our hearts into it, we invest ourselves in the needs and pains of others. We offer our care, our compassion. Also, as we pray in intercession… as we look truly upon that which is broken, we must acknowledge our part, our complicity in crucifying the good in the world. And we must acknowledge the pain and hurt that is within us. There is no place to hide at the foot of the cross… no place to hide from the hurts and needs of the world and no place to hide from our own needs and our own sin.

One result of intercessory prayer then, as Guenther points out, is that "in the experience of watching at the foot of the cross we grow in awareness of the sufferings of others. We grow in awareness of our own complicity and power to hurt. We grow in awareness of the need to support our prayers with action. Serious intercession leads inevitably to an increase in generosity and an acute awareness of injustice."

In the act of intercession, as our awareness grows, with God’s help, we become more active, more compassionate as Christians. One outcome of the experience of intercessory prayer.

And I think there is one more very important piece. In the activity of intercessory prayer, we witness to the presence of God in the midst of suffering and need. Any compassionate soul can reach out to another’s suffering. As the community of faith, we not only reach out to those in need or suffering, we also reach out towards God. We affirm that it is God on the cross, and that this crucifixion place of deepest sin and pain is also a place of holiness and redemption. As the community of the faithful, we bring the world to God. And whether or not that is precisely what the world wants, that is what it desperately needs. To discover itself, to know itself standing in the presence of God. And when individuals ask us to pray for them, to intercede for them… that is what we offer. To bring them into the presence of God, to show them the face of God looking upon them. Intercession. To stand in the middle. To be the middle. To be the link between the world and God. That is our vocation.

I’m reminded of a great hymn. The tune comes from the Church of England; the words come from the 19th century YMCA movement in this country.  It’s in our hymnal in the section entitled The Church’s Mission. Note that it is in the plural. This is the church’s mission, our mission as a community.

We, by our intercession, bring these to Christ.

The world to Christ we bring.

Amen.