You Can’t Pray a
Lie
Craig Anderson
Psalm
88; Luke 18:9-14 November 24,
2002
“You can’t pray a lie.” Or at least that’s what Huckleberry Finn
discovered. Toward the end his trip
down the Mississippi with Jim, a fugitive slave, Huck’s feelings of guilt about
helping Jim to escape, begin to get the better of him. He’s breaking the law: aiding and abetting in a crime. He is betraying Mrs. Watson, Jim’s
owner. Worse, he’s betraying the social
code of his people who were certain that slaves deserved their fate. So Huck finally resolves to do the right
thing, and gets down on his knees to repent, but the words of prayer won’t
come. To further prepare himself
therefore, Huck writes Mrs. Watson a letter, describing where Jim can be found,
and how he can be recaptured. Then as
Huck recounts it:
I
felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in
my life, and I knowed I could pray now.
But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there
thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to
being lost and going to hell. And went
on thinking. And got to thinking over
our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and
the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along,
talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no
places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of
his'n, 'stead of callin' me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he
was when I come back out of the fog;
...and such-like times; and he would always do everything he could think
of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved
him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said
I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got
now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It
was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling,
because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I
studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All
right, then, I'll go to hell” -- and tore it up.
You can’t pray a lie, and it’s a darn
shame too! As Fred Buechner points out,
lying had served Huck extremely well up and down the river. Lying about having smallpox aboard their
raft had surely saved Jim from two bounty hunters. Lying had gotten them out of one scrape and jam after another. Lying was what had kept them alive. But Huck discovered that you can’t pray a
lie: he could not bring himself to pray to God that Jim might be captured and
returned to slavery. He could not pray
to God that Jim was sub-human: inferior
both morally and intellectually. These
things were not true of Jim or any other slave, and Huck knowed it.
It was preferable to go to hell than live a lie, to live with betrayal.
You can’t pray a lie, and what a
shame that is, as the pharisee discovered in Jesus’ little story. With God especially we’d like to be able to
round the edges and shave the corners, make ourselves look just a little bit
better. “God, I thank you that I am not
like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers... I fast twice a week, give a
tenth of all my income...” But you
can’t pray a lie...
As it stands now in scripture this
story gives its point away before Jesus tells it. An explanation comes first: “he told this parable to some who
trusted in themselves and regarded others with contempt...” We know immediately that it is not going to
go well for the superior Pharisee, who is all pompadour and full of himself,
piling on words of self-praise front and center in the temple. What a joyless, insufferable fool he seems
to us now. Fortunately it is rare to
find someone who acts so much like a jerk, and seems so unconscious about doing
it. Had Huck been there, he might have
thought to himself, “If it’s people like this who are goin’ to heaven, then why
bother tryin’?!”
We’ll never know, but I can imagine
that originally Jesus might have told this parable in case-study form: not
giving the answer away in the beginning, but instead asking his audience to
ponder a question. I think Jesus might
have tried to set his audience up, the same way Mark Twain does. “As I tell you my story ask yourself, ‘Who
went home justified?’” Pharisee and
tax-collector: we know now who the villain is just from the set-up, but not so
in Jesus day. Law school professor and
Enron boss is how Jesus might create the scene now; or bank president and drug
courier; Lou Gerstner and Jack Welsh; or Olympic figure skater and NHL thug
enforcer... Get the picture? Upright, upstanding, model citizen, pitted
against a downscale, petty, creep. Of
course the Pharisee is proud of his accomplishments, and why shouldn’t he
be? And the publican? No wonder he’s hanging his head. What’s a low account like that doing in our
respectable place of prayer anyway? God
had better be merciful. It’s the only
chance that guy has, and if there is any justice in this universe it will be a
small chance indeed.
I don’t think Jesus gave away his
punch-line, (which actually was a blow to the solar plexus,) before he ever
began. I think, like Mark Twain, he set
his audience up first and lured them in for a reversal and big surprise at the
end.
Oh yes, tell it like it is in your
prayer, Mr. Pharisee. Be quiet over
there, Mr. Tax Collector. Oh yes, Huck,
do the right thing. Save your own hide
and turn that fugitive in.
But you can’t pray a lie, and a
darned shame it is too. So we might as
well tell the truth. A prayer is the
one time and place in our lives where we can be truly honest, because there is
no advantage in lying! God knows the
truth of our hearts. And we know that
God knows, so why bother with anything less than the truth? The only lies we can tell in our prayers,
are lies we tell ourselves, and with any luck, eventually we’ll see that game
for what it is and give it up. A lot of
you tell me this is why you come to church, because it’s the one quiet time in
your week when you can face yourself and your God, and take inventory. “How’s it goin’? Is this the life I meant to live? Did I really need to do what I did this week? What was the balance between the trivial and
the essential? Do I want to let stand
what has happened of late in my relationships, or do I want to make amends and
start over again? Have I done what I
can and what I want for my children, my lover, my parents, my friends, my
community and world?” No need to pray a
lie: if not to God, then why ever to
yourself?
This accounting for ourselves
doesn’t all have to come down in the debit column either does it? Inventory is not primarily about what isn’t
there, it’s accounting for what is front and present, and those can just as
easily be assets you are not giving yourself credit for. Tell the truth to yourself not only about
your failings, but your accomplishments, not only your weaknesses, but your strengths,
not only sins of omission but good deeds of commission. Don’t pray a lie about either your assets or
liabilities.
So you can’t pray a lie and get away
with it, but finally, there is no need to pray a lie because we don’t have to:
God can handle our honesty. We’ve got
to thinking in our religious lives that we have to keep it positive all the
time. Nobody else likes a whiner, why
should God? We haven’t been reading our
Psalms. The Psalms are the prayer book
of the Bible. But we know only a hand
full of them: 23, 46, 121: “The Lord is my shepherd...” “God is our refuge and strength...” “I lift
up my eyes to the hills...” And then
the preacher gets up and reads number 88, and we think, whoa, what’s going on
here? Just a little honesty that’s
all. The Psalms don’t lie. They tell it like it is. Fully a third of the Psalms are laments, and
maybe even more of them are inspired by the lament form. Lament: an anguished cry of grief from the
human heart. When scripture captures
these protests and complaints, it “insists,” in Walter Brueggemann’s words,
“that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended
way.” Nothing is “out of bounds,
precluded, or inappropriate” in our conversation with God.
The chief characteristic of Psalm 88
is repetition: The words I, me and my, are used at least 30 times in reference
to the Psalmist. The words you and your
are used at least 20 times with respect to God. This argument is personal: it’s between God and the
Psalmist! “Every day I call on you, O
Lord...” Every day! You’re supposed to be the faithful one. At night, in the morning, during the day, “I
spread my hands out to you.” But
nothing. No escape from the afflictions
which the Psalmist holds God responsible for!
You have put me in the depths of the Pit, Your wrath lies heavy upon
me.. You overwhelm me... you have caused my companions to shun me; your wrath
has swept over me...”
There are those who believe that we
are supposed to lie in our prayers, never raise a doubt or complaint, never
signal that anything is wrong. Not so
the Psalmist. There are those who
believe we must meekly accept our fate, whatever that may be: our destiny is
divinely ordained, God-given. Behind
every dark cloud lies a silver lining: God’s in heaven and all’s right with the
world. Not so, said the Psalmist. “The world must be experienced as it really
is and not in some pretended way.” All
is NOT right with the world. Terrorists
plot. Strong nations bully the weak.
Corporate profits trump social justice.
AIDS sweeps Africa, Asia and India.
Drug lords feed North American addictions and corrupt South American
capitals. The hungry go empty
away. Prisoners languish without
hope. Indifference reigns. We are like those who have no help. Waves of sorrow overwhelm us. Every day we call upon the Lord: O Lord why
do you cast us off? Why do you hide
your face from us?
Our relationship with God needn’t be
based on deceptions and lies: in our prayers we can describe the world as it
really is. God knows. Our hearts were not the first to be broken
by the sorry spectacles of world events.
If our prayers are only candy-coated and positive, full of thanks and
praise but never honesty and lament, then how will we ever encounter the God
who suffers with us, whose compassion for the world’s suffering brims over and
spills into our own beings and sends us on our way back to a world so in need
of healing and hope, of renewal and repair?
What if the Pharisee prayed, thank you God for this marvelous world
where slaves get their due, where the poor deserve their fate, where the
infidels can expect hell fire and brimstone... while on the other side of the
room, the Publican could barely raise his eyes and instead poured out his
anguish for the world’s lost and lonely?
Which of those two do you suppose, would go home having not prayed a
lie?
Would you like to raise a question or make a comment (even a provocative one)? If so, e-mail Craig Anderson at craig@brooksidechurch.org