November 28, 2021
/1 Advent
Jeremiah 33: 14-16; Psalm 25: 1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21: 25-36
The Rev. James M.L. Grace
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
In the psalm appointed for today which is psalm 25, we hear some incredible verses, the first of which I want to read again here – you can follow along in your order of service if you would like – I am going to read the first three verses: “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me. Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.”
This is very clearly the prayer of a person in great distress, a person perhaps dealing with insurmountable fear or uncertainty, something none of us can relate to at all, right? If only. There is an interesting line in those verses, the line where the author of the psalm says “do not let those who wait for you be put to shame.” That is another way of saying “God, please don’t frustrate the people who are praying to you by not answering their prayers.” If you have ever received no answer from God to your prayers, you understand how frustrating that experience can be.
Every week I have a conversation with a person who expresses to me their frustration at their seemingly unanswered prayers. I field questions all the time like “Why is God silent? Why are the prayers I have offered for months seeming to fall upon deaf ears? Does God even care?”
Of course I don’t have adequate answers to any of those questions. All I can offer is my own experience, bereft as it often is.
And my experience of seemingly unanswered prayers to a non-responsive God is more robust than I would wish. I used to get real frustrated, like the author of the psalm. “Answer my prayer, God – do not put me to shame!” And then, something changed inside me, and I awakened. I had a spiritual awakening, a spiritual experience, where I started to get some clarity, and that clarity led me to see that actually God was hearing and answering my prayers, all along.
What led me to this discovery was not God behaving any differently, but rather a change inside me that allowed me to become more aware. I learned that unanswered prayers are impossibilities, as all prayers are answered. It’s just that the prayers I thought were going unanswered instead just weren’t being answered the way I wished they would be.
It is probably a sign of spiritual maturity to maintain trust in God when things don’t go your way, and when your prayers are not answered the way you would like them to be. This experience, though often frustrating, and even humiliating, is actually good for our well-being. Priest and author Richard Rohr writes that he expects to have one humiliation daily. A daily humiliation doesn’t sound very fun does it? But what wondrous things that daily dose of humility does for our relationship with God.
Over time, one of the gifts humility gives us is that it expands our consciousness, and we begin to see more and more. Enough humility expands our vision to recognize paradox and we see things we didn’t see before, and things we have always seen begin to look different to us. Prayers that we thought unanswered for years take on a new appearance, and beauty, with our new vision, we see those beautiful unanswered prayers as they really are: radiant, gleaming, and answered. AMEN.