Words! words! words!

Jesus said, When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen… and do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard for their many words… Matthew 6:6-7

The novelist E M Forster (no friend of the church) wrote of “poor little talkative Christianity”. No doubt he had a point. We Christians (not least ministers and preachers like me) can be guilty of “going on a bit”, and in Forster’s time (he lived from 1879 to 1970) that was even more the case: a sermon lasting merely an hour might well be considered short.

I think Jesus would have had some sympathy with Forster. Teaching about prayer (Matthew 6) he told his followers not to copy the “pagans” who (as the NIV puts it), “babble”. N T Wright translates verse 7: “When you pray, don’t pile up a jumbled heap of words. That’s what the Gentiles do”.

Perhaps Jesus had in mind the kind of incident we read about in 1 Kings 18, where the prophet Elijah and the false prophets of Baal confronted one another on Mount Carmel. Which of them could succeed in getting their God to ignite a sacrifice on the altar? The prophets of Baal “called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. ‘Baal, answer us!’ they shouted”. They “danced around the altar” and went on to “slash themselves with swords and spears”, and all to no avail. That’s easy for us to read; but when we stop and think about it, we realise that it was, well, quite some prayer meeting!

Jesus wants none of such grandstanding: “When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (Matthew 6:6). Anything that smacks of display suggests a desire to be noticed and admired by others, and is to be avoided by Jesus’ followers.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that all our praying should be done in solitude, that there is no place at all for public prayer in a service of worship, or of corporate prayer in a small group – to think that would be to interpret Jesus’ words in an overly literal way. But it does mean that as Christians we should be concerned to maintain standards of dignity and respect; perhaps Paul captures it best in rebuking the unruly Christians of Corinth: “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (1 Corinthians 14:40). (And if that sounds a bit old-fashioned, well, so be it.)

Nor does it mean that there are never times and places for lengthy prayer. Jesus himself fasted and prayed for 40 days at the start of his ministry, and on occasion went out to a lonely place, presumably because he wanted a lengthy, uninterrupted time to himself.

And for us there may be occasions when we pray (and possibly also fast; why not, if that’s how the Spirit moves us?) for extended periods. But if – like me as a young Christian many years ago – you get into the subconscious habit of feeling you must rack up so many minutes of prayer every day, and, even worse, that God might be cross if you fail to do so – if you get into that frame of mind, well, it’s a habit that seriously needs to be broken!

Do we ever pause to notice how vanishingly small (not to mention how unemotional) the Lord’s Prayer is? And that is his gift to the church! Let there be long and even agonized prayers, by all means, as long as they are sincere and from the heart; but in the routine circumstances of life there is a simple ordinariness about prayer which we should value and treasure; it can even be refreshing.

I have sometimes wondered what we would have seen if we had happened upon Jesus one day on one of his solitary prayer walks. Would he have been on his knees? Hands-together-eyes-closed? Eyes lifted to heaven? Would his voice be raised? Would he simply be sitting somewhere, to all appearances just alone with his thoughts? We don’t know, of course, because we aren’t told – which alone suggests that there are no rules.

But what we can be sure of is that when a man or woman is alone with their God, that is sacred ground indeed, and woe betide anyone who sees fit to criticize or find fault with their manner of praying.

And likewise in public worship. Should it be “liturgical”, with set prayers read from a book? Why not? Better that, truly meant, than the long, rambling, shapeless prayers to which some of us perhaps have become addicted. Should it be more “charismatic”, more “extempore” or “ad lib”? Again, why not? – as long as it is truly from the heart, and not just wearisome repetition pretending to be the leading of the Spirit.

The only “rule”, I would suggest, when it comes to any form of public prayer, is that, however brief, it should always be an event, a holy moment: a moment when the congregation is aware of being drawn into the presence of God – none of this “Let’s just have a quick prayer” stuff, please, as a kind of filler!

There is, of course, so much more one could say on the basic and mysterious topic of prayer. But, going back to E M Forster… we live in a world awash with words: books, magazines, papers, radio, television, online, social media, and so on.

Whatever else you do, Christian, don’t add unnecessarily to them!

Thank you, Father, for the brief, simple prayer Jesus gave his disciples, and for the wonderful variety in the example he set for them. Please help me, by your Holy Spirit, that my prayer-life may be a refreshment to me and a blessing to others, and never just a wearisome, dutiful burden. Amen.