One person’s noble thought can draw some more likeminded followers leading that thought to a movement. More often than not, such a movement reaches its momentum and then drops down to a stagnant institutionalization losing its dynamism. The good intent of God became a movement in Jesus which later became institutionalized in the form of the church. The church, unlike many such institutions remains lively and dynamic. Thank God who is the head of the Church. Prayer is only an aspect of the total religiosity of a person. Let us not institutionalize it lest it becomes a larger institution than the church itself.
In a democratic world today each citizen has so many rights including the right to vote for electing leaders or government of our choice. Isn’t this a wonderful gift of God who gives us the freedom of choice? Unfortunately, we also speak about selling of our votes, our fundamental right that identifies us as a citizen for a morsel like Esau of the Bible. Certain aspirants for leadership may either buy or coup our rights and become free of any connection with the grievances of the subjects. This style of living has also taught us to treat prayer, the very fundamental right bestowed by the Creator to every believer. We tend to create a warrior caste within the believer’s community and almost tell them that they can institutionalize prayer and work out its complex structure, its hierarchy of officials.
A citizen’s fundamental rights come in the very package of his or her citizenship. The politics of prayer is that it comes to the believer in the very package of right to become a citizen in the kingdom of God. Every individual becoming a follower of Christ has, therefore the God-given right to communicate with God in prayer. The quality and the validity of a believer’s sincere prayer are at par with Jesus’ praying to his father. No human can claim praying better than the other in the sight of God. As believers we are told to pray for one another. But when the heart of the person in need of prayer is subjectively not inclined to God the objective prayers of the neighbors for that person becomes less effective. This is so because God has bestowed every person with the fundamental right to pray from the moment the person accepts Jesus.
Should there be a time when prayer need be controlled like a commodity God alone has the right to control it because it is the basic gift God has given to every believer as the royal channel of communication to God. God will not allow any monopoly of this free gift to all the believers. Perhaps I should not be using too much of consumerist language like, control, monopoly, or hegemony because these concepts are never compatible with prayer which is a free gift of God to all. The right to pray should not be hoarded (again I am tempted to use such a consumerist language unaware) by certain Christians and cause the others to crave for the right to pray as if they are stripped of its provision.
Informal chats with many Church members following seminars and church services gives me the impression that many committed believers in Christ are made to feel so inadequate to pray for their needs. They say they continue to pray but they feel they are made powerless by their fellow believers who tell them that the methods and the rituals of prayer are not as simple as the former think. It seems, now a days, that there are certain prescribed methods for prayer if we want God to listen to our prayers, almost reviving the priestly office of the Israelite priest who entered the holy chamber on behalf of the community.. For these days people seem to design a careful logistics for offering prayers to God. Today God is understood differently from the one who was approached by the enslaved Hebrews and the simple Galilean farmers and the fishermen. Those people were ‘poor’ from all respects except that they were fully committed in trusting God. The poor, uneducated simple folks of Galilee became the first band of Jesus’ close friends, the generic band that grew to the present Christendom. They could look at Jesus face directly and make their supplications to him. It sounds different today because the logistics of prayer seem to have become a complex beyond the reach of the poor in spirit, like certain budgeting, locations, methods of prayer, frequencies of prayers, and some advocates who plead for the people..
The criteria by which the church selects its full time ministers for executing certain rituals by observation and the common testimony of the believing community for commissioning are challenged today. Any believer seems to pop up and claim divine legitimization to be a leader. One who claims to know the mystery of executing those humanly constructed liturgy has a better credential for ministry than the one formally authorized by the Church. Such formally commissioned ministers often accept the mandate in humility and a sense of inadequacy before God. Nowadays, many volunteers would claim divinely appointment and take up leadership, thus relieving the believers community from the trouble of carefully observing and commending ministers for such a task.
Prayer in the Bible appears to be not much vociferous or visible as it is a matter of heart and one’s inner motif toward God. Today prayers have become very conspicuous in the life of the believers. I mean to say, prayers have come out from the heart to the world to take shape in the forms of those logistics mentioned above, and more of a noise than substance. In the dialogue between the Samaritan woman and Jesus the former sounded like localizing prayer or institutionalizing worship. Jesus told her that a time had began from him when people will no longer confine prayers to a certain location but that a true worshiper will worship God in spirit and in truth. Prayer cannot be localized in a certain place or monopolized by some individuals or groups. For wherever a believing soul is found, there and in that believing person lies the right to pray and have the confidence to approach God. This right was made available to all believers by the onetime and perfect sacrifice of Jesus. If a person believes s/he cannot convince God, other advocates will find it harder. Let us remember to pray for each other because it is a divine command to do so, but not institutionalize it. For, many simple and happy Christians have begun to doubt their own divine right to pray. When the individual believer is relieved of the habit of praying to the Living God their natural urge to address God may turn to some other objects or ideologies resulting in disastrous apostasy. Prayer should have taken a visible shape in our land, including our physical world, Administrative system, public life as a whole. On the contrary, the floods of prayers in our land tilts to take the shape of is a very complicated ritual system and infrastructure will confuse many believers. I write this not displease any believer in Christ but with intent to remind each of us to lead a constantly examined Christian life, including our use and abuse of prayer. For, only a constantly revived life alone can lead us to grow toward maturity in Christ.
Ezamo Murry
Jorhat
