Monday, March 5, 2012

Excursus: Elijah and the Power of ... Prayer?


16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.  17 Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.  18 Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. 
-- James 5:16-18

I have a problem with the phrase "The power of prayer."  Maybe my uneasiness with it isn't so much about prayer per se, but with prayer as it is understood and practiced among many of the Christians I know.  Certainly, prayer as it is viewed by our culture is weak and anemic, not powerful.  I've found that much of our practice of prayer makes prayer into a tool that we use to get God to act or to convince God to align His will to what we desire.  It is selfish and self-centered.  I'd say that it borders on idolatry, but we've crossed that line and have made prayer into an idolatrous act that seeks to manipulate God into conforming to our understanding of what is good, right, or best.

There's another reason I find myself bristling at "The power of prayer."  It's not found in God's Word.  I know that there are many people who think that is found in James 5:16, but the Greek word used in this verse is not the word that the Bible normally uses for "power" (dunamus, from which we get the English word 'dynamite') but is a word that is mostly translated as "capability" or "strength" or "good health" (ischuo).  Moreover, the context of James 5:16 is frequently ignored when making use of it to lay claim to the power of prayer.  Rather than prompting us to pray for physical healing when a believer is seriously ill, this passage reads much more like a commendation of the dying with an emphasis on the forgiveness of sins over physical healing.  Could it be that James 5:16 is a call to the Church to exercise the power of the Office of the Keys rather than a proof text for a power in individual, personal prayer?  I, for one, see it just that way.

What troubles me most about people using James 5:16 to bolster their claims to power in their prayers is how quickly they pass over the qualification of one who might pray effectively.  That qualification, of course, is that the one praying be "righteous."  On one hand we can quickly appeal to the right standing that we have with God as the means to lay claim to this requirement.  I certainly have no objection to this.  But given the ground that James has covered up to this verse and, once again, emphasizing the immediate context of this verse, the righteousness that is on the line here is more than our standing before God.  It is being before God in prayer in accordance with His Word and will.  This is why Elijah is held up as an illustration of a righteous man praying effectively.

It's interesting that James underscores a cause and effect relationship between Elijah's prayers and the three and a half years of no rain because 1 Kings 16:30 - 17:1 makes no reference to Elijah praying to start the drought and 1 Kings 18:41-45 says nothing about Elijah praying to end the drought.  Even more interesting is that the only two references to Elijah praying during this period of his ministry are to his prayer for God to display His power against the prophets of Baal and his three-fold prayer that God would restore life to the deceased son of the widow of Zarephath -- a prayer that would be a much better example of the power of healing prayer if that's what James is talking about!  Since we know that God's Word does not contradict itself, it's clear that Elijah did some praying at the beginning of the drought and at its conclusion.  But the power that caused and ended the drought is clearly the power of God's Word.  As the prophet chosen by God to deliver that Word, Elijah was a righteous man when he faithfully proclaimed God's Word and trusted in its power.

I suppose that my greatest objection to the phrase "The power of prayer" is rooted in Elijah's experience.  When he prayed he counted on God's power, not the power of his prayers.  He knew that the Word of God is powerful and effective and sought to align his prayers to God's Word.  This is the way that Martin Luther prayed and where he found power in prayer.  It's lacking in prayer today.  So many people go about praying as though they have the power that Elijah had without relying on the Word as he did.

I know that I'm on thin ice with many Christians by objecting to the phrase "The power of prayer."  On the surface, I'm even at odds with Luther who made use of the phrase.  But I think Luther would object to our contemporary ideas of prayer.  He would certainly find most of the teachings on prayer objectionable.  And even though James was hardly his favorite book of the Bible, he would point to it as proof that the power is in God's Word.  I'm convinced of these things because of what he wrote about prayer (Luther's Works, vol. 21, page 232): "Here we are discussing only the power of prayer and the motivation for it. The principal thing to do is, first of all, to look at the Word of God.  It will teach you what you should believe from your heart, to make you certain that your faith, Gospel, and Christ are correct and that your station in life is pleasing to God."   The righteous pray looking for and expecting the power of the Word of God.

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