Lord, Hear Our Prayer

The Old Testament reading for this week is Solomon's prayer dedicating the newly constructed Temple in 1 Kings 8:22-53. As I read over it, I realized that even though this prayer was prayed specifically for the Temple and the people of Israel, it is a prayer that the Church would do well to imitate today. Below is my own paraphrase of this passage as a prayer for the Church. It is not meant to be a precise parallel to the passage. It is only meant to be an example of how Solomon's prayer might serve the Church today.

O Lord, the God of Israel, the God of the Church, there is no one like You in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and lovingkindness to Your servants who walk before You with all their heart. You are the God who kept your promises to David that his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel as long as they walked in your ways. So also may your promises to David's descendant, your Son, Jesus Christ be confirmed in your Church.

Is it really possible for God's own Spirit to dwell among us, mere human beings? Behold, heaven and even the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this feeble church building which we have built or these feeble bodies in which we live! In spite of our feebleness Lord, have regard for the prayers of Your servants and our supplications. O Lord my God, listen to the cry of Your people and to the prayer which Your servants pray before You today; that Your eyes may be open toward this people whom you have made Your home night and day, toward the people of whom You have said, "My name shall be there," to listen to the prayer which Your servants shall pray in this place. Listen to the supplication of Your servants, Your Church, when they pray in this place; hear in heaven Your dwelling place; hear and forgive.

If one of us sins against our neighbor and we then we promise to make things right and we come to this house and repeat that promise before You and God's people, listen from heaven and act accordingly. Judge and reveal any wicked way in us. Vindicate us when we act in accordance with Your righteousness.

When Your people suffer loss and defeat because we have sinned against You but we then turn to You again and confess Your name and pray and make supplication to You in this house then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of Your people and bring us back to the place of faith which you gave to our spiritual mentors.

When the heavens are shut up and your showers of blessing cease because we have sinned against You but we then pray in this place and confess Your name and turn from our sin when we are afflicted by You, then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of Your servants and Your Church. Indeed, teach us the good way in which we should walk and soak us with Your showers of blessing once again.

If there is shortage of food among us, if there is disease or injury, if there is economic downturn, if there is job-loss, if there is war, if their are political rivalries, whatever plagues us, wherever anyone is in need, whatever prayer is made by one of Your people or Your people as a whole, all of us knowing our own afflictions and our desparate need for You, hear that prayer in heaven, Your dwelling place, and forgive and act and render to each according to all his or her ways, for You alone know the hearts of all people. May we live with respect for Your righteous judgments and live in the faith of those who have journeyed this way before us.

Even Lord, those who are not a part of this congregation or this denomination or this nation, even those who do not call themselves Christian, even those who do not know you, even those who are considered religious outsiders, when they hear of Your great power and Your great mecry and they pray to you, hear them! Answer their prayers so that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name and reverence You as we do. May they know that you have built up the Church, Your people who are called by Your name.

When Your people go to battle, whatever kind of battle it might be, and we go into that battle prayerfully following only Your lead and not our own, then Lord hear our prayer and sustain us in the cause that You have given us.

When we sin against you, for we know that we are not without sin, and You are angry with us and deliver us over to the destructive forces of our world so that we live in exile from Your Holy presence, if in that exile we repent and pray to You in the midst of our captivity, if we return to You with all our heart and with all of our soul and we pray to You, then hear our prayer and our supplication in heaven, Your dwelling place, and forgive us of our sins against You and forgive our transgressions and make us objects of Your compassion just as you did when you brought us up out of our slavery through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Exodus. May Your eyes always be open to the prayers of Your people. May You listen whenever we call upon You for you have set us apart for Your holy purposes as Your very own inheritance by the redemption and liberation that comes through the life, death, and resurrection of Your Son Jesus Christ, in whose name we ask all these things. Amen.

Wisdom?

As we move from 2 Samuel into 1 Kings, we also move from the reign of David to the reign of his son Solomon. One of the most often told stories of Solomon occurs in 1 Kings 3. In this story, God appears to Solomon in a dream and says to Solomon "Ask what you wish me to give you." Honestly, it has a sort of a genie in a magic lamp sort of feel to it except that Solomon seems to only get one wish rather than the traditional three. The story tells us that Solomon makes a choice that pleases God. He does not ask for riches or long life as might have been a typical request. Instead, Solomon asks God to give him wisdom - specifically wisdom so that he might rule justly as king over Israel. God is so pleased with Solomon's request that God says he will not only grant Solomon's request for wisdom; God will also give Solomon that for which he did not ask: riches, honor, and long life.

Or to put it in the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:33, Solomon seeks first God's kingdom and God righteousness and all of these things are added unto him as well. Righteousness and justice are closely related terms in the Bible. Therefore, for Solomon to ask for wisdom to rule justly is to ask that God's righteousness become a reality through his reign as king over Israel. It is to ask that Solomon be so wise in his reign that it were as though God himself were reigning in Israel; that Israel's kingdom be God's kingdom. This is, of course, precisely what God's anointed leader for God's chosen people should pray. Israel was always supposed to be God's kingdom and the manifestation of God's righteousness within the world.

But what about the places in the story where Solomon does not act wisely or righteously? Of course, there are several stories that demonstrate the incredible wisdom that God gives to Solomon like the very next passage later in 1 Kings 3. However, Solomon also does several things which would certainly be counted as unwise and unrighteous by the standards of the Hebrew Scriptures. He marries women from foreign nations and we learn latter in 1 Kings 11 that these wives even lead Solomon to worship gods other than Yahweh. Solomon offered sacrifices on the "high places", which were probably pagan places of worship, rather than offering sacrifices in the Temple which God had given Solomon the privilege of building. We also find that Solomon makes his own palace larger and more magnificent that the Temple that he built for God, presumably with the same forced labor that built the Temple. Certainly, that is not the wisdom and righteousness of God at work, is it?

I guess we should come to expect this ambiguous mix of righteousness and unfaithfulness by this point in the story. These narratives of Israel's history are brutally honest about the imperfections of Israel's leaders. We saw the same thing in the story of David who was a model for all the kings after him and yet still had very serious flaws. Israel refuses to whitewash the stories of its leaders while simultaneously recognizing that these leaders were gifted by God in special ways in spite of their sins.

This is an encouragement to us as the Church. We know that we are sinners. Like Solomon, we recognize our inadequacy as we face the tasks that lie before us. We can not save this world. We can not even save ourselves. But God can still give us gifts and graces for his work in this world so that even in the midst of our sinfulness we can still pray and live the prayer "thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven."