Speaking for Others

A colleague once pointed out to me that pastors speak to the congregation as the voice of God in sermons and we speak to God as the voice of the congregation in liturgy and prayers. I still fight within myself to do these things with any sense of honesty and integrity.

“Pastor, would you mind giving the blessing?”

“Pastor, could you open our meeting with a prayer?”

“Pastor, when you go to the hospital can you stop and have a prayer with               ?”

At first it feels like an honor. People turn to me for something they want and it feels good to be of service. I am valued and looked up to. People wait for me to say something to God, to ask for something from God and I like it. It’s what people expect a pastor to do. It’s what I’ve been trained to do. And it doesn’t seem to be that hard. At first.

There are Psalms and prayers written in the little books that pastors keep in their pockets. There are prayers for blessing a house, for losing a job, for relocating, for people who are sick, people who are dying, people who are getting married or divorced or having a child or just about anything else a person can experience in this life. All I have to do is find the right page and insert the person’s name in the blank as I read it.

But sometimes this doesn’t work. These specifically generic prayers don’t quite speak to the exact issues at hand so I begin to develop my own prayers. I learn to ad-lib. Good sounding petitions get repeated and before long I have a list full of phrases that can be mixed and matched to sound like fresh prayers straight from the heart. This, by and large, seems to work. It might not be completely genuine but it becomes my “style” of praying.

I begin to wonder though, “Why am I the only one who prays out loud in a group setting?” I’m aware that my prayers reveal one perspective; my own. Where is the voice of elderly wisdom? Who is giving voice to the feminine viewpoint? How can I speak the grief of someone who’s child or spouse has died when I’ve never experienced that? I can ask God to be with and bless these people but how can I ever truly be their voice?

It seems right to let others pray too. But when I ask for a volunteer to pray on behalf of a group that is gathered, there is a moment where it feels like I’ve requested a volunteer for a suicide mission. The problem with public prayer is that it is extremely self-revealing. When we pray out loud other people get a glimpse into our soul, into our most personal and private beliefs. When we pray in front of others we risk exposing our deepest doubts, fears, longings and joys. And the truth is, we don’t like being exposed like that in public.

I realize that as a pastor I’ve learned how to hide behind the prayers I say in front of other people. I’ve learned how to construct prayers that are theologically correct but not true expressions of my own feelings. I’ve learned how to create formulaic prayers that sound good to the ear but never speak to the heart. I’ve learned how to pray with bold confidence but have never been willing to pray with the uncertainty that lurks below the surface.

What would that be like?

What if a pastor stood before God and spoke out loud the uncertainty of faith; the doubt, the wonder, the speculation, the hope and the disappointment of the congregation? How would it be received? How would it change the pastoral role in the community of faith? Would it make things better? Is it even possible?