Learning How to Cry Out to God

One of the most helpful tools for learning how to pray is the book of Psalms.  Not only praying through the Psalms but also taking the time to understand the form and function of the various types of psalms is an excellent practice.  (For an overview of studying the Psalms see my series of posts beginning here.)  The most numerous type of psalm is the prayer for help, or as it is more commonly called, the lament (Mays, 21; Miller, 55).  Both James Mays and Patrick Miller have been a tremendous help to me by way of explaining the common structure of the lament psalms. Honorable mention goes to Walter Brueggemann (see bibliography below).

These are the most common elements of prayers for help: 

1. Direct Address
2. Petition
3. Motivation
4. Lament or Description of Trouble
5. Expressions of confidence or trust
6. Offer or vow 

These elements will vary in the order of their appearance, and one or two (in particular the offer/vow) may not appear at all in some instances.  When working through a psalm I find that identifying these elements proves to be extremely helpful.  The various elements are pregnant with implied meaning and purpose.  For instance, the typical address in the prayers for help is brief and distinctly personal.  This implies an urgency and a familiarity with the one addressed.  The use of motivation, or reasons to hear and answer the petition(s), typically draws upon an intimate knowledge of the one addressed, and/or a distinct history between the pray-er and the addressee.  At times the motivation is cloaked in praise which may appear at times to border on coercion.

Something that Patrick Miller points out in They Cried to the Lord, is that even outside of the Psalms the Old Testament is filled with prayers for help.  I'm sure I knew this, but my focus on the Psalms has been so narrow that I overlooked the value of considering the prayers for help throughout the rest of Scripture. Miller identifies and outlines these laments in Appendix 1: A Structural Outline of Prayers for Help and Intercession in Prose Texts (pp. 337-357).

Well, the New Testament also includes prayers for help, especially in the passion narratives.  I am currently studying Mark 14:26-52 which includes Jesus' prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.  This is an astounding example of a prayer for help.  It is also significant in that it puts the Old Testament laments into perspective.  Jesus fulfills and answers the deepest cries of the soul.*  Here's how I would outline Jesus' prayer in the garden according to the elements listed above:

ADDRESS                                     Abba, Father

MOTIVATION                                All things are possible for you.

PETITION                                     Remove this cup from me.

DESCRIPTION OF TROUBLE        [My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.]

CONFIDENCE                               Yet not what I will, but what you will.

It is worth noting that this particular address is far more intimate than the typical, "O Lord," "O God," or even "My God."  There is an aspect of motivation coupled with the address that is absolutely stunning and beautiful.  Also, the description of trouble is pulled down from verse 34.  It seems appropriate to include it here, because it clearly identifies the circumstance from which this prayer arises.  (The English text is that of the ESV.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

James L. Mays, Psalms. Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994.

Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.

Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit. Winona, MN: St. Mary's Press, 1982; 2nd Edition. Cascade Books, 2007.

_____, The Psalms and the Life of Faith. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

Note* - Today I stumbled across the abstract for Rebekah Ann Eklund's dissertation, Lord, Teach Us How to Grieve: Jesus' Laments and Christian Hope. unpublished (Duke Divinity School), 2012.  Eklund notes that, "lament has a dual function in the New Testament: it points to Jesus as the beginning of the fulfillment of lament’s cries, and it points forward to the consummation of God’s kingdom as guaranteed in Jesus’ resurrection" (iv).  With this I am hooked.  I downloaded her complete dissertation here, and am looking forward to reading more.

Learning How to Cry Out to God

The Biblical Story Viewed Through the Lens of Prayer

Address to God in the Bible and in human life generally moves back and forth between plea or petition and praise or thanksgiving.  In that movement, one is at the heart of what prayer is all about.  The Biblical story as a whole and in many of its parts may be charted along that movement also.  It begins in human address that is the cry of a suffering one (Gen 4:10), and it ends when those cries have ceased (Rev 21:1-4) and the world is filled with the praise of God (Psalm 150 and Revelation 19).  That movement, however, from plea to praise happens only because between those words to God things happen to transform the human situation or attitude and turn weeping to joy, tears to laughter. 

(Patrick Miller, They Cried to the Lord, p. 55)

The Biblical Story Viewed Through the Lens of Prayer

Prayer By Any Name

How do you pray?  What words would you use to describe your prayers?  Can prayer be silent?  When and where do you pray?  How would you describe your posture of prayer?

These questions are taken up in great detail in chapter two Patrick D. Miller's They Cried To the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994).   This is a stimulating study on the terminology, timing, locations, and actions associated with biblical prayers (focused particularly upon the OT). Miller reaffirms the case that the Scriptures do not limit pray-ers to one "correct" way of praying, but rather frees them by recognizing a variety of manners of communicating with God, a flexibility with regard to timing and location, and also appropriate, meaningful gestures.

This chapter is divided into three primary sections covering Terminology, Time and Place, and Gestures and Acts. 

The discussion of the terminology of prayer takes up the majority of space in which we are introduced to the variety of terms used in Scripture.  Identifying the terms used for communication between mankind and the divine is a task I've undertaken only on a limited scale and with reference to the NT.  This study is helpful and reads like an entry into NIDOTT.  Miller identifies general terms for communication, technical terms for prayer, and general terms of communication that have been adopted as technical terms for specific prayers (such as crying, complaining, and meditating).

What I learned from this is that prayer cannot be pigeon-holed into a single expression; for instance, "asking and receiving," or "obtaining answers."  Rather, prayer is a diverse act which is normally calm and controlled, often load and emotional, and sometimes quiet or silent altogether.

With regard to the time and place of prayer, Miller concludes:

Holy place and private room, sanctuary and sickbed are all places of prayer.  Set times and any time, morning and night are all times of prayer.  The Scriptures identify prayer as an act that could be set in particular moments and places and routinized in definite ways.  But it was not confined to such settings.  Formality and fixity interchange with openness and freedom in the time and place of prayer. (50, empahsis mine)

Questions about gestures and posture in prayer often meet inadequate answers and unbiblical reservedness.  At least that has been my experience up until lately.  The final section explores this issue with refreshing insight.  

"Praying is so much a verbal act, even if only in the mind, that one is inclined to neglect the nonverbal dimension that is frequently indicated in the texts.  But in ancient times as much or more than the present, dimensions of prayer were expressed with the body and in acts, movements, and gestures" (50).  

According to the OT data, sitting, laying prostrate, and kneeling convey a sense of humility before God, "that the conversation is not ordinary conversation" (50).  The upraised or outstretched hands in praise or petition "convey a sense of the transcendent, that prayer is directed beyond oneself and this world to the God who is in heaven" (51).  This posture is worth considering a bit further since it seems to provoke the most confusion, if not controversy.  Miller continues, 

All these gestures and actions serve to recognize that the act of praying to God, of setting one's case before God or presenting prayers in behalf of another in need, is not simply a routine action.  In some sense, one moves one's whole being into a stance of prayer.  There is a break from whatever is happening, an acknowledgement that now one is coming before God. ... Not all praying assumes a specifically holy ground, but this kind of action is not done matter-of-factly, and the reaching to heaven or to the holy place, the sanctuary, symbolizes that fact, that the very act of prayer takes one into another world, reaches out toward the transcendent. (51, emphasis mine)

What's interesting here is that we often accept "extreme gestures and acts" such as weeping and wailing, pulling the hair, tearing the cloths, fasting, etc.; yet we quibble about uplifted hands in public.  Hmmm!  Maybe we're missing something rich and vital to prayer, when we insist on strict restraint and propriety in all cases, especially when in public.

In summary, Miller writes, "However direct the encounter of prayer may be, however, open and assertive may be those who cry out and complain, there is no doubt that these are prayers of creature before creator, that anguish and anger do not belie the relationship" (54).
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Related:
Notes on the Introduction and Chapter 1

Prayer By Any Name

Reading Note: Patrick Miller on Biblical Prayer (Intro, Ch. 1)

I am currently working through Patrick D. Miller's They Cried To the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994) and am finding it to be dense, yet profitable.  This is a scholarly work dedicated to James L. Mays, whom I have come to greatly appreciate for his work on the Psalms (see here and here).

AUDIENCE
The audience for which Miller wrote is suggested by Michael Welker in his endorsement on the back cover--"This volume will become a standard work not only for exegetes but also for both practical and systematic theologians, for pastors, and for anyone interested in understanding the foundations of piety."  Having found numerous references to this work in commentaries and studies on the Psalms, I believe that Welker's statement has been amply validated.

The opening paragraph of Miller's Preface not only identifies the source from which these studies originated, but also grounds this work in a very practical setting: the classroom.  Miller writes,

This study of biblical prayer arises form teaching seminary students, pastors, and lay people about the Psalms and, more broadly, about prayer in Scripture.  All of these groups have taught me as I have taught them and thus have helped to shape this book in large and small ways. (xv)

So, we have here a book on the theology of prayer which was developed and cultivated in the crucible of the classroom in conversation with a variety of practitioners.  This sounds promising!

THEME
This book is introduced with the thought-provoking declaration that "No single practice more clearly defines a religion than the act of praying" (1).  Furthermore, by arguing that belief is shaped by prayer, Miller contends for the necessary interdependence and essential unity of prayer and the theological task.  He continues,

"So prayer and theology exist in relation to each other in a correcting circle, the one learning from the other and correcting the other.  Religious faith seeks not to think one way and to pray another but to come before God in a manner that is consistent with what we believe and profess about God and God's way and to think about God in a way that is shaped by the experience of actual encounter in prayer. Learning to pray teaches about God" (1).

AIM
The stated aim of this book is "to look fairly comprehensively and broadly at biblical prayer," yet this volume is not to be taken as "a theology of prayer in general," but rather "a theology of biblical prayer" (2).

"WHAT OTHER GREAT NATION HAS A GOD SO NEAR TO US?"*
Chapter 1, "Israel's Neighbors at Prayer," was an introduction to new territory for me, yet I found it fascinating to see the many parallels and contrasts between the examples of Mesopotamian prayers provided.  One lesson that stood out to me (and which is promised to be dealt with more fully later on in the book) was the note that whereas the prayers of Israel's neighbors typically accompanied sacrificial offerings and the biblical Psalms lack such ritual directions, nevertheless, "it is clear from references in the Psalms and the historical books that the biblical laments and thanksgiving songs were also accompanied by sacrifice.  In fact, the same Hebrew term, todah, designates both the thanksgiving song and the thanksgiving sacrifice" (31). This is helpful to keep in mind while reading the books of the Law and the Psalms.  The connection between the speech and actions of worship is significant.

Miller concludes this chapter with the following observation:

The commonality that does exist between Israel's prayers and those of its neighbors suggests structures and modes of prayer that are not precisely identical but sufficiently related that we can assume there is something universal here, that it is in the shared and common history that we learn what God seeks in prayer, that the modes receive a confirmation in part because they seem to be common human ways belonging to the creatureliness of every human being and the imperfect and partial effort on the part of the creature to communicate with the divine. (31)

I didn't expect to find so much in common although it is clear that, beyond the polytheistic and monotheistic differences between Israel and her early neighbors, the openness and freedom which Israel and all of her children enjoy in prayer is unmistakable.

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* NOTE - I love connecting the dots between books, authors and history.  Here is a hint to the significance of the title chosen for the Festschrift in honor of Patrick Miller: Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen (eds.), A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller (Eisenbrauns, 2003).

Reading Note: Patrick Miller on Biblical Prayer (Intro, Ch. 1)