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Before prayer can have meaning, it must be built on an honest sharing of life. Cornelia, the woman about whom I wrote last week, did that for me. Before prayer can be discussed in the age in which we live, it must be drained of its presumed manipulative magic. It must find expression in the reality of who we are, not in the details of what we do. These were the insights that my third story gave to me as I walked through what was probably the darkest period of my life, the years 1981-1989. The learning curve was steep; the depth of despair was real. I invite you now to enter that time period with me and to walk through that experience as I did. This narrative is true, personal and painful. I have spoken verbally of it before. I have not written about it. Doing so even now makes me feel quite vulnerable.</p> <p>Around Christmas of 1981, my first wife, Joan Lydia Ketner Spong, was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. She had never been fond of doctors and so had postponed seeing one until she felt her symptoms had become critical. She had discovered a lump in her breast much earlier and had decided to tell no one for a very long time. It grew very slowly causing her to assume, perhaps to hope, that it must be benign. It remained her secret. That December as the holidays came into focus, however, the tumor erupted externally and became a draining sore. When that occurred, I became alarmed and got her as quickly as I could to a doctor. After an examination and later a biopsy, we heard the verdict. She had a stage four malignancy. Immediate surgery was required and massive chemotherapy would have to follow the surgery. No guarantees were offered even then. In fact we were told that about two years of life might be all that we could reasonably expect. We sank into the shock of that diagnosis.</p> <p>At that time I was an active and fairly high-profile public figure as the bishop of Newark. We had been engaged in great controversies over the full acceptance in both church and society of gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual persons. I was clearly identified in this fight and my name was widely recognized from press and television coverage. People in public life learn quickly that they really do not, perhaps cannot, have a private life. Within minutes, it seemed, the news of both my wife’s diagnosis and her prognosis spread until it seemed to me as if the whole world knew. From that day on, I never visited a congregation in my diocese for confirmation that prayers were not offered publicly for my wife and for me. Prayer groups all over New Jersey informed us that they were praying for us – some were Episcopal, some were Roman Catholic and some were ecumenical. The one thing they all appeared to have in common was that they knew of the two-year maximum boundary that presumably my wife and I were facing. I did not resent this invasion of our privacy. I was rather appreciative of their efforts, as was Joan. Their actions felt supportive and loving. In their own way, the people were telling us that they really cared for us and, in whatever way they could, they wanted to help. They were willing in this way to stand with us, to share in our pain and in our struggle. One never rejects love that is so freely offered, even when the form in which it comes might not be one’s particular style. So Joan and I were carried by this wave of love from those who reached out to us in what was clearly our time of need.</p> <p>The months passed and then the years began to mount. When we passed the two-year prediction date, and things were still going positively, I noticed that these prayer groups began to take credit for my wife’s longevity. In their letters to me, it almost sounded as if they believed that they had engaged the powers of evil in some profound contest that pitted them on God’s side, holding back God’s enemies. Their prayers, they suggested, were pushing back the advance of this demonic sickness. They were winning the battle and they felt good about their success. Once again, my response was not to debate the theological implications of their understanding of prayer, but simply to appreciate the level of caring that they were offering. It was, at least in its intention, sustaining. I could not help, however, in the darkness of each night to wonder about the implications of their understanding of prayer</p> <p>“Suppose,” I thought to myself during a particularly sleepless time, “that a member of the City of Newark’s sanitation department had a wife with cancer.” At that time, Newark, New Jersey, was either at or very near the top of the list of America’s poorest per capita cities. I tried to envision just who it was who might occupy the bottom tier of Newark’s socio-economic status system. My mind settled, whether rightly or wrongly, on the garbage collector working for Newark’s sanitation department. So I focused on him.</p> <p>In this long dark meditation, I wondered how many prayer groups would have added her name to their lists. How much public notice would her illness have achieved? If this couple went to church, perhaps that community might have been aware of their struggle, but would services have been interrupted with passionate petitions for healing? Would the gates of heaven have been stormed by massive number of prayers? Would God, I then wondered, let this man’s wife die more quickly than my wife? My high public profile and social prominence alone caused more prayers to be uttered for my wife than for his. Would those prayers be a factor, I wondered, in either healing or longevity? Does God operate on the basis of human status? If I believed that prayer worked in this way, I would immediately become an atheist! I could not possibly believe in such a deity. This capricious God would be demonic, it seemed to me. The cumulative power of many people praying existed in the case of my wife only because I was a fairly well known public figure. Is status a factor in what is thought of as the healing power of God? When John Paul II lingered on his death bed for so long, the whole world joined in prayer for him. Was that a factor in his long lingering death? When hurricanes barrel down on a population center like New Orleans, the cries of millions are lifted heavenward in prayer. Will the cumulative power of many prayers affect the course of a life, change the direction of a hurricane or alter the path of a disease? Is that what prayer does? If so, then prayer is a tool to be used by the mighty, the powerful and the well-known. If that is true then God clearly cares more for the rich and famous than God does for the poor, the forgotten and the unknown. Such a conclusion becomes theologically violent, absurd and even hate-filled. Whatever prayer means, it cannot be that. My wife lived for six and a half years from her diagnosis in December of 1981 to her death in August of 1988. In retrospect, I treasure that extension of time, but I did not fully understand then the gift that I was given. Life is like that. As St. Paul says, we see only “through a glass darkly.”</p> <p>So I put these stories with their varied and distinctive insights together. Then I seek to draw conclusions about what prayer means in the 21st century. Prayer is not and cannot be a petition from the weak to the all-powerful one to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Prayer does not bend God’s will to a new conclusion. Prayer does not bring a cure where there is no possibility of a cure. Prayer does not create miracles to which we can testify publicly.</p> <p>These are little more than the delusions of yesterday that we are now called on to abandon. They arose out of the childhood of our humanity. Today a new question emerges, which we must face with honesty. Is prayer only the human act of last resort? Does praying reflect anything more than the fact that all else has failed? Why do we say so frequently to people, “You will be in my prayers,” when we never stop to pray? Is it not our impotence in the face of life’s pain that draws us to pretend that we actually possess the power to make a difference, creating nothing more than a comfortable fantasy land in which we can hide?</p> <p>Is my experience, which tells me that loving, caring and sharing matter, actually real? Can prayer be defined as something other than this pious activity? Does it have any claim on reality? Is prayer a holy activity or is it a preparation for a time of engaging in a holy activity? Increasingly, I am moving to the latter conclusion. It is life that is holy. It is love that is life-giving. Having the courage to be all that I can be is the place where God and life come together for me. If that is so, is not living, loving and being the essence of prayer and the meaning of worship? When Paul enjoined us to “pray without ceasing” did he mean to engage the activity of praying unceasingly? Or did he mean that we are to see all of life as a prayer calling the world to enter that place where life, love and being reveal the meaning of God? Is Christianity not coming to the place where my “I” meets another’s “Thou” and in that moment God is present?</p> <p>I pray daily. In my own way, I bring before the eyes of my mind those I love and thus into my awareness of the holy in which my life seems to be lived. Do I expect miracles to occur, lives to be changed or wholeness suddenly to replace brokenness? No, but I do expect to be made more whole, to be set free to share my life more deeply with others, to be enabled to love beyond my boundaries and to watch the barriers that divide me from those I once avoided lowered. Prayer to me is the practice of the presence of God, the act of embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of sharing with another the gifts of living, loving and being. Can that understanding of prayer, so free of miracle and magic, make any real difference in our world? I believe it can, it does and it will.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p> </p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Clifford Hill of Wheaton, Illinois, writes:</span> </p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question:</h4> <p>I am a member of a United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Over the years, I have taught many adult classes and would, in that process, include many of Bart Ehrman’s offerings in the Great Courses series. Currently, my class has six sessions of his course: After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, remaining and I had planned to present these this coming fall. I received a call from our Director of Care Minister, who is the scheduler for adult classes. She asked me to cancel this class because some persons, (unknown to me), but who are not members of the class, had complained about it. Earlier our senior pastor had mentioned to me that I should be “sensitive” to others’ feelings about this class and presumably, about Bart Ehrman,</p> <p>My question: What is your professional opinion about the credibility and qualifications of Professor Bart Ehrman and what is your opinion about his scholarship as evidenced in his books and in his Great Courses classes?</p> <p> </p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4> <p>Dear Cliff,</p> <p>I know Bart Ehrman and believe him to be a competent scholar of the first order. His expertise is in the period of early Christian history more than it is in scripture studies per se. I have listened to all of his classes in the Great Courses series and have appreciated his insights, controversial as some of them well may be. Dr. Ehrman challenges the popular, but not substantiated, assumption that there ever was such a thing as “Orthodox Christianity. He demonstrates, rather powerfully, that there were originally “many Christianities” long before what came to be called traditional orthodoxy emerged with power as “The One True Faith.”</p> <p>I suspect that what you are now hearing is not an objection to Bart Ehrman’s scholarship, but rather the fact that in one of his recent books, he stated that he was no longer a believer. He now calls himself an atheist. He has had an interesting history, starting in one of the most conservative and fundamentalist parts of the Christian Church. In my opinion, he is still processing his life experience. He has much to teach us all. No one has to agree with either his current faith position or with any of his conclusions; his scholarship is still impressive. In the book in which he said that he was no longer a believer, I have an endorsement on the back cover. In that endorsement I said I had come to a very different conclusion, but that I still had a great respect for his work. I do.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong </p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=e95984a88b&e=0471473479"><img style="width: 500px;height: 201px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" align="none" width="500" height="201" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/f332ff1f-2151-4430-9c66-8d87dff80810.jpg"></a> </div> <h1 class="aolmail_mc-toc-title" style="color: #003d4a;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 34px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:26px"><span style="color:#000000">Bishop Spong speaks at The American Cathedral in Paris on October 16, 2016</span></span></h1> <span style="font-size:20px"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=2b3daada24&e=0471473479">Click here for more information</a></span></div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;" border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="aolmail_footerContent" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan="2" id="aolmail_social" style="background-color: #FAFAFA;border: 0;" valign="middle"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" id="aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;" valign="middle"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"><div class="aolmail_vcard"><div class="aolmail_adr"><div class="aolmail_street-address"></div></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" id="aolmail_utility" valign="middle"> </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_29f1b92d-b119-4edc-915c-ccff80a9d0bb td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style>