Thirteenth Thursday after Pentecost
I've been thinking about the story I told a week or two ago about the young woman who was joining my United Methodist church after being brought up Catholic. She asked me if she could be a Methodist and still pray to Mary. She said, more or less, that God was somewhat remote to her but Mary she could really feel close to, especially because Mary was a woman.
As I think back, I have been praying to Jesus about half the time in my personal prayers, and about half the time to God. When I pray in a group or in a Sunday School class, I always pray to God. Why do I make that distinction? One thing that is good for me about writing this blog is that I find myself thinking about things I haven't thought about before. This is one of them.
I think it's for me a lot like it was for the young Catholic/Methodist woman. Jesus is very personal. God is high in heaven, all powerful, looking benignly down upon God's creation. Jesus is/was down to earth, literally and figuratively. I can picture Jesus. I can imagine Jesus. I can speak to him like I would speak to a very close friend. I don't like saying this, but I still feel like God is judgmental. Jesus is not. In story after story in the gospels we read of Jesus' being non-judgmental with people whom the rest of the world judges harshly.
Does that mean that Jesus is different from God? The doctrine of the Trinity is that the three are one, completely and fully, three persons in one God. I believe in the Trinity. How can I believe in the Trinity and write what I did in the preceding paragraph?
Here's how. What I believe and what I feel don't have to be the same thing. Coming to belief in and understanding of the Trinity is a rational process. Praying to Jesus is as much emotional as rational. I was brought up in the 50's and 60's as a rationalist modernist intellectual male. Emotions were bad. Emotional people weren't rational. That understanding was ameliorated in the decade of the 70's, but still has some residue for me. I now understand (almost) that what I feel is as important as what I think.
John Wesley understood this all far better than I do. The strongest accusation against Wesley by his superiors in the Anglican church and by the English press was that he and his movement were guilty of "enthusiasm." His outdoor preaching to the "unwashed masses," his organization of bands, what we would call small groups, his belief that Christians in these groups were spiritually accountable for one another, and many other things that allowed the expression of emotions did not sit well within the staid, established Anglican Church.
I don't know whether Wesley prayed directly to Jesus in his personal prayers, but I know that I do. I don't know whether Wesley would be ok with my practice, but I'm sure that God is.
How about you? I would love to hear from you, either in a blog comment or a personal email to me, about how you pray.
Faithfully,
Christian
candmwilson401@att.net
2 comments:
This is something I have felt that I didn’t understand, too. For unknown reasons I believed that I had been brought up to pray to God the Father but had found myself in various groups who often prayed directly to Jesus. I am comfortable praying to the Father in the name of Jesus. It is my personality to crave rules or procedures to do things the correct way. As I make my way on my own faith journey I have begun to realize that there isn’t necessarily a set of rules or procedures and I am free to engage in a relationship with God as I feel led. I understand that Jesus is the revelation of God the Father. Therefore all his attributes are also those of God (too simple?).
In thinking about whom I pray to, I usually address God. Jesus instructed in Matthew 6:6 to pray to our Heavenly Father but this was before his death and resurrection. However, since I believe in the Trinity, I cannot distinguish between praying to God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit since they are considered one God. If they are considered individually, then how do we explain our monotheism? With Mary the issue I struggle with is that God in Exodus 20:1-6 and Deuteronomy 5:6 instructed us to have no other gods before Him. Praying to Mary would seem to be putting her next to God. I would appreciate your comments.
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