“God will respond to you if you pray perfectly,” she said.

This was the early 2000s. We were dipping our toes back into this whole church thing. We were at a church in Alexandria, Virginia. It was a bright spring day with light streaming in, making the room glow gold.

“If you want that armoire, just go to the Lord about it. If you pray in a way that pleases the Lord, He will grant you your heart’s desire.”

That didn’t feel right. It’s a tempting theology, but that ain’t it. It makes God more like a cosmic bellhop or some magic mirror than a loving parent.

And yet the idea does seem to have biblical backing. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Jesus says in Mark 11:24, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” What are we supposed to do with that?

Did you know one of the first robots ever made was for religious purposes? In the sixteenth century, a Spanish inventor created a clockwork monk. You would wind it up and it would move, make the sign of the cross, kneel in prayer, and move its lips while holding a scroll of prayers. The idea was that the prayer would be performed perfectly every time.[1] It was an object lesson: this is how prayer is done.

I think folks took that to heart. I often hear y’all say, “I just don’t know how to pray.” Friends, there has always been debate about what prayer actually is. For some, like Martin Luther, prayer doesn’t really count unless you feel it. Luther reacted against the medieval Catholic system that emphasized fixed prayers and rituals. In that tradition, it didn’t matter so much how you felt. What mattered was that the prayers were said and the rituals performed.

Who is right? They both are. And they are both wrong.

If prayer only happened when I felt like it, no routine would ever be established. Sometimes I have to pray, and while praying my feelings might change. It’s like working out. For many of us, the best part of working out is the end. When you stop. That was always my favorite part of running; the whole stopping part. Afterward I felt glad I had done it. Yet before and sometimes during the run… no thank you.

But sometimes emotion accompanied the run. Maybe it was springtime, the blossoms coming out, the earth waking up. And suddenly I felt joyful just to be alive.

Prayer can be like that too. Sometimes there are moments of genuine connection and communion with God. Those moments are gifts. But they don’t happen every time.

But prayer is not about getting that armoire. I mean, what a thing to pray for. Why not an end to war? Why not childhood cancer? Couldn’t we set our sights a little higher than Pottery Barn? Because if prayer is just a way to get better furniture, then God isn’t God. God is just a vending machine with more expensive options.

Once an atheist friend challenged me about prayer. What good is prayer in the face of the Holocaust? In the face of Hitler?

I said those were good questions. He pressed further.

“Every time I’ve had this conversation with religious people,” he said, “they talk about free will. Humans did this. Humans built the camps, operated the gas chambers, and looked away while the trains rolled past. I get that. No argument from me there…”

That was exactly where my brain wanted to go, so I asked him to say more.

“My cousin was born with a genetic disorder,” he said. “Seizures. Feeding tube. No choices caused that. No Nazis required. Just biology. Random mutation. And my aunt and uncle are good, faithful people praying every night to a God who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do anything. That’s why I don’t believe.”

I had no answer for that, just solidarity and compassion. And isn’t that the best thing. In a rare showing of patience, my buddy and I went from conflicting ideologies to a moment of vulnerability. That’s holy ground. I too long for a world that makes sense. A world that is more just, more fair, more whole. A world without childhood illness, mass shootings, and mosquitoes. Less genetic disorders, more health and human thriving. Then I thought about the cross.

In today’s reading we hear of Christ’s death. As he hangs on the cross, he cries out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

This is actually a quotation from Psalm 22. In his agony, Jesus turns to scripture. Psalm 22 begins with despair but eventually moves toward hope. This moment is powerful for me.

I’m a Trinitarian. Jesus is God speaking to the Father, who is also God, and he feels forsaken. In Christ, God experiences abandonment from within human suffering. God is truly with us. Every person in this room probably knows a moment like that. When the diagnosis came. When the phone rang late at night. When we read a headline that broke our hearts. And our response is, “My God…”

That’s not taking God’s name in vain, by the way. For me, taking God’s name in vain looks more like praying for an armoire in the midst of suffering and injustice. As people suffer and die, we pray for furniture.

When I arrive at moments of forsakenness, I try to pray. I pray for peace and understanding. I pray for strength. I pray for the courage to face what needs to be faced instead of numbing myself or turning away. And then I reach out to people who love me. Because I need community.

God exists in community. Jesus was almost always surrounded by people. He comforted, healed, ate meals, and told stories around the table. We call him Immanuel, God with us.

In my work as a pastor, I see many ways people isolate themselves. I do it too. But it is not good for us to be alone.

To my atheist buddy, I stated that I believe God is somehow in this world, not above it manipulating events like a cosmic puppeteer, but within it, suffering with it.

My friend said, “That sounds like tragedy with company.”

Maybe it is. But when tragedy hits, I’m not about to discount the company. Because when suffering comes, the question is rarely, “Why is this happening?” The question is usually, “Who will sit with me while it does?” And when I do ask the why question, it’s to someone I love and trust.

Sometimes we need to be carried. And it is a privilege to carry others in return. Death is real. Suffering is real. The cross tells the truth about that. But the cross is also good news. Because it tells us suffering and death do not get the last word. Just as Psalm 22 begins in despair but moves toward hope, the very next psalm—Psalm 23—reminds us that even in the valley of the shadow of death, we are not alone. There are enemies in Psalm 23. There is danger. There is the valley of death. But those things are not the point. The point is that goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives, and that we dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

If God’s nature is revealed in Christ, then God is not distant or uninterested. God is present. Curious about us. Caring about us. Walking with us as we carry our crosses.

That is very different from the old pagan picture of the gods. In those stories, the gods are fickle. Life is miserable because the gods are angry. So we offer sacrifices to appease them. If the sacrifice is costly enough, maybe they will leave us alone for a while.

But that is not our God. Our God becomes the sacrifice. God comes preaching love and nonviolence, and we kill him for it. And when God returns, he comes back with scars and continues preaching love and nonviolence. We threw our worst at God, and it didn’t change God one bit. God would rather die than be in the sin accounting business or start going tit-for-tat with us.  God still loves. God still forgives. God’s grace is still constant and amazing.

If violence truly worked, the world would already be peaceful. With all the bombs dropped and all the wars fought, surely violence would have solved things by now. Instead, we are invited into a different way of life.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, Christians are called to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world.[2] In other words, the place of the church is not above the world, judging it from a distance. The place of the church is within the world, walking where Jesus walked, going where he went. Among the hungry. Among the homeless. Among the outcast. Among all who feel abandoned by God. Our presence matters.

Prayer, for me, is simply talking with God. I do it all the time. Not like the clockwork monk or the vending-machine version of God. Prayer is a conversation with the author of the universe.

Imagine calling a friend who only ever talked about what they wanted, never listened, and never responded to anything you said. That’s what vending-machine prayer often becomes. Instead, think of your best relationship. Your partner. Your closest friend. There is conversation. Listening. Response. A dynamic exchange. That is what prayer can be.

I don’t have many answers for you. But I do know this. We cannot underestimate the power of presence in suffering. I don’t know the why of suffering. It just is. But I know the how: together.

The cross tells us that God does not stand far away from human pain. God climbs right into it. Not as a vending machine. Not as a cosmic bellhop. But as a companion.

And if God is willing to meet us there… then we can meet one another there too. No hiding. No masks. No apologies. “Sorry, I’m such a mess.” Yeah, me too. Let’s be friends as our messes are similar. In that vulnerability, community and grow and start and the true miracle can happen: strangers to friends and friends to family. Those who will sit with you and pray and be with you when tragedy happens. And maybe, just maybe, our prayers and relationships start aiming a little higher than furniture. We’re a little less robotic. A little more human.

As the Sufi poet Hafiz once wrote, “I should not make any promises right now, but I know if you pray somewhere in this world—something good will happen. God wants to see more love and playfulness in your eyes, for that is your greatest witness.”[3]

That I believe. That I know. Amen.

Works Cited

[1] https://radiolab.org/podcast/radiolab-clockwork-miracle

[2] Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the suffering world. Augsburg Fortress, 2003. Page 175

[3] “Your Mother and My Mother” found in The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the great Sufi master. Translations by Daniel Ladinsky, page 39.