The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. (James 5:16)
“The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” It sometimes seems hard to convince myself and others of the truth of this assertion of the power of prayer from the Epistle of James. So often it seems to us that prayer is not powerful or effective. So often it seems that we ask and it is not given to us; we seek and do not find; we knock and the door is not opened.
Why is this so? The easy out is to examine the terms and, lawyer-like, to stipulate those terms. On the one hand, we could stipulate “prayer.” Maybe if you get prayer wrong it doesn’t count in God’s eyes, doesn’t make it to God’s ears? If you’re no good at prayer, maybe it doesn’t work? On the other hand, we could stipulate who “the righteous” are. And if you are not among the righteous, then even if you know how to pray, maybe your prayer may not, in fact, be powerful and effective? Sorry to break it to you, but maybe that’s the way it is? But such stipulations are only legalisms, and they will never lead us to good news. If we are going to gather together on a Sunday morning and read this stuff to one another, it better have something good to say to us. Otherwise, why are we here?
I believe that the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective, and I want to try to tell you why I believe this by sharing a story with you.
Late in August, gunshots were fired not far from here, outside a restaurant on Rittenhouse Square. I don’t know what happened, and, amazingly, I don’t think anyone was hurt. I wasn’t anywhere nearby. I didn’t hear the shots fired. I only heard about it the next day.
But a few days later, Felix and I were on one of our many walks through the Square when we came upon a micro-rally. I call it a micro-rally, because maybe there were two dozen people gathered by a blue pop-up tent at this event, more or less across the street from where that shooting had taken place. I think it was organized by the Anti-Violence Project. Now, the better I get to know Jesus, the more of a pacifist I become, so, I find myself drawn to anything calling itself an anti-violence project. I walked over. Felix came with me.
Taking the microphone was a broadly built black man who was wearing a red T-shirt that had the words “God or Guns” spelled out across his chest. Felix and I stopped to listen to what he had to say. Philadelphia is his home, he told us. He grew up in this city, went to school in this city, and he is raising his family in this city. He told us he’s from West Philly. And he told us that his life had been repeatedly marked by violence. His brother had been killed, he said, on the streets of this city. And his father had been killed on the streets of this city. He didn’t provide the details. They weren’t really necessary, if you ask me.
He went on to tell us that when his father was killed, he found that he had vengeance on his mind and in his heart. Now, vengeance is a biblical word. I suspect that the man in the red T-shirt chose that word for that reason. He didn’t say “revenge.” He said “vengeance,” I’m pretty sure. And I’m pretty sure he knows that vengeance is not supposed to belong to him, according to the scriptures. So he had vengeance on his mind and in his heart. He intended us to understand that he intended to do something about his father’s death. He intended us to understand that he was prepared to act. It is possible that he was in possession of the means to wreak vengeance if he had chosen to do so.
But then one night, he told us, one night he had a dream. And in his dream he tracked down the man who was responsible for his father’s death. He was very deliberate in his choice of words. He didn’t tell us that he found the man who killed his father. I don’t even think he used the word “murder.” No, in his dream he confronted the man who was responsible for his father’s death.
He told us of no words that passed between the two of them in his dream. He told us only that in his dream he “emptied a clip” into the man who was responsible for his father’s death. He had not mentioned a gun up till then. He hadn’t needed to. So, in his dream he emptied a clip into the man who was responsible for his father’s death. He had his vengeance.
And when the body of the man who was responsible for the death of his father crumpled to the ground - dead, himself, from those gunshots - the man saw, in his dream, that standing behind that other man, who had taken so much from him, standing behind him was his own three year old son. And in his dream he saw in the body of his three year old son a wound for every bullet that he had just shot into the man who was responsible for his father’s death.
Well, now I stared quietly to weep. I don’t know if Felix did too.
And then the man in the red shirt made an appeal to those of us gathered in Rittenhouse Square. He made an appeal for peace, an appeal to others to put the guns down, an appeal to choose God instead of Guns. Because his heart had been turned. And he had made a choice very different from the one that so much of his life had prepared him to make. And he was glad that he had done so. I don’t know if he said this in so many words, but he told us that he learned that vengeance was not his, and it would never get him anywhere, but it might well perpetuate the cycle of violence that had already taken so much from him.
And I stood there with Felix, and I wiped the tears from my eyes. And I think I sighed. And I think I hoped that sigh was a prayer.
Now, look, I know that I’ve got my nerve taking that man’s story and using it for my own purposes. I don’t even know his name, although I have looked for it. And I did go up to him and thank him for what he said that day. I did wish God’s blessing on him.
And it might have been that when I came across the Gospel assigned for today, I’d have been inspired to repeat this story, anyway. Because I think Jesus has something to say to those who try to take vengeance into their own hands. I thinks Jesus has something to say to those who perpetuate the cycle of violence, and who, by their examples, teach their kids to do it, too. It would be better if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.
If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble - cut it off. If your eye causes you stumble - pluck it out. It is better to enter the kingdom of God with one, hand, one foot one eye…. If your pride, or your anger, your manliness, your bitterness, or even the circumstances of your socio-economic reality cause you to stumble, cast them off. If your trigger finger causes you to stumble, cut it off. If your gun causes you to stumble throw it in the river, or better yet turn it in to cops, pound it out on an anvil until you turn it into a plowshare. For it is better to enter the kingdom of God maimed and broken than to suffer the consequences of taking vengeance into your own hands.
But the truth is that I have been praying for nearly twenty years for an end to the gunfire that takes so many lives in this city. And I have begun to wonder if my prayers mean anything, if they accomplish anything.
And there I stood on a warm August evening in Rittenhouse Square listening to a man who might have made many other choices tell me and others about the dream that led him to choose peace, that taught him how not to reach for a gun, that convinced him of the folly of adding more bullets to the tally of those fired in this city, and who learned that vengeance is not his for the taking, and never will be. Well, that was something.
It took me a while to realize what that man had told me. And I’m not sure that he knows what he told me. But this is what I heard when he spoke. I heard that my prayer had been answered… in one life… in some small but deeply significant way, and (I think) to the benefit of one three year old boy. And, of course, the prayer is not only my prayer, but the prayers of so many others, who have hoped and prayed that the gunfire would stop.
Oh, it is not over yet, and we have a lot more to pray for. And we have to do more than pray, too. We have to work to bring about peace, and to break the intertwined cycles of poverty and violence. But when you pray for years that the gunfire will stop, and yet, the bullets keep flying… you start to wonder if your prayers mean anything, if they do any good. And it’s a blessing to wander into the Square with your dog and hear the powerful testimony of a man who chose God over guns, when he was sorely tempted to go with the gun.
It would be presumptuous of me to claim that my prayers count among the prayers of the righteous. I don’t feel all that righteous, to tell you the truth. I am no Elijah: no prophet bringing about God’s will. But it has not been just me praying. I am not the only one who has been praying. So I will attribute the power and effectiveness of those prayers to all of you, and to anyone else who has aligned themselves with the prayer for an end to the gunfire that takes so many lives in this city.
In at least one life, here in this violent city, where the thirst for vengeance must be strong; at least one father of at least one three year old boy chose God over Guns. I believe there could be more.
The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
Thanks be to God!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
26 September 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
The man in the red shirt at the “micro-rally” on Rittenhouse Square