Eavesdropping: Learning to pray from those who talked to Jesus

Henry Martin, an artist, writer and ordained priest, introduces his new book of reflections, ideal for daily reading throughout Lent ...

I know that Lent books should begin on Ash Wednesday, but somehow a story about an abundance of rich wine seemed better suited to Shrove Tuesday. Many people will be planning to give up some treat or other for Lent, and if that is you, a story about an unexpected gift of delicious wine, might not be the thing for Day 1 of your fast.

My new book, Eavesdropping, will not help with fasting. It offers no advice on what not to consume, in the run up to Easter. Lent for me is this simple, it is a season for us to draw closer to God. The important questions are, ‘Who is God?’ and then, ‘Why and how do we pray?’ If we need more time for God, we can stop doing something, but ‘What should I give up for Lent?’ is very much a secondary question. Lent is primarily for us to be with God a bit more than usual. If wine hinders this, give up wine. If social media drains all your spare time, switch it off until after Easter … you know best what distracts you the most. And be creative. I heard of people using Lent to switch to Fairtrade food. One friend sent 40 handwritten postcards, renewing contact and sending love. Another lived on the minimum wage from the start of Lent until Easter. I love these kinds of disciplines, because they meet the purpose of Lent. They lead to a greater awareness of God’s love in our world.

I recently had a pre-Lent chat with a younger man. I witnessed a revelation dawning upon him. His eyes lit up. He smiled and said, ‘I see what you’re saying to me. You’re telling me I need to do a food fast for forty days! And you know what? I’m totally going for it and I’m going to do it.’ My heart sank, as this was exactly what I was trying to steer him away from. For him Lent had suddenly become a Tough Mudder/Iron Man for the soul endurance challenge. And at the end he would have an Achievement-To-Be-Proud-Of. This is fine and has a place, but it is not the point of Lent. My young friend will now be focusing on himself, how he is coping, how far he still has to go and how much respect he is earning from his onlookers. If he succeeds I will be genuinely fascinated to find out, if his titanic efforts have deepened his relationship with God.

By contrast Mary, the mother of Jesus, seems quite content with a far less ambitious achievement. She is at a wedding. Her role is to be a small, but vital cog in a much larger machine. She sees a situation, she tells her son, she leaves the rest to him.

The wedding is in the town of Cana in Galilee and this is around about the time when Jesus is preparing to make himself known to the world. The wedding is going well, for the moment, but a disaster is looming. Either more wedding guests than expected turn up, or they are far thirstier than the drink budget predicted. Whatever the reason, the wine is about to run out. The steward, who is responsible for avoiding exactly this sort of thing, is doomed. From this day forwards he will always be the guy who ruined the wedding. Who will ever forget this party? They will say,

‘Which party?’

‘You know, that party, the one that ran dry.’

‘Oh, that one!’

And, to the families’ enduring shame, this is how their children’s wedding will stick in local folklore. Mary notices. She appreciates the implications, both for the steward and for the couple. She goes to Jesus and simply says to him, ‘They have no more wine.’

This book is going to eavesdrop on many comments and questions like this, hearing how people spoke to Jesus and how he responded. Some requests delighted him, others did not. Some he answered willingly, some unexpectedly and to some he gave a plain ‘no’. Of course, things have changed. The soles of Jesus’ feet are no longer treading this soil, so we cannot see, hear and touch him, as the people in these stories could. He has died, he is risen and ascended. But he is the same person, and my plan is that this eavesdropping, on their exchanges then, will help us as we speak with him now.

So back to Cana. Mary simply brings a problem to Jesus and then leaves it with him. She offers no solutions, nor asks him to do anything. Her job is to alert Jesus and then trust that whatever he does next will be good. She is not deterred by his rather abrupt reply (‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come’), and she goes straight to the servants and says to them, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Soon the party is awash with new wine and the steward is astonished, because this wine is far better than the supposedly good stuff that he had served at the start.

So how does this help us with prayer?

Praying is often far more simple than we make it. We can babble away with lots of words when just a few well-chosen ones would do. I grew up in prayer groups that had a lot of the ‘Father, Father, we just really, want to really, just ask you, Father, Father …’ type of prayers. I was used to torrents of words, few of them premeditated and all guaranteed to fill any awkward silences. My first encounter with this ‘prayer’ of Mary came as both revelation and challenge. Could prayer really be so simple? And were our many words a substitute for trust, trust that God was already listening? Maybe God does not need a clamour to catch his attention.

‘Our solutions’ could damage our praying. Sometimes we bring not only our problem to God, but also some quite specific directions for him, on his best way to proceed. Mary does not fall into this trap. She sees. She tells Jesus. She leaves the rest to him. We might think she would need to do something larger, more dramatic in the face of this crisis. Mary plays her small role to perfection and does not embellish it with her own solutions. She could have taken charge and ordered her son to nip out and find more wine from whichever shops were open. That would be both sensible and practical, but Mary already knows her son’s ability to think outside the box. She sees. She tells him. She trusts him. On this occasion, it is that simple. Clearly, we are missing a catalogue of unwritten stories that gave her this trust in his creativity. We miss out further when we are too prescriptive with our solutions. God is free to answer us in ways far beyond our imagining. If we are so fixed just on our one outcome we might fail to notice that God is answering our prayer, but in a way far beyond our imagining.

If offering God solutions to problems is a key part of our praying, we might not pray at all in some truly awful situations. If we can see no way forward, we might feel we have nothing to say. When I first saw the Separation Wall around Bethlehem I found myself stumped for prayers. I could not take in the enormity of this structure, in both its brutal physicality and its impact on the town’s inhabitants. My head was already swimming with all I was learning about the ongoing situation. In truth, ‘drowning’ would be a more accurate word than ‘swimming’. Eventually I realised that I was not praying, and some honest reflection revealed why I was holding back; I could see no solution and had therefore decided I could not pray. Mary’s ‘praying’ helped and I adapted her words, ‘God, there is an ugly wall here.’ These small words seemed totally inadequate. Many more words will need to be said and prayed about this wall and all that it symbolises, but for me, I had found my start.

The worst prayers are those we never pray. Mary could have ignored the situation around her. She could have stood back and watched the wine run out and the disaster unfold. It was, after all, someone else’s problem and not hers. But she intervenes, not for personal gain, but because she sees others at risk, the steward, the bride, the groom and their families and all who would be shamed by a party that ran dry.

The God we pray to is the joy-giver and not a kill-joy. His son averts a disaster. He brings a lavish gift of rich wine. He sets the steward free from anxiety. On this day, he saves both those who are aware of his acts and those who are not.

An exercise

Try praying today by simply telling God what you see, however big or small. Resist the urge to offer any suggestions or solutions about God’s next best course of action and try to keep each prayer to a single sentence, just as Mary did when she said to Jesus, ‘They have no more wine.’

‘God there’s an ambulance struggling through the traffic.’

‘My friend needs a new home.’

‘There is a war that seems to have no end.’

‘He really hates his job.’

‘There is not enough to go around.’

Keep your observations simple and keep your eyes and ears open for whatever God might do next.

Eavesdropping: Learning to pray from those who talked to Jesus by Henry Martin is available now in paperback, £12.99.