Prayer and Action

George D. McClain

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I’d like to announce a marriage: the marriage between prayer and social action.

Now we really shouldn't need to announce this, for the two have long been married. But not everyone has heard the good news, and some who have heard, have forgotten.

At least since the time of Moses, prayer and social action have been devoutly married. Remember how Moses, at the very moment he was caught up in a mystical experience of God's intimate presence and self-revelation on Mount Horeb, heard God's command to liberate the Hebrew slaves from bondage in Egypt (Exodus 3:1-12).

This unity of prayer and social action was strikingly exemplified by the Hebrew prophets and, above all, by Jesus. Recall how Jesus, the model of a prayerful person, was an outspoken social prophet. He continually opposed the dehumanizing dimensions of life. He challenged oppressive customs, religious codes and institutional practices that served those in power rather than the welfare of people.

Jesus defied church leaders, healing on the Sabbath, eating with outcasts, relating to women in public and throwing the money changers out of the temple. He constantly challenged the purity code by which people governed their behavior and justified inhumane conduct.

No wonder that the prayer Jesus taught is a prayer for the transformation of human life and institutions:

May your reign come, your will be done on earth.
Provide for us our daily bread.
Deliver us from evil.

No wonder that this prayer was considered so dangerous to pray that the early church only taught it to mature Christians.

United Methodist Women and its predecessors have honored the marriage of prayer and social justice when they stared down lynching of African Americans, when they prayed and worked for the creation of the United Nations, when they wrote the Charter for Racial Justice Policies, and when they witness steadfastly and prayerfully for the welfare of women and children throughout the world.

Prayer is social action

Let us celebrate and honor the marriage of spirituality and action by examining three ways in which the union is experienced.

First, prayer is social action. If we believe that prayer changes things, then prayer itself is an action that brings about change in the direction of God's intention for us. It unites our energy with God's Spirit working to make and keep human life human.

For example, when we pray for effective gun control or the curbing of domestic violence, we help God open new channels for these things to happen. To pray from the depth of the heart, "Thine kingdom come, thy will be done on earth..." is to act for social change.

Here is one way to practice prayer as social action by means of breath prayer:

Take time to quiet your mind and heart. Pray that God may indeed use your prayer.
Image the specific situation, problem or concern you face. It may present itself to you as an important meeting, a wrong being done, a public institution failing to fulfill its calling or an abrasive personal relationship.
Now let your breath bear your prayer. As you slowly breathe in, deliberately breathe God's Spirit into the situation, bringing, for instance, compassion, tenderness, justice and freedom. As you exhale, breathe out of the situation that which is not of God -- arrogance, anger, fear, exploitation. Do this for 5-10 minutes.
Close your prayer time with a prayer of thanksgiving for God's working in your life, others' lives and institutions.

Uniting prayer and action

Second, prayer and action are united as prayer accompanies Christian social action. When we as the church engage in Christian social action, we surround and permeate the whole situation and event with prayer. We carefully center our hearts in God's love and justice.

Our planning is prayerful as we seek to discern how God would have us translate our fervent caring into strategies that promote the humanization of human life. We pray for the decision makers to make informed, compassionate decisions. We intercede throughout the process for all concerned.

Third, the marriage of prayer and social action is manifested in that Christian social action is itself a prayer to God. Institutions and groups of people, like individuals, fall from grace and violate God's good intentions. By our Christian social action, we act to restore and redeem what has gone astray. This action becomes our offering to God. We claim for God what belongs to God but has strayed from God's gracious designs.

When we write to our U.S. senators urging passage of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, we offer back to God the hungry and exploited children whom God created.
When we protest a hate crime in our community, we offer our broken community to God for healing and restoration.
When we arrange competent legal advice for immigrants, we place in God's hands the sojourner who has no secure home.
When we act to clean up toxic landfills, we offer back to God the now-damaged creation that the Creator pronounced as good.

In cultivating the intimate relationship between our prayer and our action, our lives become a compelling declaration that the dominions of this world will become the dominions of our God (Revelation 11:15).

The Rev. Dr. George D. McClain's ministry includes teaching at New York Theological Seminary, consulting with New York Methodist Hospital, and coordinating a theological-education program at a prison in his community of Staten Island, N.Y.