LET US PRAY. Christopher Hitchens, notorious atheist and author of the book God Is not Great,

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Calvin Richardson
6 years ago
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1 LET US PRAY Luke 11:1-13 Christopher Hitchens, notorious atheist and author of the book God Is not Great, is sick. He is undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer. Since announcing he is receiving chemotherapy, there has been much talk about whether it is appropriate to pray for the famous atheist. Should believers pray for him if he says he does not want their prayers, which so far he has not said? Should he be prayed for regardless of what he wants for whatever good prayer can do? Perhaps it would be best to pray for him but not let him know that he is being prayed for, thereby doing what pray-ers feel they need to do without offending his atheist dignity. Hitchens, it should be said, has no reasons for not believing in God that are not shared by adolescents coming to grips for the first time with the history of religion and the incidence of evil in the world. He has better reason for despising religion, and Christianity and Islam in particular. He focuses on the horrors perpetrated by religious fanatics and fundamentalists, whether this takes the form of killing people with suicide bombs or rejecting the scientific theory of evolution because it does not fit an interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis. He refuses to admit the contributions that religion has made to culture and human flourishing. Never mind that he was educated at Oxford, a university founded by the church, or that he sends his own children to private Quaker schools in New York City, or that he may very well be receiving treatment for his disease in a hospital built by church or synagogue. Hitchens is 1

2 something of an intellectual bully with a debating club cleverness and opinions on every subject, whether considered or not. He is a hard-drinking, hard-smoking fellow, which is behavior that is often associated with the incidence of esophageal cancer. This is a relatively rare cancer, and not one for which there is generally a good prognosis. In any case, Hitchens misfortune provides us with an occasion to think about prayer. Let s imagine that lots and lots of people pray for Hitchens to recover, pray and pray and pray; and let s say that he doesn t recover but rather that he dies. This could, I suppose, be taken as evidence for Hitchens point of view that religious people who pray are delusional because there is no God to care about what becomes of Hitchens. Accordingly, Hitchens would be right and dead. His death could also be evidence that God had it in for Hitchens and decided to get rid of him by the miserable means of esophageal cancer. In this case, Hitchens would be wrong about the existence of God and dead, but right about the futility of praying, since prayers for his recovery were denied. Or imagine that those really nasty Christians from Kansas that go around the country demonstrating against homosexuality and praying for the death of homosexuals, were also praying for atheist Hitchens death, and that God killed Hitchens in answer to their prayers. Then Hitchens would be wrong about God and wrong about the power of prayer, and dead. Or let s be sunnier about this and imagine that Hitchens recovers from the cancer. This recovery could be taken by Hitchens as nothing but good luck and evidence that sometimes people get better who have bad diseases that in other instances are fatal. Or the recovery could be taken by inveterate pray-ers as evidence of God s benevolence in that God even cures notorious atheists when they are prayed for. Or it could be that God 2

3 paid no attention whatsoever to anyone s prayers for Hitchens but miraculously cured Hitchens because God finds him amusing. Hitchens could still deny that God had anything to do with his recovery, though he would be wrong. Or Hitchens could have something of an epiphany as people who go through traumatic events sometimes do and change his mind on the questions of God and religion. Maybe he would now believe in God but not in the power of prayer, or he might continue to deny that there is God but come to believe that the prayers of the religious communicated certain good feelings to him that assisted psychologically in his recovery or that the prayers sent out good vibrations that somehow led to his cure. There are, I am sure, more possibilities than the ones I have outlined that could be drawn out of Hitchens sad circumstances, but we have enough to work with if our question is what can prayer do for Christopher Hitchens in his struggle with esophageal cancer. What we see is that the evidence is ambiguous and inconclusive, whether or not Hitchens lives or dies. But perhaps this is the wrong question. It may be that prayers for Hitchens will not change Hitchens circumstances one bit, but that prayers can change the lives of the ones who make the prayers. As a case in point, I think that Hitchens is a fairly obnoxious individual who is way too pleased with himself for all of his cleverness, but having heard of his sickness, I find myself feeling sorry for him, and praying for him causes me not to dislike him nearly as much, or perhaps it would be better to say simply that my dislike for him is now tinged with compassion. Praying for Christopher Hitchens recovery will not, I think, do him much good, but it does me good, and that is the lesson of prayer. Prayer is for the one who prays. When we pray, we open ourselves to the Spirit of God as we have come to 3

4 know it in Christ and thereby our compassion is increased and extended. We can see something of how this might work in the abbreviated version of the Lord s Prayer that appears in the Gospel of Luke. hallowed by your name is the recognition at the beginning of all prayers that God is holy. Hallowed means holy. A prayer to God is a prayer to the Holy One for what is holy. There is no holiness in indifference to Hitchens suffering. Your kingdom come. God is not a king, because kings are men. What king suggests here is sovereignty and in God s case, holy sovereignty. If we say God is holy, we are saying that holiness is sovereign and that our prayers must be for the sovereignty of holiness in all things. This, we believe, is the will of God. Give us each day our daily bread. I need to eat. You need to eat. All God s children need to eat. I do not pray for my daily bread but for our daily bread, that we would all be sustained, and how dare I make this prayer if I do not labor for bread for all, including Christopher Hitchens! And forgive our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. We pray the forgiveness of ourselves that we have extended to others, indeed to everyone. If I forgive Christopher Hitchens for being pompous and insufferable, perhaps I too am forgiven when I am pompous and insufferable. One of Duke Ellington s pieces of sacred music has its title straight from Luke. It is called Don t Get Down on Your Knees to Pray (Until You Have Forgiven Everyone). The lyrics of the song are sometimes humorous in conveying this message: Have you lost your rancor for the hanky-panker, or is there still in your heart a curse (or worse)? Don t get down on your knees to pray until you have forgiven everyone. 4

5 And do not bring us to the time of trial. This is a petition for God to preserve us from corruption, at least one form of which is indifference to others and what they are going through, extending even to Christopher Hitchens. Like so many church buildings of our vintage, Emanuel has a window that depicts Jesus I assume it s Jesus knocking on a door to illustrate the lesson that is perhaps part of our Gospel: : knock and the door will be opened for you. We might well think that the principal purpose of prayer is to keep the door open, open to God, open to one another, open to the world which is God s gift, whatever Christopher Hitchens says. And may he, O God, be well. Amen. Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 25, 2010 Emanuel Lutheran Church 5

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