The Uselessness of God
As Brueggemann says, the thrust of the Decalogue’s first three commands is: God is not useful. God is not at our service, not a cosmic concierge stationed to cater to our felt needs. When the people of God hear and confess “No other gods,” “No fashioned images,” and “No meaningless incantation of the divine name” we are hearing and confessing the otherness and primacy of God. We are admitting that we are at God’s service, that we are there for whatever God needs us to do, and not the other way around. We are owning the uselessness of God.
“Do not wroship other gods” is a prohibition of idolatry, which is as real a temptation for us as for the ancients – and for the same reason. “Idols” are not now, and never were, stone or wooden carvings. These are nothing more than symbols awaiting the traffic of the meaning-making process. In reality, idols are mistaken orientations of expectation and desire, loci of false allegiences. An idol is that-which-wrongly-owns-our-attention-and-affection.
“Do not make fashioned images” is the prohibition of false conceptions of God and a warning against the arrogant assumption that any of our conceptions are final.
Similarly, “Do not take God’s name in vain” has nothing whatsoever to do with vulgar or profane language; it has to do with invoking God on our own terms, as an accomplice to our own agendas. It is writing God into our story, as if God were at our mercy.
As I’ve said, these commands serve as reminders of our relation to God; they keep us from presumption. And it is presumption that corrupts our life.
It is in prayer that our presumptions are revealed, and if we pray in Christ – that is, in the fellowship of the Body and according to the Gospel – they are undone.
Prayer
What is prayer, then, if it is not a call on God to “cater to our felt needs”? Prayer is dialogue, exchange and interchange, it is opening ourselves up to God in conversation, making ourselves vulnerable in appeal and readying ourselves for action in response to God’s (already received) answer. Prayer is speaking to God in such a way that we - and our needs – are exposed so we can see ourselves and our needs rightly, for what they are and are not. Prayer is the action of sacrificing, i.e., setting ourselves apart for God.
The Body of Christ
Make no mistake: God is there for us. God can rightly be named the One-Who-Comes. But God’s thereness for us is in Christ by the Spirit, and that means that God is there for us in the people around us, as well as in the bread and wine that unites us together as God’s people. God’s answer to our prayers is Christ: Christ in the sacraments and the koinonia, Christ present by the power of the Spirit. There is no answer that is not this answer. In fact, all our petitions have already been answered. If our petitions are not shaped by our awareness of that answer, then we are “asking amiss,” as James says.
I don’t mean to reduce providence to what people can do for us or to say that we can never ask for God’s intervention. But I do want to insist that God’s action on our behalf is already accomplished in Christ, and for now is being mediated to us by the Spirit in and as Christ’s body; that is, in the Lord’s Supper and in the communion of saints. And I want to insist that what God has begun in Christ still awaits final consumation. So when we pray, we should be asking God to bring to bear in our experience what has already been accomplished in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, trusting God will answer these prayers with the Yes that is Christ, either now or then, at the End.
Our prayers, the more they become Christ-ian prayers, are prayers for the eschaton, for the time when God puts all the world to rights. God is not useful for us because God has not covenanted Godself to this present order of things. God is against the world (though, of course, for the sake of creation). The prayer of the apostles was Marana’tha and it should be ours, too. For this prayer is not an appeal for God’s use, but for God’s usurption of the world-as-it-is.
Ultimately, our prayers should follow Jesus’ model. We should ask for our daily bread, for the forgiveness of our sins (especially the sin of presumption), and for the soon-realization of the Kingdom. All other prayer is questionable, though not necessarily disallowed.
