Biography
The Rev. Dr. Carol Miles is Associate Professor of Homiletics at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., she has served parishes on both U.S. coasts and is in great demand as a preacher, retreat speaker and teacher. Carol's specialty is preaching from the Old Testament. She also works extensively in the area of women's spirituality. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date.]

"Honest to God"
I once sat with a man who told me he used to be religious, but not any more. Twenty-five years ago he had been devastated by the death of his infant son. Though he and his wife had gone on to have other children, he and God were no longer on speaking terms.

How do we pray when our hearts are broken? When the events of our lives have turned us upside down and God has done nothing to prevent it? How can we pray when we are angry with God? When the One in whom we've put our trust no longer seems trustworthy?

Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel recounts this incident from his experience at Auschwitz: "Inside the kingdom of night I witnessed a strange trial. Three rabbis, all erudite and pious men, indict God for having allowed his children to be massacred. An awesome conclave, particularly in view of the fact that it was held in a concentration camp. But what happened next is to me even more awesome still. After the trial at which God had been found guilty as charged, one of the rabbis looked at the watch which he had somehow managed to preserve in the kingdom of night and said, ‘Ah, it is time for prayers.' And with that the three rabbis, all erudite and pious men, all bowed their heads and prayed."

How can we account for the actions of these men? How could they indict God one moment and offer praise and thanksgiving the next? The only possible explanation in my mind is this: their quarrel with God is a lover's quarrel. And it has been revisited again and again since the early days of the relationship, when the people of God were first bound to their Creator in a covenant of love.

Listen to the words of the Psalmists: "Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" [Ps. 10:1]. "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?" [Ps. 13:1-2]. "O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mt. Zion, where you came to dwell. ...Why do you hold back your hand; ...Rise up, O God...have regard for your covenant" [Ps. 74 passim].

"How long, O Lord? Remember us. Help us. Protect us. We are your people, don't let us fall. We know you can do anything, you are the Creator of the universe. Take your hands out of your pockets and save us!" [Ps. 74:11]

This is the language of prayer we learn from the psalmists. It is the language of lament, the language of complaint. It is a unique dialect of the language of faith, but it is the language of faith nonetheless.

It's interesting that while nearly half the prayers and hymns in the Psalter speak words of lament, their distinct voice is almost never heard in the life of the church. It seems we've lost this tradition of biblical prayer. Why?

My hunch is we aren't fully convinced that it's appropriate to pray this way. When we come to worship, we want to put our best foot forward. We want God to see us in a good light. We try to clean up our act before we pray. And we've been taught all our lives to respect our elders. We don't talk to God this way. We don't challenge God. We simply accept what's happened and move on.

But this is never the response of the psalmists. They are not constrained by protocol or convention. They let their disappointment be known. They feel free to speak the truth, to be honest with God. And out of their distress and disillusionment they hold God accountable for what has happened in their lives.

This is not simply an Old Testament tradition. It is the witness of the New Testament as well. In the eleventh chapter John's Gospel we read the story of the raising of Lazarus. Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, two faithful disciples of Jesus, has died and has been in the tomb four days. When Jesus finally arrives on the scene, he is met individually by both Mary and Martha, who greet him with the same words, "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died." They do not say, "Oh, Lord, we're glad you came. Isn't it a blessing? Lazarus has died, but he's now in a better place." No, they hold Jesus accountable for what has happened. "Lord, if you had been here, our brother wouldn't have died."

How can they speak to Jesus this way? They can speak to Jesus this way because he was their friend. Because he was their Lord. Because they loved him and they knew he loved them, too. Mary and Martha can speak to Jesus this way because their quarrel with him was a lover's quarrel. They had learned it from the psalmists.

When we look at the prayers of lament in the bible, we find nearly all of them share the same structure. After God is addressed, and words of complaint and petition have been uttered, in a final breath the psalmist turns and offers a statement of faith, an expression of trust in God's goodness and grace. In a final move, abruptly and without explanation, the psalmist turns from the language of lament to the language of praise.

Hear the words of Psalm 13: "Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed'; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me."

How can we explain the shift in tone in the final verses of the psalm? What has happened to enable the psalmist to indict God one moment and turn to God with praise and thanksgiving the next? Biblical scholars have long been puzzled by this literary-theological move, and have proposed a variety of possible answers. Perhaps there has been a change in the psalmist's circumstances. When the first part of the song was written the psalmist was in distress. By the time the ending was penned, the distress had abated. Perhaps in the intervening moments, the psalmist has heard words of comfort and assurance from the priest or worship leader.

But more likely than not, there simply is no explanation. The change that comes is the psalmist's tone is not automatic, an inevitable part of the process, like spring following winter's frost. The change in the psalmist's tone comes as a surprise, as a gift, as only the grace of God can. We cannot control this intervening, transforming work of God, but as the people of faith have learned over time, it happens only when we are willing to risk, to offer our true and honest selves to God in prayer.

As the poet Ann Weems has observed, "In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life, there is a deafening alleluia rising from the souls of those who weep, and of those who weep with those who weep. If you watch, you will see the hand of God putting the stars back in their skies one by one." I know these words to be true. Honest to God.

Interview with Carol Miles
Interviewed by Floyd Brown

Floyd Brown: Carol, I enjoyed your message. It gave me some good insights and it brought to mind a story about the person who is praying and prays, "Lord, give me patience. And I want it right now!" How do we learn to pray?

Carol Miles: I think that's a good question. We do learn to pray in our youth. It's something that is modeled for us in churches, in Sunday school, and in youth ministry. The point that I was trying to make in my sermon, about this particular Biblical tradition of lament not really making its way into the church, is somewhat of a concern to me. I was just at a conference for youth ministers and I heard a story one man was telling about the youth at a conference he was giving on prayer. He had asked them to talk about their prayer lives and one of the students said, "I've stopped praying after September 11th." Another one of the girls said, "I've also stopped praying since September 11th. How can we pray?" Those people were probably praying and God didn't answer their prayers of "how can we pray." I was really struck with that because it made me think that this lament tradition from Scripture would really have been of help to those students, to be thinking it's O.K. to say to God, "Why? How could this have happened? How could you have allowed these things to have happened?" This is faithful talk, it's faithful speech.

Brown: It's almost like we are holding God accountable for what we pray for: "I giving you my prayer and I want an answer right now!"

Miles: That's absolutely how the Biblical characters that we read about speak to God.

Brown: A few years Malcolm Byrd wrote the book, Are You Running with Me, Jesus? He talked about how we should pray and talk to God, and he says that we should be talking to God in conversational tones, and that we don't have to be speaking in a structured form while talking to God. "Lord, you know I'm hurting right now. I need you to come down and help me." How do you pray? Do you have a structured format?

Miles: Well, no. I think I try to let my honest feelings be known. I try to let it all hang out, so to speak, with God. There is that great line from the Psalms, "deep calls to deep." The deepest places in me are calling out to God.

Brown: Someone once said, "We shouldn't be begging all the time when we pray." I said this to a friend of mine who has been instrumental in my life, and he said, "If you don't ask God for it, who are you going to ask?"

Miles: I think God is absolutely concerned with the ordinary, mundane details of our lives. I know a lot of people who say, "I can't bother God with this concern of mine! God is certainly too busy or there are other things more important to God." That's not the model that we have in Scripture, either. Jesus is certainly, as in the Sermon on the Mount, encouraging us to pray for those daily needs.

Brown: He still prevails. God does answer prayer, doesn't he?

Miles: God answers prayer.

Brown: Thank you for being with us.

Miles: Thank you for having me.