It is sometimes said that you can travel the world over “on your knees” – as in, “If you can’t get to the nations on your own two feet, you can surely get there on your knees.” The imagery is, perhaps, a little over the top. But it is true.
This is an imagery that has to do with the power of prayer, of course. You may have a very large horizon and a big heart. You may care for all the “tribes and tongues and nations” of the world. Yet it does not follow that you are able, necessarily, to travel to all the “tribes and tongues” and share the love of Jesus among them. No one, in fact, can do this.
Yet you can get there “on your knees.” Your prayers, in a way, can soar where you cannot personally go. And through your prayers, you can participate in sharing the love of Jesus. “On your knees,” you can participate in the transformation of the world.
St. Paul thought so, too.
The New Testament is deeply committed to prayer. Jesus taught his disciples to pray (Luke 11:1). “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,” he said of the Temple of God (Mark 11:17). The New Testament church “joined together constantly in prayer” (Acts 1:14). “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). Prayer was their life and their daily activity.
And prayer became a part of their strategy for the evangelization of the world, as well. “Pray for us,” St. Paul would plead of the Thessalonians, “that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you” (2 Thessalonians 3:1). “You help us by your prayers,” he told the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 1:11). Paul asked the church in Philippi, it seems, to join him in prayer for a specific and challenging concern: the Apostle was imprisoned in Rome. In his epistle to the Philippians, he thanked them for their effort: “I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance” (Philippians 1:19).
At the end of time, the Revelation tells, heaven will sing a song of praise to the Lamb: “You are worthy… because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). It is a song of praise to the mission of God, in a way, now completed at the very end of time. But the song is preceded by “the prayers of God’s people” (v.8), rising as incense before the throne (cf. 8:3-4).
This passage demonstrates the sweeping horizon of Christian prayer: it takes in “every tribe and language and people and nation.” It rises as incense to heaven itself. It participates, in a mysterious yet very real way, in the fulfillment of God’s mission in the earth – making real to the nations the blood of Christ for the salvation of every people. One day, by God’s immense grace, we will get to heaven on our own two feet. But our prayers rise to the heavenly throne already. And there they become a part of God’s design for the world.
We should be clear: there is nothing magical about this. Christian prayer is not “astral projection.” It is not as though we reach out through our thinking, somehow, and touch things or change things in some spooky sort of way. God alone is able to work healing and wholeness among the nations. God alone establishes the eternal victory of the Lamb, and applies his wonderful grace to everyone who believes. Prayer does not accomplish this; God does.
Yet through our prayers we participate in God’s good will and design for the peoples of the world. God hears us when we pray. God responds when we pray. And sometimes, of course, we are ourselves woven into his answer.
In the next few months we will examine a few features of Christian prayer, and in particular as it participates in the mission of God in the world. We will discover that we can indeed “get there” on our knees.