Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools--John 17:20-21

Day 13

The “middle voice” of prayer that Taylor Staton proposes in Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, is one of those concepts that is attractive to me in the same way I want to know what those little caterpillars are that were crawling all over every green at the course I played yesterday.

An idle curiosity about something, that once is satisfied, recedes away, to maybe never being thought of again.

(They’re army worms, by the way, or some variation, the larval stage of the Fall Armyworm Moth–who knew?)

Staton posits that we pray in a “middle voice” rather than an “active” or “passive” voice and really, this is the kind of arcane intellectual and psychological noodling around that learned Christians partake in that seems pointless and vain.

Until–it’s not. 

Until a little bit of new information, like “middle voice” applied to my prayer life sends a small temblor of intellectual excitement through me.

Staton writes:

“The middle voice is the language of the Edenic relationship.  In prayer, Jesus invites us back into the relationship we knew in Eden at first then lost in that first tragic act of deception.  The assumption of biblical prayer is that God’s action always precedes my request.  The aim is not to get God in on what I think He should be doing.  Rather, the aim of prayer is to get us in on what God is doing, become aware of it, join it, and enjoy the fruit of participation.  Prayer is the recovery of our role in God’s created order, the recovery of our true identity and the relationship that defines that identity to us.”

Obviously, if armyworms and the concept of “middle voice” fascinate me; I might be an easy mark.

When I look at my prayers though, I’m not so much trying to get God to go along with my program as I’m trying to fit in with what His program is for me.

Because most of the time, I don’t even know what my program is.

I’m not pushing myself onto Him and He’s not whipping me around like an inanimate doll either.  I do retain an essence of myself that in the negative countermands what God wants for me or in the positive accentuates His plan for me.

Eugene Peterson clarifies more about the “middle voice” in The Contemplative Pastor:  Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction:

“Prayer and spirituality feature participation, the complex participation of God and the human, His will and our wills.  We do not abandon ourselves to the stream of grace and drown in the ocean of love, losing identity.  We do not pull strings that activate God’s operations in our lives, subjecting God to our assertive identity.  We neither manipulate God (active voice) nor are we manipulated by God (passive voice).  We are involved in the action and participate in its results but do not control or define it (middle voice).  Prayer takes place in the middle voice.”

Staton references Jesus’ prayer in John 17 as an example of the “middle voice”:

John 17:20-21 20 “I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, 21 that they may all be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

I think Jesus could have probably prayed for a lot of different things for His disciples to do after His death, but He prayed for community.

But it’s His phrase, “Just as You are in Me and I in You”, that is a perfect example of what Staton calls the “middle voice.”

God is in me and I’m in Him.

That’s the only way I can contemplate the vast mysteries and intricacies of this world.

Oswald Chambers puts a very sharp point on the “middle voice” in Now This Explains It:

“God is not concerned about our plans; He does not say — “Do you want to go through this bereavement; this upset?” He allows these things for His own purpose. The things we are going through are either making us sweeter, better, nobler men and women; or they are making us more captious and fault-finding, more insistent upon our own way. The things that happen either make us fiends, or they make us saints; it depends entirely upon the relationship we are in to God.”

Just this morning, when I turned my computer on, I picked up an email about one of my seasonal golf buddies from PA.

His wife died suddenly yesterday.

I need to reach out to him because I know God didn’t ask my golf buddy if he wanted his world turned upside down.

How will my friend react?  What will he do?

And the fear-filled question for us–is what will WE do when it’s our day?

God is in me and I am in Him.

In the middle.  

Lord, we ask that You bring unity among all believers as Jesus prayed.  Help us to set aside our differences and to focus on what unites us–our shared faith in Jesus Christ.

Lord, teach us to live in harmony, to seek peace, and to support one another in our faith journey.  Help us to understand that You sent Jesus and You love us as You love Him.

Amen.