Nicholas Wolterstorff Public Lecture

Praying East of Eden
Samuel E. Balentine
Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education

Michelangelo, “The Creation of Adam,” 1508-1512. Vatican City, ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

The creation account in Genesis 1 records no prayers in the Garden of Eden. The only words spoken come from God, whose seven-fold repetition of the phrase “Let there be” (1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24) speaks into existence a world that is not only “good” (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25) but also “very good” (1:31). Creation’s silent conformity to God’s hopes and expectations signals a world in happy accord. God has provided everything necessary for life that is full and promising. The distribution of God’s blessing leaves nothing and no one wanting more. We might imagine the first couple, Adam and Eve, responding with the wide-eyed praise of the psalmist:

We might imagine creation itself—sun, moon, stars, wild animals, even creeping things (like snails!)—joining in such a chorus of praise:

We might imagine such words, but it is striking that Genesis 1 does not record them, however appropriate we might imagine them to be as the first words creation offers in response to God. In a “very good” world, even praise is redundant, Genesis 1 suggests. It resounds implicitly in the primordial symphony that God is conducting: “Let there be . . . and it was so . . . day one;” “Let there be . . . and it was so . . . day two,” and so on. Nothing more is needed in a world that is all it is created to be.

The Bible’s first recorded dialogue between God and human beings occurs “East of Eden,” to use John Steinbeck’s evocative phrase.¹ On the far side of the sin that pushes human beings beyond Eden’s harmony, God initiates the dialogue with Adam and Eve with a question, which bespeaks rebuke vexed by disappointment. “Where are you?” (Gen 3:10a), God asks. The answer is a harbinger of what now must be a conversation about what both God and human beings have lost: “I was afraid . . . I hid myself” (Gen 3:10b), the man says. Barbara Brown Taylor captures the import of this first exchange between God and humans with her observations about what God risked when God decided to speak the words, “Let us make humankind in our image . . . and let them have dominion” (Gen 1:26):

“Endowed with the power of the Word,” as Brown Taylor puts it, human beings pray. Why? Because “east of Eden” human beings created in the image of God yearn for the world that once was, and still may be, “very good.” Prayer is the arena in which both God and humans work out their differences, the place where they strive to bridge the gap between heaven and earth, the place where the divine-human dialogue invests its hopes in the promise of a mutual commitment, failing which neither party to the discourse can ever be all that they can be. Simply put, without prayer neither God nor people nor the world can be all they want to be, all they are supposed to be. As Terry Fretheim has put it, prayer creates more space in the world for God to be God and for people to be formed and reformed in God’s image.³

The importance of prayer’s role in binding together heaven and earth east of Eden is deeply rooted in both Judaism and Christianity. The Torah envisions the construction of the tabernacle at Sinai (the blueprint for which is given in Exod 25-31 and 35-40) as the completion of the work God began at creation. Indeed, a number of verbal and thematic parallels between the Sinai pericope (Exodus 19-Numbers 10) and Genesis 1-3 suggest that the 11-month sojourn at Sinai echoes the creation-fall-re-creation paradigm that governs Israel’s partnership with God. The theophany in which God gives Moses the instructions for building the tabernacle begins on the seventh day, following six days of preparation for entering into the cloud of divine presence on Mt. Sinai (Exod 24:16). God then delivers the building plans to Moses in seven speeches (25:1; 30:11, 17, 22, 34; 31:1, 12), a suggestive echo of God’s seven “Let there be” instructions in Genesis 1 and 2.

Before the tabernacle can be erected, however, God’s plans seem to dead-end in the debacle of the golden-calf episode in Exodus 32-34, which thematically reprises the subversion of God’s creational designs in Genesis 3-6. The failures of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and the descendants of Noah, which prompted a grieving God to say “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created . . . I am sorry that I made them” (Gen 6:7; cf. v.13), are now writ large in the people’s decision at Sinai to break covenant with God by worshipping an object of their own making. Once again, the people’s failure creates a crisis in the very heart of God, who now abruptly breaks off the conversations with Moses by saying, “Leave me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them” (Exod 32:10). The Targum captures the drama of the moment with its paraphrase of God’s words to Moses: “Refrain from your prayer.”

Moses does not leave God alone. Instead, he steps into the breach between the people’s sin and God’s announced intentions to “consume them” with a daring demand that God reconsider what God is doing. Note well the threefold imperative that Moses, the creature, addresses to God, the Creator:

The narrator reports the outcome, without commentary: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on the people” (Exod 32:14). On the heels of Moses’ prayer, God restores the broken covenant (Exodus 34) and resumes the instructions for the tabernacle (Exodus 35-40). When it is completed, the tabernacle becomes the only specific place on earth that is said to be “filled up” with the glory of God’s presence (Exod 40:34-35). On the heels of Moses’ prayer, the story of God’s journey with God’s people continues.

Perhaps God would have acted to renew the covenant and resume the journey without Moses’ contribution. God can, of course, do whatever God chooses. The Torah, however, invites a different reflection. What if Moses had left God alone? What if he did not pray?

As we ponder these questions, it is instructive to consider what the rabbis have to say about the efficacy of prayer. For them, the question is not, “Does God pray?” That God does pray they take for granted. Instead, they wonder, “What does God pray?” (B. Ber.7a). In reflecting on this question, Rabbi Yohanan comments as follows:

Imagine that—God praying “May it be My Will”! Imagine human prayers intersecting with, reinforcing, and influencing divine prayers. The rabbis dared to imagine that when people pray, they somehow enter into the very heart and mind of God, there to lend their voices to the Almighty’s vexed and ever vexing deliberations about what do with this world that, by its own decision, limps along east of Eden. This understanding of prayer, I submit, will likely require a radical readjustment of our thinking. In a modern, scientifically oriented, technologically sophisticated world, we are conditioned to adjust our prayers, if indeed we pray at all, to anemic words that do not really ask anything, expect anything, effect anything, save, perhaps, a self-referential catharsis that makes us feel better.⁴ Here again scripture should itch at our ears until we dare to live into the witness it bequeaths us. The text is from the prophet Isaiah; the words are God’s:

Let me press the Torah’s vision of prayer’s importance a step further. I fast forward, past the instructions for the portable tabernacle constructed at Sinai, to the temple Solomon constructed in Jerusalem, which concretizes the tabernacle’s promise of God’s presence on earth (I Kings 6-8). I fast forward again, this time past the Babylonian destruction of the temple in 586 BCE, past the rebuilding of the temple in 521 BCE, past the Romans’ destruction of this second temple in 70 CE, past the suppression of the Bar Kochba rebellion in 135 CE, to the days when it became undeniably clear that the temple would not be rebuilt for an indefinite time, perhaps only in a messianic era at the end of history. If Judaism is to survive, it will have to do so without the Temple’s rites and rituals. Absent a holy place, the world becomes inhospitable to a holy God. The words of the prophet Ezekiel linger; they sustain a despair over the loss of the single most important connection between heaven and earth that now seems beyond repair: “The days are long,” the prophet had said years before, “and every vision has perished” (Ezek12:22).

In the wake of the temple’s loss, the rabbis turned once again to prayer, to what they called “the service of the heart,” which they declared to be wholly adequate for keeping God and world connected in times of spiritual emergency. Until the messiah comes, it is prayer, ordered (I use the word literally, for the Jewish term for the prayer book is Siddur, “the ordering”) by the times once prescribed for the sacrifices offered in the Temple, that keeps God in the world and the world in God. Morning, mid-day, evening, whenever a sacrifice was to be offered, a prayer is to be spoken—a verbal bridge suspended over the chasm between what has been lost and what might yet be recovered. As a rule, these prayers begin with the words, “Remember, O Lord” and conclude with the words “Blessed are You, the God of Israel.” In between the invocation that God remember and the affirmation that God is always worthy of blessing, the prayers of our Jewish sisters and brothers have kept alive the promise that one day, God willing, this world may yet become the “very good” world that God envisioned “in the beginning.”

I have to this point focused on prayer in the Old Testament and by extension its formative influence on Judaism. I have done so, in part, instinctively, which I suppose requires a confession—a good prayer word, in and of itself. I have taught and written about the Old Testament for three decades, which means, truth be told, that I find my bearings as a Christian by immersing myself in Hebrew scriptures. That said, it is also the case that the Old Testament simply has a much deeper reservoir of prayers to consider: the Old Testament preserves more than 250 recorded prayers, the New Testament but eleven.⁵

The infrequency of recorded prayers in the New Testament is however largely a distinction without a difference.⁶ The Gospels, particularly Luke, make it clear that Jesus prayed at the critical junctures of his life: for example, at baptism (Luke 3:21); in the choosing of the disciples (Luke 6:21); at the transfiguration (Luke 9:28-29); and in Gethsemane (Luke 22:32). Moreover, Acts depicts Jesus’ followers as “constantly devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14; cf.1:24; 6:6; 9:11; 10:9; 12:5; 13:3; 14:23; 16:25; 22:17). They were to infuse every dimension of their lives with prayer. In suffering and joy, in sickness and in health, the church is to pray “without ceasing” (I Thess 5:17; cf. Rom 12:12; Eph 6:18; Col 4:2). On this point, the letter of James is particularly instructive:

There is one difference between the Old Testament and the New that deserves special mention. The Old Testament contains an abundance of recorded prayers, but it offers surprisingly little specific instruction on when or how to pray.⁷ The New Testament, by contrast, contains few recorded prayers but considerable instruction about prayer. Luke’s Gospel records two parables of Jesus that are especially instructive. The first, Luke 11:5-8, is the story of someone who goes to a friend in the middle of the night and asks for bread. At first, the friend refuses to get up: “Do not bother me,” he says, “the door is already locked, and my children are already in bed with me; I cannot get up and give you anything.” But, Jesus says, if this person keeps banging on the door, then the friend will eventually give him what he needs, if only because the noise threatens to wake up the neighborhood! The second parable, Luke 18:1-8, shifts the focus from the request for bread to the need for justice. A widow with a grievance comes to a judge saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” Initially, the judge refuses to hear her case, but then, because she “keeps bothering” him (18:5; cf.11:7), he finally grants her request. The latter half of this verse (18:5) adds a suggestive second reason. The conventional rendering—“so that she may not wear me out by continually coming” (NRSV)—may be translated literally, “so that in the end she may not come and strike me under the eye” (cf. NAB).

Both parables illustrate Jesus’ teaching about the importance of being persistent in prayer. Commentators often use the word “importunate” to describe this way of praying. A less elegant characterization is likely closer to the truth about what Jesus is saying. Both the person banging on the door for food and the widow demanding justice demonstrate that prayer can be, indeed often must be, annoyingly urgent and troublesome. Langston Hughes (1902-1967), the African-American writer whose poems gave voice to the demands of suffering during the Harlem Renaissance in the1920s and 1930s, provides apt commentary:

It may see odd, even blasphemous, to think of prayer as an invitation to be annoyingly troublesome when we address God, to keep at until what drives us crazy makes God crazy too. Perhaps this is precisely why Jesus uses these two parables to respond to one of his disciples who, having witnessed how Jesus himself prayed, said, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). Following the parable in Luke 11:5-8, Jesus himself provides exegesis that anchors Langston Hughes’s poem in the truth of scripture:

Ask, search, knock; it will be given, you will find, it will be opened. Jesus’ instructions about prayer in the parable of Luke 11:5-8 assume that his followers have learned how to pray the model prayer he has taught them in Luke 11:2-4 (paralleled in Matt 6:9-13). Here again, the New Testament’s instructions concerning prayer are rooted in Jewish antecedents (cf. especially the ’Amidah or “The Prayer of Eighteen Benedictions”). The “Lord’s Prayer” begins with two (or three) petitions that tune the heart first and foremost to God’s will (“hallowed be your name,” “Your kingdom come,” “Your will be done” [Matt 6:10]), which in turn invite and inform three (or four) petitions that address human needs within the context of God’s purposive plan for the world (“give us each day our daily bread,” forgive us our sins/debts,” “do not bring us to the time of trial,” “rescue us from the evil one”).

Each of these petitions requires more attention that time permits, so let me single out one aspect of this model prayer for special attention. The prayer begins with and is grounded in (according to the Matthean version) the petition that God’s will be done “on earth as it is heaven.” When you pray, Jesus says, pray like this—pray that the hopes and expectations of earth and heaven will one day be joined in perfect harmony. As the rabbis I have already cited say, pray that when God in heaven says, “May it be My will,” our prayers on earth, “Your will be done,” will be a worthy echo of God’s decision to risk entrusting the stewardship of creation to human beings who have been formed and reformed “in the image of God.”

God’s decision “in the beginning” to incarnate the Word in the flesh and blood of Jesus, who lived among us,” as John’s Gospel puts it (John 1:1, 14) is both the promise and burden of scripture’s summon to prayer. On the one hand, while he was on earth, Jesus both models prayer and teaches us how to pray in ways that keep heaven and earth connected. On the other, when Jesus dies, then we, his disciples, must follow him into what George Steiner calls “the long day’s journey of the Saturday,”⁹ the tensive gap between Friday’s crucifixion of God’s hopes—and ours—for this “very good” world” and Sunday’s lingering promise that these hopes can and will be resurrected.

The Gospel of John reports that when the hour for his death came, Jesus prayed (John 17:1-26), not only for his own needs (vv.1-8) but also for the welfare of his disciples, who in the aftermath of his death will suffer persecution and so may be tempted to lose faith (vv.9-19). He prays also for the long-term future of those who will yet believe in and exemplify the unity between Father and son, between heaven and earth, between the Word that is vulnerable to death and the Word that no grave can contain. In between the “now” of this world and the “not yet” of the world to come, Jesus promises his followers that when he departs he will not leave them as orphans (John 14:18). “In a little while,” “on that day” (John 14:19, 20), Jesus will send them an Advocate, the Holy Spirit. This one, Jesus says, “will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).

Paul expands upon Jesus’ promise with words that speak directly to our concerns here. Returning to the imagery of Genesis 3, Paul describes creation itself “waiting with eager longing,” “groaning in labor pains” (Rom 8:19, 22) for the birth of the world that will yet be the world God envisioned from the beginning. As we wait and hope for what we do not yet see, Paul assures us that the Holy Spirit teaches us how to pray God’s promises into the present. “When we do not know how to pray as we ought,” Paul says, “the Spirit intercedes [for us] with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26; cf.v.27). The vision of a new heaven and a new earth is announced in advance by the prophet Isaiah:

The same vision is punctuated by Scripture’s last canonical word—the final “Amen” recorded in Rev 22:20-21:

Until this final “Amen” is sounded, creation continues to groan, the Spirit continues to help us pray for the realization of God’s hopes and expectations, and Paul’s promise abides:

Let me collect these various thoughts by returning one more time to the thesis I have been trying to establish. Prayer is the dialogue between God and human beings that keeps heaven and earth bound together in mutual commitment. I have intentionally not spoken of the specific kinds of prayers that constitute the work we do in this regard—the prayers of praise and lament, confession and petition, trust and thanksgiving that give voice to our work “in the trenches.” I have addressed these various ways of praying in some detail in my book on prayer,¹⁰ which I am told you will be using as a resource during this Colloquy, so I trust that in your discussions you will put some meat on these bones.

At the risk of throwing a wrench into those discussions, let me conclude with a brief reflection on what one reviewer of my book said some fifteen years ago. At the end of a generally positive assessment of what I had written, this person noted that my description of prayer as a dialogue begs a very large question. How do we know that prayer is in fact a dialogue? That when we pray, God hears and responds to what we say? It is an important question. It is one thing to read in—or to infer from—an ancient text that God answers prayer. It is quite another to pray and to hear only silence in response, which by any reasonable way of thinking does not sound much like a true dialogue. As my reviewer quipped, “We await a book on prayer as a monologue.”¹¹

East of Eden monologue is in a real sense the burden of faith. In fact, scripture is quite candid about this, in essence setting before us a story in which God gradually appears less and less, speaks less and less, and is less and less directly involved in the affairs of the world and of humankind. Consider these Old Testament mileposts:

We should pause in considering this last marker. Elijah is alone on the mountain, in communication with God. God’s first words to the prophet—“What are you doing here?” (I Kngs 19:9)—recall God’s first words to Adam (cf. Gen 3:10). Elijah responds by expressing his frustration at finding God and asks to die (I Kngs 19:10). God responds by instructing Elijah to stand on the mountain, “for the Lord is about to pass by,” accompanied by three extraordinary phenomena: a great wind, an earthquake, and then a fire (I Kngs 19:11-12a). In the biblical narrative to this point, each of these phenomena has signaled an extraordinary occasion of God’s palpable presence on earth. This time it is different. God is not present in any of these expected ways. Now, the only identifiable marker of God’s presence on earth is “a sound of thin hush,”¹³ or, as Simon and Garfunkel put it in the popular 1960s song, “a sound of silence.” Elijah sees what God wants him to see, but God is not present in anything his eyes can see. He listens for what God has to say to him, but he hears only silence. And then these more ordinary words from the narrator, “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus’” . . . (I Kngs 19:15). It is the “last time in the Hebrew Bible’s narrative that the text says “And YHWH said” anything to anyone.”_¹⁴

The silence that follows Elijah into the wilderness of Damascus is the silence that is present at Jesus’ transfiguration, when he withdraws to the mountain to pray. Moses and Elijah appear miraculously and talk to him about the mission God has in store for him (Luke 9:28-36 // Matt 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8), but we cannot hear what they say. It is also the silence that hangs over Jesus’ prayer from the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” when some thought he was asking Elijah to come and save him (Matt 27:45-50 //Mark 15:33-39). Elijah did not come, and God did not take this cup from him. And, I submit, it is this silence, ever pregnant with the response we believe will come but may not yet hear, that sustains our monologue with heaven until, by the grace of God, it becomes the dialogue we call prayer.

For the duration of my remarks, the screen behind me has invited us to listen to words about prayer while looking at Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the “Creation of Adam” (1508-12) on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. On the left is Adam, leaning in a pose of trust, left arm outstretched, as he waits for God to infuse him with life. On the right is God, who is moving towards Adam, with intent pictorially concentrated in the reach of God’s right index finger. The compositional and symbolic center of the scene is the gap between the two fingers, less than an eighth of an inch, if we measure by the ruler. Inside this space, which God is already moving to close, is where the prayer that binds the hopes and expectations of heaven and earth takes place. Michelangelo could no more imagine depicting half of this scene, either Adam without God or God without Adam, than scripture can imagine a world without prayer. As it is in this visual, so it remains this side of Eden: until the fingers touch, until the gap between heaven and earth is closed completely, the work of prayer is not over, and the “Amen” that closes scripture’s “Revelation” remains penultimate.

I leave you with this commentary from R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), the Welsh priest and poet. His words are not scripture, but they may be sacred nonetheless.

So it is. So may it be. Let us “pray without ceasing” in the sure conviction that when we reach out into those unknown spaces that make life what it is east of Eden, there will be a reciprocating touch. In advance of the reality, let all God’s people say, “Amen.”

Endnotes:

¹ John Steinbeck, East of Eden (New York: Viking Press, 1952).

² Barbara Brown Taylor, When God is Silent (The 1997LymanBeecher Lectures on Preaching; Cambridge, Boston: Cowley Publications, 1998), 4.

³ T. Fretheim, “Prayer in the Old Testament: Creating Space in the World for God,” in A Primer on Prayer, ed. P. Sponheim (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 51-52.

⁴ Cf. W. Brueggemann, “Prayer,” in Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes (Louisville, London: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 149.

⁵ The most important of these is clearly the “The Lord’s Prayer,” the “model prayer” Jesus taught his disciples (Matt 6:9-13 // Luke 11:2-4). Beyond this prayer, the New Testament records seven of Jesus’ prayers: two from the cross (Matt 26:46// Mark 15:34: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”; Luke 23:34, 46: “Father, forgive them . . .; Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”); plus five additional prayers (Matt 11:25-27 // Luke 10:21-22; Matt 26:39 // Mark 14:36 // Luke 22:42; John 11:41-42; 12:27-28; and 17:1-26). Three prayers by others are recorded: one by Peter and the assembly upon the selection of an apostle to succeed Judas (Acts 1:24-25; one by Peter and John in the Jerusalem prison (Acts 4:24-30); and one by Stephen at his stoning (Acts 7:59-60. It should also be noted that prayer is prominent in Paul’s letters to the churches, especially in the introductory thanksgivings (e.g., Rom 1:7-8; I Cor 1:3-4; II Cor 1:2; Gal 1:3; Phil 1:2-3; Col 1:2) and the benedictory blessings (e.g., Rom 16:25-27; I Cor 16:23; II Cor 13:13; Gal 6:18; Eph 6:23; Phil 4:23; Col 4:18); otherwise, the actual words of Paul’s prayers are not recorded.

⁶ What follows reprises my overview of prayer in the New Testament: “Pray, Prayer, Intercede,” in D. Gowan, ed., The Westminster Theological Wordbook of the Bible (Louisville, London: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 384-386.

⁷ It is interesting that what little the Old Testament offers in this regard is presented as counter-models, examples that illustrate how people may use or commend prayer in ways that should not be followed. Job’s friends are case in point. They urge him to pray for forgiveness of sins he did not commit, assuming that confession is the only recourse God provides for those who suffer innocently (cf. Job 8:5-6; 11:13; 22:23-27). The Epilogue to the book provides God’s assessment of the friends’ understanding of prayer: “My wrath is kindled against you . . . for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done” (Job 42:7, 9).

⁸ Langston Hughes, “Evil,” in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. A. Rampersad (New York: Vintage Classics, 1994), 227.

⁹ G. Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 232.

¹⁰ S. E. Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible: The Drama of Divine-Human Dialogue (OBT; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993).

¹¹ P. R. Davies, in JSOT 64 (1994), 125.

¹² For these and other such examples of God’s steady retreat, see R. Friedman, The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery (Boston, New York, Toronto, London: Little Brown and Company, 1995), 19-26. I have discussed the theological importance of these texts in S. E. Balentine, The Torah’s Vision of Worship (OBT; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 219-227.

¹³ Friedman, The Disappearance of God, 23.

¹⁴ Ibid., 24.

¹⁵ R. S. Thomas, “Threshold,” in Poems of R. S. Thomas (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1985), 149-150. See also Thomas’s poem, “The Other” (especially the words italicized below), which is inscribed on slate in the village church of St. Hywyn, Aberdaron in north Wales, where Thomas served as parish priest for eleven years (R. S. Thomas; Everyman’s Poetry; selected and edited by A. White; Everyman: J. M. Dent, 1996, 109):

There are nights that are so still

that I can hear the small owl calling

far off and a fox barking

miles away. It is then that I lie

in the lean hours awake listening

to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic

rising and falling, rising and falling

wave on wave on the long shore

by the village, that is without light

and companionless. And the thought comes

of that other being who is awake, too,

letting our prayers break on him,

not like this for a few hours,

but for days, years, for eternity.

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