The trouble with praying -- my praying -- is that I sin so often. And so boldly.
Sin makes it difficult for me to pray.
That's because sinning makes me believe that prayer is so "holy", and I'm so unholy.
Thing is, if I'm sick, it's also difficult to get me to go to the doctor. So these things really must be related.
But how?
From the perspective of despair, sin (and sickness) are an admission of my humanity. So any seeking of healing -- either in spirit (through prayer) or body (by getting to the doctor) -- confronts my bull-headed notion that I should be complete in myself. I know enough, I'm "good enough".
But am I? It's interesting to me that Jesus refused to be called "good". "No one is good -- except God alone" (Luke 18.19).
No, I'm still too much like the "rich young man". I depend on justifying myself in the face of rules. And those rules can always do nothing more than shine a light on how often I'm broken by those same rules.
Despair is rightly the end of trying to go it myself.
It's much better to risk being seen as a hypocrite by praying after I sin than to risk growing cold and feeling alone -- even as I'm in God's arms -- by not praying.
From the perspective of despair, sin is the end of prayer. From the perspective of hope, sin is the beginning of prayer.
"And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?" (Luke 18.7).
Jesus stands on the side of hope, not despair.
That's why he describes the just prayer in this way: "God, have mercy on me a sinner" (Luke 18.13).
"Screwing up" is the precondition of grace, not its negation. Therefore the lesson of grace is: Stop being such a pansy when it comes to sin.
Luther put it this way: "Sin boldly". Bonhoeffer rightly read Luther to mean: "Grace was intended to open the way to Christ, but cheap grace only closed it". "Cheap grace"? Cheap grace is "preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance".
It's not remorse that keeps me from praying after sinning. It's not even pity. It's a secret love of the sin. I don't want to pray after sinning because I want to leave some room for the sin later, sometime when the pain of the sin is less acute. Sometime when I won't be expected to change.
No, the reason I have such trouble praying after sinning isn't guilt. It isn't that I feel so unloveable. It's that I'm loving the wrong things. I'm loving the sin. I want the forgiveness without the real work of repentance.
Want to undo the Accuser? Thank God for sinning. You now have a blindingly obvious reason to call out for help.
And that, I think, is the first prayer. "Help!"
Prayer is the opportunity to reach out beyond ourselves for God. For mercy. Prayer begins precisely where sin has just ended. Think Luke 18.1-8 here.
You want to conquer sin? Recognize this: Every act of disobedience is small when you put it up next to Jesus. The marvelous loving grace of God, without which we'd always be doing something far more miserable, makes everything -- even my very best -- look so small.
I have to wonder why it is that so many of us, myself included, think it comes down to this: That we believe Jesus lied.
Jesus said, "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who think they don't need to repent". So, why then do we wrap ourselves in such self-loathing?
I am a potential song in God's heart. A long louder and brighter than if the whole world had never sang. That's how forgiving God is.
"Feeling bad" is so insufficient. Because denying sin works for only so long. It's abysmally insufficient in the face of grace. In the face of Jesus.
"O felix culpa!", the early Christians used to pray. "O happy fault", the prayer goes, "O necessary sin of Adam, that won for us so great a Redeemer!"
Why is it we Christians don't read Romans 5.12-21 before we read Romans 6.23?
The sin in whom we are find ourselves dead is "happy"? And here I lay, at 4.38 in the morning, wallowing over mine in wretchedness?
What strange power has been granted me? God, who proclaims a wholeness out of Jesus' obedience that is "greater than" all my sin, is now somehow reduced to a mewling incompetent because I screw up?
I really do think a lot of myself, don't I? I think a lot of my sin, too, apparently.
This is what it means when I refuse to pray after sinning: I'm rating myself as something infinitely darker and more beyond help than Adam, a thing whose faults can never be "happy faults".
If there is beauty in the world, it is this: There is redemption.
So, then:
Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.