Beyond
the
words

In John Le Carré's book, Smiley's People, George Smiley, the former acting head of the Circus, the equivalent of MI6, had returned from retirement to bring to a head a complex spy ring with which he had been involved. After a painstaking trail through three countries, it involved nothing less than forcing his opposite number, Karla, in the Kremlin to defect to the West. Finally, all was arranged to receive him at the crossing in Berlin -

'If he comes, he'll come on time,' Smiley had said. Then why do we get here two hours early? Guillam had wanted to ask. ... But he knew the answer already. Because we owe, Smiley would have said if he had been in a talking mood. Because we owe the caring, and the waiting, we owe this vigil over one man's effort to escape the system he helped create. For as long as he is trying to reach us, we are his friends. Nobody else is on his side.
He'll come, Guillam thought. He won't, He may. If this isn't prayer, he thought, what is it? (John Le Carré, Smiley's People, Sceptre, 1979, pages 387-8)

It is unusual for prayer to be mentioned in a spy novel! But whatever Le Carré himself may understand about prayer, George Smiley's second in command in this covert operation is obviously a little perplexed - 'He'll come' ... 'He won't' ... 'He may'. Words have always been the vehicle of 'speech' with the God whom we cannot see. They are important and always will be for the Christian who is drawn to prayer. I suppose what perplexes people (not only Guillam) is how prayer 'works'! There is no sort of heavenly 'call centre' to deal with all these requests and other prayers! Perhaps the best working analogy for the basis of prayer is the idea of friendship. To have come to faith in God and in Jesus the Lord, it should be fairly natural to regard them as 'friends'. The idea goes back a long way - to the 8th century prophets as well as to the gospel of John - 'I have called you friends' says Jesus. And in friendship one can be at ease and familiar. But friendship with God also depends on seeing God (and the risen Lord) not as some far off divine persons with whom one cannot feel at home with but as the God and the Lord who enter into the processes of life and death with us.

Praying for others as well as for oneself enlarges the possibilities of our relationship with God. And if that relationship is characterised by sharing in the dynamics or the 'energies' of the divine, then we enter into the friendship which opens out Beyond the words. The intercession open to us as Christians is dynamic rather than static. Words can live as an expression of ourselves but generally they exist on a rather flat plane. To pray for someone, for many people unknown to us, can be, on this level, a living prayer of inter-connection: they with me in the divine love and mercy. We cannot describe that prayer beyond words in any great detail - it is, in faith, more alive than we can ever understand.

It is in that context that we see how deep are the ideas attributed to George Smiley. We are being friends for the one who is in great need. And there is a sense that we owe it as Christians who are friends with God and the risen Lord. Of course the principle, so happily hit upon by John Le Carré, is an action which undoubtedly many people undertake whether they are Christians or not. In their actions they reveal the underlying energies of the divine - in beautiful compassion and action. It is an argument for the Christian concern for prayer when people are critical and wish to say to us that it is action alone that is needed. We know that is not true! In the interconnectedness of the prayer Beyond the words, God is also helped in his concern for everyone on the planet. Prayer has often been seen as a cry for ourselves or for some person. Rather like Bartimaeus' cry to Jesus, 'Lord, that I may receive my sight!' That's important. But the sense that God can be helped by us is an encouraging and liberating idea. It is verified in daily life where our interconnectedness and response to one another, whether we realise it or not, gives meaning to life.

It may not be often true, as was said of Kara in the novel, 'For as long as he is trying to reach us, we are his friends. Nobody else is on his side.', but it can often be said of the lonely and destitute and suffering in our Western civilisation as of the poverty stricken areas of the planet.

There is a certain sense today that Christian faith and life are on trial in the modern world. We have often inherited ideas about God and our relationship to him which are 'flat', not rounded in understanding how faith in him is an invitation from him to have a share in the divine energies of his concerns for us all. We have perhaps felt that, at most, our faith and prayer should be seen to be humble - the creature before the great Creator. Whereas, in Jesus, he has stretched out his hands to us as those of his household to whom he continually turns for assistance. Humility is then certainly in place when we say that, in the love of the Lord, we owe his friends our support in love.

But to become involved in this work with God comes at some cost to ourselves. While prayer may become so much part of our 'life-blood' that it comes naturally within our ordinary concerns in the daily routines, responding Beyond the words does need more time. Like George Smiley and Guillam waiting patiently for a couple of hours in the novel to support Kara's flight to freedom, there will be opportunities which we are able to set aside just 'to be' with God, sitting, as it were, before the Lord. This patient contribution to God's working means, in a sense we cannot describe, that our energies in love for God become the means through which others are helped. Paul, writing to the Galatians, spoke of bearing one another's burdens. This can be in an explicit sense for some individual in great need, but also, as in general cooperation with God, for the ones we cannot name. While this can be seen, here and now, as a duty laid upon us by the Lord, as Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, it is part of a greater scheme - '... the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.' (Romans 8:21) So this prayer as cooperation with God is part not only of our Christian duty but as a reflection of our own, present, sense of freedom in Christ.

In music which comes from the spirit and reveals the depths of the experience of life in joy and suffering and resilience so it is in prayer with God. As the letter to the Ephesians corroborates -

'... may you be strong to grasp, with all God's people, what is the length and height and breadth and depth of the love of Christ, and to know it, though it is beyond knowledge. So may you attain to fulness of being, the fulness of God himself.' (Ephesians 3: 18-19. New English Bible)