Sunday Meditation 5

When Jesus prayed, who listened? It’s a fair question . . .

I believe Jesus turned water into wine. Walked on water. Healed the sick. Raised the dead. But the thing I’ve struggled with for years is: When Jesus prayed, who listened?

Fair question . . .

In my mind I’ve framed the query in the context of “The Trilemma, posed a generation ago by C. S. Lewis, author of “Mere Christianity” and one of my favorite writers.

Short version: “Lunatic, Liar, or Lord.”

Long version: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to …”

Some skeptics sidestep “The Trilemma” by claiming Jesus didn’t exist; I admire their hutzpah — the way I appreciate this scene from “The Taming of the Shrew”:

Petruchio: Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!

Katherina: The moon? The sun! It is not moonlight now.

Petruchio: I say it is the moon that shines so bright.

Katherina: I know it is the sun that shines so bright.

Petruchio: Now by my mother’s son, and that’s myself, It shall be moon, or star, or what I list, Or ere I journey to your father’s house. Go on and fetch our horses back again. Evermore cross’d and cross’d; nothing but cross’d!

Hortensio: Say as he says, or we shall never go.

Katherina: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, And be it moon, or sun, or what you please; And if you please to call it a rush-candle, Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

Petruchio: I say it is the moon.

Katherina: I know it is the moon.

Petruchio: Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.

Katherina: Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun; But sun it is not, when you say it is not; And the moon changes even as your mind. What you will have it nam’d, even that it is, And so it shall be so for Katherine.

Moving on from Shakespeare …

Matt Slick (cool name) is president and founder of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (carm.org). He approached the praying problem this way: “As a man, Jesus needed to pray. When He was praying, He was not praying to Himself but to God the Father.”

A solid answer, I suppose, but (for me) not entirely adequate.

Like a puppy gnawing on an old shoe, I pondered: Biting. Chewing. Growling. Drooling. Sadly, I never really felt a satisfactory breakthrough. The shoe won. Closest I could get was how Francis Schaeffer (of L’Abri fame) described the relationship of the Trinity, prior to creation.

Often in a discussion someone will say, “Didn’t God, then, if He is personal and if He loves, need an object for His love? Didn’t He have to create? And therefore, isn’t the universe just as necessary to Him as He is to the universe?” But the answer is, No. He did not have to create something face-to-face with Himself in order to love, because there already was the Trinity. God could create by a free act of the will because before creation there was the Father who loved the Son and there was also the Holy Spirit to love and be loved. In other words, God had someone face-to-face with Himself in the three Persons of the Trinity. (Francis A. Schaeffer, “Genesis In Time and Space,” Chapter 1)

Here’s how that helped me in my struggle:

Because each person of the Trinity is/was (or, if you prefer, was/is) distinct, each has the independent ability to communicate with the other(s). This communion is not incidental to their relationship, but vital. Not a sideshow, but center stage. It’s why the Trinity was able to plan, implement and execute the act of creation in the first place, but also why Jesus (who provisionally removed his infinite, transcendental robe to don earthly, temporal garb) continued to communicate/commune with his eternal sidekicks while visiting earth. (This intrinsically intimate communication/communion was deliberately disrupted while Jesus was on the cross — for obvious reasons.)

I accept that my “to-whom-was-he-praying” answer is neither elegant nor eloquent. (Truth is, I wrote it more for me than for you.) Why, then, “let it all hang out”? Because, in my opinion, it’s in sharing — and the subsequent vulnerability — that we can honorably attempt to address questions of consequence larger than ourselves. In doing so, we must be prepared to get slapped around if we don’t get the answer right — or, at the very least, articulate it reasonably.

Let the games begin …

BONUS: “Taming of The Shrew” video.

Sunday Meditation 1: The Prodigal Son

Sunday Meditation 2: Ode to Jim Elliot

Sunday Meditation 3: House of Bread

Sunday Meditation 4: Run, Baby, Run

My Testimony: Stealing Psalm 40

Jim Lamb is a retired journalist living in Florida. He’s author of “Orange Socks & Other Colorful Tales,” the story of how he survived Vietnam and kept his sense of humor. He accepted Christ at a Sunday chapel service in Da Nang. For more about Jim, visit www.jslstories.com.