Spiritual Aerobics for the 21st Century Chapter II

This is my second chapter of Spiritual Aerobics
For the 21st Century. It is entitled Dangerous Prayer.
This chapter contemplates the power, ethics and dangers
of prayer in the modern world.

Given the weakness and sin of humanity, Christians
once believed that prayer should center on personal
and social repentance. We recognized our constant
need for God's forgiveness and grace. The Episcopal
Church's Book of Common Prayer is a great example of
traditional prayer.

In today's popular TV religious culture, prayer is
portrayed as our source of personal power over
the world, and even over God.

Many people pray, "In Jesus' Name," asking
for prosperity, power, victory or revenge. They pray
as if the name of Jesus were a mystical spell, or a
magic word. What if we pray, in Jesus' name, and
ask for something totally sinful and wrong?
Such prayers are very dangerous. Spiritual Aerobics
shows us how God might answer these dangerous prayers.




SPIRITUAL AEROBICS FOR THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY II

The Rev. Rod Reinhart

DANGEROUS PRAYER

When I was young and holy
The Church always taught me
To take my burdens to the Lord
And leave them there

The Church taught me to "let go and let God"
It taught me that "I was weak and
He was strong" and
"I'd be satisfied as long
As I walked, let me walk close to Thee."

They taught me to pray and not worry, just live in God's light
"Just have a little talk with Jesus and
Everything would be… ALL RIGHT"

But patience and faith are not popular
In this age of instant religious gratification
We no longer take our burdens to the Lord and leave them there

We storm Heaven with our demands
We send bucks to religious radio shows
We petition TV preachers
And all the saints in Glory
To release God's power in prayer
And make JESUS give us
Exactly what we want and right when we want it



America is caught in the
Arrogance of Prayer
We don't trust in God's patient power
To heal and help us.
We thrust our fist in God's face
Demanding a miracle
As is we were in control
And a few Biblical verses
Give us power over God

How many books and TV preachers teach us
That Prayer is our personal Power over the real world
How often do we pray
"Not THY will, but MY will be done"

The Church once taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves
To love our enemies and care for the sick and the poor
But are we taught today to trust in God
And lean not to our own understanding
Are we taught today to love mercy
Live justice and walk humbly before our God?

Humility is as out of style as the 1964 Thunderbird
Too many of us come to God today
In the cool assurance
Of our own perfection
And the cruel resurgence
Of our own prejudice

No longer do we earnestly repent
Of our own sins
Or live in love and charity with our neighbors
No longer do we make our humble confessions
Devoutly kneeling
To our almighty and loving God


All too many preachers today have taught us
That patience and love are signs of weakness
They tell we must expect a miracle
As soon as we send our money

We now expect God's wrath to fall on our enemies
When we wave around words like
"Tradition, Heresy, Righteousness and Morality"
We pile these words like stones
On the backs of people we do not like
Yet we refuse to carry them ourselves

The arrogance of phony prayer
Fills far too many temples today
Self-flagellation has become self-congratulation
As powerful leaders legislate repentance
for the sins of the world
And not the sins of themselves

I have grown old enough to see
Doctors run TV cameras through my heart
And felt the cat lick my whiskers when I'm sick
I have seen many painfully glorious
answers to prayer
And I know now that we must be
very careful with prayer
For God pays attention
Maybe too much attention
And God makes desperately
important decisions about us
With every prayer we even begin to breathe

For Christ's death and resurrection
Opened the doors of Heaven to our prayers
Jesus promised God would obey
Every prayer we pray in His name
But when we fail to pray with mercy and love
God alone knows what judgment we will receive

Prayer is not playing power games with God
It is not magic or wishing on a star
Prayer is not taking revenge against strangers
Or building our career on the people we crush

Real prayer is power by which God
Judges, changes, guides, and enlivens us
We must give ourselves totally to God
Or our prayer isn't really prayer at all

Prayer is our total concentration
Our ultimate consecration
Of utterly giving ourselves to God
Prayer is that moment of uncontrollable intensity
When God fills our mind, our emotions, our whole being
With incomprehensible presence and overwhelming power
And pours forth His own prayer through us
We plead with God from the flaming shadows of our soul
God explodes through us to move the stones of earth

Prayer becomes prayer when we cannot stop praying
When God becomes the flood raging over our barriers
Of fear and pain and reaches through our lives
To incarnate justice and redemption in the world

Prayer becomes prayer when we are engulfed in God
And God prays through our lives
Prayer becomes prayer
When we are transfigured, transcended
And transformed by the love of God
Prayer becomes prayer
When we are the prayer of God

And how many vast armies
Of visionaries, missionaries, and monks
Have raised their voices
To become the prayer of God?


The Archbishop of Canterbury
Back woods Pentecostal preachers
Priests offering Christ at mass
Tibetan monks on mountain paths
Gurus in crowded temples
Swamis, Imams, and Shamans
Ancient gypsies and medicine men
St. Teresa, St. Claire, St. John of the Cross
St. John the Divine
The Bal Shem Tov, the Seer of Lublin
Ghost Doctors of the Aborigines
Gnostics, mystics and agnostics
Kneeling or dancing
Singing in the void or weeping into silence
How many vast armies have prayed themselves out to God

With every ounce of consecration and joy
Every second of concentration and love
With profound repentance
Overwhelming gratitude
Endless longing and unhealable pain
How many vast and holy armies have prayed
That great spiritual prayer
That subsumes all prayer....

Oh God, save us from ourselves
Oh God, teach us how to love
Thy will be done, Oh Lord
And let our cry come unto Thee

And whose prayer does God hear
And how does He answer them?

Does God hear the prayer of the abortion doctor
Or the prayer of the abortion doctor's murderer?


Does God hear the prayer of the gay Christian
Struggling to live out his faith
Or does God hear the prayer of the gay bashing Christian
Looking for his next victim?

Does God hear the prayer of the concentration
camp prisoner trying to escape
Or the prayer of the concentration camp commander
Trying to cover up his crime?

Does God hear the prayer of the old woman
Seeking safety on the street
Or the drug-addicted mugger
Looking for his next fix?

Does God hear the prayer of the preacher
Calling down damnation
On the hustlers and hookers on the streets
Or the prayer of the local pastor
Trying to save young people
From a life of destruction?

Does God hear the prayer of the drunk
Looking for a drink
Or the prayer of the AA member
Trying to stay sober?

Does God hear the prayer of the man dying with AIDS
Or the politician trying to cut AIDS funding?

Does God hear the prayer of the Rabbi
Before he is killed by the Nazis
Or the prayer of Hitler before he kills himself?

Does God hear the prayer of the escaping slave
Or the prayer of the master hunting him down?

Does God hear the prayer of the mental patient
Crying out in the dark
Or the prayer of the governor trying to close
The mental hospitals?


Does God hear the prayer of the Crusaders
attacking Jerusalem
Or the prayer of the armies defending it?

Does God hear the prayer of the strikers
seeking fair wages
Or the prayer of the owners refusing
to give in to their demands

Does God hear the prayer of the beaten wife
Trying to defend herself
Or the prayer of the drunken husband
Gathering his strength
To slug her again?

Does God hear the prayer of Caiaphas and Pilate
As they condemn a man to death
Or does He hear the prayer of Christ
Forgiving them from the Cross?

Whose prayers does God hear?
He hears all our prayers
He knows us by our prayers
He judges us by our prayers
He hears the prayers
Of the righteous and the unrighteous
He answers our prayers in the world today
And in the world to come

God answers our prayers through the power
Of the Cross and the Resurrection
He answers the prayers of the
Repentant, the suffering, the faithful
And the merciful with reconciliation
In this world and redemption in the next

God answers the prayers of the
Unforgiving and the unforgiven
The murderer and the basher
The merciless and the hypocrite
With punishment in this world
And judgment in the next

God hears our prayers
He hears them all too well
He knows far beyond our knowing
Why we ask and what we're after
And some times, just because He is God,
He touches us
With underserved but overwhelming grace
Just because He loves us
and we need His love so much


God hears our prayer . . . born on the heartbeat
And summoned on the drum of our soul
We come to God with courage and love
Throwing off our cloak of hatred and fear
Coming to Him in full consecration
Clothed in the garment of redemption and love
In union with Christ, asking one thing
That God's will alone be done in our lives
As we enter fully the mystery of God
He will grant our request that His will be done
All will be well and our joy will be complete
For we shall be like Him and He will call us each by name
And all of us will be forgiven and redeemed
Filled with the Spirit . . . made one with Christ
United to God in holiness and peace

Rev. Rod Reinhart

Plymouth MI 1995
Chicago IL 2011

Spiritual Aerobics for the 21st Century

I now begin to publish my book called
SPIRITUAL AEROBICS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

I wrote this book of poetic, political and critical theology
in the early 1990's. It reflects on the ways that religious
fundamentalism, new age mysticism, and unrestricted greed had
become accepted all through the 80's, as America's main mode of religion.
I sought to show the difference between legitamate religious faith, and the
violent, vague and self-serving religious messages people received from
extremist politicians and TV preachers.

Now that we are in the 21st century, I can see that my warnings from long ago
were completely justified. This long poem... SPITIUTAL AEROBICS, is more needed
than ever before. This work has many fine, quotable lines. Feel free to quote from
it as long as you give credit to the author.
I have updated and edited the book with the help of my good friend, Alan Engle.
I plan to post a new chapter of Spiritual Aerobics for the 21st Century each week untill everything is on the internet. Please let me know what you think. I believe you will enjoy reading it.

Rod Reinhart




SPIRITUAL AEROBICS FOR THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Ebenezer Scrooge had it easy, compared to us
All the ghosts of Christmas worked overtime
To convince him to love the poor

The crux of his salvation was to care for Tiny Tim
And give some bucks away
The paradigms of Paradise have shifted and
It's not so easy now
Christ's Gospel has been twisted like a top
To justify bigotry, violence and sin
Scrooge scoured his soul and learned to love
But cruel passion's back in fashion
We don't know if God calls us to let the Tiny Tim of Today suffer
and die
Or languish in an orphanage
Or live at home on welfare… then steal the welfare away
Our guilt has been gilded through therapy and talk shows
We are weighed in the balance and found confused

Christ's incarnation was not a vacation
Jesus did not vault in from the void
To sanctify our moral chaos or justify our fear

He called us to be His disciples here and now
He called us to bring our inner Scrooge to redemption
And save the children dying in the streets

We Americans want a paint-by-numbers religion
A fast-food faith for the twenty-first century
We'll repent for other people's sins
And never worry about our own

We want Inquisitions and repentance for our enemies
But instant unrepentant forgiveness for ourselves
We pray for our enemies while the blood drips from our hands
We believe in the sanctity of life
But we justify murder when our ideology is right
We accept cheap religion and radio idolatry
We grasp a bargain basement morality
When rioters and cops destroy a city
Militias bomb day care centers
Holy Warriors bomb churches
And all claim God's grace upon the deed
We are a nation of pathetic ascetics and misguided mystics
We want our salvation on the installment plan
We want to be redeemed in six easy lessons
We want religion that fits our life-styles
And makes us popular at parties and at work

We want preachers and gurus to do our spiritual work for us
We want confessors to confirm our transgressions
We want pastors to pat us on the head
And tell us our most vicious feelings are the will of God

We want TV evangelists to absolve all our sins
And never make us look at our own soul and say "I'm sorry."
We want to feel forgiven when
Insincere repentance lets hate grow in the heart
We cry for scapegoats to attack
And we beg for the command to go get them

But God wants us to love one another
He wants us to climb the ladder of knives
To walk on fire and hold the rattlers high
He wants us to brand His name on our hearts and hands
And love God by loving others through the Church
But we so seldom commit ourselves to faith
We jump from church to church seeking the most
Convenient path to God . . . hoping God will never catch on

We may be baptized to new life in Christ
But we won't go any deeper than our finger-tips

We want to grab the grace and run
We want mystical experiences to make us feel good
We want salvation that soothes the nerves
We want a conversion we can write in our resumes
We want a church as prestigious as a country club
We want a faith we can place on our wall like a trophy
And point out to voters or advertise on TV

But Spiritual Union with Christ is not a spiritual high
God is not a license, a degree, or a suburban address
Miracles are not magic
Enlightenment is not entertainment
Redemption is not recreation
And salvation is not for sale to the highest bidder

The mystical presence of God breaks us, overpowers us
And builds us into God's own image
When you pray . . . and really pray . . . watch out . . .
God just might answer you
When we follow the cross, we must change our direction
We're marching to Zion so loudly God's orders are lost
On the wind

But we lack the courage and compassion to follow God
We play the victim so we can make others suffer
We pretend to be Jesus so we can judge like Pilate
We talk like Tiny Tim so we can walk like Scrooge
We play the game so we never give God our lives

But what does God want except our lives
And he'll pull every string until He has our lives
All we want from God is happiness with no strings attached

We claim we won't believe unless we see a miracle, but
We want secular miracles that make no demands
We go to Lourdes for the cure the same way we'd
Go to Hot Springs or the Betty Ford Clinic
But Bernadette never had it easy
And God heals us for His purposes, not ours

We weave our religion around miraculous powers and miracle cures
But we don't have real miracles because we won't
Give our lives to God
Real miracles are messy and make too many demands
We want second-hand miracles
Magic is cheaper

We don't want to come to God's Kingdom unless it's good for
Our Career
We want to be embraced by someone else's light
We don't want to face real pain, so
We pay for psychic hot-lines and pray to plaster angels


We buy our spiritual abuse at the cost of our blood
We pay new-age hucksters and Fundamentalist Hustlers
To comfort us when we call and drive the demons away, but
They channel darkness disguised as light into our souls
They baptize us amid piranha swimming in pools of despair

But where do we find God? God runs out to meet us on the road
We need only to reach out our hand but we run the other way
We could return like the Prodigal Son
But we adopt ourselves to cruel families
We kiss the lash while God weeps for our pain

A vision quest is not a picnic
We don't take the great Spiritual Journey to see the sights
A pilgrimage is not a pleasure cruise
Our pilgrimage to whatever holy land we choose means nothing
Unless we expect revelation and change
God wants us to see a vision which will cut us to the heart
And carve reality on our eyes
Open your eyes wide . . . God has so much more to reveal

Jesus did not call us to an easy life
When he said, "Follow Me."
He is not our bell-boy or tourist guide
He wants us to follow Him to the cross

Jesus wants to be our way
Our truth and our life
He wants to be all we need

But we fixate on times and trends
We look for Jesus in tree-tops or the sides of barns
We go to hear the latest raging preacher
We make pilgrimages to the newest weeping Madonna
We want our auras balanced by soul-retrieving
New Age healers
We want to be saved by the grace of any one in style

We refuse communion, yet seek the Holy Grail
We abandon the rituals and discipline of the Church
While we seek instant access to powerful religious emotions
We want the ecstasy of the Cross
To sweep over us and disappear like a movie storm
We want our spiritual orgasms to pass away quickly

God offers us total transcendence
We refuse to be transfigured or transformed

We deify the culture and abandon justice and love
So we elect God every year
We want our creed to be multiple-choice
Yet we wonder who will fill in our blanks
When we die

God wants to be revealed through you
What have you done to walk in His love?

We tolerate and respect every religion today
But it doesn't mean I must worship your idol
Toast marshmallows at your cross burning
Or believe everything your guru says

We make a religion of weapons today
The non-violence of the past
Bleeds through a mirror of murder today
We all preach peace
So why does your pastor have so many guns
And why are some church armed to the teeth?

What about these Christians today?
New age Puritans of the passive pew
On the take and on the make
Placing their faith in religious commercials
Buying with other people's money
And repenting for other people's sins
It leaves them morally bankrupt, homeless and damned
The blood of Christ won't cover your secrets
When you confess to nothing, burn witches
And your phone number is 6 . . . 6 . . . 6 . . .

We want the manuscripts of our lives illuminated and laminated
To eliminate any ghosts of trespasses past
We want visible spiritual perfection which requires
No repentance or change

But Jesus is standing there full of forgiveness
He wants to love us and heal us
If only we would leap into His arms
But the leap of faith is not a bungee jump
Sometimes, we must leap off a cliff in the dark
To be saved
God calls us to fall on the Rock of His Word
He calls us to the ambiguity of our own repentance
He calls us to the ambivalence of our own salvation
He calls us to discover it is no metaphor
To be a soul set free from sin

He calls us to love our enemy with real love
Not the disguised hatred we pass off as love
No longer can we define Sin
As other people's sins against us
The Gospel is not a self-help book
God will not heal us
If we curse our enemies with phony forgiveness
And prepare our knives to strike
God wants to redeem us and save us for His own
But don't take it for granted
He judges us by whom we love and who we hate
And our enemies will arise to accuse us before the Throne

God is no myth
God is no genie in a bottle
God is not going to offer us three wishes if we let him out
God is no philosophical principle
God is no vague ideal
God is no game show host
God is no gun dealer
God is no agent of our revenge
God is no advocate for our fear
God is no infomercial for salvation
God is no cosmic cosmetics kit

God is power and love
God is fire and light
That fire will burn you
If you do not walk in His love
And live in His light

The Way of the Cross is not the
Path of least resistance
It is the path through the flame
And God's fire burns away everything in you
Not filled with the love and charity of God

Embrace the flame
Take up your cross
Care for the poor

Jump over the cliff
Seek the vision
Go on the journey
Stand for your faith
Repent of your sins
Receive your redemption
Be changed by your miracle
Give yourself totally to God

Look, with Scrooge, into the
Depths of your own grave
And find new life among the stones

Come forth, with Lazarus
From your tomb of despair
From this culture of hatred
From confusion, chaos, and fear

Christ has called you to new life
Grasp, with Him, the nails
Accept His great salvation
Dance with Christ on the flame
Raise with Him to the sky

The true Paradigms of Paradise are about to be revealed
Let the Apocalypse begin

Rev. Rod Reinhart
Plymouth, MI 1995
Chicago IL 2011