God Cannot Become Present

Invocations have always puzzled me. I value prayer and I would hope that we all would “pray without ceasing” but invocations seem a bit off. Contributing to my unease with invocations is the idea that we give the impression that we “summon” God to the gathering. Maybe this is not what others feel is happening, but many invocations I have heard use phrases like, “we invite you into this place” and “be here, O God.” These prayers are not evil or “bad” they do however hold an implicit theology of where God is.

There is a story in the Bible where a prophet named Elijah is in a weird contest against different prophets of a different deity to rain down fire. These other prophets cut themselves and yell for a long time in order to “invoke” their god. After a while, Elijah jeers them and suggests… well just read how the Contemporary English Version tells it in 1 Kings 18:27:

At noon, Elijah began making fun of them. "Pray louder!" he said. "Baal must be a god. Maybe he's daydreaming or using the toilet or traveling somewhere. Or maybe he's asleep, and you have to wake him up.

This god never shows up. Elijah then prays that God would answer his request to light a fire and the fire is lit.

Elijah knew something that invocations fail to understand.

God cannot become present because God is never absent.

Examine our prayers and listen for the implicit theology. Is this person praying that God would “please, just be present”? Are we aware that God cannot become present - God is presence.