| Rev. Will Rice | ||
Romans 8:26-26
As we mention at the beginning of the service each week, when we agree to join Christ’s church, we agree to support it with our prayers our presence our gifts and our service. During the summer, we have selected some scriptures that talk about presence.
The Church, as a whole, while it does encourage people to live up to that pledge, it doesn’t really do a whole lot to hold people to it. We figure, at some level, that it is between you and God. But the leaders of the church can tell whether or not the members of the congregation in general are taking it seriously.
If I stand up here on Sunday morning and realize I am talking to myself, I will realize that we may have forgotten about the presence part. If during my sermon, the lights go out because we haven’t paid the light bill, I will realize that maybe not enough of us are supporting the church with our financial gifts. If suddenly I notice that we don’t have any Sunday school teachers or ushers or musicians I may realize that people are maybe not taking seriously their pledge to support the church with their spiritual gifts and therefore their service.
But how would I know if the membership of the church had forgotten all about their pledge to support the church with their prayers? I can’t tell you for sure if I would know, but I do know that it is possible to tell the difference between a church whose membership is praying and a church whose membership is not.
I think, as United Methodists, we have an interesting relationship to prayer. Within any congregation there are a number of people who have very deep, rich, disciplined prayer lives. There are also quite a few for whom prayer is mostly a mystery or something only done in church. I would say the majority of people fall somewhere in between.
We also fall on two sides of a different spectrum. On one side, there are those among us, whether or not they have an active prayer life, who clearly see prayer as a powerfully important part of the life of the church and/or individual lives as Christians. On the other side, there are some who aren’t all that sure what part prayer plays in the lives of the church or our personal spirituality. Once again there are a whole lot of fall in between.
There are also a wide variety of answers to the question of What is prayer? In fact, there is a class that I have developed called Prayer 101 and one of the first things I ask the group is What is prayer? I am always surprised by variety of answers. The first cluster of answers usually revolve around the idea of communicating to God. For instance,
“Prayer is telling God what you need. “
An answer for which there is certainly scriptural support. Philippians 4:6
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
But quickly, and the exercise is designed for this to happen, someone will jump in and say, it is more than asking for stuff, we have to give thanks.
“Prayer is giving thanks to God.”
And there is scriptural support for that as well. 1Thessalonians 5:16-18
16 Rejoice always,17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Not only is there scriptural support, there is an actual word for it in Greek. The word for give thanks used there in Greek is Eucharisteo, which is the source of another word we use for our celebration of Holy Communion, eucharist. A Eucharistic prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving.
So the answers to the question what is prayer, so far, are pretty good, but they might be missing something. Some times when I teach the prayer class, we get stuck here and I have to draw a diagram on the board and say, So far all of our thoughts about prayer have been one way, as though prayer were a one way thing, from us to God.
That almost always inspires someone to add:
“Prayer is listening to God”
Psalm 46:10:
"Be still, and know that I am God
With a little more nudging, the class comes to the conclusion that it is not talking or listening, it is both. Prayer is communicating with God.
Scripture speaks to that as well, Luke 11:9:
"So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
It doesn’t just say knock. It says knock, and the door will be opened for you. If you are going to visit your best friend, you don’t knock on the door and then run away. You knock and then you wait for the door to be answered.
Alright, now that I have done a mediocre job of tackling the question of what prayer is, let me try to get at the question of how we pray. As I mentioned earlier, we all fall in different places in regards to this question. I remember teaching the prayer class once and when I got to this part, a woman said, “What do you mean? Everyone knows how to pray.” As I looked around the room, I could tell by the looks on many faces that there were quite a few who didn’t agree with that.
As a Church over the last couple of thousands of years, there have been thousands and thousands of texts written offering direction in the discipline of prayer. But, as a modern church, I think we really have fallen down on the job.
If we are lucky, when we are children, our parents will teach us some rudimentary prayer skills, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
If we are truly lucky, our parents will continue to teach us by example. They will pray with us at bedtime and mealtime and other times, modeling prayer for us. If you had that blessing, you should feel fortunate. Most are left with the simple prayers they are taught as children, or, as in my case, with nothing at all.
I will say again for any of you who haven’t heard me speak before, I did not grow up as a Christian. The only time I heard prayer was when I was visiting my grandmother or aunt, and because I wasn’t used to it, it just sounded so strange and foreign I just hoped it would be over so we could get to my aunt’s cream corn casserole.
Now picture me years later, in my late 20s, feeling the emptiness and lack of meaning in my life, desperately seeking a connection with something, feeling the gentle pull of God’s prevenient Grace upon me without really knowing what it was. Picture me, alone in my home finally being overwhelmed by the desperation of existence and the powerful pull of God, falling to my knees and saying…
What? What do you say?
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
And out of my mouth came the words, “Show me the path.” And those words became my prayer. And as I prayed that prayer, I begin to see and hear the movement of the Spirit around me, pulling me and leading me on that path, the path of the beginning of a journey that would lead me to church, to baptism, to dedicating my life to serving God, to seminary and eventually right here. “Show me the path.”
Sometimes, I think there is an advantage to the purity and naivety of someone who doesn’t know how to pray. Sometimes, when we think we know what we are doing, we get so lost in our words, that we don’t really get to pray.
And what are we undertaking when we try to pray. As theologian Paul Tillich sees it, The Apostle Paul is saying in his letter to the Romans that there is a question of whether prayer is possible at all.
This we should never forget when we pray: We do something humanly impossible. We talk to somebody who is not somebody else, but who is nearer to us than we ourselves are. We address somebody who can never become an object of our address because he is always subject, always acting, always creating. We tell something to Him who knows not only what we tell Him but also all the unconscious tendencies out of which our conscious words grow. This is the reason why prayer is humanly impossible.[1]
But remember these words of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 19. Jesus has just told a rich young that he would have to sell everything in order to enter into life and follow Jesus. Jesus then says,
"Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." 25When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, "Then who can be saved?" 26But Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible."
It is not our ability to pray correctly, rather our faith that it is God who is at work in prayer.
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
Prayer is something we are never going to get right, but at the same time we are never going to get wrong, because it is truly the Spirit of God that is praying for us. Now before you think that this takes all the responsibility off of us. It is not as if, we can just go about our daily lives and let the Spirit intercede for us whenever necessary. We have to make ourselves available, we have to make ourselves open, we need to make prayer part of our lives. More than that, we have to make prayer a basis of our lives, if we can expect the Spirit to truly intercede for us and put us in constant contact with the very source of our being.
Which takes me back to the beginning. When we join Christ’s church we agree to support it with our prayers our presence our gifts and our service. My challenge to us all, me included, is that we take that seriously. I want to see Grace United Methodist Church as a church with a deep life of prayer. I want to see prayer as the focal point of our worship and ministry. That is a pretty ambitious challenge. Some are already there. But some of us still don’t quite know where to start, and this sermon has raised more questions than answers.
But you know what, those who are already convinced of the importance of prayer and those who already have a disciplined prayer life can lead the rest of us. Pastor John and I are already impressed by the depth of the prayer life of this church and we are pushing to take it further. We are doing everything we can to encourage time for scripture reading and prayer during the meetings of all of the leadership groups within the church. We are doing what we can to support and encourage the spiritual development of our staff and leadership. We hope to find more chances in the future to show different ways of praying and being in God’s presence and we hope to make everyone aware that prayer is not the same for everyone. And we are doing all we can to be attentive to our own spiritual lives so that we can lead through example.
I am totally convinced that if a church is attentive first and foremost to its life of prayer, the rest will fall into place. I am convinced that our entire mission to invite, nurture and serve will come naturally with each using their God given gifts and talents in the best possible way if we turn our hearts toward God in prayer. Remember as Jesus said,
"For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible."
That is my message today, simply, pray. If you don’t know how, start with this:
God, teach me to pray.
Then listen.
Amen.
[1] Paul Tillich, “The Paradox of Prayer”, Chapter 18 in The New Being, (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955) online at Religion Online, http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=375&C=31, accessed 22 July, 2005; internet
