Learning to pray, 1.29.12

Psalm 73:21-28

²¹When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart,
²²I was stupid and ignorant; I was like a brute beast toward you.
²³Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.
²⁴You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor.

²⁵Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. ²⁶My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. ²⁷Indeed, those who are far from you will perish; you put an end to those who are false to you. ²⁸But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, to tell of all your works.

Luke 11:1-13

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” ²He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. ³Give us each day our daily bread. ⁴And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

⁵And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; ⁶for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ ⁷And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ ⁸I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

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. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ¹¹Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? ¹²Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? ¹³If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

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            This week we continue our series on Christian discipleship by talking about prayer. Prayer is one of the most important ways we nourish our relationship with God. It’s also an area where many of us feel inadequate or lost. We worry we don’t have the right words or that we’re “doing it wrong.” We feel like we send our prayers out into empty space and never hear anything back. Or maybe we want to pray but somehow the day slips away under a sea of tasks; days become weeks and we can’t think of the last time we really prayed.

            We’re going to have another sermon in a couple of weeks focused on the prayer at the heart of this passage from Luke. That sermon is a skit about the Lord’s Prayer, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. It will offer you another perspective on the familiar prayer, which is a good thing. The great thing about having a prayer from Jesus is that Jesus keeps teaching us to pray even now. The down side is that when we pray the same prayer week after week it can become just words sliding through our mind instead of a life-changing connection to our God.

            Today’s sermon is more of an exploration of prayer in general. I have questions about prayer myself; I certainly don’t have all the answers. At different times in my life I’ve had different prayer routines; other times I haven’t prayed much at all. There’s still plenty about prayer that doesn’t make sense to me.

            For one thing, what’s our goal in prayer? Are we trying to change God’s mind by praying for something? Do we pray to call attention to a situation that’s on our hearts so God will notice and come to the rescue?

            The Bible suggests that sometimes that’s exactly what happens. While I believe God is watching all the time, in scripture crying out to God has a powerful way of getting God’s special attention. When Israel was enslaved in Egypt, God must have known, but it was when Israel cried out under the burden of their oppression that God responded by sending Moses into action.

When Moses taught Israel how to live in the Promised Land he warns those with money to be very careful about how they treat the poor. When they loan money to a poor person and take their cloak as collateral, for instance, Moses tells them to return the cloak before nightfall because that might be the person’s only protection from the cold night air. If they return it, the person will be comfortable at night and ask God to bless their kind creditor. If the lender holds on to the cloak to protect their loan, the poor person shivering in the cold might cry out to God in their suffering and God would be angry with the selfish lender.

So even though God is paying attention all the time, there’s a mysterious power in crying out to God in our need. The Bible suggests that the cry of the oppressed is especially quick to travel to God’s ears, which is a sobering thought for us, since we live in the richest country on earth.

But what does prayer change? Is God counting prayers like votes to decide what do do? If more people pray for the Giants than the Patriots, will they win the Super Bowl? Do the best prayers count for more than a quick: “Help me Jesus?”

            Jesus doesn’t talk about how God makes decisions; I think that is above our pay grade. He does talk about how God listens to prayer, though. He specifically says God doesn’t care about eloquence or length. Fancy words don’t catch God’s attention.

God especially isn’t interested in prayer that lifts us up at the expense of others. In my favorite parable about prayer Jesus tells a story about a religious leader and tax collector who went to the Temple to pray. The religious guy thanked God for making him better than other people, especially better than the tax collector. Then he went on to praise his own piety, as if God needed to know.

The tax collector prayed simply and humbly for mercy. Jesus tells his listeners that the tax collector went home justified, but the religious leader didn’t. Elsewhere Jesus tells his listeners not to be “heap up empty phrases” when they pray. He clearly rejects the idea that longer prayers catch God’s ear. It’s not the theological sophistication, or length of our prayers that makes them beautiful to God.

There have been some studies that show that patients in the hospital with people praying for them did better than patients without prayer, even when the patients didn’t know they were being prayed for. At the same time, often we pray for healing for someone and it seems like no healing comes.  Sometimes God brings healing beyond physically curing diseases. Other times we are left without an obvious answer to our prayer.

Prayer can change the world around us, but most often it does that by changing us. When we pray, especially when we pray the way Jesus taught us, we grow more connected with God. Both in the Lord’s Prayer and in Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and execution the heart of the prayer is submission to God. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven. In the Garden Jesus prayed that he wouldn’t have to suffer, but then he prays that God’s will would be done, not his.

Prayer is about getting in synch with God. It’s about opening our heart to what God wants and praying for God’s will to come about in the world. As we pray for God’s will we are changed. We start trusting God more as we recognize that God is wiser than we are. We start wanting God to be more in charge so we pray less about getting our own way and more about finding God’s way.

Prayer also changes us when we pray for other people. If you’re having a hard time with a particular person, if you can’t seem to get along or you can’t let go of something they have done to you, start praying for that person. Spend a few minutes in prayer for the person every day lifting up the hardships they face and desiring the best for them.

Beacon Presbyterian farewell sermon, 1.22.12

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: ²a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; ³a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; ⁴a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; ⁵a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; ⁶a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; ⁷a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; ⁸a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

⁹What gain have the workers from their toil? ¹⁰I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. ¹¹He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. ¹²I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; ¹³moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.

Colossians 3:12-17

¹²As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. ¹³Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. ¹⁴Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

¹⁵And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. ¹⁶Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. ¹⁷And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

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            What is a church? A church is a community, a family, a home. A church is a hospital for sinners and a training ground for saints. A church is a place where everyone is welcomed as a child of God, and a place where we practice forgiving others because as God’s children we always come up short. A church is a place we come to recharge our spiritual batteries, to find refreshment and sanctuary from the challenges of our daily lives in the world. It’s also a missionary station where we get ready to go into the world renewed by Christ’s love to invite other people to join the family.

            Inescapably, a church is an institution with structure and organization to give shape to our life together. As an institution led by people any church will always be imperfect because we are imperfect. At the same time, miraculously, the church is the body of Christ. All of us together across the universe and across the divide of time are one community and we make up Christ’s body in the world.

            Like everything else, the church is always changing. As Solomon reminds us in our reading from Ecclesiastes, everything comes and goes in its season. At its beginning, Beacon was a small group of people who felt there should be a Presbyterian community in this neighborhood.

Over the years, in response to God’s calling and in conversation with the world around them, the saints of Beacon ministered to their neighbors and their world in Christ’s name. At some points in their history the Sunday school was the main focus of their ministry. Other times music or youth work or ministry with working families took the foreground depending on the needs of the neighborhood and the gifts of the leaders of the church.

There were times of growth and times of decline; times of sorrow and times of joy. There were brilliant ideas and unfortunate mistakes; there were moments of inspiration, months of careful planning and generations of faithful ministry.

Through it all, God has been faithful and this congregation has been faithful as well. Elders and pastors, teachers, singers, workers and members have come and gone, lived and died in the faith. Children have grown up learning the story of Jesus and his amazing love. People have come to these doors for help paying rent or a compassionate ear and have found the love of God shining through ordinary women and men.

Don't be a mule, 1.15.12

Luke 6:31-38

³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you. ³²“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ³⁵But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. ³⁶Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

³⁷“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; ³⁸give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Psalm 32:1-11

¹Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. ²Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

³While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

⁴For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

⁵Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah

⁶Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. ⁷You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah

⁸I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. ⁹Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.

¹⁰Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. ¹¹Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

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            Have you ever had a secret that ate you up inside? Have you ever had something in your life that you felt wasn’t right but you felt powerless to do anything about it? Maybe you were ashamed to say anything to anybody so you kept it locked up inside you. Maybe you didn’t even want to think about it yourself, but part of you couldn’t let it go.

            Maybe it was something wrong in your relationship with someone else. Maybe something someone did to you just stuck in your soul and kept you from moving forward with your life. Maybe it was something you did that you just haven’t been able to feel right about since. Maybe it’s not so much something you or the other person has done, but a gap in your relationship, something keeping you apart that has slowly built resentment even though you can’t remember what started the problem. You try to ignore it; you tell yourself you’ve forgiven yourself or the other person, but every now and then something will remind you and it’s like you’re back to square one.

            Many days you manage to avoid thinking and talking about it, but there’s part of you that feels stuck, like it’s sick and wasting away. You can’t find your way forward because the issue feels so big you worry if you say anything about it, it will totally overwhelm you and take over your life.

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            That feeling is what the psalmist is getting at in Psalm 32. It doesn’t matter if our particular problem is in our relationship with God or another person, or even if it’s just some hard to define feeling that something isn’t right inside us. These things we keep buried inside us keep us from growing and trap us in guilt, anger, regret and sorrow.

The psalmist remembers being there: “While I kept silent my body wasted away because of my groaning all day long. Day and night your hand was heavy on my; my strength was dried up like in the heat of summer.” There’s a heaviness, a powerlessness in feeling that something is just not right. When we keep it inside, when we keep silent we feel like God’s hand is weighing us down.

When we overcome our fear and confess, the sky opens up above us and the sun comes out. When we say to God, and possibly to the person we’re struggling with, that we’ve done wrong, the way is open for healing.

love and conflict

Matthew 18:15-20

¹⁵“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. ¹⁶But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. ¹⁷If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

¹⁸Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. ¹⁹Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. ²⁰For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

 Romans 13:8-14

⁸Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

¹¹Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; ¹²the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; ¹³let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. ¹⁴Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

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Paul gives us two very practical guidelines for faithful living in this short passage from Romans. The first is love and the second is living like it’s daytime. Paul says when we love each other we fulfill the law. That’s because real love demands a lot from us. Paul’s guidance is simple, but it is also challenging. It’s not that the commandments go away, but if we follow where love leads we won’t even have to think about the commandments.

            Imagine love as a road we drive on. The law, the traditions, the rules we grow up with are the guard rail bordering the road. The guardrail will keep us on the road, and sometimes when it’s dark and the road is hard to see we need the guidance of the reflectors on the guardrail. But most of the time we don’t want to be close enough to the guardrail to count on it. We follow the road; not running into the rail comes naturally.

            The commandment tells us not to commit adultery, but the fact that we love our neighbor and our spouse means we wouldn’t do it anyway. If we love our neighbor not only will we not violate their marriage, we’ll go out of our way to strengthen and support that marriage.

             Love isn’t usually glamorous. It’s everyday stuff like changing tires and cleaning up after ourself. It’s making sure we do our fair share of the work and leave enough for others. Love starts with respect and honesty and sometimes includes self-sacrifice. Hailey gave a great example of sacrifice a couple of weeks ago, which is really an example of love. She talked about standing up for people being picked on and stepping in to break up a fight. Love sometimes means saying “no” to things that are wrong.

            That’s where things get tricky in community. It’s easy enough to be a loving community when all that means is being friendly at coffee hour. Things get challenging when love demands questioning a brother or sister’s actions. Things get challenging when we think someone is following a self-destructive or immoral path. That’s where we move from Paul to Jesus in this morning’s readings.

            We had a fascinating discussion last month at our session meeting about scripture and about church discipline. The idea of church discipline makes many of us very uncomfortable. We remember that Jesus teaches us not to judge each other, and we know that we are not perfect ourselves. Who are we to tell someone else what to do?

The gift of grace (3.27.11)

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
2:15The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.16And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

3:1Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” 4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; 5for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Romans 5:12-19
12Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned — 13sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law.14Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
15But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.

16And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.17If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

18Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. 19For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
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Our story with God begins with creation. God created the world good and beautiful. He put a man and a woman there to take care of it and help the plants grow. In a world full of safety and abundance God gave the man one limitation. God told Adam not to eat the fruit from the one tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The story doesn’t tell us anything about why God doesn’t want the people to eat from that tree. Over the years there have been plenty of ideas: maybe God’s testing them to see if they will obey; maybe God doesn’t want them to decide right and wrong for themselves, but simply to rely on him; maybe God knows they won’t be able to handle the knowledge of good and evil. Lots of ideas, but we don’t know for sure.

Actually, there’s a lot we don’t know about the story. We don’t know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden before the serpent made his move. We don’t know how often God and the people talked or what they talked about. We don’t know what Adam and Eve did with their time in that garden.

What we do have is an image of peace, innocence and intimacy. We know God sometimes walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. We know Adam and Eve were peacefully at ease with each other and their surroundings so it didn’t bother them to be naked.

What would it be like to live in that garden with God? Maybe it would be like the simple joy of children running and playing. Maybe like the pure pleasure of gardening without the difficulty that comes with weeds and hard soil and pressing time commitments. Maybe living in the garden was like a perfect vacation without ever having to go back to work.