Core Values: Prayerful

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Timothy 2:1-7  and Matthew 6:5-15:

A Pastor had a kitten that climbed up a tree in his backyard and was afraid to come down. The Pastor coaxed, offered warm milk, etc. but nothing worked – the kitten wouldn't come down. The tree was not sturdy enough to climb, so the Pastor decided that if he tied a rope to his car and drove away so that the tree bent down, he could reach up and get the kitten. That's what he did, all the while checking the progress of his car. He then figured if he went just a bit further, the tree would be bent sufficiently for him to reach the kitten. But, as he moved the car forward, the rope broke. The tree went "boing!!!" and the kitten instantly sailed through the air---out of sight. The Pastor felt terrible. He walked all over the neighborhood asking people if they'd seen a little kitten. No. Nobody had seen a stray kitten. So he prayed, "Lord, I just commit this kitten to your keeping," then went about his business.  Later that day he was at the grocery store and met one of his church members. He happened to look in her shopping cart and was amazed to see cat food. This woman was a cat hater and everyone knew it so he asked her, "Why are you buying cat food when you hate cats so much??" She replied, "You won't believe this," and told him how her little girl had been begging her for a cat, but she kept refusing. Then, a few days earlier, the child had begged again, so she finally told her little girl, "Well, if God gives you a cat, I'll let you keep it." She told the Pastor, "I watched my child go out in the yard, get on her knees, and ask for a cat. And really, Pastor, you won't believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes. A kitten suddenly came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws outspread....and landed right in front of her!!!"  Never underestimate the power of prayer or of God’s unique sense of humor.

For the past two weeks as we’ve been working our way through the core values that we have articulated as a congregation, we’ve been talking about our baptism and what happens as a result of being a baptized people. Now, if we had gone a little farther in the baptismal liturgy when we renewed our baptismal vows, we would have come to the membership vows which are that we will support this congregation with our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness. As I have said before, I believe that prayer is at the top of that list because it is the most important, and start of all of the other vows. It is key to the development of our faith and our relationship with God, and it’s definitely important for it to be a core value for the congregation. But, before we get into that, let’s say our values together again. We are Christ-centered, prayerful, inclusive, growing spiritually, compassionate and caring and in service and mission. Now, just as prayer comes first for the membership vows, Christ-centered comes first for our values because it centers and directs everything else that we do. Buddhists pray, but their prayers are obviously not about Christ, or through Christ, and so when we talk about prayer it’s a particular type of prayer that we are discussing. It is Christ-centered prayer, and it’s not just individual prayer but also corporate prayer, what we do alone and what we do together, and all of those things are what make us prayerful. As we were talking about this as a core value it was that sense that we are going to bathe everything in prayer. That prayer will be a part of every gathering, that when we are seeking to make decisions that it will have prayer involved, that nearly everything we do will have prayer as a part of it.

And so prayer is at the heart of who we are. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement said that prayer “is the grand means of drawing near to God” and more importantly it is “the breath of our spiritual life” It is the breath of our spiritual life. That means that without prayer, our spiritual life will die. We cannot be connected to our faith, to God or to Christ, we cannot channel the Holy Spirit without prayer. That means it’s sort of important. The writer of 1 Timothy believed the same thing, and that is not Paul by the way. Because he is giving instruction to Timothy about the faith so that he might live in the faith, and the first thing he talks about is prayer. And not only does he talk about it first, but he even says, here is your instruction, “First,” you do this, and that first is to lift up “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings.” Although he gives this list as if they are separate things, they really all fall under the general heading of prayers. And for whom are we to offer these prayers? Everyone, because God wants to save everyone. And then he specifically includes “for kings and all who are in high positions”, we would say politicians and public servants, because good government is for the benefit of everyone, and we pray for them “so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” Wouldn’t it be nice to lead a quiet and peaceable life, or to have government generating that reality? Although we should probably add peace without justice is not peace at all, but that goes with last week’s message on inclusiveness.

But that sense of inclusiveness is inherently linked into our prayers. If we are praying for everyone, that says something significant. If we are genuinely praying for our enemies and those who persecute us as Jesus commands us to do, and note it’s not a suggestion, then we will be changed. As early church father John Chrysostom said, ““No one can feel hatred towards those for whom he prays.” No one can feel hatred towards those for whom we pray. That means to offer prayer as a Christ-centered people means that we have to pray inclusively. It’s part of who are and what we do because we are baptized. Not just that we pray, but how we pray, because what we pray for and about simultaneously shapes and expresses one’s theology. If we only pray for ourselves, then our faith will be self-centered. If we only pray, or treat prayer as a wish list of what we want and desire, then we are treating God as Santa Clause, or as Bishop Willimon has said, God as cosmic butler, who serves us, rather than the other way around. Because one of the things that prayer should teach us is not only our need for God, but also that we are not God. Prayer acknowledges that God is God and that God is finally responsible. And prayer is ultimately confessional. Not confessional in the sense of making a confession about wrongdoing, although that should certainly be a part of prayer, but confessional in the sense of making a confession of faith. It says who we who, whose we are and what we believe and profess. Because one of the things that is at the heart of prayer is self-revealing honesty before God, laying ourselves bare before God.

And we see that in what Jesus tells us about prayer in the Sermon on the Mount as we heard it this morning. After Jesus talks about what hypocrites do in praying, not to pray, but so they can be seen by others praying, to receive applause and praise for being so religious, which is not the purpose of prayer, and then Jesus says something crucial that often gets overlooked because we want to rush right into the Lord ’s Prayer. And that is “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” And so all that angst that some people have about what to say, or saying they don’t know how to pray, should all go away. And then some might say, “well if God knows what we need before we even say it, then what’s the purpose of prayer?” and here is where we can say that prayer is not as much about God as it is about us. Prayer is like worship. We don’t worship because God is some egomaniacal narcissist who has to be told all the time how great he is. Only people with a personality disorders need that level of affirmation. God doesn’t need to be praise to feel good. We praise God because of what God has done for us and to remind us of what God has done. Worship helps us to remember that reality. Prayer does exactly the same. Prayer centers us in God.

But, what the Lord ’s Prayer should also remind us that it is about us. First, Jesus doesn’t say if you pray, he says when you pray. There is an expectation that people will be praying, it’s not just a recommendation. But then there are no I’s in the prayer. It’s a communal prayer. It’s about the body of Christ. It’s about the community. Praying this thing together or individually. And then also notice that it does not start with us or with what we need or want, but about God and desiring what God wants for the world. And so as we talk about what it means to be prayerful as a congregation it is that petition for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. That we should always be seeking God’s guidance for what we should be doing as individuals and as a congregation. And that also plays a significant role as we think about being in service and mission. That’s what it means to bathe everything we do in prayer and seeking God’s guidance, because as we think about what we’re doing it’s rarely about what new things we can do, but instead asking, “What is God already doing that we can join in?”

And then the prayer turns to personal issues, and shows us that prayer, again, is not about our dream shopping list, not about praying that our team will win, but about what is really important and appropriate. Give us, the plural, this day our daily bread, that’s the only tangible thing, because then we turn to forgiveness, which Jesus says at the end is what Jesus says is core because if we don’t forgive then we won’t be forgiven, remembering the fact that being Christ-centered means living into and in forgiveness. And it’s also again seeking God’s guidance and direction for our lives, towards the good and away from evil.  And so while the Lord ’s Prayer can be a guide to how we pray, showing us the parts, it can also be the prayer that we simply pray because we don’t have the words or don’t know what to say. But, we also have to remember the power of silence as prayer. Not just to give space for the Spirit to intercede for us with sighs too deep for words, as Paul says, but also to give space for God to speak to us. If we are going to seek God’s guidance, then we have to give space for God to be able to answer us. The Dutch theologian Soren Kierkegaard said that the more he prayed the more he realized that praying wasn’t really about talking, that it was just as much, or more about listening, and to listen we have to be silent.  Perhaps there is a reason why those words have exactly the same letters.

And so if you have spent your time in prayer just talking, here is an invitation to be in silence. If you don’t know what to say, that’s perfectly okay, just simple be and let God. the corollary to that as a congregation that is seeking to be prayerful is to know that God doesn’t just speak to or give guidance to those who are in leadership, and so we have to be open to how God is speaking to everyone, and that means if God is speaking to you that you need to speak up too. We believe that God speaks to us through many means and ways, and one of the things that we are seeking in being prayerful is to hear God’s voice and guidance, because when we are in alignment with God, not only do things go much better, but God provides the ways to make sure they happen and the resources will appear.

Prayer is the foundation for our commitment to Christ. It has to be part of our life of discipleship. As the author of 1st Timothy says, the first thing we do in the faith is to pray for everyone, which includes praying for our leaders and even our enemies. It is the first of our membership vows, and Jesus sets the expectation that we will be praying, not just to be heard, but to praise God, to given thanks, and to seek God’s guidance for our lives and for the life of the church. John Wesley said that God does nothing without prayer and everything with it, and so we bathe everything that we do in prayer. But, it’s not just enough to pray for things, but we have to act on that prayer as well, that our actions come out of our prayers which we will talk about more later. If we are going to be Christ-centered that we have to pray individually and collectively because Christ is our mediator between God and us, and we are also inclusive because we are praying for everyone because God wants to save everyone. God knows what we need before we even ask for it, but that is a reminder that prayer is about us connecting with God and also taking the time to listen to God. So may all that we do be centered and formed in and through prayer. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.