Twelfth Sermon - Intercession

Intercession (Sermon on 10/14/2018)

            Scriptures:    Job 23:1-9, 16-17, Psalm 22:1-15 , Mark 10:17-23 

Prayer is a powerful means of building relationship between you and God, between each of us, and among God, ourselves, humanity, and the rest of creation.  Prayer is a powerful tool. I’ve been told that my whole life. As a child, we said grace before every meal, before bedtime, and at various other moments through the day.  For example, my mom would pray when I was learning to drive… and most fervently when she was in the car with me learning to drive.

Mom prayed for everything from lost keys, to friends’ illnesses, to finding a parking space at the mall. I learned to do this as well. So, when we found the keys, heard about the friend’s flu getting better, or got that parking space near the door, we knew that prayer had worked and that we were special to God.  If the keys weren’t found for a while, the delay kept us from that horrible accident we noticed on our way to our destination.  If the illness progressed, it was God’s way of calling that person home.  If we didn’t find that parking space, God was reminding us that we needed some exercise.  Despite it all, we knew that we were special to God.

As the years went on I began to wonder. What about the people who were in that horrible accident? What about the person who we beat to that parking space at the mall? What about all the people who didn’t get what they prayed for in order that my prayer might be answered?  The #blessed movement really got me thinking a lot about this.  For the unaware, #blessed is when people post a picture to Instagram, snapchat, or Facebook showing their good fortune or how God has blessed them; a new car, a sweet vacation, a great dinner at an expensive restaurant, or winning some sport, contest, or lottery.  It comes from the mindset that “I’m special to God and God is rewarding me.”  When we experience this “I’m special” mindset, we raise ourselves above others. We exalt ourselves instead of humbling ourselves. We do the opposite of what Christ calls us to do. We often do this collectively in how we are fanatical about our team or our school.  It is often cloaked in the guise of pride, hometown pride, state pride, national pride, group pride.  We say God bless America, but not the rest of the world.  Because we are special.

We are all special though in the sight of God. You are special… just like every other person ever born… just like all of God’s creation. But, it is true. You are specially chosen to humble yourself and work for the reconciliation of the world. 

The young man in Mark 10:17-23 felt special because he had great wealth. It became what made him feel special more than following God’s law of love, he needed his wealth more than he was willing to help the poor, more than he valued entering the Kingdom of Heaven. When Jesus told him that he needed to give away all he had, his basis for feeling special fell and he went away grieving.

In Psalm 22, I get the impression that David felt his sense of being special fall away as enemies plotted against him and his kingdom.  Job felt his feeling of being special fall away when his life was turned upside down and he lost everything. In their fear, David and Job cried out to God. The question that comes to mind is how do we understand God’s response to our prayers.  What does it mean to ask God for stuff… from parking spaces, to security, to healing, to justice? Does God play favorites?

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Almost 20 years ago, I was in a hospital room with my dad and my Uncle Dan.  It wasn’t good. With Dad, we were pretty much just waiting for his heartbeat to stop.  It had been a long road, a very long road.  But here was my Uncle Dan, praying intensely, binding demons, casting out disease, absolutely claiming what he had been told he had the right to claim, complete healing for my father. As we read in the bible, anything you ask in my name will be given unto you.  I just sat there and wept as my father’s heartbeat slowed to a halt.  So, what happened?  Why didn’t the prayer work?  Why had my God, and my uncle’s God forsaken us?  There was no reason my dad should have died at such a young age. He was an amazing pastor, a loving father and husband, a righteous and upright man… kind of like Job.  And let me tell you, at that moment, I felt absolutely forsaken. I was poured out like water, my body ached, my heart felt ripped out, I did not know where God was in that moment. It was a terrible time and my uncle’s prayers did not help.

Sometimes in our lives, we feel a little like Job, maybe not exactly since he had lost his wife and all his children and everything he had and was covered with boils from head to toe. Nonetheless, we may feel that troubles have come our way through no fault of our own, that the calamity that has befallen us is unjust, and God is silent.

Other times we may feel a little like David who wrote today’s Psalm, maybe not exactly because none of us have a kingdom, many wives and concubines, and great treasures.  Nonetheless, we may feel like God is not responding to our prayers in times of struggle. We may feel that our prayers are going unanswered. Sometimes we can relate to these groanings, these laments.  Sometimes we can wonder where God is in our times of trouble.

Prayer seems to be the thing to do in times of trouble. Aren’t we told to ask God to help us? Aren’t we promised that God will do what we ask?  Over and over we read

·       Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

·       Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

·       Luke 11:9 So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

·       John 14:13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

There we have it. All four gospels… so why didn’t my dad get healed? Why weren’t my uncle’s prayers answered? There are so many answers to this question.  It wasn’t God’s will. It was his time.  God brought him home. His suffering was ended. What we think is best and what God thinks is best may not be the same thing. There are lots of ways that people have tried to explain why prayer did not work.  But what if the problem isn’t so much that prayer didn’t work. What if we didn’t really understand the point of prayer at that moment. What if we need to understand prayer in much deeper way. 

There are many types of prayer.  There are praises like the Hallelujahs that we lift up in song, there are supplications when we ask for something personally, there are confessions where we ask forgiveness for our sins, there is thanksgiving where we show our gratitude for all God has done for us, there are intercessions where we pray on behalf of others, and there are other ways to pray as well.  Today I want to talk about intercessory prayer, praying for another person; and supplication when we call out to God for help.  When we pray for ourselves, we call God to mind and grow in relationship with God. When we pray for someone else, whether they be a friend or someone we are angry with, we also call them AND God to mind.  In bringing them to mind and considering their trouble, we may feel empathy for them, we may feel that God is drawing us to do something to help them.  Bringing others to mind in prayer is a way of bringing our bonds with them to our consciousness and strengthening those bonds while communing with God. This is true of friend and foe alike.

Because, we are a family, members of the body of Christ, a community bound by the sacraments of water, the cup, and the bread.  Through our baptism and in our communion, we are reminded of this bond and the responsibilities we have because of this bond.  One of those responsibilities is that we are called to pray for one another when someone is feeling forsaken, broken, in despair, or abandoned.  We even are called to pray for people who are not part of the church, to bring their sufferings, joys, and struggles to our mind and God’s. And we do it, we gladly tell people, “I’ll be praying for you.”  You’ve heard it or seen in on Facebook…  How many times have you said or heard said, “you are in our thoughts and prayers.”  It happens quite often, in my experience.  So much so that some cynics laugh it off.  They say, “you can keep your thoughts and prayers. What we need is action.”  And that’s true.  Because if “thoughts and prayers” is just said as a cliché, it does not do what it should.  Sometimes people say it and don’t do it. Sometimes people pray but nothing more.

So prayer… is left at the doorstep to the church. 

This brings us to supplication.  Is it self-centered to come to god begging for our own benefit?  Is it wrong to ask where God is and why we cannot get a sense of God’s response? David and Jesus are both quoted as saying, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

In a recent message Pope Francis said

"Is it blasphemy when Jesus complains - 'Father, why have You forsaken me’? This is the mystery. I have often listened to people who are experiencing difficult and painful situations, who have lost a great deal or feel lonely and abandoned and they come to complain and ask these questions: Why? Why? They rebel against God. And I say, 'Continue to pray just like this, because this is a prayer'.

It was a prayer when Jesus said to his father: 'Why have You forsaken me!'". Crying out to God is good, heck, any conversation with God is good because you are talking to God.  In doing so we are bringing to mind the bond we have with God, the bond that is not just with God but also with the rest of the body of Christ; we are also allowing God to bring about change in us.  One woman recently wrote that when they are crying out in anguish, it brings to mind other people who are also suffering, and so she would begin to pray for them, strengthening the bond between them within the love of God. Soon her problems would slip from her mind and she would begin to figure out ways to help those others and in the process her problems sometimes would begin to be solved.

Helping others is often the key to finding our own solutions.  But helping others is not always easy.  We may feel that it is too much to risk, especially when we are already struggling. Or perhaps we might have to make a life change that would be too  much to sacrifice. And why help someone who has been a pain in our side all our lives.

In our gospel reading today, the “rich young ruler” as he is often described declares his obedience to the law and wants to know what else he must do to attain the kingdom of heaven.  Christ tells him to obey the law of Moses. He responds that he has done this since his birth.  But one thing he lacks, Christ continues, sell all you have and give it to the poor.  He has the means and the opportunity to answer the prayers of many who are poor and suffering. But when he is told of what he must do, he goes away grieving because it is so much more than just offering thoughts and prayers. 

Answers to prayers sometimes come in the form of demands being made on the praying person. We are taught that salvation comes through faith, as a gift, not by works.  But, sometimes we need to be reminded that when we are blessed, it is so that we might bless the world through our prayers, our words, and our deeds.  How hard it is for someone who has been blessed to enter the kingdom of God if they have not shared that blessing with the world. When God made covenant with Moses, God said “I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

For the young ruler, he was blessed with wealth.  For others, we may be blessed with other gifts such as counseling, healthcare, carpentry, accounting, or whatever skills we have been given.  And this brings us back to what prayer is and how our intercessions often lead to action. As Corrie ten Boom said, “We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.”

We have to be involved in some way.  I’ve mentioned a couple times already about how we strengthen the bonds between us and those who we pray for simply by asking God to be present in their situation, simply by praying for them.  We change the story, our friends, and ourselves by bringing their names before God.  Thomas Merton wrote, “When I pray I am, in a certain sense, everybody. The mind that prays in me is more than my own mind, and the thoughts that come up in me are more than my own thoughts because this deep consciousness when I pray is a place of encounter between myself and God and between the common love of everybody” He is describing the body of Christ. We are each members of the body of Christ with Christ at the head. It is no wonder that some of those thoughts that come to us in prayer, come from the whole body with Christ as the source.  Perhaps this is what the scripture means when Christ says “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you,” that in our prayers we become one body. 

Merton was a mystic Jesuit who spent most of his time at a monastery here in Kentucky.  I highly recommend taking a retreat to Gethsemane to get a taste of what this kind of prayer can be like. 

What effect does intercessory, bond-strengthening, oneness experiencing prayer have?  I mean, does anyone else change or is it something for your personal prayer experience?  Primarily it changes the way you feel about the other person.  And how you feel about the other person can change how the respond to you, and rippling out to the rest of their world. This change is evident even when you are friends but even more so when you are praying for those with whom you disagree. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that “A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.” If there’s a better explanation of the benefits of praying for your enemies, I’m not sure what it is.

So intercessory prayer and prayers of supplication are both means of communing in the spirit of God while growing stronger in our relationship with God, with one another, and I would dare say with all of creation.

So what about my dad?  What about the promise of whatever we ask we will get?  The sooner we stop trying to turn God into some form of cosmic vending machine, the sooner we will actually grasp what prayer is about.  Prayer is about oneness with God and one another.  If we are truly asking God in faith, the things we will be asking for will be that God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.  We will ask for strength, for skills, for caring words with which to help others through their storms. We will ask for peace and wholeness for a family mourning a loss. We will ask for comfort, for emotional healing for those experiencing trauma. We will ask for God to use us all to God’s purpose for the reconciliation of our friends, our family, our enemies, our world, and all creation.

Amen

Eleventh Sermon - Known and Not Alone (June 3, 2018)

• First reading and Psalm
  • 1 Samuel 3:1-10
  • Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
• Gospel
  • Mark 2:23-3:6

Growing up as a pastor’s kid afforded me many wonderful things. I had a huge playroom next to my house in which I could delve deep into boiler room dungeons, climb into belfry castle tops, hear the echo of my voice and piano plunking, and otherwise invent adventures mostly in solitude, yet something made me feel like I was safe and not alone.

  

I grew up in the church, almost literally.  I spent time there when my parents were working there. I spent hours there as an unpaid official of the collate, fold, and staple variety; in the diaconate of taking down tables and stacking chairs; and as a contemplative monastic by simply wandering.  I even took a few naps there as a small boy (not during Sunday service of course).  I wonder what I would have thought if I had heard God audibly calling my name while I slept in the House of the Lord like Samuel did.  I know I felt God’s presence there and a peace that I didn’t feel elsewhere. Sometimes we experience a calling less audibly but no less spiritually. Whether audible or not, you are called by God.

One Sunday morning as my father was preaching his sermon, my friend David and I were playing tic-tac-toe on the back of a bulletin in the balcony, although we knew we should be paying attention.  As we were writing our Xs and Os, a booming voice poured out, “Jonathan and David!” and we jumped and sat straight up! Red faced and fearing what was to come, we sat like statues while my father continued with his sermon about King Saul’s son Jonathan and his best friend the soon to be King David.  The thing was, we heard him and knew he was calling our names (which I found out later, he most assuredly was) … even though he blended it into the sermon, so the rest of the congregation didn’t know what he was up to.  

You know when your parent calls your name, you can hear it across a room or in a crowded grocery store. Being called has a special significance, especially when you are called by someone who knows you fully and loves you deeply. 

The Samuel scripture is known as one of the vocational passages, the ones that are used in ordination services or when celebrating the calling of someone who is considering going into the ministry.  Most pastors have a story about what happened the moment when they felt a call to the ministry.  But sometimes we forget that we are all called, called by God.  

What does it mean, to be called? How can we know what we are called to be? It begins with being known by God and finding your true self.

To be called, to be really called, to be called by name, you must be known.  

In our Psalm today, we learn that God knows us with astounding clarity. God knows you and has always known you. God knows how fearfully and wonderfully you are made. God knows every step of your path, your lying down and all your ways. God knows your true self and your true calling. 

God knows the injuries you have endured and the injuries you have inflicted. God knows the joys you have experienced and the great gladness that you have brought to others.  God knows the needs you have had, those that been fulfilled and those that are yet to be. God knows the ways that you have neglected to fill a need and when you have filled a need of another even at great cost to yourself.  Even knowing all our flaws, God still calls us, God still is with us. We are fully known and not alone.  God knows what you can do and where your talents lie, and from that knowledge you are called. 

How can we know what that is?  Frederick Buechner says (of course I had to quote Buechner), he says, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  And “Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.” 

So, God is not calling you to be inauthentic or to grow some new

 talent.  God is not calling you to do something that someone else thinks you should do or what you feel you ought to do.  God calls you to be confident in God’s presence beside you as you discover your true self, your talents and passions, your means of shining light into the world.  If your gift is comforting those who weep, that is a calling. If you find joy in cleaning gutters for a shut-in, that is a calling. If you find joy in helping a child with their school work, that is where God is calling you.  

Theologian and Civil Rights leader Dr. Howard Thurman said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  God knows what makes you come alive. And God is calling you. And God will be with you. 

Where can I go from your spirit?

   Or where can I flee from your presence? 

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 

If I take the wings of the morning

   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 

even there your hand shall lead me,

   and your right hand shall hold me fast. 

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

   and the light around me become night’, 

even the darkness is not dark to you;

   the night is as bright as the day,

   for darkness is as light to you.

Why is it important to be known by God when discussing this whole calling thing?  Because God calls you to what God knows is part of who you are.  

Why is it important to know that there is no place that we can go from God’s presence?  Because God is there to remind us of our true self, of our purpose, of our worthiness for the calling, and of God’s great love for us.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

   How vast is the sum of them! 

I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

   I come to the end—I am still with you.

Amen