This Week’s Sermon – Teach Us to Pray

SCRIPTURES
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

He said to them, “When you pray, say:
   ” ‘Father,
   hallowed be your name,
   your kingdom come.
  Give us each day our daily bread. 
  Forgive us our sins,
      for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
   And lead us not into temptation.’ “

 Then he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’ “Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

SERMON
“Teach Us to Pray”
Luke 11:1-13
July 29, 2007

I think I’ve heard that prayer somewhere before. While it’s not in its completed form as we know it, this passage from Luke is the source for what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. We say this prayer every single week, along with millions of other churches. In fact, the Lord’s Prayer is the second most frequently spoken prayer in the world, right behind, “Dear Lord, please don’t let that cop behind me turn his lights on.”

The danger with such a familiar prayer is that it can become rote and lose its flavor. When you’ve said it so much, do you even know what you’re saying? So it’s important to take a look at the prayer and its original context. One day Jesus is by himself praying and a disciple approaches and says to Jesus, “Teach us to pray.”

Now right away, we have an interesting concept: we have to be taught how to pray. In the public speaking class I teach, I talk about how everyone assumes they know how to listen well. If you have two ears, you can listen. But actually, good listening is a skill that must be learned. Prayer is the same way. Praying takes learning and practice.

So Jesus gives them a lesson in prayer, with this string of petitions as an example. It’s important to note that Jesus is not giving the disciples some magic words to say. He’s not saying, “If you repeat this words, burn some incense, and turn in a circle three times, all your wishes will come true.” What he’s doing is giving the disciples a pattern for prayer. He’s demonstrating for them the elements of a faithful prayer.

In my journalism classes in college, we spent a lot of time on learning proper grammar. There’s a whole book of rules called “Strunk and White’s Elements of Style,” and we basically had to memorize it. When you think about it, it’s a bit unbelievable that the English language has so many rules about grammar.

Based on Jesus’ teaching here, I would say that there is a grammar to prayer, that there are certain rules we are to follow when constructing what we say to God. With this simple prayer, Jesus is laying out for the disciples some of the rules of the grammar of prayer.

The first thing to notice about this prayer is that Jesus doesn’t start by asking for stuff. He doesn’t begin by asking for daily bread or forgiveness. He begins by acknowledging God as both intimate and other. By calling God “Father,” Jesus is invoking a familial relationship with God. God is as close to us as our own parent. God loves us like a father.

But then Jesus puts the other end of the spectrum into place. “Hallowed be your name.” “Hallowed” is like “haloed.” It’s a way of giving God honor: “Your name is holy.” It’s a way of acknowledging that the One to whom we pray is greater than we could ever imagine. Before we start making requests, it’s important to establish the ground rules. Like the bumper sticker says, “Rule No. 1: there is a God. Rule No. 2: You’re not him.” I would add Rule No. 3: God’s name is sacred and holy, and should always be spoken as if we truly believe that.

Next comes the first request of the prayer, but notice it’s not a personal request. The grammar of prayer says that God’s will, not ours, comes first. Jesus says, “Your kingdom come.” Matthew’s version of the prayer adds, “Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” This is not some pie-in-the-sky request. First and foremost, before we ask anything for ourselves, we must acknowledge that it is God’s will that must be done. In Jesus’ days it was believed that God’s kingdom was indeed coming soon, that God would come to earth and restore peace and harmony. People wanted that to happen more than they wanted anything else: “Your kingdom come.”

Only after calling on God’s will does Jesus offer the first personal petition: “Give us this day our daily bread.” This line alludes to the Israelites’ time wandering in the wilderness, when God provided manna for them each day. Each morning, when they woke up and came out of their tents, there was bread on the ground. They were only to gather enough for that day; if they took more, it would go bad.

That’s almost a foreign concept to us today, isn’t it? Taking only what we need to survive each day. I continue to be astounded at the size of the portions restaurants serve around here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time I order a salad at the Cheesecake Factory, it comes with its own storage unit. It’s almost obscene how much food we have at our disposal, and how much of it gets disposed. There’s an imbalance in this world. There are those who have way too much to eat, and those who don’t have nearly enough. This line in the prayer promises that we will take each day only what we need to sustain us, allowing others the chance to do the same.

But this line is about more than just nutritional sustenance. The grammar of prayer states that communication with God is a daily necessity. When Jesus is being tempted by Satan in the desert, Jesus tells him, “Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” This line acknowledges that, just like we need to eat every day, we need contact with God every day. That relationship is as essential as the food we eat. We can’t store it all up on Sunday and then not talk to God for six days. We need daily feeding and contact.

Next comes the line that gives a lot of people fits: “Forgive us our sins” – that part is OK – “for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” Oh dear. That part doesn’t go down so smoothly. As you know, in this church we use “debts” instead of “sins,” and the Catholic church uses “trespasses.” It’s like the little boy who was reciting the Lord’s prayer and said, “And forgive us our trash baskets, as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.”

That’s actually a pretty good way to describe it. People DO put trash in our baskets, don’t they? And we’re often tempted to put trash right back into their baskets! But – to extend the metaphor well beyond its usefulness – God has emptied the trash we’ve put in his basket. He’s forgiven us of our debts, our sins, our trespasses. And because of that gift of grace, we are compelled to extend the same to others. In the language of prayer, forgiveness received is always linked to forgiveness given. The one follows the other like I before E – except after C, of course.

The last line of Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is, “And lead us not into temptation.” This has always puzzled some folks. Why would God lead us into temptation? Isn’t that Satan’s job? Another way to translate this line is, “And do not put us to the test.” I really like the way it’s translated in The Message: “Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.” There is actually a biblical history of God testing people: he did it with Abraham, he did it with Job. Jesus is simply telling the disciples to ask for God’s protection at all times.

Jesus follows up this prayer lesson with the parable about the neighbor who needs bread and the question about what we give our children. The point he is trying to make with both of those can be summed up in one word: persistence! Prayer is not a spare tire, something to be pulled out and used when there’s an emergency. Prayer is more like steering wheel, and essential and often-used tool which helps guide us. And we are called to use prayer persistently.

In the parable, Jesus is not saying that God is a sleepy friend who is reluctant to help us; he is encouraging a kind of holy boldness, a prayerful search that keeps at it and keeps at it and refuses to give up. Fred Craddock says, “We don’t know what prayer is until we stand before a locked door with bloody knuckles.” We ask, we seek, we knock – all metaphors for prayer – because we trust that the One to whom we pray will answer.

Now, that answer isn’t always the one we’re looking for. God may not give the snake instead of the fish or the scorpion instead of the egg, but he doesn’t always give the fish or the egg, either! But through our persistence in praying, we are acknowledging or trust in God and in God’s will, even if it is different from our own.

What Jesus is telling the disciples here is if you want to learn to pray, you have to start by praying. Prayer is not just a routine, it’s not a going through the motions. It’s meant to be an action. We are to pray with boldness, not with reluctance or timidity. Even when we say a prayer we’ve said a thousand times, we are to say it as if we really believe what we’re saying, that we really do want God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done.

So we pray. We ask. We seek. We knock. And if we keep at it, day after day after day, even praying when we don’t feel like it, or praying when we’re tired, or praying when we’re not sure what to pray, or saying the Lord’s Prayer again, we’ll find that our eyes will be opened to how God answers prayer in our lives. We pray when we don’t need to in order to be prepared to pray when we do need to. And we take comfort in the fact that our prayers are effective, not because of what we say or do, but because we pray to a God who loves us and hears us and wants to answer us.

QUESTIONS

1 – With which version of the Lord’s Prayer are you most familiar (debts, sins, trespasses)? Which version is most meaningful to you?

2 – Did someone teach you how to pray?

3 – This prayer is forward-looking; it anticipates what will be rather than what is. What’s one forward-looking prayer you could offer to God this week?

Taking a break

I have to admit right up front that I’m breaking the commandment I’m about to encourage you to follow. I’m writing this article on the first day of my vacation, which is supposed to be a break from work, not a continuation of it. But I wasn’t able to get all my work done before I left, and I don’t want to get on the newsletter editor’s bad side. She runs a tight ship!

The commandment I’m breaking is the observance of the Sabbath. As described in the Bible, the Sabbath is a time of rest from all forms of work, modeled after God’s rest on the seventh day after creating the world. Observing the Sabbath is meant to be God’s way of reminding us that our bodies and minds weren’t meant to run non-stop. We need breaks, or else we break down.

For centuries, the Sabbath was observed with strict adherence. No form of work was done on the Sabbath by humans or animals. It was truly a day of rest and renewal. Mothers didn’t cook, dads didn’t go to the office, kids didn’t do all the things they liked to do the other six days. Some of you may still remember the blue laws that helped keep this in effect

But the Sabbath wasn’t just a rest for rest’s sake. Yes, our bodies and minds need rest, but our spirit also needs reorientation. During the six days of work, it’s easy for us to lose sight of our connection with God. On the seventh day, we are called to use our time of rest to focus on God. We rest our minds and bodies as a way of honoring them as God’s gifts to us, and as a way of reminding us of why we’re here in the first place.

Today, the practice of observing the Sabbath seems antiquated at best and irrelevant at worst. Who in the world can take off a whole day from work? As Sunday loses its sacredness and the surrounding culture invades our Sabbath day, we find it harder and harder to find a day for rest. Even vacations become times to catch up on unwritten newsletter articles!

Is it unrealistic to ask us to take a whole day off from productivity in a society that determines a person’s value by their accomplishments? Can we bear the consequences of a day of “doing nothing in the name of God”? I admit observing the Sabbath may not be possible in our current state of living. But we can’t justify breaking a commandment simply because it’s no longer convenient.

So I would like to suggest an alternative. If you feel like you can’t give up a whole day to rest and renew, how about looking for Sabbath moments in each day? Is there a time each day you can unplug and give to God? For example, I try to commit to reading at least one half-hour each day. No TV, no cell phone, no computer. Often I spend a few moments after reading reflecting on God’s words for me in what I just read.

There are other times in our day we can turn into Sabbath moments. Sitting in traffic can become a time of prayer. Exercising can become a time of reciting a litany of all the things for which we can be thankful. A sit-down dinner with the family can be a time of breaking bread and sharing stories. All of the above activities can be seen as simply one more thing to check off our daily to-do list, or they can be seen as pockets of space opened by God in our day to take a break.

A machine that never stops running breaks down. A body that never stops moving eventually gives out. A faith that never stops to rest wears thin. Follow God’s example. Observe the Sabbath. Find time to rest and reconnect.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to play a game of Candyland with my girls.

This Week’s Sermon – Being Made Clean

Hi everyone! Here is this Sunday’s sermon. I’ll be on vacation for two weeks, so I’ll continuing posting when I return. I pray God continues to bless you in unexpected ways!

SCRIPTURE – 2 Kings 5:1-14

Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

 As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”

 When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

 But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

 Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

 SERMON

Being Made Clean
2 Kings 5:1-14
July 8, 2007

As some of you may know, back in the fall I was struck with a case of vertigo. If you’re not familiar with it, vertigo is an affliction of the inner ear which causes extreme dizziness, sweating, and nausea, which also describes how I felt on my first date.. I had never experienced vertigo before, and after that episode, I never wanted to again. But it continued to linger. Anytime I would lay straight back, or lay on my back and turn to one side, the symptoms would hit. So I went to see an ENT doctor about it.

He told me I had Benign Postural Positional Vertigo. There was medicine to treat the symptoms, but the only way to completely get rid of it was a type of physical therapy called desensitization therapy. That basically means that you create the symptoms over and over again until your body is desensitized, or gets used to it. That would be like saying you should hit yourself in the head with a hammer over and over again until your skull thickens up enough to not feel it. I was not happy with the doctor’s orders, and had no intention of following them.

That must have been how Naaman felt when he heard Elisha’s prescription to cure his leprosy. Naaman was a high-ranking general in the Aram army. He was known for his great prowess on the battlefield, and had been instrumental in many of Aram’s victories. Naaman was very valuable to the king; he had everything going for him.

Except one thing. He came home from his latest battle with a small patch of discolored skin, and this patch threatened everything Naaman valued. It reminds me of the scene at the beginning of the movie “Philadelphia,” when a co-worker in Tom Hanks’ law firm notices that Hanks has a small lesion on his forehead. Hanks tried to shrug it off, but the co-worker recognized it for what it was: the first signs of the HIV virus. Hanks ends up losing his job because of it.

Naaman must have felt the same way. He knew how lepers were treated. They were outcasts in society, no one wanted to touch them or be around them. That had no status or rights in society. This patch of skin threatened to take Naaman from the very top to the very bottom.

That may explain why Naaman, the five-star general, is willing to listen to someone as insignificant as a Hebrew slave girl, who tells Naaman’s wife that healing can be found back in the enemy territory of Israel. I love it when God chooses to work through people like the Hebrew girl. A shepherd named Moses takes on Pharaoh, an unmarried virgin girl bears the Messiah, 12 blue-collar workers become disciples. God does some of His best work through ordinary people.

Naaman is so desperate for a cure – after all, he doesn’t want to lose his status! –that he listens to the girl and petitions his king to send him to Israel. Naaman goes, and after being snubbed by the king, is sent to the house of Elisha, a famous prophet and successor of Elijah. Now, I’m guessing that Elisha didn’t live in some big mansion. Prophets were known more for their meagerness than their lavishness. So imagine the scene the Bible describes to us when it says, “so Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’ house.” It would be like the presidential motorcade making a stop at some out-of-the-way dilapidated country shack to visit the man who claimed to be abducted by aliens. This is a case of power and prestige meeting head-on with the local loony.

Imagine Naaman’s mindset as his full military entourage arrives. “This will be the pinnacle of Elisha’s career. Imagine, he gets to heal me! He must be so excited that I’m coming. He’s probably already updating his resume. I better get my autograph-signing hand loosened up.”

But he doesn’t quite get the fall-at-his-feet greeting he expected. First, Elisha sends out a messenger to talk to Naaman. The commander of an army shows up at your doorstep and you send out the intern? Not only that, but the intern delivers these instructions: go wash yourself in the Jordan seven times and you will be clean.

This is not what Naaman expected. Don’t they know who he is? He stomps off in a huff and says, “I thought for sure Elisha himself would come out, call upon the name of his god, wave his hand a few times, and heal me. I’ve got rivers back home that are a lot cleaner than the Jordan. I could have just stayed there.” If he doesn’t follow these instructions he’s going to die of this hideous disease, but hey, at least his pride is intact.

Naaman is suffering from an affliction even more destructive than leprosy; he is suffering from immediacy. It’s a disease that runs rampant today, and is only made worse by our increasingly technological society. Do you remember your first microwave? I do. We got it in 1978. I think it weighed about 800 pounds and took up half the kitchen. But it worked! And what precedent did it set? That we no longer had to wait a whole 30 minutes for our food to be cooked.

The disease of immediacy has run rampant since then. ATMs, drive-thru windows, self-service checkout lanes at the grocery. We design everything to save time. You’re probably thinking right now that this sermon should be shorter! Instant mashed potatoes, instant delivery, instant credit, instant messaging. Leonard Sweet said the only thing we’re missing is an instant God!

That’s what Naaman was looking for. He didn’t want to go through the hassle of following Elisha’s instructions. He wanted an instant healing. Come out, wave your hand a few times, and – poof! – the leprosy is gone and he can be on his way back to his cushy life in Aram.

I believe what Elisha did by giving Naaman a more time-consuming cure was to heal him of his immediacy while he was healing him of his leprosy. He’s showing Naaman that, no matter how big and power and wealthy Naaman gets, the world still revolves on God’s time, not his.

God’s time. That’s a phrase we heard a lot on our mission trip to New Orleans a couple weeks ago. When we arrived there and saw the work that needed to be done, we had a clear sense and an ambitious goal of what we wanted to accomplish. On Monday we devised our plan and set out to complete it. Yet it became very clear to us that we weren’t going to get done what we wanted to get done. The work was slower. We had to correct mistakes made by previous groups. The angles of the wood trim didn’t fit together like we thought they would. And this was very frustrating for us.

And then the lesson smacked us upside the head. We’re not working on our time; we’re working on God’s time. And God has good reasons for why we won’t accomplish what we want to accomplish. Maybe the group that follows us needs to be the ones to finish the work. Or, as I suspect, maybe God was trying to slow us down for another reason.

Jesus was a carpenter, so he might have known the saying, “You can build it the quick way, or you can build it the right way.” I spent most of the week in New Orleans working on building plywood boxes to cover up exposed beams in the church sanctuary. There were a number of beams to cover, so I started out the week in high gear, quickly taking measurements and making cuts and constructing the boxes.

And they didn’t fit. Inevitably one side came up too long, or another board was too short. It wasn’t until the third box, when Laura Fisher took over the measuring, that we got it right. But she took forever! I stood beside her gunning the saw. “C’mon! We got boxes to build!” But she methodically measured and re-measured, and the box she measured is the only one in the sanctuary that is perfect.

We’ve constructed a world around us where time is saved and instant is the norm, especially for those of us who live in Naaman’s well-to-do neighborhood. We may shave minutes and seconds off our daily lives by taking shortcuts or using instant somethings, but none of that changes God’s time, or the length of our days here on earth, or how God chooses to use us and respond to us.

Naaman learned what we all learn at some point. True healing never comes easily. I’ve yet to meet someone who said a person waved her hands a few times and healed him of his deepest wounds. That would be the spectacular way to do it, wouldn’t it? But God more often chooses to work through the ordinary, and that can take time and effort and mundane repetition. How many counseling sessions? How many chemo treatments? How many times do I wash in the Jordan?

We have the luxury of enjoying a lot of instants in our lives, but we do not have access to an instant God. Sometimes our healing comes in a muddy little creek, at the urging of some ordinary servant, in some mundane way. Does that make it any less of a healing? We are on God’s time. It may not happen when we want it to happen, how we want it to happen, in the way we want it to happen. But it will happen. In God’s time.

QUESTIONS
1 – What time-saving device in your life (microwave, GPS navigational system, cell phone, etc.) do you believe is the most beneficial?

2 – Have you ever been frustrated by God’s timing?

3 – When has being patient with God paid off for you?

God of the whisper

The other day, Leigh was in Super Target (our home away from home!) with our youngest daughter, Molly. As usual, Molly was being cute, cuddly – and a bit too loud. Sometimes, for no reason, she likes to start yelling, “Help! Help!” in the middle of a store, which of course draws stares for the other shoppers. We have to explain that she really is our daughter and there’s no need to issue an Amber Alert because we’re not trying to kidnap her.

This time, Leigh said to Molly, “You have to be quiet, or we won’t get to play Elmo games on the computer,” which, for a toddler, is a serious threat. After about ten minutes, Leigh realized Molly hadn’t said a word and had a bit of a hang-dog look on her face. Molly didn’t talk in the ice cream aisle, she didn’t talk in the candy aisle, and she didn’t even talk when the grocer said “Hi” to her (and this is usually a VERY social little girl!).

Leigh was beginning to think something was seriously wrong, so after she checked out she pulled the cart over to the side and said, “Molly, are you OK?” Molly just looked at her and nodded but didn’t say anything. Leigh said, “What’s wrong, baby? You can tell me.” Molly finally opened up and said, “I’m just being quiet so we can play Elmo games!” Who knew our child could be so obedient?

How many of us take the same opportunity to be quiet? We live in a world that values communication and information, so to be quiet seems to go against our very fabric. How many of us leave the TV or radio on even when we’re not paying attention to it? We call it “background noise,” emphasis on the “noise.”

It reminds me of this obscure little passage from 1 Kings. The prophet Elijah is on the run from evil queen Jezebel, who wants to kill him. While hiding out in a cave, God comes to him: “The LORD said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.”

Our lives are full of the noise equivalent of powerful winds, deafening earthquakes, and roaring fires. Is it realistic to expect God to shout louder than all of these sounds in order for us to hear His word for us? Instead of trying to out-noise the noise, God comes to Elijah as a gentle whisper. How different that must have sounded!

I tend to turn the radio up loud when I drive. Because of this, I don’t often listen to the sound of my car. Leigh will drive it and say, “Don’t you hear that grinding sound in your car?” And I say, “How can I hear anything when the radio is up so loud?” My car is trying to tell me something, but I’m not listening.

I wonder how many times God has tried to tell me something, but my ears have been too full to hear it. Instead of asking God to take on the formidable task of breaking through the noise, I wonder what would happen if we all followed Molly’s lead and just got quiet. What could we hear if we stopped listening to the sound of our own voice and started listening for God’s voice, that gentle divine whisper?

Where is the quiet time in your life? If you just rolled your eyes, then I would submit that God is speaking to you, not through wind or fire or earthquake, but through a gentle whisper. Listen. Just listen.