Sermon: "Prayer Is…"
Rev. Dianne Shirey
Senior Pastor, The Church in Silver Lake
Scripture: Matthew 6:5-15
September 21, 2008
If the Sermon on the Mount is the centerpiece of Matthew's gospel, this section on prayer is the centerpiece of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has been preaching/teaching for awhile now. Even though this is called a sermon, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between preaching and teaching. In truth, all good preaching contains elements of teaching. In Luke's gospel, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. Here, as part of the sermon, Jesus teaches them how to pray. But not before he tells them what prayer is, or rather what prayer is not. Sometimes it's more revealing and helps us understand a little better what Jesus is saying if we read from the translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson, called The Message:
PRAY WITH SIMPLICITY
"And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They're full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better that you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simple. Like this:"
Jesus speaks about the importance of honesty often. What he finds so disturbing about the religious leaders, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees is their hypocrisy. They say or do one thing, but secretly think something else. In this case - they make a great display of their piety which Jesus sees as nothing more that pretense - they are merely pretending to be pious - to be humble - they bow their heads and close their eyes, only to open one now and then to make sure someone notices them.
In our private prayer life, Jesus is telling us to go to a quiet place; a place set apart from the public eye and there, in quiet humility pray to God, who is your Father. In other words, there are times when it is appropriate for prayer to be between you and God. It is enough for God to hear your prayers.
By the same token when you pray, don't worry about the words you use - too often, I hear people say, "Oh, I can't do devotions, or I can't pray before a meeting. I don't have the words, or my words aren't eloquent. God is not concerned with the words you use - God is only concerned that you try - that you pray, even if your words are halting, or you stammer, or the words are simple. What matters most to God is the attitude of the heart and what it is that motivates your prayer. We know what is coming - we know that Jesus offers to us the one, true, essential prayer, the one we call the Lord's Prayer. But tucked into these verses on prayer is this amazing thought - "Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him." It doesn't say, Your Father knows what you want before you ask him, but God knows what you need. I don't know about you, but I struggle with this notion of what I want as opposed to what I need. They are not always the same thing. I remember my husband's grandmother Bertha was her name - when Dick was growing up, she would spend several weeks at a time with Dick and his parents. Bertha was a minister's wife, although by the time I came to the family, she was widow. We would have dinner together and my mother-in-law would offer her a second helping, especially of dessert, because she loved sweets. Her inevitable response was "Oh, I don't need another bite." And we would all protest, and tell her it wasn't a matter of need, but one of want. We live in a time of consumer opulence - my children and grand children are very hard to buy for because they already have nearly everything they want. I don't sense they have a clue of the difference between want and need.
The prayer that follows this wisdom from Jesus and the assurance that God knows what we need is the "Our Father." This is a communal prayer - one we say when we are gathered together. It isn't "My Father," it begins "Our Father" - we pray to the one we all know as and call our Father. Imbedded in this pray we say every week is this notion of asking for only what we need, our daily bread. Each one of these prayer petitions of the Lord's Prayer is a whole sermon, in and of itself. And maybe; some day, I'll preach a series of sermons on the petitions of this Lord's Prayer. I want to shift gears for the moment.
More books have been written about prayer than just about any topic of faith we have. When people in our church are experiencing real crises in their lives, their friends come to me, feeling so helpless. They want to do something, and they don't know what. In frustration and maybe even a little exasperation they tell me, "well I guess all I can do is pray." It is as though when all other more concrete suggestions are exhausted about how to be helpful - in helplessness, they resort to prayer. I believe that in any crisis, in any perilous situation, prayer is not the last resort, prayer is what we do first - and we pray without ceasing. Because it is prayer that is at the center of our relationship with God. In fact, we pray in the name of Jesus, for when we do, we are asking Jesus to intervene on our behalf with the great God almighty. One of the imponderables is what are we to pray for? Tell the story of Stephen - "God said no, Mommy." This was a simple prayer, with a simple result in the part of a 3 year old child. For many of us, prayer is a list of petitions we ask of God on our own behalf, or on the behalf of others. Those prayers for others are called prayers of intercession. What Stephen prayed may have been a prayer of confession and a plea for changed behavior. Just the act of praying has the potential to change one's behavior, and certainly one's attitude.
Probably 10 or 15 years ago, Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger starred in a movie called, "Shadowlands," based on a stage play. It is about the English writer of children's books, C.S. Lewis. He wrote, "The Chronicles of Narnia," which inspired J.K. Rowling of "Harry Potter," fame. But Lewis wrote books for adults too. His most popular book about faith - why the Christian faith is true is called, "Mere Christianity."
It wasn't until late in life that C.S. Lewis married an American divorcee', Joy Gresham. Initially, the marriage was one of convenience in order to give her British citizenship. Later, Joy was diagnosed with cancer of the bone and it was during that crisis that Lewis realized he truly loved Joy. Needless to say, her condition was very serious. There is one scene in the movie - C.S. Lewis is coming out of chapel, getting ready to go to the hospital. The headmaster asks what news. Good news, I think, says Lewis. The headmaster responds: "I know how hard you've been praying. And now God is answering your prayer." Here is what C.S. Lewis says about prayer, "That's not why I pray. I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I am helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me." That is the singular most essential understanding of prayer I know.
Deborah Smith Douglas has written a short book called The Prayer Life: Seeking God In All Things. Regardless of the outcome of your prayers, there is something more, something deeper, filled with mystery that is going on in prayer, because in prayer you and God connect and the connection is beyond the words you utter. Prayer is like an invisible thread - dare I say, an umbilical cord attaching you to God, and all the nutrients you need to stay alive or to stay connected flow along that thread, or through that cord.
Living a praying life is at the heart of our relationship with God. And to live a praying life well is essential for our overall sense of well-being, of being able to maintain our grounding when life is especially difficult.
Living a praying life will help to make of us instruments of God's peace and agents of God's love. Such a life calls upon us to work for mercy, order, beauty and harmony. To live a life of prayer makes of us repairers of the breech, menders wherever we find things…or people who are broken.
Living a life of prayer compels us to lead a different kind of life - it is the life of awareness, of attentiveness to the teeming life, just under the surface
Prayer makes us mid-wives, helping to bring to life the kind of world we want for our children. It was Gandhi I think who said we must work to bring about the kind of world we pray for - the kind of changes we seek, we must work to make reality.
The praying life will lead us on a journey into God and God's love - from awareness of God's presence to participation in God's love.
Earlier I mentioned that sometimes an impediment to prayer is that we feel we simply don't know how - what words to use, not just for public prayer but for our private ones as well. Deborah Smith Douglas wrote about that in an essay called, "Be of Few Words." Now, I must confess, I don't believe in using 5 words when 10 or 20 or more will do - but then, you are aware of that.
While spending time in Scotland, Douglas went to the local post office, just before Christmas. There was a sign that said substantially reduced postal rates for unsealed Christmas cards containing no more that 5 words in addition to the printed message. 5 measly words. The subtitle of Douglas' essay was "Her Majesty's War on Verbosity."
Douglas stood in line pondering this impossible task, but the longer she stood there, the more challenged she became to try to find meaningful quotes, Christmas or otherwise of just 5 words. One of her favorite quotes also happens to be one of mine. It was written by Etty Hillesum, a Jewish girl in Holland, she wrote on a slip of paper, which she threw at the window of the train taking her and hundreds like her to the Nazi death camps. "Tell them, we left singing." 5 words that's all, yet it tells everything. For the rest of the day Douglas became obsessed with thinking about 5 word quotes. She turned to scripture and was astonished at what she discovered.
Peace I leave with you.
Peter, Do you love me
Well you get the idea - prayer doesn't depend on our verbiage - our verbosity. St. Paul speaks of prayer that rises to God with sighs too deep for words; or prayers that ascend to God like evening incense. You can fill your praying life with something as simple as this:
Lord have mercy on me…
We still haven't answered what prayer is - I'm note sure we would ever light on any one definitive definition - but I want to leave you with this thought to ponder over, think about, pray about: From "Prayer is the Souls Sincere Desire," (Pg. 5 between Heaven and Earth):
James Montgomery, What is Prayer?
(1771-1854) Hymn writer from Scotland, Montgomery wrote four hundred hymns. Many of which, like the following classic, are still sung today.
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Unuttered or expressed,
The motion of hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
Prayer is he burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of the eye,
When none but God is near.
Prayer is the Christian's vital breath,
The Christian's native air,
His watchword at the gates of death;
He enters heaven with prayer.
Prayer is the contrite sinner's voice,
Returning from his ways,
While angels in their songs rejoice
And cry, "Behold, he prays!"
O Thou by whom we come to God,
The life, the truth, the way,
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod:
Lord, teach us how to pray.
