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Thursday, June 17, 2010
Prayers, Presence, Gifts, Service and Witness
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: Mark 1: 35 New Revised Standard Version
35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.
We are beginning a five sermon series today on the promises people make and the covenant we enter when we join the church and identify ourselves as followers of Christ.
We promise, first of all, to uphold God’s work with our prayers, and our first quote on prayer comes from one of the most beloved and honored people in U. S. history. President Abraham Lincoln was a man of constant prayer who said—“I have been driven many times upon my knees in prayer by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go!
Do you understand that need to pray? Most of us do and we have opinion surveys that tell us that almost everyone prays. Even people who say they are not sure they believe in God still say that they pray.
One of the biographers of Lincoln says that his chief aim in prayer is to know, and then to follow, the will of God. This was at a time in our history, that was perhaps the most critical and dangerous time, when we lost 600,000 lives in our tragic Civil War.
Anne Lamotte, one of my favorite writers on faith, says that there are really only two prayers:
HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!
And..
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
When do you pray? At a regular time? One of my regular times is in the morning in the shower. I pray the prayer from Marcus Borg in your words for meditation: Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world. Fill my mind with your wisdom and my heart with your love. And I sing the hymn, “Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me, melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.”
When do you pray? I pray during the day for people I see and who do not know that God’s dreams and hopes for them may be realized.
I pray each Sunday morning over the rows of chairs in the chapel and in the sanctuary about 7:15 touching the chair at the end of each row.
When do you pray?
What do you pray for?
Judy and I had a chance to pray in some unusual and special places when we were in England on renewal leave. I prayed when we were in St. Paul’s cathedral where Methodist leader John Wesley worshiped 300 years ago. We prayed in Westminster Abbey. I prayed at the tombs of Frederick Handel and of Isaac Newton. We prayed at the grave of Wesley close to his church in London.
I got a chance to put my hand on our new cross four weeks ago when it was still lying close to the ground before it was raised. I prayed that the thousands and thousands of people who see it would be touched by God’s peace and power and purpose and hope. This is the same prayer that I pray when I get into our new sanctuary each week and say a prayer there.
We tell each other at St. Andrew that prayer is a mystery to us, we do not understand it. It is not a matter of manipulating God or giving a wish list to a cosmic Santa Claus. And we do not need to understand it to use it, just as we utilize other resources in our world that we cannot explain.
It is my experience that there are some things that God does not do no matter how hard we pray. When our son Todd was born 38 years ago I was the associate minister at Littleton United Methodist Church. When Todd’s disability was announced to that very caring congregation, there was a prayer group that set to work asking God to remove every extra 21st chromosome in Todd’s body. I got angry because that is not how God works. The senior minister said that kind of prayer would be like asking God to make an amputated arm grow back for one of the church’s war veteran’s.
There were other prayers being offered that were more effective. Prayers for God to bring hope and comfort and new possibilities out of what was a different kind of future from the one we had imagined. That has happened in profound ways so that Todd’s life in the community of Colorado Springs has been part of an international model of how people with disabilities can be included and integrated instead of being segregated and set aside.
I believe that prayer works in mysterious ways. And, that when we pray, something happens to us, in us and through us, something that we do not understand and that we do not need to understand.
We promise when we identify ourselves with Christ and with his movement that we will become people of prayer and that we will support what God is doing with our prayers. Most of us are like those first disciples who, when they saw the depth of Jesus’ prayer life, said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
I have put together, with the help of some of our church staff team, a resource of prayers for you to take home and use as part of your growth as a person of prayer. I have also written a new prayer for our church leaders that I am asking us to use as we open or close all of our church meetings because I have seen us lessen our practice of prayer in our meetings, and I think we need to change that direction.
I hope that as we all renew, or as we begin our commitment to be followers of Christ, that we will start with the deepening of our prayer life. I suggest that you take home the bulletin insert and find the prayers that are most important for you to pray this week. You could even talk with a family member or friend over lunch about which of these prayers speak most clearly to your heart’s desires and to the needs in your life right now.
I particularly like the prayer by Father Thomas Merton that begins: “My Lord, I have no idea where I am going and I do not see the road ahead of me…nor do I really know myself….But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.”
I like the prayer toward the end by Rabbi Shapiro that begins: “May we discover through pain and torment the strength to live with grace and humor. May we discover through doubt and anguish the strength to live with dignity and holiness.”
I pray that you will find new ways to pray and new times to pray as a result of this morning’s worship time so that we may more fully uphold God’s work through this faith community with our PRAYERS AS WELL AS OUR PRESENCE, GIFTS, SERVICE, AND WITNESS.
We will close with the prayer from UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld:
Gracious God,
Give us pure hearts that we may see you.
Humble hearts that we may hear you.
Hearts of love that we may serve you.
Hearts of faith that we may abide in you.
Amen.