“Three Gifts and a
Prayer”
Sermon delivered on
Scriptural Basis: Colossians
2:6-15, Luke 11:1-13
People
are funny. Some people are funny in the
comedic sense, but most of us are funny in the head-scratching, bemusing kind
of way. Look around you some day, at the
shopping mall or in the grocery store and watch people as they go about their
business. I’ll bet you that on any given
day, you’ll find at least four people that you think are a bit
“different.” As I’ve gotten a bit more
experienced (that sounds so much nicer than “older,” doesn’t it?), it seems to
me that one of the most interesting ways that people are funny is how very hard
some of us make things, especially those things that are at their very core
quite simple. Like buying
groceries. To me, this is a very simple
process. I have a list, I pick up those
items on the list, and maybe a treat or two that I eat in the car before Karen
can find out about it, I go to the checkout line, pay for my items, and go
home. But for some folks, grocery
shopping takes on all the intensity and rigor of General Patton’s race across
And
what about saying “I love you?” How very
easy. Each and every one of us delights
in being told we’re loved. But let a
copy of Cosmopolitan magazine be lying around, or maybe Psychology Today, and
look out! How do you love me? Do you love me more than your first
girlfriend from high school? Do you love
me more than the dog? You say you love me,
can you expand on that? Is your love
platonic, romantic or some combination of the two? Do you love me the way you love your
mother? If so, have you read Oedipus
Rex? Please compare and contrast your
feelings for me with this ancient Greek tragedy. What’s so hard about saying “I love you” and
having the person you said it to say “I love you too?” We make giving and receiving gifts hard. A gift is given, a sincere thank-you is
offered, you’re welcome is said in return, case closed. But no, not in the early twenty-first
century! There are gift consultants to
help you avoid buying a non-organic gift for your environmentally-conscious
friend, and we don’t just say “thank you” anymore. We gush and carry on about how this is the
greatest gift the world has ever known, nothing can top it and then we do the
same thing when we open the next package. We even make prayer hard. In
today’s gospel reading, Jesus teaches us how to pray, and it’s real
simple. “Father, hallowed be your
name. Your kingdom come. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves
forgive everyone indebted to us. And do
not bring us to the time of trial.” The
Lord’s Prayer, before the church got hold of it and made it complicated. The essence of today’s gospel reading is how
to pray and what to pray for. It boils
down to three gifts and a prayer.
Now
before you start heating up the tar and tearing open your feather pillows, let
me say that I love the Lord’s Prayer as it has evolved over the centuries into
the prayer we recite every worship service and after every meeting at
Belleville Presbyterian. Even in its
more complex form, it’s a masterpiece of power and simplicity. It’s the one prayer that every lapsed
Christian can recite, the prayer that can break through those times when you
desperately want to pray, when you need
to pray but the words just won’t come to you. But the fact remains that the ecclesial professionals, the folks like
me, couldn’t leave well enough alone. We
had to “enhance” Jesus’ instruction, and in this case I think the church pros
did a great job but that’s not always the way it works out.
I
don’t know how many books have been written about prayer. Karen and I have at least a couple of dozen
of them, and if I had to guess I’d say the total number of books about prayer
numbers in the hundreds. Over the years,
there have been rules developed about what the proper physical posture is for
legitimate prayer. Some traditions
require that you kneel with your head bowed and hands folded, others expect you
to raise your hands to the heavens and let your body move to the emotion of the
moment and shout out “amen.” We
Presbyterians are taught to sit upright, bow our heads and fold our hands, all
very dignified and proper. And then
there are the right words for a prayer to be legit. Our denomination’s Book of Common Worship has
page after page of prayers that cover just about any contingency you can think
of with flowery prose and theologically substantial themes. Our Catholic brothers and sisters, both Roman
and Orthodox, learn several very specific prayers for a myriad of occasions,
all of which have decades and centuries of history behind them. The worship guide that I often use to prepare
for services offers four different prayers for each Sunday that somebody worked
very hard to make just right, and I don’t want to diminish their efforts in any
way. Many, many of these written prayers
are meaningful and helpful and comforting and inspiring. But I don’t think that they should be viewed
as complete unto themselves, not even the Lord’s Prayer. I think they should be viewed as a starting
point for your conversation with God, which is what prayer is all about. To simply read or recite a prayer out of
habit or because you’re “supposed to” and be satisfied that you’ve fulfilled
your religious obligations for the day is completely missing the point, and
shortchanges you on the benefits of prayer.
Look
closely at today’s gospel reading. We’re
all familiar with the Lord’s Prayer, and with ask, search and knock. But the verses that bridge these two sections
may not be quite so familiar and on first reading don’t make a whole lot of
sense. What does knocking on a
neighbor’s door at
I
remember the first time I heard “ask, and it will be given you; search, and you
will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Cool! The Bible says I’ll get anything I ask for! Hey mom and dad, come here for a minute! I also remember the lesson I learned about
how prayers get answered. God gives us
what is necessary and beneficial for us, not whatever it is we want. From where I stand, I really need five million dollars, I’d love to
find the pair of binoculars that used to be in my Explorer, and it would be
nice if some of the companies I contact in my recruiting work opened the door
to some of my clients. From God’s point
of view, all I need is enough to pay the bills and to enjoy some leisure
activities. Five million dollars is many
times more than is necessary to fulfill our obligations, and there are lots of
people who could use some portion of that five million to put food on the table
or keep a roof over their heads. The
binoculars are buried somewhere in a closet and I didn’t use them much anyway,
so let it go, and the right positions for my clients will make themselves known
at the right time. I’ve come to
understand that it’s perfectly OK to ask for whatever it is we might want as
long as the last part of that request is “however, not my will but yours be
done” or “not what I want, but what you want.” I know that’s hard sometimes, but like a loving parent, God really does
know best.
So what
should you pray for, and how should you pray? As I said earlier, the Lord’s Prayer is a pretty good starting point if
you’re stuck for words, and it touches on the three gifts that are essential to
life: food (give us this day our daily bread), forgiveness (and forgive us our
sins, for we forgive everyone indebted to us) and fidelity (and do not bring us
to the time of trial). These three
things are essential to us as individuals and as communities, and for our
ongoing relationship with God. These are
the things we truly need, and they
are things that we will be freely given. I think asking for guidance is well-received, and asking for right
outcomes for health concerns (ours or someone else’s), peace and harmony, reconciliation
of broken relationships, and safe travels are all perfectly fine. And you know, asking for a high-paying job to
provide well for your family is probably OK too. But asking that the competition for that job
be taken out of the way, or asking God’s vengeance on somebody who has wronged
you isn’t likely to be met with a favorable response.
As
to how you should pray, well, in my opinion there’s no right or wrong way. In the Letter to the Colossians, it says
“Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or
observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and
worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way
of thinking” There are some contexts,
like Sunday morning worship, where a more subdued approach to prayer is appropriate,
but other than that I think the field is wide open. I pray when I’m driving, when I’m cutting the
grass, when I’m walking the dog and when I’m in the shower. And yes, sometimes I get down on my
knees. And in spite of all the
high-powered theological words and formal sentence structure we’re taught as
being the “right” way to pray, I think God is happy to converse with us in any
style we’re comfortable with. If you
want to ramble on with a list of joys and concerns, that’s fine, just remember
to be quiet from time to time so God can get a word or two into the
conversation. If you want to sit still
and listen, opening your soul to whatever God wants to talk about, that’s good
too.
What
you pray about and how you go about praying are ultimately up to you. I’d encourage you to give thanks for the
gifts of food, forgiveness and fidelity every time you pray, but for heaven’s
sake, pray! Or I should say, for your sake, pray!
In
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
