Prayer in the Teaching and Life of Jesus

Preached at South Salem Friends Church

July 7, 2013

When we want to get to know Jesus better, we go to the Gospels and read about what he said and did.  Then we have to think, because what Jesus said and what Jesus did do not always seem identical.  So then we have to be willing to ask what truth is there for us in the disconnect, because as Christians, we believe that Jesus came from God, that Jesus was God as well as human, and that when we see Jesus speaking and acting in the Gospels, we see who God is.  So here’s one riddle to work through, and it has to do with prayer.

First misunderstanding: Prayer should always be private.

We see that Jesus would withdraw to deserted places and pray (Luke 5:16). Furthermore, in Matthew 6:5-8, Jesus gives advice to his followers about prayer.

“When you pray, don’t be like those who pray so that people can see them praying.  These hypocrites stand on street corners or in synagogues and pray out loud so that others will see them.  The attention they get is their only reward.  But when you pray, go into your private room, shut the door, and talk with your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees you praying privately will reward you.”

(We do not now recognize how explosive the teaching that God is “your Father” was at this time.  Watch for how often Jesus connects prayer with this intimate familial relationship to God Almighty.)

Now many folks have read this and felt like Jesus was forbidding or devaluing public prayers.  But this cannot be so, because Jesus himself prayed aloud in front of other people. 

Jesus prays aloud:  “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and revealed them to infants, yes, Father, for such was your gracious will” (Matthew 11:23-24).

Looking up to heaven, he blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to pass out to the crowd (Matthew 14: 19). He took the loaves and the fish, and after giving thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples to give to the crowd (Matthew 15:36). He regularly gave thanks for food. There are other times also when he prays publicly. Therefore, we need to learn how and when to pray publicly.

Second misunderstanding:  Prayer should always be spontaneous and original.

Back to Matthew 6: “Also, when you are praying, don’t heap up empty phrases as those who worship false gods feel they have to; they think that only if they repeat their requests over and over will they be heard.  Don’t be like them.  You have a Father who knows what you need even before you ask.”

Many folks have read this and concluded that repeating a set or liturgical prayer is not the best way to pray, even though the most famous of these, called The Lord’s Prayer, immediately follows. As Luke tells it, Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, 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. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial” (Luke 11:1-13 ). Jesus himself used a “set prayer” in his cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” a shorthand reference to Psalm 22 (Matthew 27:46). Therefore, we need to feel free to borrow the prayers of others when they express our need and our trust in God.

Third misconception: if we get it right, God will grant our requests.

In Matthew 7:7-11, Jesus teaches further about prayer.  Ask, he says, seek, and knock.  The asker receives, the seeker finds, and the door opens for the one who knocks. “Think of God as a parent like you.  Would you give a stone to a child who asks for bread?  Would you give a snake to a child who asks for fish?  So if you, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will our Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

Many folks have read this and felt like this guarantees that they will get what they pray for, particularly if they quote this to God.  But that cannot be exactly what this means, because Jesus himself asked God for something that he didn’t get. He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane to be spared from death on the cross.  God did not answer this prayer.  Instead, God answered the second half of the prayer, which was “not my will but your will be done.” “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want but what you want (Mark 14: 36).

Therefore, we cannot conclude that when we experience hard things, it is because we do not have enough faith.  Instead the passage challenges us to believe that God is expressing God’s will through our lives, and that in our suffering is nutrition for our whole selves.

Fourth misunderstanding: if we get several other people to agree to pray for the same result, God will give us what we ask for.

“If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:15-20). Intriguingly, the immediate context for this is conflict or wrongs done between Jesus’s followers.  “If anyone sins against you, go and point out the fault, etc.”  This suggests that we must remember in conflict with another that coming to talk to that person directly brings Jesus into the conversation.  Jesus is right there.  The point may be that when the two in conflict can agree to ask for the same thing from our Father, God gladly answers their shared prayer.

Fifth misconception: it is inappropriate to ask God for the same thing more than once.

Jesus teaches persistence in prayer through several parables—the unjust judge and the persistent plaintiff and the neighbor who needs bread from the person who has already gone to bed.  These are funny stories that encourage us to keep asking God to meet our needs—for justice, for daily bread, just as in the prayer Jesus taught the disciples.

Sixth misconception: having faith means getting what we want in prayer.

Jesus taught that prayer itself is an act of faith.  It is not “a done deal,” not like adding baking powder to the biscuits.  Instead, having faith means we believe in the giver of good gifts, our Father, and so we ask.

Additionally, Jesus taught that when we pray, we need to forgive in order to be forgiven. And Jesus taught that our attitude in prayer is humility and asking for mercy, not self-congratulation and bullying God.

So in one central incident, let’s see how prayer works for Jesus.

John 11 Back Story:

Lazarus has died, and Jesus tells his disciples that Lazarus has fallen asleep and he must go wake him up.

He says: “Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there so that you can learn to trust. Now, let’s go to him.”

Jesus arrives back in Bethany.  Lazarus has been dead and entombed four days.  Martha, his sister, meets Jesus, and says “If you had been here, Lazarus would not have died.  But even now, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give to you.”

Jesus says to her, “Your brother will stand up again. “ Martha responds, “I know he will rise in the resurrection at the end of time.”

Jesus says to her, “I am the resurrection and I am life.  All who trust in me, even if they die, shall live, and all who live and trust in me shall never die. Do you trust me on this?” She replies, “Yes, Lord, I trust that you are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into our world, our universe.”

Lazarus’s other sister, Mary, also comes to meet Jesus, and she greets him similarly to Martha, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus sees her tears, and the tears of the whole crowd, and he also weeps. 

They walk to the tomb where Lazarus is lying dead, and Jesus asks them to roll away the stone from the opening.  Martha says, “Lord, he’s been there four days and now stinks.”

Jesus says to her, “Didn’t I tell you that if you would trust, you would see the positive judgment, the glory of God?”

This is the part I want to emphasize:  after they roll away the stone and while the stink of death is in their nostrils, Jesus lifts up his eyes to heaven to talk to our Father.

Jesus says, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.  I know you always hear me.  But because these people around me don’t know that, I said it aloud so that they may trust that you have sent me.”

Then he shouts, “Lazarus, come out.” And from the opening in the earth, Lazarus shuffles out, looking like a mummy.  Jesus says, “Release him and let him go.”

Many onlookers trust Jesus as being the one sent by God on that day, but some go to tell his enemies what Jesus had done.

What can we learn about prayer from this passage?  First, we learn that when Jesus said to pray in a closet, he obviously didn’t mean all the time.  Here he is praying out loud just so that the crowd can hear.

Second, we learn that Jesus knows there is nothing magic about praying out loud.  It doesn’t make it more likely that God will do what we ask.  Instead, he prays out loud to demonstrate his faith that God has told him to come to Bethany and return Lazarus to life.

Third, we learn that Jesus doesn’t take a long time to explain things to God.  He just acknowledges to God what God has told him to do, and in his prayer explains to the crowd why he is praying aloud: so that they can believe God sent him to do this work, so that they can see he has faith that God is his Father.

Fourth, it is clear that a whiz-bang miracle like this one is not enough to win everyone to trusting in our Father God who sent Jesus to show us what God is like.  Some will still work against this truth.  It is not enough that a person rises from death into life.  So we don’t have to succeed in getting what we specifically ask for in order to prove to people that God is real or that they should also be following Jesus.  

Fifth, Jesus’s prayer here is an acted parable for all of us about what our public prayers are for:  They are to demonstrate our faith that God has sent Jesus to do the work of setting people free from spiritual death into abundant spiritual life.  We are a part of the crowd that unbinds people and lets them go free. 

So we have read what Jesus said about prayer and we have seen him pray.  We have learned that Jesus did pray privately, but he also prayed publicly, including thanking God for food and blessing it, that he sometimes used the prayers of others, that Jesus prayed on purpose so others would witness that he and God were in a son/father relationship, that Jesus prayed for spiritual and for physical needs, and that even for Jesus, prayer itself was an act of faith, as it also is for us.

Luke 10:21 At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

Jesus shows us that prayer is important, so I encourage you to be people who pray in private, in public, for spiritual needs, for physical needs, using spontaneous prayers or prayers written by others, but for sure, be praying people. If any of you lack wisdom, ask God for it; God gives it liberally without scolding; pray to the Lord of the harvest of souls to send workers to bring them in.  Pray often, and pray simply, just like God’s little children.

Listen, Learn, Obey

Preached at South Salem Friends Church

April 21, 2013

Mary and Martha, Radical Faith

Luke 10: 38-42

Jesus went into Bethany, a town close to Jerusalem, and was invited in by a woman named Martha, who had a sister named Mary (and a brother named Lazarus, as we remember from a later story).  Martha was hospitable and busied herself with serving everyone—the word is diakonia, root of deacon, by the way—and Mary sat at Jesus’s feet to hear what he had to say.

Martha was weighed down by her work, distracted and driven to do it right.  She came to Jesus and said, “Master, Messiah, don’t you care for my distress? I am drowning in work, and Mary is doing nothing to help me. Tell her to work alongside me and help me.”

Jesus replied, “Martha, Martha.  You are full of cares and disturbed about so many things.  But only this one thing is a duty, is required. Mary has chosen what brings health and is useful and honorable.  No one will be allowed to take it away from her.”

We don’t have the next bit of the story, which is where, perhaps, Martha sits down also, her worry smoothed away, and lets the words of Jesus soak into her.  We can see that there must have been some time when she did so, because she is the one who runs to meet Jesus when he comes to comfort them after the death of her brother Lazarus.  In John 10, she says, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died, and I know even now that God will give you whatever you ask.”  When Jesus responds that Lazarus will rise again, she says, “I know that he will rise again at the last resurrection.”  Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, still lives. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She replied with as decisive a statement of faith as any in the Bible:  “Yes, Master, yes Messiah, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, come into our world just as you were meant to.” This belief is the foundation on which the church is built.

Clearly, Martha had done some listening, too. 

South Salem Friends are making this next year a holy experiment.  Though I know you are sad about being unable to keep Jim as your pastor, your elders have a vision of how to move forward in this next that can transform your lives individually and as a congregation.

Let’s think first about your call to be ministers, deacons, servants to your neighbors through your Tuesday evening dinner.  This is an awesome ministry, and the fact you find it still invigorating and fun means you are doing it right.  Hospitality is high on the list of Christian values, as is generosity, another aspect of your ministry.

At the same time, this ministry is grounded in a vision of Jesus, the resurrection and the life.  Jesus is in our world, just as God means him to be, and his Holy Spirit walks with us every day to teach us what we need to learn and tell us what we need to do.  The work of Jesus in the world is to reconcile the world to God.  Reconcile means that you once again bring yourself face to face, eyebrow to eyebrow, with God.  You look God in the eyes and let God look you in the eyes.  What do you see?  What do you sense that God sees in you?

Let’s take a few minutes to sit with this picture.  You look directly into God’s eyes, reconciling with God.

Write down for yourself or to share what you saw in God’s eyes.

Part of the reconciliation is letting God see into your soul through your eyes.  God sees all that is there, alive, dead, beautiful, ugly, clean, dirty.  God loves you and wants you to be whole and holy.  What does God see in you that makes God happy? Write this down so you remember it.

What does God see in you that God wants to clean up, beautify, or resurrect? Write this down so you can remember it.

Please give God permission to fix what needs fixing and to love you into a life of resurrection.

Now, this is the business of sitting down to listen to Jesus, the Son of God, sent by God into our world to show us what God is like and what perfect human life is.  Jesus said about himself, “I do what God tells me to do and say what God tells me to say.”  Jesus's kind of life lived in connection with God wasn’t because Jesus was so different from us; this is what human beings are made for. Jesus came to teach us how to live this way.  It is a life of listening and risky obedience.  It can get you out of trouble with others and into trouble.  And it is not simply an individualistic way to live.  Whole congregations, like S. Salem, can live this way.

Many years ago, when I was in high school, a Lutheran minister named Bill Vaswig came to Newberg Friends.  Bill taught me to ask God for help, listen, and then try to do what I heard to do.  It was very simple.  I observe many times that I ask desperately for help over and over and never sit still long enough to hear what God says.  I also observe that sometimes when I get a nudge, I fail to recognize it as God and thus do not obey it.  I also notice that sometimes I ask, I do what I hear, and God is in it.  I don’t always even have to ask. 

How do I know it is God I’m hearing from?  The Holy Spirit turns out to be quite practical a lot of the time, and most often very matter of fact, and sometimes quirkily funny.  And what I’m told is not a violation of spiritual truth but instead advice about how to implement it in my life.

I may have told this very story here before, but it is a good one, so I’ll tell it again.  I spent about 10 years working to forgive someone who had wounded me so deeply it affects my life to this day.  I said to God over and over, "I know I am supposed to forgive, and right now, all I can do is say to you, ok, if you forgive this person, I will forgive you for doing it.  You can let him into heaven if you have to be so scandalously gracious.  This is the best I can do."

Then one day I was driving with the radio on, and I heard in my spirit the words, “Becky, you can do better than that.”  “Ok,” I said. “You’re right.  Please forgive this person.  Please let him into heaven.” 

Well, I can tell you that listening and obeying and saying what God wanted was so freeing to my spirit. The person had died, and I felt in my car a spirit that was grateful for my forgiveness. I believe my forgiveness set that other person’s spirit more free to receive God’s love also. 

At least twice when I have been so angry at God, I have been very frank in expressing my feelings about how things are going.  “Do you know what you’re doing?” I have cried out in outrage and despair.  My experience is that in the quiet following those cries, God talks back.  This is the crucial teaching of the book of Job.  Job rails against God, and God shows up to talk. And Job says, “I talked a lot, and now I see you, and I regret what I said, I choose God over myself, and I repent and am comforted here in my dust and ashes.”

Jesus comes to help us when we ask.  We need to have the faith of Martha to say, “We know you are sent by God, God’s Son. What you want to do, you can do.  What do you want us to do next?”

As you experience a year where you are caring for each other as pastors, it falls on each of you to prepare for worship together by asking God if there’s something you need to sing, pray, or preach, or if there is someone you need to bring to Jesus as the congregation meets. If anyone lacks wisdom, just ask God, who gives wisdom liberally and without scolding. 

Jesus is here today to teach you himself.  Jesus is the head of the church universal and local.  Jesus is smart, capable, and strong and well worth listening to, obeying, and following around.

Tamar and Immortality

One of the signs that the Bible depicts continuing revelation is the institution of levirate marriage among the early Hebrews. The only kind of immortality these people believed in was found in having children who carried on their father’s patrimony. So the practice, which was written into the Law later, was that if a man died without fathering a child, a brother or the nearest male relative must father a child with the widow, and that child would be the dead man’s child. (Barren women were considered to be failures, and their failure to produce children legitimized polygamy.) We don't do this nowadays because we no longer believe it to be God's plan--thus, continuing revelation.

This is the context for the story of Tamar—a Canaanite woman, by the way—from from the book of Genesis, chapter 38. Tamar was married to Er, eldest son of the famous patriarch Judah (by his Canaanite wife Shuah). Er died without any children, so Judah gave Tamar to his second son, Onan. Onan was selfish and cared nothing for his duty to his brother, so when he had sex with Tamar, he interrupted coitus and spilled his semen on the ground. God struck him dead.

One misreading of this story is that birth control is wrong. Subsequent understanding of reproduction tells us that “pulling out” is not a sure method of birth control, so Tamar could have been impregnated by Onan despite his stinginess. Further, semen has millions of sperm in it, only one of which is not “wasted” if pregnancy results. Natural reproduction for humans is immensely wasteful of the potential for life contained in sperm and ova, particularly if we add in the number of spontaneous miscarriages, many of which occur before women have any idea they are pregnant.

Another misreading of this story is that masturbation is wrong. In fact, masturbation doesn’t appear in it at all. The only possible Biblical reference is in Leviticus where “nocturnal emissions” make a man unclean the following day. More about uncleanness laws another time. If anything, Onan’s selfish action is sexual fraud, and we can see how God feels about that.

Judah blamed Tamar. Something about her had killed two of his sons (his own hope for immortality, by the way). He sent her back to her own family. This was a huge disgrace for her, and it is obvious that she felt it as such. Her duty—a sacred duty—was to provide a child to carry on her husband’s patrimony. Before God she felt bound to do this work. She waited for Judah to carry out his promise to give her to his youngest son, but it became clear over the years that Judah did not intend to do so. She was stuck in childless widowhood with no way out.

Because Tamar’s duty to her dead husband is so embedded in and infected with patriarchal values, it is hard to see how she is an example of the inclusion of women in the love and plan of God. However, note that she represents a woman who put her own sense of right and wrong ahead of propriety or fear. If having a baby for her husband was her sacred calling, she was determined to fulfill it.

The rest of the story is a wonderful trickster tale. Tamar hears that Judah is coming into her part of the country. She dresses up like a Canaanite religious prostitute and waits for him by the road. He does not recognize her behind her veil, and he takes advantage of her availability to have sex with her. (No one takes him to task for sex with a supposed idolater, or for sex outside his marriages. This is another evidence of the profound stranglehold patriarchalism had on this culture.) He is short on cash, so he gives her his ring and walking stick in pledge. When he sends money to redeem these items, no one knows that religious prostitute, so he keeps his money and keeps his mouth shut.

Tamar goes home to her father. In a few months, someone tells Judah that his daughter-in-law has turned up pregnant. “Bring her out and burn her to death,” he rages. Now this is interesting; it is apparently the case that she was not free of her marriage despite being a widow, at least until she birthed a child who could be legally attributed to her dead husband. Judah is angry because she has not fulfilled her sacred duty to his household, but at the same time he has made it impossible for her to do so. What a double or triple bind she is in.

But Tamar speaks up on her own behalf: “The man who owns this ring and walking stick made me pregnant.” “Oops, those are mine,” says Judah. “Never mind that stuff I said about burning her. God has taught me a big lesson here; Tamar was doing what she could to fulfill what she thought God wanted of her.”

Some of this story is infuriating—the culture that required Tamar to make herself vulnerable to the opportunism of a sexual exploiter like Onan; the culture that allowed Judah to have sex with a prostitute and then to require his pregnant widowed daughter-in-law to be burned for adultery.

More of this story is inspiring—a Canaanite woman does what she believes is her religious duty, even though she risks death, and she lives to tell about it. Some of the story is empowering—God validates Tamar by including her and her children in the line of the Messiah, and the record is there for all time in both Old and New Testaments. Some of the story is simply deeply satisfying—the powerless person tricks the powerful person, and the outcome is comedy.

It is interesting to think ahead to Mary, whose baby could be attributed to no human male. Like Tamar, Mary chooses for herself. She chooses to accept God’s will for her, which involves scandal and humiliation and potential death by stoning. As it turns out, through Mary’s son, no single male became immortal, no one family or clan continued its existence, but instead all humanity is invited into eternal life, starting now and continuing through death.