LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Proper 12C + July 29, 2007 + St. Paul’s Church, Lake James

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

What a strange episode we just head in today’s Gospel! Jesus tells a parable in what seems to be an unselfish and perfectly reasonable request (food for a hungry person) is rejected even though the one doing the rejecting is described as a friend of the one asking! And if that isn’t odd enough, the request is finally granted not because of friendship – or even compassion – but just as an exasperated response to persistent pleading!

What’s that all about?

If the parable had taught that, out of friendship we should help others, that would make sense. If the point had been that, in cases of real need those having what is needed should share, that would seem right. But instead, Jesus tells a story in which the moral seems to be “pests get rewarded!”

The reading from the Hebrew Scriptures appears to teach the same thing! To save the life of his relative, Abraham makes a bargain with God in which his success in the bargaining rests not so much on his being right, but just being persistent!

It’s really so much easier to hear the first part of today’s Gospel. Most of us know and love “The Lord’s Prayer” and so it’s comfortable and pleasant to hear St. Luke’s description of its origin. We may remember that it was a common practice in Our Lord’s time for rabbis to teach their followers a special prayer, one which reflected the particular teachings of that leader, and which then served as a sort of “insignia” for that rabbi’s disciples. When the followers of Jesus asked him for that kind of prayer, they received a two-fold response: one which they expected [a specific prayer to be said] but also another which probably caught them by surprise, namely a parable on the subject of prayer! The message was that learning a prayer to say, and learning to pray were and are not the same thing at all!

One of the most common laments heard by priests (and, I am sure, by ministers and rabbis as well) comes from people who have lapsed from the practice of regular prayer, people who pray only very occasionally, or people who have never been regular at prayer. Their experiences usually include some kind of crisis, in response to which they tried to pray, only to find that they weren’t sure how to pray. They had just assumed that, if and when they wanted, or needed to pray, they would simply “do it.” But, when the chips were down, they discovered that, somehow, it wasn’t that easy. Nothing seemed to happen, their situation remained unchanged, they felt awkward, even a bit foolish, and soon gave up.

The Church teaches us that prayer is communication – conversation, if you will, with God. Think about that for a moment. Consider the difficulties many people have in establishing communication – real communication – with anybody! How about you? If you are in the midst of relative strangers, do you find it easy to make meaningful conversation, especially if the other person is someone with whom you seem to have little in common? After a few remarks about the weather, have you ever found yourself wondering what else you could possibly find to talk about? That’s the problem some people have with prayer! They don’t know God very well, nor do they have a clear understanding of prayer, so, when in a time of stress, they try to speak to a God they may not even be sure is there, a God who so often doesn’t seem to them to care or to respond, they feel silly, decide that prayer is useless, and so, they give it up.

“Lord, teach us to pray” was the disciples’ request, and, if truth be told, isn’t it often ours as well? If even the disciples, who had been people of prayer all their lives, asked Jesus for guidance in that area, don’t we do well to do the same?

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gives us both a model prayer, but also a specific prayer to repeat over and over. From earliest times, the Church has used that prayer not only in her liturgies but also taught it to the faithful for private use, because repetition of prayer, and continuation in prayer are both important. St. Paul writes that Christians should “pray without ceasing” and all the great teachers of the devotional life agree that prayer is an art to be practiced, not a medicine to be taken in times of crisis. The point is that prayer is intended by God to be a normal part of everyday living, something as common to us as eating and sleeping, even breathing!

If we really care about our relationship with God, we will treat prayer the way a serious musician treats music, with regular and disciplined practice, not being afraid to make mistakes or worrying if we are less than perfect in each attempt.

Let me suggest that one’s prayer life should include a daily expression of our love for God, thanks for divine blessings, sorrow for sin, and expressions of the needs of others as well as our own. But one may well ask why? Doesn’t God know that we love Him, that we are grateful for our blessings, sorry for our sins, and that both we and others have real and specific needs? Is God waiting for us to provide Him with that information the way you and I look to the morning newspaper or television news to discover what’s going on? Of course not! So why do it? The answer is that God delights in our bringing our realities to Him, much the way a loving parent is pleased when his or her small child runs in breathless excitement to bring the startling news that ants can actually drag large sticks, or that fish can be seen swimming in the clear waters of a pond.

No, it is, or should be obvious that we don’t pray in order to educate God, and certainly prayer is not intended to be a thinly disguised way of twisting God’s arm to get something done that we want, no matter how noble our desires may be, or seem, to us. Prayer, is a way humankind is given to work with God in bringing about the Divine Will for the creation. It is God’s way of including us, because, as we heard in the Psalm this morning, “though the Lord be high, he cares for the lowly.”

When people misunderstand prayer and treat it the way they use a drive-up window at McDonald’s, ordering not cheeseburgers, but healing for this person or a new job for that one, sooner or later they find that that sort of “prayer” just doesn’t work, that God isn’t a celestial waiter waiting to take their order, no matter whether that order be for selfish or self-less things. So, they wind up giving up on prayer, or giving up on the Church, or even giving up on God! Maybe you know someone who has done that – or maybe you yourself have done that at one time or another.

So, again, why, for example, pray for healing for a sick person? For the same reason that Jesus, in his agony in the Garden prayed “O Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me.” Our Lord was doing what we are all supposed to do – lifting to God the realities of our lives, knowing that the loving God truly cares. But what is so often missing from our prayers may be those nine words which put Christ’s prayer in the right context, namely, “nevertheless, Father, not my will, but yours be done.” To bring before God those concerns, needs, hopes, even fears which are part of our existence is to live in a reality which includes God. But that inclusion also needs to trust the God to whom we pray, knowing, as the Prayer Book puts it, that he is doing for us better things than we can desire or pray for. Parables are stories intended to teach a particular lesson. Today’s parable is Christ’s way of instructing us that prayer is neither something to “try out” once or twice and then drop if it doesn’t seem to make any difference, nor is prayer a “magic wand” by which we can control God or our lives. Instead, prayer is a way God has designed for us to express our love, our concerns for others, our needs, our hopes, and even our fears. God intends prayer to be a normal and wonderful part of everyday life.

All of us can live without prayer – but if we do, we are not living the full, vibrant life God intends us to have – a life not just connected to, but centered in a wonderful relationship with God. Life without prayer is simply incomplete, not adequate for a Christian (or for anyone else, for that matter). So, if we take the Bible messages of today’s liturgy seriously, how thrilling to realize that God wants us – you, and me, everyone of us – to be people of prayer. And what a joy it is for a priest to be given the privilege of proclaiming that Good News!

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig, Sr.

This page last modified on Friday, April 11, 2008 09:40 PM