This was the last sermon I gave at my post in the Kidderminster and Stourport Circuit; it was given at an ecumenical service of Holy Communion that worshiped together every Wednesday.
The sermon is based on John 12:1-8.
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Introduction
Today the church celebrates the festival of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Our Gospel reading for today contains all three of these characters as well as Jesus, but it also contains another character: Judas.
If you were going to make a film out of this morning’s story, I reckon that you could turn this into quite an uncomfortable scene.
Lazarus has just been raised from the dead in the previous chapter and, although the text doesn’t say it explicitly, we imagine that Jesus is having a celebratory meal with these friends who he loves. Mary then does something that would be as embarrassing as someone in our society hiking her skirt up to her thighs.
In my imaginary film I can just see Judas portrayed as a model of calm and sensibleness, looking at Mary with an attitude of pity and announcing: “The money you spent on all the drink you’ve just poured down yourself could have been given to poor”…
So when Jesus opens his mouth to speak, we expect that he’s going to take Judas’ part and tell Mary to calm down and stop making everyone uncomfortable. But instead Jesus tells Judas to leave her alone. And the narrator tells us that Mary’s heart is right with God and that Judas’ is not.
Resurrection
Although today is the feast of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, it’s the character of Judas who is the foil that helps us learn from the example of these three siblings.
Let’s think about the difference between the Judas and Lazarus to start with. Lazarus has experienced resurrection and Judas has not.
None of us has any idea of what it would feel like to be resurrected, but there are people in our culture who have had near death experiences. It seems to me that one universal outcome of such experiences is that people often have a sense of the true meaning and the true value of life.
I imagine that Lazarus might feel that he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. He’d lost his life but now he’s found it again and every moment, every day, every taste of food, every drink, every moment shared with a loved one is a sweet and joyful bonus.
Judas, I imagine, thinks that life is much more serious than this. Life is about freedom from political oppression and Judas will stop at nothing to get it.
But although Judas is serious and apparently lacking in a certain degree of empathy, we are also told that he is not straight. Judas’ serious outlook toward life did not prevent him from stealing from the common purse.
Lazarus, along with Jesus, is on the right side of resurrection.
The readers of this story are invited to be on the right side of resurrection as well: the poor will always be with you until the resurrection of the dead and the kingdom of God has come.
Turn your sights to the day when God’s children will live in true freedom. Be like Lazarus and live the resurrection life today.
Workers for the Kingdom
Then we have Martha.
Poor old Martha; I always think she gets a bit of a raw deal. Martha does all the work of the kingdom behind the scenes and, although she always gets mentioned, the picture I have of her is as some sort of generic worker-bee.
And it’s the Marthas – male and female – who are the backbone of the Church, and often the backbone of society’s army of carers. People who quietly do the work of God asking for no recognition or reward who often influence the lives of many for good.
Here again, though, is a contrast with Judas.
I imagine the Judas thought of himself as working for the coming of the Kingdom of God. But I suspect that he also wanted that kingdom to come in a blaze of earthly glory. And I somehow doubt that he would have been content to fade into the background.
Martha, unlike Judas, understands what the real work of the Kingdom is. We are called to be like Martha. When we work, we work for Jesus and for the Kingdom of God. We do not work for personal glory or gain.
Prophets for the Kingdom
And then we have Mary.
Mary the sister who sits at the feet of Jesus learning from him. But Mary who also embarrassingly proclaims her love for Jesus in today’s text.
Mary is something of a prophet. She is happy to ignore what is normally expected in society in order to learn from Jesus. And she is happy to embarrass herself in order to proclaim the profound truth about Jesus: Against all expectations of what the Messiah will be like, Jesus will have to die in order rise again.
The Messiah does not look like what the world expected. The Messiah will not bring about the Kingdom of God the way that the world expected.
That, of course, is the great contrast between Judas and Mary.
Judas insisted that Jesus must follow his expectations. And when Jesus’ Messiahship didn’t follow the pattern that Judas wanted, he was willing to betray Jesus. Mary learned from Jesus. Judas expected Jesus to learn from him.
Need I say: be like Mary, learning from Jesus. Do not make God in your own image.
Conclusion
Mary, Martha and Lazarus appear to have been amongst Jesus’ closest friends during his earthly life.
But we celebrate their lives not simply because of their intimacy with Jesus, but because they represent three important aspects of being a follower of Jesus. Resurrection life, active discipleship, and the willingness to pray and learn from Christ.
As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together this morning, I pray that we all may be strengthened for the journey ahead. May we learn from Christ, may we seek to follow him actively and may we always keep our eyes on the resurrection. Amen
Showing posts with label prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prayer. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Monday, January 21, 2008
Monday 21 January - Prayers for Christian Unity
This was preached at the first of Five services this week held by our 'Churches Together' to celebrate the Week of Christian Unity. The texts are: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-18 and Luke 18:1-8
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Introduction
This week we’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of Prayer for Christian Unity. This is an observance that’s dear to my heart so I’m very happy to be here praying with you as an ecumenical Christian community this afternoon. I think that those of us participating in this week of prayer are demonstrating unity in a simple and practical way, and I think that this is important to acknowledge.
Of course, for some people, the concept of 100 years of praying for Christian unity more than just a little ironic. An acquaintance remarked that 100 years of praying for something that’s never happened rather indicates to him that the whole exercise has been a failure. A writer for The New York Times was slightly more charitable, wondering in print whether the movement was actually a victim of its own success.
Practising Unity
‘Unity’ was one of the challenges that the Apostle Paul was addressing in his letter to the Thessalonians. And today’s Epistle reading ends with Paul’s advice to those seeking unity to: ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances.’
What does it mean to pray without ceasing? As Christian people, prayer is not just confined to our ‘spiritual life’ but our whole lives are to be a seeking of the Lord. We are called to be persistent in prayer like the widow, convinced that in seeking we shall find.
Paul gives other instructions to the Christian community in Thessalonica that is in need of a spirit of unity: respect those who labour among you; esteem others in love; be at peace among yourselves; admonish the idlers; encourage the faint-hearted; help the weak. These are his instructions for unity – instructions that might seem a bit bizarre until we recognise that, it is often in working together toward a common cause that people learn to respect those who are different.
St Francis of Assisi said: ‘Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words’. In paying tribute to Rob Frost, a Methodist minister and evangelist who died recently, someone said: ‘He didn’t just preach the Gospel, he was a free sample of the Gospel’.
Prayer Changes Us
To me, these are examples of Christian lives lived out as prayer. Today’s gospel reading suggests that prayer can change God, but I suspect that the real benefit of prayer it that it changes us.
The heart of prayer is not being in a room on our own asking for God to change the world. The heart of prayer is, I think, our own changed lives so that there is something about us and the way that we live that turns us into a ‘free sample’ of the Gospel.
The author Margaret Silf, who writes mainly on the subject of prayer, talks about intercessory prayer (prayer for the world and for others) as being an exercise in drawing others into God’s love. She describes the image of a circle with God in the centre.
We can think of our closest loved ones and our dearest intentions as being very close to us on the circle, immediately to our right or to our left. Directly opposite us we can think of those people and intentions that we find most difficult to pray for – perhaps impossible to pray for.
Praying for others is, she says, like drawing those people and intentions into the love of God in the centre of the circle along with ourselves. I find this image helpful because I can use this picture to pray for loved ones when I have run out of words. And I can even use this image to pray for people or for intentions who I find difficult or impossible to pray for otherwise.
For instance, instead of praying that God will harm the National Socialist Party, I can simply draw the members of the party into the love of God so that instead of praying that violence will overcome violence, my prayer becomes a request that hatred be replaced by the love of God.
Persistence Pays Off
I have to disagree with my acquaintance who said that praying for Christian unity for 100 years suggests that the exercise has been futile. I agree more with the writer of The New York Times that, if anything, the movement has been a victim of its own success.
If we think about the centre of the circle, if we use ‘God’s love’ as a plumb line to measure what has happened 100 years, I think we can see that prayers have been answered and that they continue to be answered. Prayer for Christian unity has certainly changed the way that Christians behave toward one another over the last 100 years and I believe that it is only the Holy Spirit who could have brought that change about.
Of course, we still have a long way to go and the way that God answers our prayer for unity will inevitably not conform to someone’s preconceived ideas.
However, our Gospel reading encourages us to be persistent in our prayer. If even a corrupt human judge eventually honours persistent petitions, why should we doubt that our loving Father hears and answers our prayers?
Conclusion
So my prayer this afternoon is that as Christians we continue to pray for the unity of the Christian church. And I pray that our prayers will change us as much as they change God and that all our actions may witness to the love of God. I pray that, through prayer and discipleship, we may all become free samples of the Gospel. Amen
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Introduction
This week we’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of Prayer for Christian Unity. This is an observance that’s dear to my heart so I’m very happy to be here praying with you as an ecumenical Christian community this afternoon. I think that those of us participating in this week of prayer are demonstrating unity in a simple and practical way, and I think that this is important to acknowledge.
Of course, for some people, the concept of 100 years of praying for Christian unity more than just a little ironic. An acquaintance remarked that 100 years of praying for something that’s never happened rather indicates to him that the whole exercise has been a failure. A writer for The New York Times was slightly more charitable, wondering in print whether the movement was actually a victim of its own success.
Practising Unity
‘Unity’ was one of the challenges that the Apostle Paul was addressing in his letter to the Thessalonians. And today’s Epistle reading ends with Paul’s advice to those seeking unity to: ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances.’
What does it mean to pray without ceasing? As Christian people, prayer is not just confined to our ‘spiritual life’ but our whole lives are to be a seeking of the Lord. We are called to be persistent in prayer like the widow, convinced that in seeking we shall find.
Paul gives other instructions to the Christian community in Thessalonica that is in need of a spirit of unity: respect those who labour among you; esteem others in love; be at peace among yourselves; admonish the idlers; encourage the faint-hearted; help the weak. These are his instructions for unity – instructions that might seem a bit bizarre until we recognise that, it is often in working together toward a common cause that people learn to respect those who are different.
St Francis of Assisi said: ‘Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words’. In paying tribute to Rob Frost, a Methodist minister and evangelist who died recently, someone said: ‘He didn’t just preach the Gospel, he was a free sample of the Gospel’.
Prayer Changes Us
To me, these are examples of Christian lives lived out as prayer. Today’s gospel reading suggests that prayer can change God, but I suspect that the real benefit of prayer it that it changes us.
The heart of prayer is not being in a room on our own asking for God to change the world. The heart of prayer is, I think, our own changed lives so that there is something about us and the way that we live that turns us into a ‘free sample’ of the Gospel.
The author Margaret Silf, who writes mainly on the subject of prayer, talks about intercessory prayer (prayer for the world and for others) as being an exercise in drawing others into God’s love. She describes the image of a circle with God in the centre.
We can think of our closest loved ones and our dearest intentions as being very close to us on the circle, immediately to our right or to our left. Directly opposite us we can think of those people and intentions that we find most difficult to pray for – perhaps impossible to pray for.
Praying for others is, she says, like drawing those people and intentions into the love of God in the centre of the circle along with ourselves. I find this image helpful because I can use this picture to pray for loved ones when I have run out of words. And I can even use this image to pray for people or for intentions who I find difficult or impossible to pray for otherwise.
For instance, instead of praying that God will harm the National Socialist Party, I can simply draw the members of the party into the love of God so that instead of praying that violence will overcome violence, my prayer becomes a request that hatred be replaced by the love of God.
Persistence Pays Off
I have to disagree with my acquaintance who said that praying for Christian unity for 100 years suggests that the exercise has been futile. I agree more with the writer of The New York Times that, if anything, the movement has been a victim of its own success.
If we think about the centre of the circle, if we use ‘God’s love’ as a plumb line to measure what has happened 100 years, I think we can see that prayers have been answered and that they continue to be answered. Prayer for Christian unity has certainly changed the way that Christians behave toward one another over the last 100 years and I believe that it is only the Holy Spirit who could have brought that change about.
Of course, we still have a long way to go and the way that God answers our prayer for unity will inevitably not conform to someone’s preconceived ideas.
However, our Gospel reading encourages us to be persistent in our prayer. If even a corrupt human judge eventually honours persistent petitions, why should we doubt that our loving Father hears and answers our prayers?
Conclusion
So my prayer this afternoon is that as Christians we continue to pray for the unity of the Christian church. And I pray that our prayers will change us as much as they change God and that all our actions may witness to the love of God. I pray that, through prayer and discipleship, we may all become free samples of the Gospel. Amen
Sunday 20 January 2008 - Persistent Prayer
This is a non-lectionary sermon that was inspired by the readings from the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity whose theme this year is 'pray without ceasing'. It's loosely based on Luke 18:1-14
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Prayer in Luke
This evening’s Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Luke. And one of the recurring themes in Luke is the theme of prayer.
In the bible-reading scheme that we use on Sunday mornings, the two stories that we heard earlier are normally divided up. And so on one Sunday we hear the story of the widow and the unjust judge. And on the next Sunday we hear the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. And we’re used to concentrating on the meaning of each one of these stories separately.
However, I think that Luke also put them together for a reason. Together, the two stories tell us: on the one hand, be persistent in prayer and; on the other hand, don’t be prideful in your prayer either.
I think that this balance between persistence and pride is actually a very difficult balance to strike. Speaking for myself, I know that I swing back and forth between these two extremes of praying persistently and pridefully and I expect that many of us do.
In any case, this difficult balance is one reason that preaching about trying to achieve a balance is also difficult. For what they are worth, here are some thoughts.
Dogged Persistence
First of all, I want to talk about dogged persistence. The kind of dogged persistence that the widow showed in asking for justice against her opponent.
But I don’t want to think about this story in the very literal way of ‘If you pester God long enough for want, your prayer will eventually be granted.’ I simply want to think for a bit about the value of dogged persistence when it comes to the very act of praying itself.
There is a phrase that has been used in child-rearing that I hope society is now beginning to understand the folly of. That phrase is ‘Quality time.’ The implication is that as long as we spend quality time with our children, we don’t need to worry about the quantity of time that we spend with them.
What’s wrong with this picture is that children do need quantity-time with their parents. Quantity-time is how children bond with their parents, how they learn by imitation and how they learn to relax and be themselves in their parents’ presence. An intense, short period of time spent with his mother or father is just going to make the child anxious to ‘get it right’. The child may learn the value of performing in front of his parent, but it’s not a real, long-term relationship.
And I think it’s the same thing with prayer. I think that regular time before God – regular prayer time – is a very important practice to try to cultivate. Sure, it’s wonderful when our prayers seem to flow out of us spontaneously. And, yes, it’s difficult, or boring or a struggle, to sit down to pray when we’re angry with God, when we don’t perceive his presence or when we simply don’t have anything to say to him.
And I suspect that we’ve all been in one of those situations – if not others – in the course of our Christian lives. But I actually think it’s important to have a regular time of prayer even in times – maybe especially in times – when we can’t pray.
Pray as You Can, not as you Can’t
But what is a person to do in these instances? How do you pray when you can’t pray? Well, everyone is different, and my second point this evening is ‘Pray as you Can, not as you Can’t’.
Particularly when we feel like we don’t have anything to say to God, prayer-time can be a real struggle. In this instance, I think it’s helpful to have a range things that you know you can ‘do’ even when you feel that you can’t talk to God.
And I think that this something that is often personal and sometimes it’s a matter of trial and error. Sometimes we have to try approaches and see if they work or we can ask others what they do and see if these approaches work for us.
Personally speaking, I’ve found that using written devotions is helpful; I can read through these and let my prayer be in the words. Also, simply reading the bible can be helpful when I feel I can’t talk to God.
I was hoping that perhaps we could share some prayer practices that we find helpful ourselves?
When we regularly spend time with God in prayer we are like a child who gets to spend ‘quantity time’ with his or her parents. This persistence – this quantity time – is how a real, everyday relationship with God comes to be established.
Our relationship with God is not just based on coming to him in the good times, but – if we’re persistent in prayer – we know what our relationship with him is like in the difficult times too. I think that every experience we have of praying through a difficult time gives us a better foundation for the next time of difficulty. Each experience gives us tools, and the knowledge of how we find it helpful to pray in times of crisis.
Pray without Pride
Our Gospel reading also suggests that when we pray, we should pray without pride. And that’s what makes preaching about prayer a difficult thing to do. As a preacher, I risk setting myself up as some kind of expert on prayer, which I’m not.
The irony of the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, of course, is that it’s the person who is supposedly the ‘bad pray-er’ who is actually the one who is making the authentic prayer. Perhaps part of the point of preaching on prayer is for me to lay my cards on the table and say that I don’t have all the answers. That I sometimes find prayer difficult too.
The other risk in preaching about prayer is that someone hears that there is some kind of ‘right’ style or methodology of praying. Sometimes we succumb to the temptation of thinking ‘my way of praying is better than your way of praying’.
And that’s why I think the message ‘pray as you can and not as you can’t’ is important. We are all different people, created unique by God. Some of us find practices helpful that are of no use to others. That is part of God’s rich variety in creation.
That said, this Gospel reading does tell us that there is a wrong attitude toward prayer – an attitude of pride. As one wag once said, if your God hates all the same people you hate, you had better start suspecting that you’ve created God in your own image rather than the other way around. It’s somewhat amusing as a saying, but there is a lot of truth in it, as illustrated by the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
Conclusion
Where is the Good News in all of this? Well, I hope that there is something like ‘good news’ in knowing that prayer is something that most Christians struggle with at one time or another. And I hope that there is Good News in the fact that scripture encourages us to be persistent in our prayers to God. And I think that there is Good News in Scripture’s promise that God hears our prayers, even if we feel that they are not be answered in the way we might like.
As we approach the Lord’s Table this evening, let us remember that God’s hospitality is open to everyone who will accept it and let us come into his presence.
The celebration of the Lord’s Table is also a prayer. It’s a prayer that we make together as a community. It’s a prayer that we make with real, physical things taken from our every day lives. And it’s a prayer where we have Jesus’ promise in scripture that he will be with us when we do it.
So when we come in a few minutes, I invite each of us to draw near to the Lord’s Table as a physical act of prayer. As your feet bring you to the Lord ’s Table and as you eat and drink, may these actions be acceptable to God as a prayer of intention to be in communion with him and with his church. Amen
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Prayer in Luke
This evening’s Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Luke. And one of the recurring themes in Luke is the theme of prayer.
In the bible-reading scheme that we use on Sunday mornings, the two stories that we heard earlier are normally divided up. And so on one Sunday we hear the story of the widow and the unjust judge. And on the next Sunday we hear the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. And we’re used to concentrating on the meaning of each one of these stories separately.
However, I think that Luke also put them together for a reason. Together, the two stories tell us: on the one hand, be persistent in prayer and; on the other hand, don’t be prideful in your prayer either.
I think that this balance between persistence and pride is actually a very difficult balance to strike. Speaking for myself, I know that I swing back and forth between these two extremes of praying persistently and pridefully and I expect that many of us do.
In any case, this difficult balance is one reason that preaching about trying to achieve a balance is also difficult. For what they are worth, here are some thoughts.
Dogged Persistence
First of all, I want to talk about dogged persistence. The kind of dogged persistence that the widow showed in asking for justice against her opponent.
But I don’t want to think about this story in the very literal way of ‘If you pester God long enough for want, your prayer will eventually be granted.’ I simply want to think for a bit about the value of dogged persistence when it comes to the very act of praying itself.
There is a phrase that has been used in child-rearing that I hope society is now beginning to understand the folly of. That phrase is ‘Quality time.’ The implication is that as long as we spend quality time with our children, we don’t need to worry about the quantity of time that we spend with them.
What’s wrong with this picture is that children do need quantity-time with their parents. Quantity-time is how children bond with their parents, how they learn by imitation and how they learn to relax and be themselves in their parents’ presence. An intense, short period of time spent with his mother or father is just going to make the child anxious to ‘get it right’. The child may learn the value of performing in front of his parent, but it’s not a real, long-term relationship.
And I think it’s the same thing with prayer. I think that regular time before God – regular prayer time – is a very important practice to try to cultivate. Sure, it’s wonderful when our prayers seem to flow out of us spontaneously. And, yes, it’s difficult, or boring or a struggle, to sit down to pray when we’re angry with God, when we don’t perceive his presence or when we simply don’t have anything to say to him.
And I suspect that we’ve all been in one of those situations – if not others – in the course of our Christian lives. But I actually think it’s important to have a regular time of prayer even in times – maybe especially in times – when we can’t pray.
Pray as You Can, not as you Can’t
But what is a person to do in these instances? How do you pray when you can’t pray? Well, everyone is different, and my second point this evening is ‘Pray as you Can, not as you Can’t’.
Particularly when we feel like we don’t have anything to say to God, prayer-time can be a real struggle. In this instance, I think it’s helpful to have a range things that you know you can ‘do’ even when you feel that you can’t talk to God.
And I think that this something that is often personal and sometimes it’s a matter of trial and error. Sometimes we have to try approaches and see if they work or we can ask others what they do and see if these approaches work for us.
Personally speaking, I’ve found that using written devotions is helpful; I can read through these and let my prayer be in the words. Also, simply reading the bible can be helpful when I feel I can’t talk to God.
I was hoping that perhaps we could share some prayer practices that we find helpful ourselves?
When we regularly spend time with God in prayer we are like a child who gets to spend ‘quantity time’ with his or her parents. This persistence – this quantity time – is how a real, everyday relationship with God comes to be established.
Our relationship with God is not just based on coming to him in the good times, but – if we’re persistent in prayer – we know what our relationship with him is like in the difficult times too. I think that every experience we have of praying through a difficult time gives us a better foundation for the next time of difficulty. Each experience gives us tools, and the knowledge of how we find it helpful to pray in times of crisis.
Pray without Pride
Our Gospel reading also suggests that when we pray, we should pray without pride. And that’s what makes preaching about prayer a difficult thing to do. As a preacher, I risk setting myself up as some kind of expert on prayer, which I’m not.
The irony of the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, of course, is that it’s the person who is supposedly the ‘bad pray-er’ who is actually the one who is making the authentic prayer. Perhaps part of the point of preaching on prayer is for me to lay my cards on the table and say that I don’t have all the answers. That I sometimes find prayer difficult too.
The other risk in preaching about prayer is that someone hears that there is some kind of ‘right’ style or methodology of praying. Sometimes we succumb to the temptation of thinking ‘my way of praying is better than your way of praying’.
And that’s why I think the message ‘pray as you can and not as you can’t’ is important. We are all different people, created unique by God. Some of us find practices helpful that are of no use to others. That is part of God’s rich variety in creation.
That said, this Gospel reading does tell us that there is a wrong attitude toward prayer – an attitude of pride. As one wag once said, if your God hates all the same people you hate, you had better start suspecting that you’ve created God in your own image rather than the other way around. It’s somewhat amusing as a saying, but there is a lot of truth in it, as illustrated by the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
Conclusion
Where is the Good News in all of this? Well, I hope that there is something like ‘good news’ in knowing that prayer is something that most Christians struggle with at one time or another. And I hope that there is Good News in the fact that scripture encourages us to be persistent in our prayers to God. And I think that there is Good News in Scripture’s promise that God hears our prayers, even if we feel that they are not be answered in the way we might like.
As we approach the Lord’s Table this evening, let us remember that God’s hospitality is open to everyone who will accept it and let us come into his presence.
The celebration of the Lord’s Table is also a prayer. It’s a prayer that we make together as a community. It’s a prayer that we make with real, physical things taken from our every day lives. And it’s a prayer where we have Jesus’ promise in scripture that he will be with us when we do it.
So when we come in a few minutes, I invite each of us to draw near to the Lord’s Table as a physical act of prayer. As your feet bring you to the Lord ’s Table and as you eat and drink, may these actions be acceptable to God as a prayer of intention to be in communion with him and with his church. Amen
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
17 December 2006 - Prayer and the Nearness of God
This is the sermon for Advent 3. The scripture readings are: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Philippians 4:4-7 and Luke 3:7-18
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Introduction
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. (Philippians 4:4-9)
It was the phrase ‘The Lord is near’ that drew me to this particular scripture reading this morning.
‘Well, of course, the Lord is near’ you might think ‘After all, it is Advent, when the Church celebrates the nearness of the Christ-child on Christmas morning.’ There are all sorts of reasons for rejoicing at the arrival of the Christ-child, all sorts of reasons for rejoicing at Christmas.
What really strikes me about these sentences from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, though, is the context in which they were written. Paul himself was in a Roman prison when he wrote these words, and he was facing execution. And the church to whom Paul wrote was a church that was encountering persecution.
You might very well expect this letter read something like: ‘Times are difficult, we are all suffering hardship, pain and persecution, but the Lord never told us that things were going to be easy.’ However, instead of taking a sombre tone, Paul uses the word ‘rejoice’ 14 times in this very short letter. Knowing this information, we can either admire Paul or we can think him foolish. The one thing that we can’t do, however, is to disregard these words as being written by someone who did not have experience of life or who didn’t know pain and suffering.
What was it that gave Paul this extraordinary perspective? How did Paul acquire his ability to rejoice in the face of prison and death? I think there are two key phrases in this morning’s Epistle reading. The first is ‘The Lord is near’ (verse 5) and the second is ‘In everything, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God’ (verse 6).
In fact, I’d like to argue that the statement ‘the Lord is near’ is a prayerful statement
Prayer as Relationship
I want to put forward the idea this morning that ‘Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God.’
I almost hate to use the phrase ‘a relationship with God’ because it’s become so over-used in Christian culture. But I think the idea of ‘relationship, not audience’ is helpful, and I’d like to spend some time unpacking that idea this morning.
Now, I have to confess that I’ve never had an audience with any dignitary I’ve never had an audience with the Queen or an audience with the Pope. I imagine that, before the actual audience, something formalised has to happen, such as receiving a letter from the Queen's staff or perhaps approaching the right people to join in with an organised audience with the Pope.
But whatever happens in an audience, you don’t form a relationship with that person whom you have gone to see. You don’t become the person’s friend and you definitely don’t become part of their life.
I suspect that most of us – myself included – have had experiences of treating our prayer-lives a lot like having an audience with God. We kind of ‘check in’ with God at the formal times. Maybe that’s Sunday morning church service, house group or our personal devotional times. (And there isn't anything wrong with that, per se) Then we sit and [gesture] ‘say’ our prayers to God. Most of us probably thank him for things and ask him for things. Maybe we also spend some time praising God. And then, like having an audience with the Queen, we finish our prayers with God, leave God and get back to our ‘real lives.’ Does any of this sound familiar?
But what about a form of prayer that focuses on the nearness of God? It seems to me that, in order to have a relationship with someone, that person has to be near. The person has to be present with us in our ordinary lives and he or she has to share our everyday concerns. The Queen doesn’t get a look-in here. Neither does the Pope. When was the last time you and the Queen commiserated together about British Gas’ price rises? I don’t think so.
I suspect that the apostle Paul knew something about the nearness of God in prayer. If Jewish prayer in the first century was anything like Jewish prayer today, everything that Paul did would have been an occasion for blessing God in prayer. Small, mundane things like opening one’s eyes in the morning, washing one’s hands, putting on one’s sandals, all required a prayer of blessing. And the prayers themselves would have focussed on God’s presence in those daily tasks.
As an example, here is the modern Jewish prayer that takes place when a person washes his or her hands before eating: ‘Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us to wash our hands.’
I think that, even though these prayers are formalised, they certainly do bring God into a person’s everyday life. Whatever else one can say about such prayers, they are not the prayers of a person having a formal audience with God. They are the prayers of an every-day relationship.
I’m not recommending that we all adapt the prayer practices of Orthodox Jews. I am, however, suggesting that we might not go too far wrong in considering whether the everydayness of such prayers might give us some inspiration with respect to being aware of the nearness of God.
Prayer as Listening
There is another aspect to ‘prayer as relationship’. This aspect is ‘listening’. If we are going to have a relationship with God, doing all the talking ourselves is not necessarily the best way of going about it.
As Christians, we say that we believe that: 1) God the Creator is everywhere holding us in being; 2) that we meet Jesus – the Son – in the people around us and that 3) through the Holy Spirit, God is in our own spirits. If we truly believe that God is to be found everywhere around us, then it is helpful to practice the mindfulness of God’s presence. It is incredibly helpful to listen to God. To be quiet and ‘just be’ with God.
Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God.
The Peace and Joy of Prayer
Paul suggests that there are great benefits to having a prayer-relationship with God. 'And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' (Philippians 4:7)
Again, I think that the analogy of ‘relationship’ is incredibly helpful here because we’re not talking about ‘prayer as magic’.
In my years as a Christian, I have heard a number of people complain that they didn’t feel that they could go to church anymore because their lives weren’t particularly happy or peaceful. These people sometimes felt that to be a “real” – or a “successful” - Christian, they had to be happy all the time. They felt that their troubles would be seen by the Church as some sort of a spiritual failure. Or maybe it was just that they themselves felt that they were spiritual failures.
I don’t think that an unrealistic happiness is the sort of peace that Paul is talking about – nor the sort of joy that he’s talking about either. And I don’t think it’s the sort of the joy that Zephaniah had. His was the joy of a Jerusalem retaken after destruction by an occupying force. This is a bittersweet joy, not a Pollyanna joy that refuses to confront suffering.
Consider what it is to have a relationship with someone who you trust. Perhaps it is a spouse, or maybe a long-term friend. Someone with whom you do not need to put on masks. Someone who you can trust to accept you as you are – neither over-dramatising your pain nor brushing it away because they are afraid of it. It is in such a relationship that we can experience peace and joy even in the middle of hardship. It is in such a relationship that we can let ourselves go in the good times, knowing that our friend will be happy for us.
But relationships take time. They take commitment. They are about giving and receiving, about speaking and listening. Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God. The Lord is near and constant mindfulness of the presence of God is the way that we can increase our experience of his nearness to us. Such a relationship can be a source of strength, of joy and of peace, even in difficult times.
Conclusion
In this third week of Advent, we draw ever nearer to the coming of Christ into our world.
Here and now, we also prepare our hearts to celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion as we draw near to the Lord at his table. We are mindful of the God who is near to us. We are mindful of the God whose Spirit is in us, the God who holds us in being and the God who meets with us in our brothers and sisters in Christ.
May the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
We pause now in silence to be mindful of his presence.
(Note to readers. I always leave a minute or two silence after every sermon.)
=====
Introduction
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. (Philippians 4:4-9)
It was the phrase ‘The Lord is near’ that drew me to this particular scripture reading this morning.
‘Well, of course, the Lord is near’ you might think ‘After all, it is Advent, when the Church celebrates the nearness of the Christ-child on Christmas morning.’ There are all sorts of reasons for rejoicing at the arrival of the Christ-child, all sorts of reasons for rejoicing at Christmas.
What really strikes me about these sentences from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, though, is the context in which they were written. Paul himself was in a Roman prison when he wrote these words, and he was facing execution. And the church to whom Paul wrote was a church that was encountering persecution.
You might very well expect this letter read something like: ‘Times are difficult, we are all suffering hardship, pain and persecution, but the Lord never told us that things were going to be easy.’ However, instead of taking a sombre tone, Paul uses the word ‘rejoice’ 14 times in this very short letter. Knowing this information, we can either admire Paul or we can think him foolish. The one thing that we can’t do, however, is to disregard these words as being written by someone who did not have experience of life or who didn’t know pain and suffering.
What was it that gave Paul this extraordinary perspective? How did Paul acquire his ability to rejoice in the face of prison and death? I think there are two key phrases in this morning’s Epistle reading. The first is ‘The Lord is near’ (verse 5) and the second is ‘In everything, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God’ (verse 6).
In fact, I’d like to argue that the statement ‘the Lord is near’ is a prayerful statement
Prayer as Relationship
I want to put forward the idea this morning that ‘Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God.’
I almost hate to use the phrase ‘a relationship with God’ because it’s become so over-used in Christian culture. But I think the idea of ‘relationship, not audience’ is helpful, and I’d like to spend some time unpacking that idea this morning.
Now, I have to confess that I’ve never had an audience with any dignitary I’ve never had an audience with the Queen or an audience with the Pope. I imagine that, before the actual audience, something formalised has to happen, such as receiving a letter from the Queen's staff or perhaps approaching the right people to join in with an organised audience with the Pope.
But whatever happens in an audience, you don’t form a relationship with that person whom you have gone to see. You don’t become the person’s friend and you definitely don’t become part of their life.
I suspect that most of us – myself included – have had experiences of treating our prayer-lives a lot like having an audience with God. We kind of ‘check in’ with God at the formal times. Maybe that’s Sunday morning church service, house group or our personal devotional times. (And there isn't anything wrong with that, per se) Then we sit and [gesture] ‘say’ our prayers to God. Most of us probably thank him for things and ask him for things. Maybe we also spend some time praising God. And then, like having an audience with the Queen, we finish our prayers with God, leave God and get back to our ‘real lives.’ Does any of this sound familiar?
But what about a form of prayer that focuses on the nearness of God? It seems to me that, in order to have a relationship with someone, that person has to be near. The person has to be present with us in our ordinary lives and he or she has to share our everyday concerns. The Queen doesn’t get a look-in here. Neither does the Pope. When was the last time you and the Queen commiserated together about British Gas’ price rises? I don’t think so.
I suspect that the apostle Paul knew something about the nearness of God in prayer. If Jewish prayer in the first century was anything like Jewish prayer today, everything that Paul did would have been an occasion for blessing God in prayer. Small, mundane things like opening one’s eyes in the morning, washing one’s hands, putting on one’s sandals, all required a prayer of blessing. And the prayers themselves would have focussed on God’s presence in those daily tasks.
As an example, here is the modern Jewish prayer that takes place when a person washes his or her hands before eating: ‘Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us to wash our hands.’
I think that, even though these prayers are formalised, they certainly do bring God into a person’s everyday life. Whatever else one can say about such prayers, they are not the prayers of a person having a formal audience with God. They are the prayers of an every-day relationship.
I’m not recommending that we all adapt the prayer practices of Orthodox Jews. I am, however, suggesting that we might not go too far wrong in considering whether the everydayness of such prayers might give us some inspiration with respect to being aware of the nearness of God.
Prayer as Listening
There is another aspect to ‘prayer as relationship’. This aspect is ‘listening’. If we are going to have a relationship with God, doing all the talking ourselves is not necessarily the best way of going about it.
As Christians, we say that we believe that: 1) God the Creator is everywhere holding us in being; 2) that we meet Jesus – the Son – in the people around us and that 3) through the Holy Spirit, God is in our own spirits. If we truly believe that God is to be found everywhere around us, then it is helpful to practice the mindfulness of God’s presence. It is incredibly helpful to listen to God. To be quiet and ‘just be’ with God.
Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God.
The Peace and Joy of Prayer
Paul suggests that there are great benefits to having a prayer-relationship with God. 'And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' (Philippians 4:7)
Again, I think that the analogy of ‘relationship’ is incredibly helpful here because we’re not talking about ‘prayer as magic’.
In my years as a Christian, I have heard a number of people complain that they didn’t feel that they could go to church anymore because their lives weren’t particularly happy or peaceful. These people sometimes felt that to be a “real” – or a “successful” - Christian, they had to be happy all the time. They felt that their troubles would be seen by the Church as some sort of a spiritual failure. Or maybe it was just that they themselves felt that they were spiritual failures.
I don’t think that an unrealistic happiness is the sort of peace that Paul is talking about – nor the sort of joy that he’s talking about either. And I don’t think it’s the sort of the joy that Zephaniah had. His was the joy of a Jerusalem retaken after destruction by an occupying force. This is a bittersweet joy, not a Pollyanna joy that refuses to confront suffering.
Consider what it is to have a relationship with someone who you trust. Perhaps it is a spouse, or maybe a long-term friend. Someone with whom you do not need to put on masks. Someone who you can trust to accept you as you are – neither over-dramatising your pain nor brushing it away because they are afraid of it. It is in such a relationship that we can experience peace and joy even in the middle of hardship. It is in such a relationship that we can let ourselves go in the good times, knowing that our friend will be happy for us.
But relationships take time. They take commitment. They are about giving and receiving, about speaking and listening. Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God. The Lord is near and constant mindfulness of the presence of God is the way that we can increase our experience of his nearness to us. Such a relationship can be a source of strength, of joy and of peace, even in difficult times.
Conclusion
In this third week of Advent, we draw ever nearer to the coming of Christ into our world.
Here and now, we also prepare our hearts to celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion as we draw near to the Lord at his table. We are mindful of the God who is near to us. We are mindful of the God whose Spirit is in us, the God who holds us in being and the God who meets with us in our brothers and sisters in Christ.
May the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
We pause now in silence to be mindful of his presence.
(Note to readers. I always leave a minute or two silence after every sermon.)
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