Sermon - "Prayer: Being Bent Toward God"

"Prayer: Being Bent Toward God"
Luke 11:1-13  

(We'll see how the week goes, but I might post more than one rewritten sermon on this significant text dealing with Jesus sharing some thoughts about praying. This one is of a little more personal nature. The essence of it was created/crafted/inspired/gleaned in response to a request by the current pastor of Maple Grove, Rev. Glenn Schwerdtfeger, shortly after he began his appointment there - a kind gesture indeed. His intriguing and appropriate request was that I consider prayer and what it has been like for me since my diagnosis of ALS and incapacity leave.)

A few weeks before I was to share the sermon, I received a Facebook message from a ministerial friend, Dave Beckett, serving as a District Superintendent in the Alaska United Methodist Church Conference. He asked me what I consider to be an awesome question.  "How do you want me to pray for you?" he asked. It's a question I wished I had asked more often in my own pastoral ministry before I launched into praying with someone.

Frankly, it caused me to ponder what my own praying had been like since diagnosis. Quite honestly, and I hope not shockingly or disappointedly to you, it has not been to be miraculously physically healed.  Don't get me wrong, I'd love for ALS to go away.  It's just that, that's not the way I understand God to work - or prayer to work for that matter. Those of you who know me have heard me share before that I'm not particularly fond of the idea that it's because of God’s grace that one family's house isn't destroyed when all the others in the area are. I don't believe God decides athletic events. Prayers aren't going to help the Browns win games. God doesn't cause players to miss tackles or score touchdowns. God doesn't cause innocent people to die in airplane crashes because one person on the plane had an affair! American soldiers dying in war is not God's judgment on our nation for changing attitudes about gays! Illnesses are not God's way of telling us we need to change our lifestyle. Some illnesses may indeed be a result of bad choices on our part, but they are the natural results of our mistakes/misdeeds/mistreatment and not God's selective enforcement of the laws of nature! I personally don’t think it's sound theology to promote an understanding of God as genie-like, a power who arbitrarily chooses some to get better and some not based on how many people are praying for the person or situation or even based on the amount of faith the one in need has or doesn't have, and especially not simply because God is a puppeteer-like being moving the strings of all of us human beings as we go through life.

So, what has my prayer life been like since diagnosis? What have I been praying about? Well, I've been praying for those doing research - that they will find treatments/cures that will bring this disease to its knees - for some understanding of the causes, if there are any. I've been praying for scientists and researchers and doctors and nurses and the miracles they are looking to discover in this arena just like they have in so many others over the centuries. I think miracles happen every day in hospitals in our communities, in our nation, and around the world because of the curiosity and intelligence of those who research the wonders of God's creation. God is the creator - scientists are those who help us understand how God did it and what all God did and what God continues to do as this world and we humans continue to evolve. And so, I've been praying for their continued work.

I also have been praying that God would be with me - that I would know God's comfort, God's peace - that those around me trying to help would not have to be put through too much and would also know God's comfort, peace, strength.

Jesus' disciples had observed on several occasions that Jesus prayed and after he prayed some curious/interesting things happened. It caused them to wonder about his prayer life - how he prayed - what he prayed about. Leading up to this interchange, Luke recorded the time when he was baptized; the time when he went out to the mountains and prayed all night and the next morning selected twelve to be his disciples; the time when Jesus privately prayed while the disciples were nearby and Jesus asked them what others were saying about him, what they thought about those thoughts and their own; and Peter boldly stated that he believed him to be "The Christ of God!" – and finally, there is the wondrous story of the transfiguration which James, Peter, and John observed, again on a mountain.

I'm sure these were not the only times Jesus prayed. But they were certainly times when something significant happened after his spending time in prayer or during it thus earning for it a place in Luke's report on Jesus' life from his perspective.

Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem and Jesus paused to pray, and when he was finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, you know, like your cousin John taught his disciples."

You've probably heard sermons before on this text and remember that the custom was for religious leaders to teach their followers a simple prayer that they could regularly use to remind them who they were and what they were about. I'm also going to assume you've heard a fair number of sermons on this text - the prayer itself and the little story following - maybe even a series with a phrase each week being reflected upon. I'm not going to repeat those efforts in this sermon.

What I want to do instead is move to a sort of summation of what I think is a take-away from this portion of Luke's accounting of things in his encounter between Jesus and his followers. When his disciples asked him about prayer, he modeled for them a prayer. But, the Lord's Prayer is not just a model for praying. It's also, if you will, a summary of what it means to live a Christian life. The prayer sums up, in a very condensed version to be sure, the way Jesus read and responded to the signs from God in his life - the way in which he understood his own vocation and mission and the way he invites his followers to share in it. "The Lord's Prayer" is a vignette in which we can see Jesus, what he was about, and what our lives as followers can be.

The Lord's Prayer reveals what it takes for us to be formed into faithful followers. We are to take up the way of life described in the prayer: God's kingdom is to come among us - God's will is to be done in us and through us - we are to forgive others and seek God's forgiveness - that's what we pray will happen when we pray The Lord's Prayer.

One of our United Methodist bishops, William Willimon, once noted that by praying The Lord's Prayer we're being made into a people whose life is a sign to the world that God has not abandoned the world but is still present in the world as a people on the move. Our lives are being bent toward God when we pray.  It's a lifelong act, this being bent toward the one that reaches out to us. (1)

We most often repeat this prayer when we are gathered together as the Body of Christ - when we worship as the corporate body. One of the things our repeating this prayer together reminds us of is that the Christian journey through life is tough to do alone.

Willimon went on to say: “We, who are accustomed to thinking of prayer as a good strategy for getting what we want, an appropriate opening for football games and important civic meetings, may be surprised that we must be taught to pray. This prayer is not for getting what we want but rather for bending our wants toward what God wants. This is the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer ‘in Jesus’ name,’ which means that this prayer, unlike some other modes of prayer, is distinctively related to the one who teaches us to pray. This prayer is the enactment of the story of a God who called a people into existence through Jesus. In praying this prayer we become the people God has called us to be in Jesus.” (2)

Praying bends us toward God.  That’s what I’ve been praying for since being diagnosed with ALS – to be bent toward God.

1. William Willimon, The Pulpit Resource, July, August, September, 1998, p. 16-17.
2. Ibid.