7/30/23 Sermon

7/30/23 Sermon – Rev. Quincy Worthington

 I hate praying.  I know.  What an awful thing for a minister to say. And maybe hate is a little strong of a term for how I actually feel about prayer.  I guess that needs some explanation too.  No one ever taught me how to pray.  In my house prayer was like crying... Only to be done in private when no one was looking.  So, I always just winged it.  

I don’t really hate it, I just don’t really know what to do.  You’d think I would be a trained “pray-er” by now...  But I’m not.  I just usually don’t know what I’m doing.  And actually my interior prayer life is different than my exterior prayer life.  I try to be more eloquent when praying with you all.  You know, there’s pressure there to say something profound and beautiful when you pray out loud or doing a blessing for a meal.  And then people find out you’re a minister and the “God is great, God is good and we thank God for our food”  doesn’t seem to cut for people.  And that’s my favorite prayer!

You know, another thing that bothers me about prayer is I’m afraid of the answers now.  Yeah, I’m afraid that God will actually answer my prayer because half the time I don’t know what I’m actually asking for.  Last time I prayed for patience I woke up with four kids. The sad thing is that I thought that I was already a pretty patient person until they came along.  I’ve come to fear the old adage of be careful what you pray for, you just may get it. But on the other hand, what if we don’t get what we pray for?

 I’ll never forget this... I’ll never forget my first week by myself as a chaplain’s intern at the hospital.  As a chaplain, you get almost unlimited access to the hospital and to information, but because of confidentiality issues, you can’t always share that information.  It was one of the first nights I was there by myself and I thought that I would swing by the surgical waiting area.  It was in a tucked away corner of the hospital  and I know how the waiting game is the worst part of the process.  So, I thought I would go check on people and just see how they were doing.  

 Lesson  #1:  Never walk into a place where people are waiting for someone in surgery and simply say, “Hello my name is Quincy and I’m the chaplain.”  The first lady I said that to burst into hysterics.  I created my own pastoral emergency.  After about 5 minutes I had her calmed down and assured enough I was just seeing how she was doing.  I then started introducing myself in a way I often times wish I still could:  Hi, I’m Quincy and I don’t know anything.  

Lesson #2:  Never assume that people are too busy to talk to you or don’t want to.  Whether you are a chaplain at a hospital or out at the grocery store, if you think someone wants to or needs to talk to you or pray with you offer it. The worst they’ll say is no, the best that will happen is that it will be an ultimately rewarding and satisfying experience. That night  I saw a group of three ladies in the surgical waiting area.  All three had computers out and were huddled in a corner and I told myself I didn’t want to interrupt them.  

An hour later I was walking around the Critical Care Unit and as I turned the corner I heard, “Oh thank Goodness here he is.” and a nurse and doctor were coming up to me.  Thankfully behind me was the actual Chaplain on call.  The doctor told us that a man had come up from surgery and they were trying their hardest to save his life right now.  His heart had stopped.  When we went into the waiting room to tell the family what we could tell them and what was happening, it was the three ladies on the computer.  My heart just sank.  

 We kept running back and forth between the family and the man’s room trying to find out what was going on and what we could do.  And thankfully, the family’s pastor came and was with them.  I went back to the man’s room to check on how things were going.  And one of the doctors came out and told me that the man had died, they had done all they could but he had died.  He told me to let the family know that someone would be in the conference room in a little bit to give them an update.  I wasn’t allowed to tell them anything.  I walked back to the conference room where they were with their pastor gathered in prayer, praying that their husband and father would make it through and yet I knew that he was already gone.  That this would be a prayer that would not seemingly be answered.  I knew.  They didn’t.  And they prayed he’d make it through it.

Its nights like that which will make you question what Luke is telling us here.  Even though the Greek suggests that this isn’t just something that we ask for once... that its ask and keep on asking, search and keep searching,  knock and keep on knocking, sometimes our diligent prayers seem to go unanswered. And I don’t think it’s because of a lack of faith or praying the wrong way or not praying enough...  

 It would be easy to write prayer off as a form of superstition, as something that doesn’t really work if we’ve never witnessed prayer working.  But For every case like this one, I’ve seen people in hopeless situations pull through miraculously.  I’ve had my own prayers answered and I know people who’ve had their prayers answered in very direct ways.  And so then its a mystery.  Maybe it’s something we’ll never understand.  

I think it’s true, though... I think it’s fair to say that God answers all our prayers but not in the way we expect.  And I don’t know what that says about why people have to die or suffer.  I don’t feel comfortable saying that these things happen to teach us something or to answer our prayers in some way.  That’s where I get stuck.  Yet, maybe we aren’t supposed to know all the answers.  Maybe we aren’t supposed to know God’s Will all the time or most of the time or maybe even some of the time. 

 The interesting thing, one of the things that we can easily overlook in this passage is where Jesus asks the disciples that if their child asks for fish, do they give the kid a snake.  Notice that Jesus doesn’t say that you give them a fish, but you don’t give them something harmful and dangerous. And I think that’s important.  I think that’s something crucial to faith and to prayer.  Because in many respects at the root of faith is trust; trusting that God gives us what we need, trusting that God somehow answers diligent prayer even if the answers aren’t what we expect.  

But we trust they are heard and they are answered.  What prayer does is focus us, it gives us a model of life that allows for something bigger than ourselves and in this passage it urges us to become living prayers.  The prayer that Jesus gives us, the one that is in shorter form here gives us a wonderful model for living our lives in an intentional relationship with God.

Our Father who art in Heaven Hallowed be thy name

Only God is worthy of our praise and God’s name is sacred.  It reminds us who we are supposed to focus on.

 Thy kingdom come thy will be done

It reminds us who we are working for - that its God’s will not our will that we’re supposed to be doing and its God’s kingdom, not our own that we’re working for.

On earth as it is in heaven

We’re here to bring a new order, a new kingdom here on earth.  We are to work at building God’s kingdom here and allow God to be in charge.

 Give us this day our daily bread

We should rely on God alone to provide our nourishment.  What we need comes from God and God provides. 

And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors

This tells us how we are to be in relationship with other people.  We make mistakes; all of us.  And we hurt each other too.  We need to let go of that though sometimes and allow for love.

 And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

There’s a lot of stuff out there that wants to distract us and keep us from doing what we know we should be doing: working for the kingdom, relying on God, and living in love rather than resentment.  This reminds us that we need to focus on God and God’s will.

 for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory for ever and ever.

Only God is infinite and ultimate and God holds all the keys.  Only God is worthy of our praise.

 Amen

Let it be so.

 And if we pray that prayer and pray it like Luke is suggesting to us in this passage.  If we are to ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking, if we pray incessantly, constantly praying, our lives become prayers.  Everything we do becomes a prayer because we begin to pray without ceasing.  Imagine how different this world would be if that is how we prayed, if we prayed with our entire lives.  If every action we did was done as a prayer.  I would imagine that everything would become richer.  Our relationships with people would change.  The way we approach work would change.  The way we view the world would change. 

And it wouldn’t matter if we always got it right, as it were.  It wouldn’t matter if we said the right words or always believed the right things.  What matters is that we do it; that we pray and keep praying.  We ask and keep asking.  We knock and keep knocking.  We never allow ourselves to stop.  It’s hard to say what would happen.  I’ve given up trying to put expectations on prayer.  But we would acknowledge that despite what comes down the pike at us. No matter what the world threw at us, somehow in some way God’s kingdom has come and that God’s will is being done- on earth as it is in heaven.  And that is a prayer that I love praying.