During my rotation at Novato Community hospital, I was called to the bedside of a twenty five year old man with a painful and incurable disease that would not kill him. It would only leave him more and more disabled and in pain that could not be completely addressed by opiates. He’d been in and out of hospitals for years, and here he was once again. He let me know that before now, he had always been able to talk himself back into believing in the goodness of God, but this time he said he’d just hit a wall and couldn’t get past the bleakness of his situation. Why?” he asked. “Why doesn’t God hear me? Why doesn’t God answer me? I am Christian. I have many people around the world praying for me. But things only get worse, with no end in sight. I’m not even praying for healing any more, just that I would find purpose and meaning – but I don’t hear God. Still, I am not done praying.”
When we enter into prayer – we enter into deep mystery and there are often not very satisfying answers to our questions. Because when there is a disparity – as there often is – between our expectations and the results – there are basically two options we have to explain this: The first option is about me – I’m not good enough. I’m not praying the right way. I don’t have enough faith. And the second option is about God: God doesn’t care. God doesn’t listen. Or finally, God doesn’t exist. Because most of us are pious, we usually take the first option and think that there is something wrong with us. But I’m guessing that some of you know people who have taken the other option – and given up on God.
What was remarkable about this young man who had suffered for most of his life, and could only see further suffering into the future – was that, as far as I could tell, he hadn’t taken either option. He clearly did not believe there was something wrong with him or with his faith or with the purity of his prayers. And he had not given up on God. What he had done instead was enter into deep relationship, into deep struggle with God, into conversation with Mystery where most of us would hesitate to step. But it is the kind of conversation that Jesus had in mind for his disciples. It is the kind of relationship into which the Christ invites you and me. Because basically, “a Christian is someone who is engaged in lifelong training in how to pray like Jesus.” Will Willimon
The first think I notice about this prayer is that it is not sentimental, or pious, or particularly devotional. It is a prayer for people on the road – a prayer for people who are figuring out, step by step, how to live with God in Christ.
So this prayer just starts - "Father." Not as someone who has to beg for a hearing, or for forgiveness, or for anything for that matter. Father. Almost like a teenage son asking for the car keys so he can take his girlfriend out. There’s an incredible presumption of familiarity and trust.
When my son was about three years old, he would make the rounds of the dinner table, looking to see what was on everyone else’s plate and asking for a share in whatever looked good. Somehow the zucchini on my plate looked better than the same thing on his plate. He was completely shameless in his asking.
And I say shameless for a reason – our translation uses the word “persistent” - the friend is persistent in his knocking and so gets a response of the three loaves of bread - it is easy to think that wearing out your knees in prayer is one way to get God to answer – but the word does not mean "persistent" so much as it means "shameless." Be shameless in your asking - it has a different flavor than persistent doesn’t it.
On the Good Shepherd camping trip last year, one of the young children, much like my son, quite shamelessly made the rounds asking each of us what our snack was. Someone had an orange, someone else a cookie, someone else a sandwich. Whatever she liked, she simply asked for a bite of it – or the whole thing if it was especially tasty to her. This is the kind of shameless asking that Jesus is recommending. The same kind of boldness. The same kind of familiarity and trust in our status as beloved children of God. By the way, my son grew up to have excellent table manners and is socially quite competent – so our parental indulgence did not spoil him! And I’m quite sure our young parishioner will have excellent manners as well! Jesus however, isn’t interested in our manners when it comes to prayer. He didn’t teach a formula - 2+2=4, pray this way and get this result. No, he taught boldness, confidence, trust and surrender. Above all, he taught childlike receptivity.
I was at the Kodet household earlier this week, and watched Todd carry his baby granddaughter, Charlotte, off to bed, wrapped up in a towel after her mommy had bathed her – Charlotte was completely relaxed and cooing in his arms – a picture of trust and happiness. Even when she began crying, her trust in the solidity of his arms did not diminish.
Jesus trusted - and when the soldiers were on the way to arrest him, he prayed: “Father, if it is your will take this cup away from me.” He asked, he pleaded, he wept– and he did not get what he wanted. Nevertheless, his trust remained, through the absence of any positive response from his Father to his prayer.
This is what I was privileged to be a part of in the hospital room of the young man hooked up to a morphine drip that barely masked his pain. A conversation that did not, from any human point of view, look satisfactory. A man willing to have deep relationship with God and not turn aside. In truth, I was the one tempted to turn aside by offering pat answers. But when you are face to face with the cross, with suffering, any glib response crumble to ash in one’s mouth. All I could do was to stay with him, listen to his questions and his struggle, and not turn away.
So the disciples asked Jesus what you and I would want to ask him – how to pray. And at one level, his answer is not very satisfying. He gives no mathematical formula, and he doesn’t give any assurances of outcome. In fact, if his life is any indication, there are certainly no assurances of the things we often pray for: ease, prosperity, health, lack of suffering. Quite the opposite, in fact.
On the other hand, what we are offered is of immensely greater value – and that is a living, amazing relationship of familiarity and boldness with God, an invitation to shamelessness on our part, in what we ask for and how we are invited to approach our God. This section on prayer ends with the assurance that God readily desires and is ready at any time to give us the gift of the Holy Spirit – of God with us – the Lord, the Giver of Life – the one who will sustain us in all trials and temptations and who will deliver us from all evil. The Holy Spirit is ours for the asking – our challenge is to receive. Receive. Receive. When we lift up our hearts before God, our hands open in prayer, it is this that we are truly praying for, asking for – and which we can, without any hesitation, affirm that God pours down upon us.
In this context, asking publically and in common, that God gift us with the presence and guidance and courage of the Holy Spirit, I turn to a vexing issue. As many of you know, Good Shepherd has been challenged for some time with the Gordian knot of a gift of twenty acres that entailed a bank loan, in that the guarantor of the loan became unable to follow through. We have an excellent negotiating team which has been working hard to resolve this for the past year – however, in this past week, Rabobank filed a complaint against the church for nonpayment of this loan. The Vestry has referred the lawsuit to our attorneys to evaluate our options and to advise us in responding to the bank’s lawsuit. The Vestry has asked the land committee to continue to work on solutions – and we will keep you informed of all material developments. Because matters like this requires that all communications between an attorney and client be kept confidential, however, we cannot respond to specific questions. What I can say is that, while the person who guaranteed the loan has also been sued, we don’t know of any basis by which anyone else – parishioner or Vestry member or priest, could be found responsible for this loan which was taken out in the name of the parish.
I know that this announcement kind of takes the wind out of the room – and that it most likely raises lots of questions and emotions. And my guess is that everything I’ve just preached about has likely flown out of your minds. The truth is, however, that this is precisely the type of situation in which disciples of Jesus flees to God, to pestering God shamelessly for what? For relief? For guidance? For bad things to go away? For solutions? Yes – for all that. But even more – for the Holy Spirit to descend, to cover, to encourage, to enable us to bear witness to the ways of the Kingdom. And as we run to God in prayer for the Parish, we will not just pray for ourselves, but for all those who are affected by economic downturns. We will pray for all those who need word of God’s Love – the Word which is the reason for our being and the wellspring of our life.
While the Land committee and Vestry are taking care of the legal issues, I would like to invite anyone who would like to form a weekly prayer group to see me after the service in the side chapel.
We pray, just as we live, just as we move and have our being, In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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