Persistant Prayer

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Luke 18:1-8

When I was a child I spent many weekends at my best friend Ronnie’s house.  As he lived across town, it was too far for a kid to walk on his own.  I needed a ride to get there.  As my parents worked on Saturday, I would often have to wait for Ronnie and someone from his house to come and get me.  Ronnie would arrange that on his end.  We’d be on the phone and he would say “Pops says he can come get you.  We’ll be there in a few.”  The assumption was a few minutes.  I would stand at the living room window watching and waiting.  An hour would pass, an hour and a half.  I’d call again wondering where they were.  “He says we’ll leave in ten minutes.”  Another hour or so would pass while I stood staring out the window, watching and waiting.  I’d call again.  “We’re on our way.”  Another hour or so goes by.  I’m not exaggerating.  I spent many Saturdays, morning and afternoon, staring out that window waiting.  I’d call again.  “Are you coming.”  “Let me go check what’s up.”  I’d hear them bicker a bit in the background.  He’d come back to the phone. “Leaving now.”  A half hour later, he would show up with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend to get me.  Watching and waiting.  I wonder if I would have ever made it to his house if I had not kept calling.  I have no idea.  I don’t know what was going on Ronnie’s end of things.  Was his dad forgetful or had something more important going on. I don’t know.

Looking at our reading, this continual and persistent praying seems to be what faithfulness is and it almost seems like hope.  Jesus asked his disciples that rhetorical question, “When the Son of Man comes will he find faithfulness on the earth?”  That question comes at the end of a parable in which he was teaching them about their need to pray persistently so that they do not lose hope in God and fall away.  Jesus knew that being his faithful disciples in this world that crucifies its hope was going to get tough for them.  It was going to be quite difficult to live faithfully, which is to live according to hope by showing unconditional and forgiving love and steadfast commitment to Christian fellowship.  He likened this task to the hopeless impossibility of a falsely accused widow seeking vindication for her tarnished honour by going to a crooked judge who just likes to see people put to shame.  You ask and you wait.  You ask and you wait.  You ask and you wait.  You ask and you wait.  You keep at it until you’ve gotten on the judge’s (God’s) nerves enough that he grants your request.  That getting on God’s nerves part is probably Jesus showing a sense of humour, but we get the point.  We can relate to that widow.  So often when we pray, we do so wondering what it's going to take to get some action out of God, but then in time, God does act.

Praying continually and persistently is necessary to having faith and being faithful.  Apart from it, Jesus warns his disciples that they would fall into what we translate rather weakly as discouragement or a loss of heart. I’m going to get your Greek lesson out of the way quickly this morning.  The word Jesus uses quite literally means “in evil doing.”  The word is enkakeo (Those who like playing with Spanish homonyms think en caca.) and there are two senses in the way it gets used.  It can be either “to treat others badly or evilly” or “to wrongly cease doing something” meaning to quit on people or to leave fellowship for wrong reasons.  So, without this habit of continual, persistent prayer Jesus’ disciples will fall into the evil of a discouraged heart that leads them away from Christian fellowship or even to turn on it and treat it badly.

For time’s sake, instead of tracing this parable out in depth I’ll just go straight to the point and say that there is a correlation between Jesus’ disciples learning to pray continuously, persistently and the continuance of Christian community on earth.  Without this discipline, the habit of continual prayer among the disciples of Jesus, the church perishes.  It is in prayer that the personal faith, hope, and love that are the seeds of Christian community take root and sprout.  In prayer by the working of the Holy Spirit God changes us, transforms us to be in the nature of his children, Christ-like as Jesus is his Son.  As children trust their parents for everything, so prayer makes us look to our Father in heaven and trust him for everything. 

So, what is continual, persistent prayer?  Well, what goes on in our heads anyway? All of us worry.  We worry instinctively.  Apart from worry, we usually just let our minds go on in their own little worlds of imaginary conversations around emotions we can’t quite name.  Sometimes we get ideas.  A few of us can actually sit and think and sort things out.  Mostly, we just let our minds get preoccupied with whatever.  Continual, persistent prayer is taking control of our thought world with prayer, focusing on the things of God rather than the things of me. It’s how we turn over to the things in life that most concern us…again and again until God sorts it out.  Let me give you some other suggestions for continual, persistent prayer.  

First, there is finding a specific prayer to pray over and over in those times when we’re just letting our minds graze the green pastures of nattering, persistent, intrusive thoughts.  I like the Lord’s Prayer for this.  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” and so on.  I pray this prayer and think about what it means quite a lot, especially “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”  If I wake up in the middle of the night, I wait and listen if anyone in particular comes to mind then after that I just keep saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over in my head until I fall asleep.   When I’m exercising or cooking dinner or working in the yard or driving or grocery shopping, I pray the Lord’s Prayer over and over.  In fact, if I were laid up in the hospital or lying on my deathbed, praying the Lord’s Prayer over and over would likely be where my mind would be.

A more mission-oriented way of doing continual, persistent prayer would be to walk around our neighbourhoods praying for everyone.  Figure out when people are most active and get out there so you can actually see them and hear them.  There’s also actually talking to our neighbours and finding out what’s going on in their lives and keeping it in mind and praying about it.  If they are worried about something, bear that worry with them through prayer.  If they are okay with it, pray with them.  When we’re out and about we can take notice of the people around us and pray inwardly, “Lord, bless that person.”  If we see a young family walking a baby carriage up the street, if you’ve had kids you know what they’re going through, pray for them.

 We can make our homes prayer hubs.  Anybody that comes into our homes does not leave without us having first prayed for them.  This is especially so for our children and grandchildren.  If you start a ministry like that, be prepared for in time people will start coming to you. 

Some of you might be thinking “that’s what ministers are supposed to do.”  No, it’s what we do.  We pray.  That’s faith, faithfulness, loyalty, fidelity.  Prayer is the inroad of the Kingdom of Heaven coming to earth.  When people in churches take up this habit, this ministry of continual, persistent prayer, churches change because God begins to change the people in them.  If we are to take Jesus seriously in this passage, it is when we, his followers, depart from praying continually and persistently that churches become social clubs, or go into survival mode and die.  

So, if Jesus were to return today and come to this church would he find faith?  Would he find us praying?  Let us not forget that our God is not an unjust judge.  Our God deals in things like healing, hope, restoration, reconciliation, forgiveness, and even resurrection.  Let us not fall into the evil of disheartenment that destroys Christian fellowship.  Take up the work of continual, persistent prayer. Amen.

 

Thine Is the Kingdom, Power, and Glory

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Matthew 6:5-13

This past little while we’ve been working through the Lord’s Prayer and I would like to wind it all up and highlight a few things as a matter of summation just so they are in writing for posterity’s sake.  So, the Lord’s Prayer.  Jesus gave it to his disciples to pray when they pray, not if they pray. It occurs in two places in the Bible: Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel.  Oddly, you will notice they are different from each other just as you will notice that the Lord’s Prayer, we pray on Sunday morning is different than either of those.  Matthew and Luke aren’t all that different so I’ll let that sleeping dog lie.  But it is important to note why the Prayer as we pray it is different from what it is in the Bible.

The Prayer as we pray it today is the product of a church that had become established.  In the 300’s and 400’s persecution of Christians by the state had ceased making it so that the Lord’s Prayer wasn’t so much a prayer for bringing in the Kingdom of God.  But rather, the “atmosphere” of the Prayer became daily life.

Jesus gave this prayer to his disciples under the expectation that they would be persecuted for their loyalty to him.  They lived in a world oppressively governed by arguably insane Roman Emperors who lived in a faraway place called Rome and thought themselves to be gods.  They loved being called Lord, Saviour, and Son of God.  The coinage minted during their reigns to be circulated all over the empire bore pictures of themselves and those titles; little pocket idols.  They extended their rule along with a system of taxation throughout the Empire by means of corrupt political leaders who wielded the power of the most brutal and efficient military the world had ever known.   

The early Christians went forth into the world to spread the Kingdom of God embodied in the fellowship of the Church.  They proclaimed the message that Jesus, the Messiah of the Jews, was the world’s true Lord and Saviour and really was the Son of God.  He was crucified but God raised him from the dead.  His death was for the forgiveness of sins and by his resurrection death, sin, evil, and the Evil One had all been defeated.  Jesus ascended into heaven to be crowned Lord of all creation and took his place at the right hand of God, his Father, awaiting the Day that the Father says “Enough” and sends him back to establish God’s kingdom on earth once and for all.  God’s kingdom will be known not for oppression, corruption, military thugs, and taxation but for justice, peace, economic equality, unconditional love, and forgiveness.  On that Day, there will be Recreation and Resurrection.  There will be a great feast, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, as well as a great judgement from which no one is excluded.  Loyalty to Jesus and the extent to which we have loved and forgiven others will be factors in how that process goes for each of us.

The first Christians also believed that behind the scenes of the reality that we can see, there is another one full of principalities and powers that have sway in what happens in our reality.  There are angels and there are demons.  In the unseen realm, God gets his way unhindered.  But it also needs to be said that what goes on in the unseen reality has to take into account what we do here in the seen reality.  God in love for us has given us free will and that, dear friends, complicates things with respect to the appearance of whether or not God is really in control.  For, too often it appears as though that dastardly enemy, Satan, the Evil One is in control even though he was defeated by Jesus by means of his death and resurrection.  Yet, the Evil One still hangs around because of us and our free will and God’s respecting of that.  But it won’t go on forever. The early Christians believed their true struggle was against the behind-the-scenes powers that Satan was using to influence every individual person as the line between good and evil runs through each of us.  As they went throughout the world proclaiming the Gospel, the Church spread and Christians were persecuted for it.

Well, that’s about the best I can do to paint the Biblical worldview of the early church.  That was the context in which they lived and in accordance with it Jesus taught them to pray to God, his Father as our Father in heaven – a very unusual way of addressing God.  No other god would tolerate that kind of familiarity.  God, our Father, his name is hallowed meaning holy which means different from all the others.  A name is a reputation gained from the way one has exercised their power.  Our Father, unlike anything or anyone else we might make into a god to worship and serve, actually loves us.  He is for us.  He gives life.  He heals, renews, restores, reconciles, forgives, even resurrects.  He listens and answers.  He even gives us his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, as a deposit on the Good that is to come when Jesus returns.  Anything else we could make into a god – money, power, celebrity, sex, a substance, work, even family – will only take life from us.

As the early church went into the world to proclaim the Gospel that this good God was saving the world through the Lordship of Jesus the Christ made evident in Christian community, they prayed “Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.”  God’s Kingdom comes through prayer and prayerful people just as we sing in that old hymn, “Thy kingdom come on bended knee.”  Praying for the coming of the Kingdom and for God’s will to be done helps us to focus on it, desire it, and realize it when Kingdom things happen.

We pray for a taste now of that feast to come – the joy, the new life, the fellowship of Love.  “Give us today the Bread of the Day.”  The bread of that Day is Jesus himself, the new life he has to give through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The Presence of God with us is that small taste now of the good feast we will have in his kingdom.

The way of Jesus and his kingdom is most poignantly felt and displayed when we forgive those who have hurt us, even those we would call enemies.  Forgiving is so important that Jesus tells us to pray that God forgive us in accordance with how we forgive others.  The alternative is bearing a grudge and we know that if you bear a grudge long enough, it will eat at you like a cancer.  Forgive!

Jesus then tells us to pray that our Father not lead us or bring us to the time of trial: not temptation as we know the prayer, but trial.  A trial is something that happens that is bad enough and undeserved enough that it could make us walk away from Jesus and our loyalty to him.  These trials are orchestrated by the Evil One and carried out in ways personal to us…our worst fears, our weakest moments…and yes, God lets them happen as he did in the story of Job.  But God wouldn’t let them happen to us if he didn’t have faith in us.  Moreover, our awareness of God’s Presence with us and his strengthening sees us through.  

The last line of the Lord’s Prayer as we pray it on Sunday is actually not in the Biblical Prayer.  It’s a doxology, a praise – For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever.  It was customary back then for prayers, especially prayers in the Bible, to end with a doxology and it would seem odd that Jesus didn’t include one.  So, as this doxology isn’t biblical, so to speak, I guess I have license to say what I will about it.  So, take what I say with a grain of salt.

I see this doxology, this moment of praise at the end of the Lord’s Prayer as a sort of reminder.  First, it is a reminder to us that no matter what, come what may, throughout it all things are in God’s hands and at the end of the day God will be praised.  Second, it is a reminder as well as a snub to Satan to pray this prayer and say this doxology while in the midst of the trials he has orchestrated in an attempt to destroy our faith in God, our loyalty to Jesus.  

I have lived through trials, through nightmares in my life from which I could not wake up.  Nightmares that only God can end.  I have learned that in the midst of these trials it is best to just keep praying.  When my thoughts get buried in rumination, dwelling on the hurt, carrying on silent conversations in my head directed at those who hurt me, pointing blame, wondering where God is, I stop myself by praying the Lord’s Prayer over and over and over and over.  Pray without ceasing Paul tells us.  I make myself ruminate on how God in his hallowed-ness has been faithful in love towards me and made his kingdom and will arise in my life time and again and will do so again and again even when all Hell has broken loose.  I sit still in the peacefulness of his Presence knowing that God is God, knowing that I am his beloved child.  I pray for the strength to forgive those who have hurt me and pray that God will bless them.  I pray for God to strengthen me through the trial reminding myself that ultimately it is Satan just trying to beat me and we can beat him because Jesus already has. 

And now the final reminder that arises from the doxology.  I know that the kingdom and the power and the glory belong to our Father in heaven.  I know I am God’s beloved child.  But when you’re in the middle of a trial, living a nightmare that you can’t wake up from, a nightmare only God can end, a nightmare you don’t understand, you just know it’s not deserved, and it hurts…in the midst of a trial you just want God, whose truly is the kingdom and the power and the glory,…you just want God to step up and be God.  Like the disciples on the Seas of Galilee in a violent windstorm in the swamping boat with Jesus sleeping on pillows in the stern, you want your Father to wake up and do the God thing.  To pray “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory” can be for us a way of reminding God of who he is and it’s okay to do that.  Moses did it.  Many of the Psalmists and prophets did it.  It’s okay to be angry with God.  But remember, he will in the end prove himself faithful to you.  You will yet again praise him.  His power is made perfect in weakness. God’s Presence will be with you.  He will strengthen you to the end…and it will end.  Amen.