July 26th, 2010
A Matter of Faith
Based upon Luke 11:1-13, 9th Sunday after Pentecost, July 25, 2010
Rev. Mark Seifried at First Churches UCC and ABC in Northampton
I went on a road trip earlier last week with a 75-year-young widow to bless and scatter the ashes of her deceased husband into Narragansett Sound. I love this woman and was looking forward to spending a few quality hours with her. I also grew close to her husband and was looking forward to helping the family find closure after long struggles with his health prior to his death.
So, knowing my friend Sherry gets anxious about being on time, I showed up to her house 10 minutes before the prescribed time of 8:00 AM. Being a motherly type, she made sure that I used the bathroom, but asked me not to dilly dally. I didn’t so we got on the road before 8:00 – 15 minutes ahead of her documented and detailed schedule. Yes, she has the whole day planned to the minute, so that I could get back to Worcester and take a nap before heading out here for a pastoral visit and committee meeting. Did I tell you that Sherry was driving? She decided that I drove enough now that I’m commuting 8 to 10 hours a week. Besides, for more than 10 years, she hasn’t let anyone else chauffer her– it makes her nervous.
So, Sherry pulls away from her house like you would expect a sweet 75-year-old widow to drive: cautiously and almost a bit pokey. Well, that didn’t last long. Within 5 minutes she had me riding the phantom brake on the passenger side. She was driving like a 16-year old boy who can’t control himself because of raging hormones, and I’m thinking, “Lord, this is going to be a long day.” Well, 2 minutes later, it’s as if she transformed back to the cautious sweet woman I know and love. She goes through this routine a few times of driving slowly and then gunning it and is scaring the b’Jesus out of me. I ask her why she seems to be driving like Dr. Jeckyl and Mrs. Hyde. While going 55 in a 30-mile-an-hour zone, Sherry takes her eyes off the road to look at me and says, “I know where the cops sit all the time. I slow down when I’m close to the spots where I’ve been pulled over before. I wish I’d have brought the fuzz buster.”
And then we get on the interstate. Within a minute of her accelerating up to 85 miles an hour, I’m white knuckling the door handle, every muscle in my body is locked in place for impact. She says, “Reverend! Say a prayer that I don’t get a speeding ticket.” By this point, I am losing all semblance of peace, so I say, “Sherry, I don’t think God cares if you get a speeding ticket. In fact, it would be divine intervention if you did get one.”
She inquires, “Don’t you think God cares if we get you back in one piece.” To which I reply, “Yes M’am. I do think God cares. You, however, can afford a speeding ticket if you can charter a boat to scatter Joe’s ashes. Beside, we’re plenty early. We could spend a half hour on the side of the road, and still get there on time. I think you should pray that we get to Narragansett Sound and back home safely.”
After a minute of silence between us, Sherry is maintaining the 65 MPH speed limit and tells me that I should alert her if I see the speedometer going above 70 miles an hour. I don’t think it was my comments that made her more cautious. I think she may have discovered what Søren Kierkegaard meant when he said, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who prays.” Sherry prayed we would arrive home safely and she cooperated with God to make that so.
Here’s the thing … God knows what we need before we ever pray. In the case of our road trip, God knew that, for our safety, Sherry needed to slow down, but like all of us, she is given free will to do whatever she well pleases, including drive like a maniac. Enough about Sherry. I want to talk about prayer which may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but bear with me. This is good stuff.
If you think about it, prayer is pretty simple. When we pray, all we are doing is letting God into our lives. Effective prayer is more about listening for God than our telling God what we need or what we expect in terms of divine favor. Or as Joan Chittister said, “Prayer is an attitude toward life that sees everything as ultimately sacred, everything as potentially life-changing, everything as revelatory of life’s meaning. It is our link between dailiness and eternity.” I would add to that: Prayer helps us understand God’s purpose, presence and power. Prayer humbles us and opens our will to be more aligned with God’s will.
That’s why the disciples in our lesson for today wanted Jesus to teach them how to pray more like he prayed. They saw what prayer did for Jesus. It transformed him from an ordinary man to someone with extraordinary power and a magnetic mystical presence. When he prayed chaotic situations morphed into miracles. The disciples wanted to emulate the way he prayed because it blurred the distinction between heaven and earth. Jesus could take someone who was out of their mind and imagine them as rational. And so he laid hands on them and prayed over them until they felt God’s blessing and received healing. He could imagine fishermen as the founders of a religious movement that would last for millennia. He could imagine death as just a port of call before the next great adventure in the spirit world. He could imagine all the evil in the world being swallowed up by love and grace as the order of human nature. All this came to him as a result of his connection to God in prayer.
So that’s the context of our gospel lesson for today. The disciples were used to saying rote prayer and following age-old tradition so that their obligation to God was complete. Juxtapose this with what they saw and heard in Jesus’ prayers. It was novel. They heard intimacy they had never heard before. Jesus called God “Papa”! He seemed to be filled with holiness and so reflected the essence of God back in prayer; the essence of God being love and grace. The disciples did what many of us do. They prayed the prayers they learned at home and in school. As one commentary on this lesson said, “The disciples’ problem was not their prayer technique – it was faith.[1] They didn’t need new prayers. They needed to be connected to their God.
A 10th century Benedictine monk, Peter de la Celle,[2] seemed to sum up our lesson for today. He said, “When grace comes first and touches the mind, prayer is enjoyable and devout. It is like a morning rain shower. [However] Prayer is laborious when your heart is far away from your prayer, and God is far away from your heart. Your heart is far away from you if it is preoccupied with unimportant concerns, lukewarm in religious fervor, or immersed in carnal desires.” Prayer is a matter of faith, a matter of the heart, a matter of relationship between the one praying and God.
In other words, as we pray, if we think of God as anything other than love … if we think of God as wanting anything other than what is best for us … if we think of God’s presence as anything more remote than the tenderness and care we have experienced in our most intimate lover … we’re going to struggle with prayer … we’re going to have a hard time realizing God is even on the scene … we’re going to see the shadow side of life rather than light and love. Jesus said that prayer was a matter of faith. If you think God will pummel you with problems, then all you’ll associate with God is problems. Well, scripture says, “If a little girl is expecting an egg and you give her a spider, that’s the same as praying without faith.” God gives us what we need when we need it, and if we don’t see it, that’s our problem in that we’re not seeing things right or we’re praying for the wrong things.
Let me give you a case in point that is near and dear to my heart. When my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, she was told she might have six months to live. The oncologist said that she could prolong her life another 4 months or so with chemotherapy and keep the tumors from growing so big that they became painful. Mom accepted the diagnosis and treatment plan but she said that God was in charge of the prognosis, so she prayed for a miracle.
She called me the day of that doctor’s visit. She was matter of factly, saying, “You know I told you about the lump in my abdomen. I’ve got cervical cancer and the doctor said it’s spreading rapidly to other parts of my body. He told me to put my affairs in order because he thinks I’ve got less than a year to live, and that’s if I start chemotherapy next month. If I don’t go through chemo, I may have six more months.”
After more questions, choking on my tears and asking what she was going to do, Mom said, “I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but I’ve already asked God for a miracle, and I got this feeling of peace, so I’m turning this over to God.” I don’t want to make my mom out to be a saint. She was an ordinary woman who struggled with big issues for many years, but – through her cancer journey, beginning with the diagnosis – she grew to be a woman of faith.
For example, she was determined that chemotherapy was not going to be a bad thing, so when she was able, she made picnic lunches for her and anyone else who was going to be in the chemo room (as she called it). She made broth for some who couldn’t hold down solid foods. She brought peppermint candy for others who couldn’t eat anything at all. She brought homemade fried chicken, potato salad, fruit cocktail, and angel food cake for anyone else who had an appetite and wanted a real lunch.
She took her treatments with joy and prayed with faith … and her faith became contagious. She told everyone God was going to give her a miracle, and you know what? Mom never was really sick. She felt weak sometimes, so laid low more than usual, but she thought it was a miracle that she could enjoy resting so much. She lost her appetite from time to time, but to her it was a miracle that she dropped the 35 pounds that she had been hoping to shed. It was a miracle that she had gone from being a compulsive over-eater to someone who could moderate their food intake. There’s more. One member of my family who had chronic problems with money stopped going to Mom for so-called loans. He was praying for miracles for Mom, too.
Oh, did I say that Mom lived another 4 years? During that time, she took 2 cruises and went on seven other trips. She had the strength to baby sit five grand kids on a regular basis and shop for their birthday and Christmas gifts – which she loved more than anything. She spoke at 9 more conventions to inspire thousands of more people to call on their higher power to heal them of their addictions. Miracles. Until two days before her death, Mom never experienced any pain and the medicine we had on hand took care of that quickly. The day before she died, she told me that she had no regrets, no grudges, and no enemies. She was able to name more than thirty miracles that she had received since her diagnosis when she first started praying for a miracle.
Mom learned to be grateful for every day she was given and for every relationship she had. Despite being quite a talker, she learned to be quiet so that she could notice all the miracles with which God was showering her. She learned the wisdom that Jesus taught his disciples. Mom learned to pray with faith because she had an intimate relationship with her Lord who she believed would do anything for those who love Him – even suffer death so that we might live abundantly. This is a God to worship. This is a God to go to in prayer.
Jesus tells us that if we pray with faith, if we believe, God will be faithful to us in return. I pray that you will take this lesson to heart so it can transform your life. If you’re struggling with an issue right now, be it your health or the well being of a loved one; if you are struggling with an addiction; if you are at wits end because of a strained relationship, rather than asking God to fix it, scripture says to pray and to be specific. Tell God what you need. If you need strength to see it through, pray for strength, not an easy fix. Or maybe you need faith to trust that God will provide, so pray for your faith. Maybe you don’t know what you need, as was the case with my Mom, so pray for a miracle, knowing that sometimes a miracle is a swift death and sometimes it means more time and struggle.
Let me say one more thing about prayer. When we are in the midst of struggle, ask God what the struggle is supposed to mean to you and what God wants you to learn from it. I also think it’s fair to get angry and let God have a piece of your mind … just like you do with your most intimate friends and family members. But tell God specifically what you’re angry about: being alone perhaps, not being able to handle the pain, being fearful of what’s next, feeling betrayed. Tell others, tell me, what you’re praying about and ask us to pray with you and for you.
My deceased friend who I was referring to earlier had his last big stroke. It debilitated 80 percent of his brain. His wife, Sherry, said she was afraid of doing the wrong thing because she didn’t know how to proceed as his healthcare proxy, whether to put in a feeding tube or to let him die, so we prayed for wisdom. After the prayer and a time for reflection, Sherry was able to recognize that there was little hope he would ever be able to enjoy life again. He wouldn’t walk or speak or sail, which was his deepest passion. He wouldn’t be able to process words others were saying. Sherry decided that God was calling her husband home and that medical intervention would be wrong. So we prayed again – this time with thanksgiving for wisdom given and received. We gave thanks for her husband’s wonderful life, all the adventures he was able to have, and love shared. We even prayed in faith for Sherry’s peace as she watched her husband die. And that’s what she received. Even the death of her husband became answered prayer, God’s amazing grace!
Jesus asks us to be specific in what we pray for. Don’t bargain with God, and pray in faith.
I would like to apply this lesson to our corporate life as a church. I want to ask those of you who are willing to begin praying everyday at noon with me for a miracle for this church. I don’t know what God wants of us except to be faithful, so let’s just pray for a miracle and see what happens. From this moment on, let’s be faithful both in praying and in giving testimony when we see miracles taking place here. I’ve witnessed several miracles this week. I hope some of you can give testimony to them in a moment when we share what we are praying for. For now, just let me say I give thanks for you because each of you is a miracle and through your faith God will do more than we can even imagine.
And so I pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, through our faith in Jesus, make for us a miracle.” Amen.
[1] Christian Century, July 13, 2010, pg. 21
[2] Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom, by Hugh Feiss