Sermon, "Strengthen Your Core: Prayers," Nehemiah 1

Sermon 4/15/18

Nehemiah 1

Strengthen Your Core: Prayers

           Some of you know that our RipIt folks in our exercise ministry have been participating in a challenge since January, a challenge that draws to a close in the next few weeks. Folks have been trying to eat in healthy, wholesome ways, and been pushing themselves to be more physically fit, all the while trying to build each other up in teams, encouraging each other, challenging each other. Amber, our fearless leader, and some of our other fitness buffs will tell you that one of the areas of focus in physical fitness is having a strong core. There are lots of exercises that emphasize strengthening your core muscles, because with a strong core, so many other areas of fitness are enhanced, and, reciprocally, you’ll have a harder time having strong arms and legs if you don’t have a strong core of your body to support them. And so Amber is constantly reminding us to focus on our core muscles when we exercise. It’s not easy, of course. But it’s important.  

            When my nephew Sam was a baby, he was a bit late in learning how to walk. There was nothing physically wrong with him. He just was, well, a bit floppy. You would sit him down and he’d just slump right over. He had no muscles to hold himself up. When my brother and sister-in-law took him to the doctor, they figured out that this was probably simply because Sam had never been set down on the ground in his life. Ok, that’s maybe an exaggeration. But Sam, the first child, the first grandchild, the first nephew – we all held him a lot. So baby Sam had to have some physical therapy sessions that focused on strengthening his core. He’d have to sit on a big yoga ball, and my brother would roll him around from side to side, holding him in place on the ball, so that Sam would have to engage all his core muscles to stay on the ball. With that and some other similar exercises, Sam was walking in no time. He needed those core muscles to get himself moving.

            In the same way that we need to develop a strong physical core, we also need a strong spiritual core. We need our souls strong, ready to hold us up through the challenges of life, a core that reminds us who we are and who we are following when we are bombarded with constant “opportunities” to go in different directions than God. And I think that to focus on our spiritual core, to find practices that strengthen our core, we have to turn no farther than the words we say again and again: when we become members of the church, when we celebrate baptisms, and when we renew our own baptismal vows each year. Next month, after spending most of this school year working hard to learn, and explore their faith and the teachings of Jesus, and understand what it means to be United Methodists, our confirmands Ayse and Peyton and Shea and Taylor will become adult members of the congregation. And when they do that, they will, as we all have many times, pledge that they will support the ministries of the church through their prayers, their presence, their gifts, their service, and their witness. Prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. And so for the next five weeks, as we lead up to Confirmation Sunday, we’re going to be exploring these themes, these practices together. Because as they are confirmed, again, we have the opportunity to recommit ourselves too, affirming one more time that we will commit to these practices, these core-strengthening spiritual disciplines in order to strengthen our faith and the faith of our congregation as disciples of Jesus.

            Today, our focus in on prayer. We say in our membership covenant, “As members of the body of Christ and in this congregation of The United Methodist Church, we will faithfully participate in the ministries of the church by our prayers.” So, how exactly do we do that? How are we doing that? How could we be doing that? Are you strengthening the church and your own faith life through prayer? If you’re not, can you take steps to start? What would that look like? I think about the opportunities we have to support each other, the whole congregation, and our personal spiritual growth through prayer. Each week, there is a place on your bulletin worksheet to write down prayer requests that emerge during worship. I hope you not only write things down here, or make a note on your phone, or whatever works for you, but that you also then actually return to these names, these requests in your prayers throughout the week. We have a fellowship group on facebook, aside from our regular facebook page, that is a place folks share prayer concerns. We have a monthly prayer ministry, on Thursday afternoons. We’ll meet this coming Thursday at 2pm in fact. In that group, we’ve been praying through our church mailing address, inviting folks to share with us what is on their hearts for themselves and their families. I’d love for you to join us in that prayer time if you’re free in the daytime. And of course we have other opportunities – prayer during worship, prayer at meetings and events, prayer in our own devotional life.

            There’s been a lot of push back lately against the phrase “thoughts and prayers,” and I understand why. Sometimes, in the face of tragedy, leaders offer up their “thoughts and prayers” but fail to act, fail to work for changes that could prevent future tragedies, or minimize them. And so I’ve heard people saying, ““We need more. We need more than thoughts and prayers. We need action. We need people working for change. We need strategies and solutions.” As people of faith, I think we need to be attentive to those voices, those calls to action. And I think: Yes, this is just what is in line with the message of the scriptures: prayer paired with action. We pray for God’s guidance, God’s direction, God’s presence, and then, confident that God hears our prayers and equips us as we need to be equipped, we act as God’s agents of change, of compassion, of grace in the world. Pray and act. I think of baby Nolan, Natalie Towne’s grandson for whom we’ve been praying since he was diagnosed at birth with leukemia. We pray – we pray a lot. But we also hold some benefit fundraisers, because we know that God has called us to be a part of the very answer to prayer that we are seeking.

            As we turn to our scripture for today, we see prayer and action together in our reading from Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a book of the Bible you might not be very familiar with. Nehemiah was written in the late 5th century BC, and is a unique book among books of the Hebrew Bible because it is primarily told in the first person point of view. We hear directly from Nehemiah. The events he describes take place after the Israelites had been exiled to Babylon, conquered by the Babylonians, and after the Israelites had finally been allowed to return to Jerusalem. But all is not well, “back to normal,” and Nehemiah returns to oversee the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

Nehemiah is the cup-bearer to King Artaxerxes in Susa, the capitol of Persia. Cup-bearers were positions of high status. Because of the constant fear of plots to harm the ruling king, a person had to be considered highly trustworthy to hold the position of cup-bearer. The cup-bearer had to guard against poison or tampering with the drinks served to the king, sometimes even required to taste-test for the king. But this role also brought the cup-bearer a degree of closeness and confidence with the king. Cup-bearers had influence with the king.

Nehemiah, cup-bearer to Artaxerxes, learns that the wall of Jerusalem had been destroyed. As our text opens, we find him praying to God after receiving the news. He prays that God will give him strength and success as he asks Artaxerxes to let him return to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of the walls. After our text for today, the king agrees, and Nehemiah is appointed governor of Judah. He rebuilds the walls, he wards off enemies, and he rebuilds the community to conform again with the law of Moses, making many reforms, including reforms to combat oppression of the poor, like cancelling past debts and mortgages. He meets with a lot of opposition, especially from the Jewish nobles, but he eventually prevails.

But our focus today is specifically on Nehemiah’s prayer. Before any of the events unfold, right in the first chapter of Nehemiah, we read his prayer, his starting point, before he begins to carry out what he believes is God’s purpose for him. Nehemiah’s prayer is beautiful and flowing, but we shouldn’t be put off by the beauty of his words. The heart of the prayer is always what matters to God, just as a child’s “I’m sorry” or “I love you” is as powerful to a parent as an adult child’s more eloquent communication. Essentially, what Nehemiah says is this: “God, you are always faithful. I’ve screwed up, my family and my people have screwed up, and we see the consequences, the separation we’ve experienced from you because we’ve failed to follow you. But we’re going to try again.  You’re always faithful. So please be with us and help me communicate my plan to my king.” Nehemiah has a sense of what he thinks God is asking him to do. He asks God for strength to get it done, for God to help him convince the king who will have to allow Nehemiah’s journey. He admits that without God, he screws up. And he remembers God’s faithfulness, God’s promises, and places his trust in that faithfulness, those promises. And then, confident because of his relationship with God, Nehemiah gets to work on just what he has offered to God in prayer.

            If you read the newsletter this month, you’ll know that our Council of Stewards and Council on Ministries are reading a book together right now called Simple Church, a book that talks about how important it is for congregations to have simple, clear paths for discipleship. In other words, a congregation should have a way that everyone knows and can share and participate in that makes it clear how you would come to know Jesus and be a disciple of Jesus. Often, authors Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger say, churches don’t send any clear message about how people should go about being disciples. We might talk about being disciples a lot, but we don’t make it clear to people that are trying to be disciples of Jesus just how they might go about doing that. I think we’ve got a lot to learn from this book, and we’re trying to think together deeply about how we are doing, and how we could be doing at helping folks come into a relationship, new or deeper, with Jesus.  As we work through this together, creating an intentional discipleship system in our congregation, we’re going to face challenges and changes, undoubtedly. And so I know that prayer – our constant conversation, our constant communication with God – is going to be an essential part of our journey. I hope that you will pray for our congregation, and be ready to act, so that we can connect more people to a life-changing path as followers of Jesus.

            When we talk about prayer as part of our commitment in this family of faith, we’re committing to praying with a purpose: to strengthen the core of our own personal faith, and to strengthen the core of our congregation. We pray to say: God, help us do your will here, in our own lives, in the life of the church. God, be our strength here. We pray to ask God for help in keeping the core of who we are and what we’re about as a congregation and as disciples of Jesus at the center of everything we do. We pray for courage to follow wherever Jesus leads, and wisdom to help others follow with us.

            Each week, as we consider these core acts of discipleship, these core faith practices, I want you to think about how you will make this vow your own. When you say that you will commit to supporting the ministries of this church with your prayers, what do you mean specifically? “As members of the body of Christ and in this congregation of The United Methodist Church, we will faithfully participate in the ministries of the church by our prayers.” Let’s do just that. Amen.

Sermon, "Why: Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers?" Luke 11:1-13

Sermon 1/21/18

Luke 11:1-13

Why Doesn’t God Answer My Prayers?

Are you a praying person? Do you feel like God answers your prayers? Have some of your prayers gone unanswered? As a young teen, I experienced the most powerful sense that my prayers meant something to date. I was at Camp Aldersgate, attending Senior High Creative Arts Camp. Our director, Bobbi, was pregnant, in her first trimester. She was a bit older than a “typical” first time parent, although honestly I say that from my teenage perspective – I’m not sure how old she was really, and I’m sure she was younger than I am now. But I know she was very anxious about the pregnancy. And while we were at camp, she experienced some spotting, and she had to leave to go to the hospital and get checked out, and it was clear, she was distraught and fearful. We were a small group of Creative Arts campers that week, and we pulled together, and we prayed, and prayed, and prayed for Bobbi and her baby. And when Bobbi came back from the hospital all smiles and announcing with tears in her eyes that everything was ok, I felt so completely: God has heard our prayers and answered them. My faith was so strengthened by that experience.

But what about those who have prayed a similar prayer only to face tragedy? I’ve certainly experienced loss and grief despite praying for healing. What about the prayers we share with God that express our deepest hopes and desires, and yet what we’ve asked for doesn’t come to fruition? Sometimes it seems that God answers our prayers, and sometimes it feels like God is silent. What’s the rhyme and reason at work here when it comes to prayer? Why does it seem like God doesn’t always answer our prayers?

And doesn’t God say that God will answer our prayers if we’re faithful in our asking? The scriptures seem to point to this idea in more than one place in Jesus’ teaching. Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt … even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.” (Matthew 21:21-22) That seems pretty clear, right? Whatever we ask for in faith, we’ll get, right? In our text today, in the conclusion of his response to the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus says, “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” There is it again – ask, and you’ll receive! Everyone who asks receives! And yet, I know you must be able to immediately think, as I can, of prayers I’ve offered to God where what I was seeking never came to fruition, and what happened seemed to be the opposite of what I asking for.

What do we make of this then? Is the Bible wrong? Is Jesus not telling us the truth about prayer? Or, is there something wrong with us? Is there some sin in our life that is causing God to refuse to answer our prayers? Are we not praying hard enough? Often, people point to these kinds of explanations – blaming the pray-er – when prayers are unanswered. But telling a parent that their prayers for their sick child weren’t enough or weren’t right somehow seems heartless and wrong and contrary to the very nature of our God who is love. So what, then? Why doesn’t God answer our prayers, when the Bible seems to insist that God will give us what we ask for?

In his book Why?: Making Sense of God’s Will, Adam Hamilton suggests that when Jesus’ teachings in the Bible don’t match up with what we know from our life experience, perhaps what is at work is “our failure to understand what Jesus meant” by a certain teaching.[1] So what aren’t we getting about Jesus’ teachings on prayer? Hamilton writes “One of the features of hyperbole is that what is said is not logically possible, so that the hearer knows it is a figure of speech. You can see this in our own use of hyperbole. When a person says he is ‘so hungry I could eat a horse,’ we don’t scratch our heads and say, ‘That’s terrible, you shouldn’t eat horses!’ We understand by the nature of the statement that he is saying he is hungry. And when one of my daughters in middle school said, ‘Dad, if that boy comes to talk to me, I’ll just die,’ I didn’t call the paramedics to be on standby just in case the boy tried to speak to my daughter.”

He continues, “I suggest that Jesus’ hearers understood that Jesus was speaking hyperbolically when he said, ‘Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive’ … They did not think he was suggesting they could pray for wealth and have it, or that they could pray for the Romans to leave, and they would be gone. They did not think he was saying, ‘Pray for world peace,’ and it would instantly happen. Or that if they only prayed with faith all of their problems would magically disappear or be resolved. I think they understood that Jesus was saying, ‘Go to God with your burdens! Be bold when you pray! Trust that God hears your prayers! And, in ways you don’t fully understand, God will see you through this situation you face.’” (38-39) Hear that again: “Go to God with your burdens! Be bold when you pray! Trust that God hears your prayers! And, in ways you don’t fully understand, God will see you through this situation you face.” Like Hamilton, I believe that this gives us a good sense of what Jesus is telling us about prayer. Jesus isn’t trying to tell us that prayer is like giving God our shopping list and expecting God to deliver everything on the list. Instead, Jesus wants to encourage us to be completely open and honest with God in our prayers, trusting that God is listening.

Why, though, doesn’t God just give us what we ask for? Let’s think about that together. First, think about the challenges that would arise if God wanted to say, “Sure, no problem,” to all of our prayer requests. Have you seen the 2003 Jim Carrey movie Bruce Almighty? In one scene, Carrey’s character, Bruce, who gets to take on all God’s power and responsibilities for a brief time, is answering all the prayer requests that come to God. They arrive in email form, and Bruce thinks it will be so easy to do this part of the job. He decides to simply reply “yes” to every prayer request. You’d think that would be great, right? Everyone’s requests to God answered with a “yes, sure, whatever you want!” But in the film, when everyone gets a “yes,” the results bring total chaos. For example, everyone who prays to win the lottery does – but since so many people win, everyone gets only $1 or so, and everyone is livid. Or, what if two people have applied for the same job, and are both praying that God will give them the new position? Whose prayer should God answer with a yes? I think of the sincere prayers I offered as a young person of faith, including an occasional prayer that the current boy of my dreams might in fact turn out to be “the one.” What if God had said “yes” to some of those prayers, when sixth months later, I didn’t feel the same way? And what about what those boys had wanted? Should God have made them fall for me, just because that was what I wanted? Not if we actually value the precious gift of free will that God gives us! Or what if I pray to pass my math test, even though I haven’t studied? Is it helpful for God to say “yes” to these prayers, and set a pattern where we never bother to learn these skills on our own?[2] Sometimes, we must admit that we’re eventually thankful that God didn’t say “yes” to all of our wants. Sometimes, my new prayer is “thank goodness you didn’t force what I was asking for to take place.” Sometimes, we have to acknowledge that the only way God could answer our prayer is by taking away free will from someone else. And sometimes, we have to admit that our prayers are really requests for us to get what we want without working hard, striving toward goals, and using the gifts and tools God has already put into our hands.

            I think God also works within the natural order, the rhythm and law of the universe most of the time. Hamilton writes, “When God wants something done, god typically sends people. This has led me to conclude that God’s customary way of working in our lives is through what appears to be ordinary means. Rather than suspending the law of nature that God created to do God’s work, God typically works through natural laws and through people … Can God miraculously intervene in answer to our prayers to protect us from harm? Yes, but God’s normal way of working is found within the natural laws God establish and in human beings to whom God gave responsibility for tending this planet on God’s behalf.”[3] Most of the time, outside of miraculous occurrences that are by definition rare, God works within the patterns of the universe that God has created, which means that sometimes our prayers, which would require breaking and bending the order of the universe to fulfill, don’t get answered as we want.

            What I do believe, what the scriptures show, is that God never abandons us, even when God does not answer our prayers in the ways we seek. In fact, God gets right in our despair with us, experiences heartbreak and grief with us, walks beside us in the dark valleys, even coming to us in the person of Jesus to be closer to us and our experiences. God never abandons us, ever. And God takes the pain and sorrow we experience and draws new life even from the hardest moments in our lives. We’ll think more about that together next week.

            So, if God doesn’t promise to give us everything we want, and God might have many good reasons for not saying “yes” to our prayer requests, and God doesn’t often intervene in the natural order of the universe to make things happen the way we want them to, why bother praying? Why does Jesus emphasize how persistent we should be in prayer? What’s the point?  This is when our thinking of God as a parent is so helpful to me. You know my mom and I are very close. She knows my heart pretty well, and knows my hopes and dreams. She can’t always make want I want take place. She can’t fulfill every wish I’ve expressed. And certainly, she wouldn’t, even if she could, if you think about all my hopes over the years and the times that she knew better than I what would be meaningful in my life. Does that mean there’s no point in me sharing my heart with her? Does that mean she doesn’t want to know about what I want? Of course not! Of course, my mom wants to know everything about me, anything I’m willing to share with her. She wants to know about my hopes and dreams because she loves me, and sharing like this is a part of building a relationship, part of building trust and compassion. And the relationship brings me comfort, strength, and encouragement. That’s what God wants with us: to be in relationship with us, to have us pour our hearts out to God, to shower us with love and encouragement, to have us get to know God deeply, and be known by God deeply, to be comforted and strengthened by the constancy of our relationship. Prayer is our way of building relationship with God.

            Prayer is also about listening to God – we talked about that last week. We pray so that we signal to God and to ourselves that we’re listening and ready to hear what God has to say to us. Prayer is not so much about changing God as it is sometimes about changing us. In the words we call the Lord’s Prayer, a version of which appears in our text today, Jesus encourages the disciples to pray about forgiveness, to pray to learn to not hold things against each other, to pray for daily sustenance rather than food to store up, to pray for God’s way and God’s realm to be the way of earth rather than our own way and will. Essentially, Jesus guided the disciples to pray not that God would give them what they wanted, but that they might be transformed into the servants of God that Jesus knew they could be. Prayer changes us, because it helps us tune our hearts to God. It helps us remember that God has placed into our hands already the tools and resources and gifts and abilities to be the answers to the prayers we’re praying, to be the agents of transformation in the world we long for. Prayer changes us, and so we pray because it opens us to the work of God in our lives.

            I want to encourage you to think about your discipline of prayer. I have found keeping a prayer journal to be a helpful reminder of God’s faithfulness: recording prayer requests and looking back over time to see how God has been at work. Rarely does God seem to act in the ways I expect or ask. But always, God is at work, drawing life and hope and good out of everything. And always, God is with me, and with those I have lifted up to God.

            Friends, Jesus tells us to ask, search, and knock at God’s door. I don’t think he tell us this so that God can check everything off our wish list, or so that we can make fools of ourselves praying prayers that will never be answered. Rather, I think when we ask, God does give, even when what God gives is unexpected. I think when we search, we do find, even when what we find is not the original destination we were seeking. And I think when we knock, God always opens the door for us that leads to a deeper faith, a closer relationship with God, and a changed heart for us. And so we ask, with the disciples: Lord, teach us to pray. Amen.

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[1] Hamilton, Adam, Why? Making sense of God’s Will, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2011, 36.

[2] These scenarios are adapted from Adam Hamilton’s scenarios in Why?, 39-40.

[3] Hamilton, 46, 49. 

Sermon, "Prayerful: Thanksgiving," Matthew 6:24-33

Sermon 11/22/15

Matthew 6:24-33

Prayerful: Thanksgiving

My mother will tell you that in some ways, I’ve been a worrier since I was a little girl. When I started kindergarten, I went through a stretch where I kept asking my mother “what if” questions about starting school. What if I couldn’t find my bus? What if I got locked in the bathroom and no one heard me calling for help getting out? What if no one was home when I got off the bus? What if the teacher didn’t show up? What if I wore a dress on a day I was supposed to wear pants for gym? What if I didn’t have my money for milk? These were apparently serious concerns on my 5 year old mind, and my mother did her best to help me relax, to know that I would be safe and that someone would be there who could help me no matter what I encountered. I don’t even remember having all these questions myself, so she must have done a good job in calming my anxieties.

But I’m still a worrier. I might put on a good exterior show, if you think I am always calm, cool, and collected. But I am worried about matters large and small every day. There was a study that came out at the end of last year that said people who worry a lot might have higher intelligence, and I rejoiced, because it is certainly about the only benefit worrying might produce. Everybody, it seems, worries about something sometime. Are you a worrier? Do you experience stress? How do you cope with it? We’re going through a period of global fear and worry just now, aren’t we? Our minds are filled with images of violence people have been experiencing in the Middle East, in Europe, in Africa. We’ve experienced acts of violence in the US in the past year. At my job in Rochester we had to watch a video about what to do, how to respond, should someone come into the building and start shooting. It is hard not to be afraid, to be worried, and then to let our lives be ruled by our fear and worry.   

And in the midst of this, we find this scripture passage from the gospel of Matthew. It’s a passage we characterize as being about “worry,” although there’s certainly a lot packed into this text. In this chapter, Jesus has just talked about giving alms, praying, and fasting, followed up by saying that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And then Jesus starts with today’s passage. He says that one cannot serve both God and wealth. This statement is a springboard for Jesus to speak about worry. Don’t worry, Jesus says, about what to eat, or drink, or wear. Life is more than these things. The birds of the air don’t work or worry, and have plenty to eat, and we are more valuable than birds. And the lilies are clothed with great beauty, but they only last a little while. Won’t God take even greater care of us? So why worry? God knows what we need. So strive for the Kingdom of God, not these other things, Jesus concludes. Strive to live righteously, and everything else will come as well.

In some ways I love this passage – it is beautiful, comforting. But my other reaction is: Is Jesus serious? How can he be? Most of the time when reading the gospels, I’m struck by the deep wisdom of Jesus. By his perceptiveness, his way of seeing right to the heart of the matter. By the way he makes things so clear. It is one of the many reasons I choose to follow Jesus – his ability to trim away all the meaningless stuff and get to the core in a world that so needs that, when my life so needs that. But then sometimes there’s a passage of Jesus’ teaching that comes along like this one and my reaction is, “Yeah, but Jesus…,” “Jesus, you’re pretty naïve, idealistic, you really don’t understand how stressful my life is.” “Yeah, but easier said than done Jesus. Have you seen my to-do list? Have you seen the news?” A first read of this passage tells us that Jesus says we’re not supposed to worry. And perhaps some of you are like me, then, walking away from the passage worried that we worry too much.

            As usual, when we really examine the text, Jesus says something much more compelling than “Don’t worry.” He doesn’t offer easy platitudes – this isn’t “hakuna matata” or “don’t worry, be happy.”  Jesus is tying his words about worry back to his opening comments in this passage today about having more than one master. We can tell this because of how this section about not worrying starts. In our New Revised Standard Version bibles, we just get “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.” But the original Greek is even more specific. It says, “Because of this I tell you do not worry.” So the whole section reads: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other; or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. Because of this I tell you do not worry.” So, in context, what does this passage mean for us, that because of not being able to serve two masters, Jesus tells us not to worry?

When Jesus talks about worry, the word used is merimnate, which means more literally to “be preoccupied with or be absorbed by.” (1) When Jesus speaks of worry, he’s speaking of something that preoccupies us, absorbs our attention, takes our effort and energy and heart’s direction. In fact, in this way, Jesus is equating worry to something that’s very close to idolatry. Idolatry is when we take anything that is other than God, and give it the place of God in our lives. All through the scriptures, idolatry is one of the things that God most deplores about our human behavior. Again and again, we’re putting something else in a more important place than we put God. Worried? Preoccupied? Absorbed? Not only is your stress hard on you, it’s also putting your very soul at risk, because your worry is just another form of making idols. That’s why Jesus talks about worry and serving more than one master. If we don’t want to end up serving a master other than God, we must stop worrying, stop being absorbed by and preoccupied by things that aren’t God.

Instead of being naïve, Jesus is, of course, being extremely wise. He calls our worry out for what it is – a way of distancing ourselves from God and God’s plan for our lives. We worry because we’re striving for the wrong things, or striving, at the least, in the wrong order. So what do we do? How do we change? How do we give up this striving, our obsessive anxiety, our stress, our worry, our fear? How can we just “not worry” like Jesus says? He gives us the answer: We still strive, we’re still preoccupied, we’re still consumed – but all that energy is given to striving for the kingdom of God. We do that first. Strive first for God, and God’s way, God’s justice, God’s reign. Strive for God, and we’ll find that we’re too filled up with God’s abundance to be consumed by worry and fear. Strive for God, and when we live a life that is focused on serving others, we won’t find much time left over to worry for ourselves.

Does seeking God’s kingdom free us from worry? Does seeking God’s kingdom clothe us and feed us? Maybe not in the ways we’d expect. But I think striving for God’s kingdom ultimately turns our view from ourselves out to the world God has created. So striving for the kingdom lead us to feed others, to clothe others, to fill others. I’m reminded of the folk parable about heaven and hell. In hell, everyone is given huge amounts of food, but the spoons they are given have such long handles that no one can actually eat. Everyone is miserable. But in heaven, everything is just the same – except that people in heaven are feeding each other, and everyone shares in the feast.

As we draw near to Thanksgiving Day, I am meditating on the verse from 1 John: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” We’ve been thinking about being a prayerful people, and giving thanks to God is one of the primary ways we are called to pray. Last week we heard the psalmist say, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” The prayers of the psalmists are filled with praise. We can give thanks more fully when we take all of the stuff that absorbs our minds and hearts, and lay it down at the feet of Jesus, who we follow. In fact, until we do that, lay down our burdens at the feet of Jesus, I’m not sure we can really thank God like we intend to. But when we cast out the fear and anxiety that threatens to overwhelm us, we make room in our lives, in our hearts, in our world for God, and for each other. We make room to be filled up with thanksgiving. We make room to focus first on pursuing God and God’s reign on earth, God’s justice, with our whole being. My beloved: I don’t think Jesus expects us to never have a worry or care. But I do think Jesus challenges us not to be absorbed by our worries and fears, not to be ruled by them. We claim one ruler of our lives only. We can truly serve one ruler only. So let us choose to strive after God. Let us choose to pray for hearts that are learning to cast out fear and instead be filled up with love. And let us give thanks to God, who answers our prayers. Amen. 

Sermon, "Prayerful: Praying Like Jesus," Matthew 6:5-13

Sermon 11/8/15

Matthew 6:5-13

           

Prayerful: Praying Like Jesus

            We’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a prayerful people. We’ve talked about being confessional, and being persistent in our prayers. And we’ve talked about how we’re bound together in prayer in the act of communion, bound together across time and space in the body of Christ. Next Sunday, we’ll practice praying through music. In two weeks, we’ll be focusing on prayers of Thanksgiving. Some of you have had experiences, even over these past few weeks, of the power of prayer, as you gave thanks to God for some prayer answered. Some of you have offered prayer at one of our meetings or studies – I’ve really been encouraging everybody to feel comfortable offering a prayer to God on our behalf. And so far, everyone has survived the experience! Today, though, I want to spend a little time thinking about Jesus, and how Jesus prays. Jesus does a lot of praying, and it seems like we can’t find a better example to mold ourselves after, right? So what can we learn about praying like Jesus?  

            I found this to be a more challenging question than I thought. The scriptures mention Jesus praying often, but they don’t always, or even usually, tell us exactly what Jesus is praying about, which makes complete sense, because most often, when Jesus prays, he has drawn away, by himself, away from the crowds, away from even his disciples, often. We know he does it frequently. And we know it seems to be a way he gives himself fuel, strength, for the work before him. What does it mean to pray like Jesus? I asked this question on facebook, and got some good answers:

            “I have always been struck by the fact that Jesus went away to pray; away from the crowds, away from the disciples, all alone with God.” “To pray like Jesus is to love each other through our daily trials and joys and to never judge each other.” “To be one with God.” “To pray without ceasing...to know that Your Father hears you and knows the desires of your heart. Talking to (sharing your heart with) someone who KNOWS you.” “Pray without ceasing...why is that is so hard to do sometimes? Like the disciples drifting off in Gethsemane...” “Pray with our sacred Story and Tradition so often and deeply that it becomes a part of who you are: the Story becomes my story. I am struck by the way [Jesus] has the sacred Story as his own vernacular (as did his mother, see the Magnificat and Hannah's song in Samuel). Perhaps also to pray the word so completely that you/I become the wordless living word-we incarnate and live the word/Word. And the quiet contemplative going apart from the noise to simply be with God.  “Praying with your mind, body and soul.” “Becoming one with the prayer.” I’m blessed to have some thoughtful facebook friends! What about you? What do you think it means to pray like Jesus?

            Jesus teaches about prayer a few times – and we’ve shared in some of those passages in worship – Jesus teaching us to pray persistently. Jesus teaching us to pray for forgiveness and offer forgiveness to others. Jesus teaching us to ask, and search, and knock, and expect answers in our prayers. In passages we haven’t read together in worship, Jesus talks about praying like a tax collector, who prays for mercy, rather than like a Pharisee, who tries to load up his prayer with telling of his good deeds, in order to somehow impress God. And of course, in our text for today, we hear that rather than trying to pray with the fanciest, most eloquent words we can find, actually, a good prayer to pray is quite simple. It’s the prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer. Most of us pray it by rote – we pray the same exact words, probably one of the first prayers we learned. And often, without realizing it, our informal prayers cover many of the areas the Lord’s Prayer does: praising God; seeking strength to avoid evil; asking for forgiveness; asking for enough to get by each day. And, without realizing it, I think we see throughout Jesus’ life his embodiment of the prayer he teaches us.

            So what does it mean to pray like Jesus? Although we may not know the whole content of Jesus’ prayers, his most intimate conversations with God, between what he teaches and the discipline of prayer he demonstrates, I think we glean a lot.

            First, prayer is a pattern of his life. It’s necessary to him. He’s compelled to pray. He needs to pray. Jesus needs to spend time with God in serious conversation, and he needs to do it regularly. And the more full, the more packed the rest of his life is with the relentless needs of those around him, the relentless demands, the more Jesus prays. He doesn’t get too busy to pray. In fact, he can sustain his pattern of life because of the way he is grounded in his relationship with God. I think one of the biggest mistakes we can make in our life with God is when we view our time for prayer, for reading the scripture, for deepening our faith, for talking to God as optional, or extra, the first thing that gets “cut” when we are feeling overwhelmed or exhausted. It’s tempting, and easy to do. But the pattern of Jesus’ life tells us that immersing our life in conversation with God needs to be first, not last.     

            Jesus teaches us here and elsewhere to pray not for show, but for God. Not to try to impress God, but with humility. We don’t need to explain to God how good we are. God doesn’t listen to one prayer more than others based on our goodness. Our prayers are for God, and we don’t have to worry about impressing God. But all the same, we see that Jesus prayed always with confidence. His confidence was not in himself, but in God, and his relationship with God. Praying with confidence is different than praying with the belief that God will do everything we want, like filling all the requests on a giant wish list. Praying with confidence in God means trusting that God knows us, knows our hearts, loves us, and wants us to experience good, abundant, deeply satisfying life. That’s what we have confidence in. And we have confidence that nothing is impossible with God. That God can do anything. Knowing that, we pray with confidence in God.

            What did Jesus pray for? We don’t know everything. But we know a lot. He gave thanks to God many times. He asked for what he wanted and needed, for comfort, for God to make things easier. He prayed for his disciples, for the people he saw all around him who seemed lost and vulnerable. He prayed to ask for forgiveness for others He prayed that others would forgive each other, that they would experience unity and reconciliation instead of brokenness. He prayed for new life to come where it seemed death had won the day. He prayed again and again for God’s kingdom, God’s reign to be realize on earth. He prayed that he and his followers would be able to carry out God’s vision for the world. And he prayed, finally, that what he wanted most was for God’s will to be done on earth, even when it was so hard that it would cost him his life.

            I think we can, should, do pray for the very things Jesus prayed for. We can always ask God for just what we want and need. We pray for one another, and especially for those who seem lost, who are searching, who are vulnerable. We pray for forgiveness and that we might be more forgiving, that we might reconcile with each other. We pray that God’s reign is realized on earth – that God’s kingdom is made visible right here at Apple Valley – that we embody God’s hope for the world in this place, as much as we are able, as much as we can respond to God’s call. We pray for clarity about just what is God wants for us to do. And we pray, ultimately, that it is what God wants, God’s will, that is carried out.

            As much as we can, let’s pray like Jesus: with thanksgiving; with confidence; with hope; with constancy; with listening ears; with open hearts. Amen.

           

Sermon, "Prayerful: Communion," Hebrews 11:1-8, 13-16, 23-40, 12:1-2

Sermon 11/1/15

Hebrews 11:1-8, 13-16, 23-40, 12:1-2

           

Prayerful: Communion

How would you define a Saint? What does it mean, to be a saint? I’ve been reading a little bit about different religious traditions and what they understand by the term “saints.” Some traditions understand the term saint in more formal ways – there’s a process to be officially named a saint. And others have a more fluid understanding of what it means. How about you? How do you define a saint? What is a saint? In most any tradition, the folks I encounter are sure of at least this: A saint is something other than themselves. I can’t say I often hear people identify themselves as a saint. Are you a saint? And yet, regardless of tradition, if, instead, I ask folks to name those who have been saints in their life, those who have died, those who are living, people can usually quickly tell me people they view as saints.

            There are many ways to define the word “saint,” but here’s what I’ve found most compelling. A saint is a person who has an exceptional degree of likeness to God. Or, a believer who is “in Christ” and in whom Christ dwells. I imagine that might well describe the people you’d call saints in your life. People who make you feel like you’ve drawn a little closer to God from being around them, from knowing them, from loving them. People who you interact with and think, “I caught a glimpse of Christ today.” Is this not what it is to be saint?    

             Today, we reflect in particular on the communion of saints in the body of Christ. When we say the Apostles Creed, we say that we believe, among other things, in “the holy catholic church, [and] the communion of saints. Here, catholic, with a small c means the church universal, literally “according to the whole” – the whole collective Christian church, the body of Christ in the world. And the communion of saints means the spiritual unity of the whole body of Christ, living and dead. It acknowledges that our connection to our loved ones, and our brothers and sisters in Christ doesn’t break with the barrier between life and death. They are still a part of the church, still a part of the body of Christ, just as are we. The communion of saints means that we are bound up together with all who came before us, in our own individual lives, in the life of this congregation and its predecessors, throughout Methodism, throughout church history, throughout our biblical heritage. Their story is our story, still. We’re just part of a later chapter of this one great story God is writing with creation.    

            In our book study, Bearing Fruit, we were talking this week about congregational creation stories. Apple Valley has a creation story. Not just our beginnings a decade ago, but our creation story includes our predecessor congregations. Why did Navarino and Cedarvale and South Onondaga and Cardiff become churches? What events led to their creation? What vision of ministry did the leaders of those faith communities have? Each generation of faithful disciples tries to live out the promises of God, tries to express, to realize God’s reign, God’s kingdom on earth, in their corner of the universe. That’s what we see in our reading from Hebrews. The author crafts this beautiful litany that is the story of God and God’s people. It’s a story of generation after generation acting in faith that God fulfills the promises made, that we may catch glimpses of God’s promises fulfilled, even as they are still unfolding, still expanding, beyond what any one person, any one generation sees. Even as we bear good fruit for God today, we plant seeds that won’t bear fruit in our own time, but in the generations yet to come, who also will seek to be faithful to God’s promises. It’s our story with God, and it makes us – you and me – part of this communion of saints – as much as we seek to live into God’s promises, as much as we seek to fulfill God’s vision for the world as much as we can, in our time, in God’s way for our lives. When we do this work, when we, by faith, like all the people in our reading from Hebrews, when we live into and live out of God’s promises, we are part of the communion of saints, the great cloud of witnesses.

A saint, I said, is a person who has an exceptional degree of likeness to God. Or, a believer who is “in Christ” and in whom Christ dwells. I don’t think this happens by accident, like you might accidentally be someone’s doppelganger. If we are to have a “likeness to God” – if we are to be people in whom Christ dwells, I think we practice. We work at it. That’s what it means to be disciples – students of Jesus, who are trying all the time to be more and more like their teacher. And so I have a task for us, to practice our discipleship this month. Last year I asked you to count your blessings during the month of November. I asked you to think about, every single day, at least 5 ways in which you are blessed, by posting on facebook, or writing it down, or keeping track in some other way. I have them here – your scrap papers, your notes, printouts from online, even a calendar page with blessings filled in on every square of the month. So we know we are blessed.

            I also asked us to think, last year, about how we are called to be blessings to others. God is the source of our blessings, but we also have the opportunity to offer blessings to others through our actions, through our love, through building each other up, through our words of affirmation. And that’s what I want us to focus on this year. Every day, I want you to think of a way you can bless someone, a way you can build up the community – not just the community of Apple Valley, but your work or school community, your family, your neighborhood, your global community even. I’m challenging all of us, each day of November, to bless someone else’s life. And I want you to be on particular lookout for people who might not usually get blessed by someone else. People, perhaps, that might not usually get blessed by you. People who are in some way not valued very much by society’s standards. Perhaps you’ll take this month to particularly seek after the sick and homebound, those who are living in nursing homes. Maybe you might focus on ways you can bless people who work in all sorts of customer service jobs – the person working at the convenience store, or at the fast food place. How often are they blessed by someone? Praised for their good work? Prayed for? Maybe you’ll bless some single parents. Some parents who stay home with children. Some local politicians – maybe even the ones you didn’t vote for. Maybe you’ll think of people you know who are struggling with addictions, or who have been in trouble. Maybe you’ll find that you have the power to bless someone who you’re usually fighting with. Even if you know there’s no way they’ll offer a blessing in return. Perhaps especially when you know that. You can choose the best way to do this, to offer your blessings. You can tag someone on facebook and tell the world how blessed you are to know them. You can write them a note, or make a phone call, and just tell them how much you value them, and God values them. You can do a task for them – help them with the dishes, or run an errand for them. Find someone’s boss and tell them what a good job their employee is doing. Tell a parent how great their child is. Every day, for 30 days, I want you focus on how you can be a blessing to someone else. We’re writing our part of the story, our story with God, our story of the communion of saints, of which we are part, and which we are growing into, the more and more we model our lives so that others see in us a likeness with God.

            Aside from the communion of saints, the other time we think about communion is of course when we share in the sacrament of bread and cup together. There are a few names for this holy meal. Some call it the Lord’s Supper. We sometimes call it the Eucharist, which means literally the Thanksgiving or more fully, thanksgiving for the good gift of grace. Sometimes it is called simply the Breaking of the Bread. But we most often call it communion, which means, “sharing in common.” This word for communion comes from Paul’s writings, in 1 Corinthians, when he says, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion (the sharing together in) the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion (the sharing together in) the body of Christ?” It is in this holy meal that we find that we have communion in so many senses of the words. We commune with God, and with the real presence of Christ as we embody Jesus in the meal and as we are sent forth from the table into the world to serve. We commune with our brothers and sisters in Christ too – across time and space. On World Communion Sunday, we particularly focus on our connection across space, meditating on how we are bound together by the sacrament with Christians all over the world. But on All Saints Sunday, we focus on how we are bound together across time. We come to the table just as our forefathers and foremothers in faith came to the table. Just as the early church did. Just as the disciples came together with Jesus. As we come to the table, we are bound together, sharing in common with them this holy meal, not just by remembering the past, but as we reflect on how we are bound together in the present, and how even our futures are bound together as we work for the fulfillment of God’s reign. And so as we share in this common meal, we are bound together with the very people who we have lifted up today.

            We’ve been focusing on being a prayerful congregation. And the whole service of communion is prayer. The special prayer we share in as we ask God to bless our communion is called the Great Thanksgiving. And indeed, our thanksgiving is great, as we reflect on the fullness of God’s grace in our lives, grace that binds us together in the body of Christ, with all the saints of God, past, and present, and yet to come. Thanks be to God for this communion. Amen.

Sermon, "Prayerful: Persistence," Luke 18:1-8

Sermon 10/25/15

Luke 18:1-8

Prayerful: Persistence

            What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “Christian values” or “Biblical values”? Maybe faith, hope, love, joy, peace? Some of those fruit-of-the-spirit words Paul talks about? Of course, those things are in there, in the scriptures. Lots of good lessons about all that good fruit we might cultivate in our lives, just like we talked about over the last several weeks. But there’s also several stories that seem to highlight values, personal characteristics, that we don’t really know what to do with. Jesus commends to us in one parable a household manager who deceives the master of the house for his own benefit, and he’s labeled as shrewd, something, apparently, we’re meant to admire. In our Bible Study last spring we read several stories about women who were tricksters, finding sneaky ways to exercise some control in a society where they had little power. And these trickster women become, in fact, part of the family tree of Jesus himself. And today we’re looking at a parable that lifts up what is nicely called persistence, but is more commonly known as nagging.

            Jesus tells a parable, and Luke tells us that it is meant to show us that we’re to pray always and not to lose heart. Jesus tells us a story about a judge who neither fears God nor respects people. There’s a widow who keeps coming to him day after day saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” A widow would be among the most vulnerable in society – a woman, no husband, no standing in society. Typically women were not even allowed to be in court, part of the proceedings. But here she is, demanding justice. The judge refuses. But eventually, even though, as he himself knows, he doesn’t fear God or respect anyone, he decides to grant the woman justice so that she will JUST QUIT BOTHERING HIM. And Jesus says, won’t God grant justice to you who cry to him day and night? Won’t he help you? I tell you, he will grant them justice quickly. And yet, when the Son of Man comes – will he find faith on earth?

            This isn’t the only story like this. We read another text from Luke, not long ago, that is fairly similar. In this story, Jesus says, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked … I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” And Jesus concludes saying, “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

            Persistence. The word means “shamelessness” or “unembarrassed boldness.” Nagging. Asking again and again and again. There’s two categories of people that have this quality down to a T, I think: children, and parents. My mother often tells my brother about the saying: nags are not born, they’re made. When she’s reminding him, again, to do something that he has forgotten, again, to do, he might get frustrated, but she knows what brings about results. Children have their own special techniques when it comes to nagging. How many pets are part of households because of children nagging for a kitty or a puppy? How many second helpings of dessert are granted because of nagging? 

            Persistence. Of course, maybe it isn’t that unusual of a value to admire. Rather than calling it nagging, though, we might talk about endurance. Determination. Perseverance. Relentless pursuit of a goal. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The little engine that could. There’s a runner determined to build up to a marathon, or to beat their fastest time. A musician practicing the same measure over and over until they get it right. Scientists testing theory after theory until they get it right, searching for a cure for a disease that seems untouchable until a breakthrough comes. We value that kind of perseverance through obstacles, through adversity, right?

            Still, why exactly would we need to show persistence in our prayers offered to God? Why would God answer our prayers because of persistence? After all, perseverance against challenging obstacles implies we have to get beyond something that has been put in our way. Are we trying to wear God down? Change God’s mind? Do we have to convince God, persuade God, to answer our prayers? I struggle with such a concept. And yet, why else would persistence be so valuable?

            I think persistence in prayer is more about us and the changes persistent prayer works in us than it is about God. It impacts us, speaks to our needs more than what God might need from us. Persistent prayer reveals our truest heart to God, our heart’s desire to God. Imagine if a parent said yes to every single thing a child ever requested, if a parent granted every single request that passed the lips of a child. Yet, when we long for something, when we ask again and again, when we are relentless in our need for something, things are different. When a child has asked for the same thing again and again and again – not just in five minutes, but over five months – a parent knows the child is expressing sincere, heartfelt desire.

            More than that, persistence in prayer is more about us than about God because it shows our commitment, our faithfulness. I think we have some pretty short attention spans sometimes. I think of our constant, instant news cycle. Something is headline breaking news today, and the next day we’ve forgotten it ever happened. I think of the story of Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical CEO who increased the price of an important drug in the treatment of AIDs and cancer from $13 a pill to over $700 a pill overnight. His name and his story were everywhere for a few days, and he announced that he would lower the price of the pill. But he hasn’t – not yet anyway. And I wonder if part of his strategy is to just wait until we forget about it. Wait until the spotlight is off of him. Wait until we’ve moved on to some other story. We speak often about “15 minutes of fame.” Sometimes I wonder if that’s how much time we spend bringing what we claim are important concerns before God. 15 minutes. Maybe less. One mention, and we’ve moved on. What does it mean if we can’t even be bothered to hold something before God in prayer consistently? Persistently? Our persistent prayers are acts of faithfulness, to God, and to one another as we lift each other up in prayer, as we seek for justice through prayer, as we hold up the marginalized, the suffering in prayer. Can we keep the needs of our friends and family and community and world on our hearts for more than just a few minutes? Or have we forgotten our prayers just after they’ve passed our lips? I know God has not forgotten. But do we? Our persistent prayers are prayers of faithful commitment.

            And ultimately, I think persistence in prayers aligns our hearts with God’s heart. It is God who is ultimately persistent, persevering, in seeking after us. It is God who is relentless, who never ceases to seek after us, who never stops searching for the lost sheep, who never stops hoping for the prodigal child to return, who never ceases in calling our name. If persistence is unembarrassed boldness, then certainly God is ever the most persistent of all. And when we persist with our prayers that we offer to God, we find ourselves in fact on the same page. We find God already laboring to bring about peace and healing and justice in the world, seeking to change hearts, and open minds, and transform souls. I think sometimes when we pray with persistence, God isn’t suddenly hearing us. Instead, we are suddenly hearing God. I think of the long and relentless work of the Civil Rights movement, and all the prayers offered to God to change hearts and break down the walls of racism and hate in our nation. I don’t believe for a moment that God needed to be convinced to created change. Rather, we needed to realize what God had been saying all along, when we realized our voices crying out to God for justice were in fact in harmony with God’s cry for justice through the ages. With persistent prayer, our hearts sync up with the very heart of God.

            And still sometimes, our persistent prayers just make a space for God to enter into our pain, our struggles. Writes Peter Woods, “The [suffering and struggling] of life somehow directs that the longed and worked for perfection does not always follow according to my schedule Yet despite all my experiences of suffering, stress and unsatisfactoriness I still cry out to my ABBA and long with God that it could all be different. Somehow the calling helps. It helps even if nothing changes. I have discovered that it is far more consoling to have a God who feels the pain with me and who longs for a better world than to have a MacGyver God who fixes everything at my beck and call. A Mr Fixit God leaves me fickle and superficial. It would seem that, for Jesus, faith doesn’t fix things as much as it gives the capacity and courage to bear the unbearable.”

To pray with persistence is to make ourselves so very vulnerable. To pray with persistence is to come before God with unembarrassed boldness. That’s not a phrase I’d very often use to describe myself. Unembarrassedly bold. Not quite me. But for God? To be faithful? To be vulnerable to God? To have God share in my suffering and my struggle? To find myself working alongside God for justice? To show God my heart? Maybe for all that, I can, with boldness, bring my prayers to God. Again. And again. And again.

Amen.   

1) http://thelisteninghermit.com/2010/10/11/why-god-doesn%E2%80%99t/?t/

Sermon, "Prayerful: Confession," Nehemiah 1

Sermon 10/18/15

Nehemiah 1

Prayerful: Confession

           

            We are in the midst of what promises to be an extremely long election season, especially when you consider that we still have one election day before the actual election we’ve been hearing all about lately. The presidential election in 2016 is already taking up a lot of our energy. What are you looking for in a candidate? I’ll tell you one thing I’m looking for: a candidate who can apologize well, and can apologize sincerely, can apologize with humility. A candidate who can simply and clearly admit when they are wrong.

            I remember back in 2008, when Sarah Palin was on the ticket for the office of Vice President. She was speaking in Boston, one day, and talked about Paul Revere’s famous ride, and she made some reference to him riding to warn the British, instead of warning the colonists. Palin made a mistake, and in my opinion, the media went a bit overboard in jumping on her words, which seemed to me more like misspeaking than misunderstanding. Still, though, Palin’s reaction was even worse. Instead of saying: “Yes, I got that wrong. I screwed up. Sorry,” she dug in her heels, and insisted that Paul Revere also rode to warn the British, like to intimidate them. It would have been so much better if she’d just admitted her error. But she just dug herself in deeper and deeper because apparently, that was preferable to saying “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” Sarah Palin is certainly not the only candidate to adopt this behavior. That particular incident just sticks clearly in my mind. Republicans and Democrats and Independent and all the rest of the politicians do the same thing all the time. I’m not sure what the strategy is. I guess we have a cultural belief that people who are powerful and are good leaders are never, ever wrong. That they are above needing to apologize, perhaps. Certainly, the impression is that apologizing, admitting a fault is a weakness.

            Good thing we’re not like that, right? Well… It seems that apologizing is something that we are remarkably bad at as a whole. Some of us say it too much. I have a colleague who has a bad tendency to apologize constantly. I keep telling her I am going to make her an “I’m sorry” jar – a jar to put $1.00 in every time she says I’m sorry. But she probably couldn’t afford it. Maybe you fall into this category – apologizing for everything you do and say. I’m not sure that kind of apology is particularly powerful – except in being powerfully harmful to the self-worth of the person who is apologizing all the time. But for others of us, we apologize too infrequently, not too often. Think of these things we do to avoid having to say “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong.” We say, “I’m sorry, but…” and follow with basically an explanation of why we are not sorry at all. Or “I’m sorry that you got upset with me.” This is another non-apology, basically a criticism of the other party, rather than a sincere admitting of wrong. How about the phrase, “My apologies.” I find myself slipping into that phrase when I’m telling someone that I’m sorry I haven’t emailed them back more promptly. In my experience, the most powerful apologies are sincere, and direct. “I’m so sorry. I was wrong.”

            Today, we’re talking about a particular aspect of prayer: confession. As Protestants, and as United Methodist Protestants in particular, we don’t always focus a great deal on confession. When Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, one of his critiques of the Church was against the idea that we needed to confess our sins to a priest or to an intermediary instead of directly to God. And indeed, although some parishioners of mine over the years have sought me out to share a confession that had been weighing on their hearts, there is certainly no requirement that you would seek out your pastor or anyone else and confess your sins to them. Indeed, in our individualized, privacy-focused culture, such a concept is a hard sell. I taught a study once on Richard Foster’s Spiritual Disciplines, and in one chapter, he suggests the discipline of confession. He encourages readers to seek out a trusted person and indeed confess to that person in full one’s sins. What would you think of that? I can tell you my class struggled more with that chapter, that discipline, than any others. It can be so very hard to say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” And maybe even harder to admit exactly what it is we are sorry for.

            In our tradition, individual confession is something we usually do on our own. And in worship, we might participate in a corporate confession. I tend not to include a prayer of confession each week, but often our morning prayer has a confessional nature, and usually when we are preparing to receive communion, our service includes a prayer of confession – the very one we shared today, and a couple weeks ago on World Communion Sunday. It’s easier, perhaps, to confess our sins if everyone else is doing it too!

            I think, over time, we’ve come to approach confession in our relationship with God in the same way we approach apologies in the rest of our lives. “I’m sorry, God, but…” “I’m sorry, God, that you don’t like what I’m doing.” “My apologies, God.” We have occasional times in our church year when we’re a bit more comfortable talking about repenting, turning our back on the ways we’ve wandered away from God. We start off Lent on Ash Wednesday with a time of penitence, admitting our sins, our brokenness, and seeking forgiveness. But most of the time, I think we’re convinced that as long as we don’t confess our sins to God, God won’t notice what we’re doing. I’m reminded of many parents telling children that it isn’t the wrong they did that is so bad – it’s the covering up afterwards, the lying, the hiding of the wrongdoing that’s so upsetting. Our failure to confess to God, to say “I’m sorry,” to say, “I was wrong,” is not so different from lying to God. Certainly, we’re lying to ourselves!    

            Part of our prayer life with God if we are to be a prayerful people is becoming a people who are willing to be honest with God about our shortcomings. Not because God doesn’t know them otherwise. But because true growth and strength in our discipleship comes when we bear our hearts to God and acknowledge our failure. We can’t move on, we can’t experience the fullness of forgiveness, we can’t embrace the new direction that is repentance if we’re still unwilling to acknowledge the truth about what we’ve said and done, or left unsaid and undone. So, we’re starting with some of the hardest parts of prayer with God.

The scriptures are full of prayers of confession. That shouldn’t surprise us, given that some people who end up dedicating their lives to serving God, following in the footsteps of Jesus, have very colorful beginnings. God seems to like to show just how very much our lives can be turned around when we’re ready to admit we’ve been going the wrong way. This morning, we’re looking in particular at a prayer of confession from the Book of Nehemiah, a book of the Bible you might not be very familiar with. Nehemiah was written in the late 5^th century BC, and is a unique book among books of the Old Testament because it is primarily told in the first person point of view – a rare voice in the scriptures. We hear directly from Nehemiah. The events he describe take place after the Israelites had been exiled to Babylon, conquered by the Babylonians, and after the Israelites had finally been allowed to return to Jerusalem. But all is not well, “back to normal,” and Nehemiah returns to oversee the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

Nehemiah, is the cup-bearer to King Artaxerxes in Susa, the capitol of Persia. Cup-bearers were positions of high status. Because of the constant fear of plots to harm the ruling king, a person had to be considered highly trustworthy to hold the position of cup-bearer. The cup-bearer had to guard against poison or tampering with the drinks served to the king, sometimes even required to taste-test for the king. But this role also brought the cup-bearer a degree of closeness and confidence with the king. Cup-bearers had influence with the king.

Nehemiah, cup-bearer to Artaxerxes, learns that the wall of Jerusalem had been destroyed. As our text opens, we find him praying to God after receiving the news. He prays that God will give him strength and success as he asks Artaxerxes to let him return to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of the walls. After our text for today, the king agrees, and Nehemiah is appointed governor of Judah. He rebuilds the walls, he wards off enemies, and he rebuilds the community to conform again with the law of Moses, making many reforms, including reforms to combat oppression of the poor, like cancelling past debts and mortgages. He meets with a lot of opposition, especially from the Jewish nobles, but he eventually prevails.

But our focus today is specifically on Nehemiah’s prayer. Before any of the events unfold, before everything turns around for Nehemiah, right in the first chapter, we read his prayer, his starting point, before he begins to carry out what he believes is God’s purpose for him. Nehemiah’s prayer is beautiful and flowing, but we shouldn’t be put off by the beauty of his words. The heart of the prayer is always what matters to God, just as a child’s “I’m sorry” is as powerful to a parent as an adult child’s more eloquent communication. Nehemiah confesses his sin, his family’s sin, and in fact confesses the sin of the whole nation. The people have turned away from God, and Nehemiah knows he, too, had turned away from God. From the scriptures, we know that Israel understood its time in exile as the consequence of failing to follow the commandments of God. And that’s exactly what Nehemiah says in his prayer: God, I confess for me, for my family, for my nation, that we’ve sinned, and we’ve stopped following your commandments. It’s pretty simple, his confession. And he follows it up by saying that he understands the consequences of his wrongdoing. But he understands something else, too. He understands that when people return to God, when they repent, turn back to God’s direction, God delights in offering forgiveness, reconciliation, new hope, and new life. So Nehemiah confesses, deeply sorry for how off track he and his people have been. But he doesn’t despair. Because he knows that it is God’s nature to forgive and rebuild and keep God’s promises even when we don’t keep ours. His prayer, his confession, is a turning point, a restart.

Confessing our wrongdoing is hard work. It involves some soul-searching, and a lot of vulnerability. It involves saying we are sorry, that we’ve been wrong, without trying to lessen the impact by couching our confession in explanations. But if we know, as Nehemiah did, that we serve a God who keeps promises, who forgives again and again, and who in fact loves to build wonderful stories of transformation from the most unlikely beginnings, we take heart. God is waiting for us to say that we’re sorry. And God is ready to say, “I forgive you. I love you. Now come this way. Follow me.”

God, I am sorry. We are sorry. God, I was wrong. We have been wrong. Please forgive me. Please forgive us. Amen.