Prayer

Proper 20C: Rogue Discipleship

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labyrinth-burfordosbFIRST LESSON:  Jeremiah 8: 18-9:1

Read the passage from Jeremiah

The prophet Jeremiah is often called the “weeping prophet” and this passage depicts that to a tee.  This week’s passage is from a portion of the book that deals with the unrepentant and incorrigible people of Judah and God’s seemingly wrathful reaction to them.  In the context of the whole book of Jeremiah, this passage is moving closer toward what would be the total destruction of Israel.

Preceding these verses is the image of the bitter disappointment and dismay of a landowner who comes at the harvest to gather grapes or figs only to find there is no fruit.  The distress and anger of the landowner is made evident.  And even though the people acknowledge that they have had a part in these wrongdoings, their response is one of resignation, rather than repentant.  They desperately want peace and healing but are unable to heed to call to do what it takes to make that happen.  And so the Babylonian armies come closer and closer to Jerusalem.

And so in today’s passage, we have the sense that Jeremiah is overwhelmed with grief, sharing the pain and dismay of what is happening around him.  He is frustrated and filled with a deep sense of helplessness.  What is happening to the people is surely an out and out faith crisis.  God seems to be absent.  The harvest is over and there are no filled barns to get us through the rest of the year.  The God who protects and delivers has not come.  But is the God they are seeking some sort of vending machine God that always comes to their rescue?  God, rather, desires a relationship with the people, desires that they truly become the people of God.  Their piety and their theology do not reflect God’s ways.  In truth, they really know nothing of the Lord on which they rely.  In fact, they know so little of the Lord that they do not realize that God is still with them.

The prophet Jeremiah is torn between his love for his people and his love for God.  He claims that he cannot weep enough for the suffering of the people and, yet, he desires that they change and turn toward God.  Jeremiah’s joy is gone, his heart is sick, and he hurts for the hurt of the people.  God feels all that and more.  God, too, weeps for the people.  Like Jeremiah, God loves the people but cannot ignore the fact that they are so far away from Truth and Life.

In these words, we find an image of a God that holds deep and abiding compassion for God’s people, while at the same time One who cannot ignore what they have done.  This is a God who hurts for the people’s hurt as much as the hurt of God.  This is a God who desires so deeply a relationship with God’s Creation and God’s people that this God will stay even when God is ignored or turned upon.  But God also cannot ignore what has been done.

The familiar phrase referring to the “balm in Gilead” probably refers to a resin from the balsam trees that were so plentiful in the area around Gilead.  They did, indeed, provide a healing of sorts.  But this was not going to be enough this time.  You cannot mend destruction with a band aid and you certainly cannot anesthetize it away.  No longer is there a “right” and “wrong” way or a “right and “wrong” side.  Things are too far gone for that.  Rather, God, in the midst of sorrow and grief, calls the people to total and complete transformation.  But the good news is that God is not asking us to do it alone.

 

  • What is your response to this passage?
  • What do you think of the image of God feeling pain, or sorrow, or grief?
  • How does our own societal order fit in with this passage?
  • What vision of hope does this passage depict for you?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  1 Timothy 2: 1-7

Read the epistle passage

Remember that the letters to Timothy and Titus are known as the Pastoral Epistles, meaning that they were addressed to the whole church.  In this passage, the writer (probably not Paul) uses the Greek phrase that is translated as “everyone” to emphasize the universal nature of the Christian faith.  As the passage says, “everyone” should be the focus of our prayers, our intercessions, and our thanksgivings.  “Everyone” should be the focus of our Christian faith.

Some interpreters have suggested that this emphasis on inclusiveness reflects an intentional corrective to Gnostic attitudes that one should pray for only certain people who are in possession of the “special” knowledge of Christ.  But it also means that the writer is exhorting the readers to pray for even those who are teaching false doctrines and causing the new faith community so many problems.

So, we are told, pray often; pray for everyone.  But, the passage continues.  What is important is not just prayer for prayer’s sake, but the meaning:  the One God revealed by Christ, who wants a broken and estranged humankind (all humankind) to be mended with the truth of divine shalom.  And, to take it a step further, we are to pray with gratitude and thanksgiving.  We are to give thanks for all things and all people.  What would that mean if we really did that?  Well, it would imply that there is something in all of us for which we should give thanks.  It sort of dispels that “right” and “wrong” depiction or the “good” and “evil” one.  All of us are God’s creatures; all of us were created by God with gifts and graces unique to each of us.  What would that mean to give thanks for all?  Well, for one thing, it would probably transform the world.

In Feasting on the Word, Matt Matthews tells a story that was told by John Buchanan in “The Christian Century” as a tribute to the Russian cellist Matislav Rostropovich.  Buchanan admired Rostropovich’s courage.  In 1970, Rostropovich expressed his support for artistic freedom and human rights in a letter to “Pravda”, the state-run newspaper of what was then the Soviet Union.  In response, the Soviets stripped him and is wife of citizenship.  Buchanan saw Rostropovich play a Dvorak cello concerto in Chicago.  As the last note faded, the audience sat mesmerized.  Rostropovich did and extraordinary thing:  he stood up and kissed his cello.  The audience erupted.  Then he hugged and kissed the surprised conductor.  Then he hugged and kissed the entire cello section before moving on to the violins.  He hugged and kissed most of the orchestra.  Gratitude.  What if we prayed for others like that?

If we prayed like that, might our prayer-grounded lives better reflect the image of Christ?  Might the sometimes-ashen words of gratitude we use in our stiff praying for others, even enemies, blossom into the lilt of song, the vital flesh of action?  Might a modicum of our selfishness melt to communal concern?  Might we turn away, however slightly, from our penchant for self-reliance (a mirage), toward new submission to the one who “gave himself to rescue all of us”?  To pray like this lessens the space for hubris in the heart of the one who prays and widens its capacity for humility. (From “Feasting on the Word”)

 

  • What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  • What does that mean to you when the writer exhorts us to “pray for everyone”?
  • Why is that so difficult?
  • What would it mean if we took the meaning of this passage to heart?
  • What does it mean to be the image of Christ in the world?
  • In terms of our own society, how does this relate to the words “with liberty and justice for all”?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Luke 16:1-13

Read the passage from The Gospel According to Luke

This parable is really just downright baffling.  The story is clearly set in the context in which wealth is of great importance with all of the problems that entails.  So the disciples are warned that they cannot serve both God and money.  But it’s still an odd way to get to that assertion.  The parable is also pointing to the eschatological hope and promise to which we are all called.

Throughout Luke, the theme of wealth is obvious.  Next week’s Scripture will continue this theme.  The last part of this week’s passage deals with how we handle money as an indicator of responsibility.  In other words, how do our financial decisions inform our spiritual walk?  And the last verse suggests that wealth can assume divine status in people’s lives as the absolute value.

There does seem to be some intent for the writer of Luke to interpret the parable.  The “children of this age” outdo the “children of light”.  So how are we to understand this story?  Was the man overcharging and so forwent his cut to gain acceptance among his former clients when he knew he would be dismissed?  Or was he setting up a situation which would enhance his reputation?  Reputation and trust was of even higher importance in that age than it is today.  Remember that debt was used more than once by Jesus as a metaphor for sins and forgiving debts, for forgiving sins. Jesus uses the same imagery in the Lord’s Prayer. Central to the story is the fact that the rogue had no authorization to go around canceling or cutting people’s debts. It was outrageous behavior. But Luke has been telling us that Jesus’ behavior was also outrageous. His opponents were saying he had no right to go about welcoming sinners and declaring God’s forgiveness to them. Jesus was a rogue in the system. They denied his authority to do so.

Jesus may possibly have taken up a popular story about a rogue manager, then used it to confront his opponents. He is like the rogue whom they accuse of being unauthorized to forgive debts, but, as he asserts, he does so with God’s approval. As the master praised the sacked manager, so, claims Jesus, God will approve his ministry and his radical generosity. Jesus is the legitimate agent. God is that generous!

Wealth and exploitation are not simply a moral issue which Christians also need to address, but something quite central to the gospel. No one is to be written off, because what people have held against others has been written off by the incomprehensibility of divine grace. That divine grace cancels prejudice and judgment of any kind that renders other people less than human and without rights or poor ‘because they deserve it’.

But we still don’t like this story.  The scoundrel triumphs.  That’s not fair.  He didn’t deserve it.  How hard is it for us to believe in transformation, in everything being made new?  You cannot serve God and wealth.  And life is not fair.  But God is very, very just and filled with grace for all (yes, all!).  But, really, who are we called to be?  What if we handed out open hospitality, unending generosity, and unconditional love?  What if we never stopped to look at the budget or ask what it would cost us in resources or reputation?  Well, we’d probably be a church that looked a whole lot like the Kingdom of God that God envisions.  And isn’t that the whole point?  In the big scheme of things, that is all that matters. So why is this parable so bothersome to us?

 

  • What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  • What is the most challenging part of this parable for you?
  • Why is this so difficult for us?
  • What would it mean to truly believe in transformation and everything being made new? Would it change the way we read this parable?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on inside. It is about becoming open to the God of newness. It is about allowing ourselves to let go of the present, to believe in the future we cannot see but can trust to God….Hope is fulfilled in the future but it depends on our ability to remember that we have survived everything in life to this point—and have emerged in even better form than we were when these troubles began…Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn’t an ounce of proof in tonight’s black, black sky that it can possibly come. (Joan Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope)

If you begin to live life looking for God that is all around you, every moment becomes a prayer.  (Frank Bianco)

Forgiveness is something freely granted, whether earned or deserved;  something lovingly offered without though of acknowledgment or return.  It is our way of mirroring the goodness in the heart of a person rather than raising up the harshness of their actions…it allows us to live in the sunlight of the present, not the darkness of the past.  Forgiveness alone, of all our human actions, opens up the world to the miracle of infinite possibility.  (Kent Nerburn, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace)

 

 

Closing

 

We look for light but find darkness, for brightness, but walk in gloom…Blessed be your name, O God, forever.  You reveal deep and mysterious things; you are light and in you is no darkness.  Our darkness is passing away and already the true light is shining.  Amen. (From “Canticle of Light and Darkness, UMH # 205)

Proper 12C: Pray Like This

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Lord's Prayer (Aramaic)FIRST LESSON:  Hosea 1: 2-10

Read the Old Testament passage

Hosea, another “minor prophet”, prophesied in northern Israel about 750-740 BCE (after Amos), which was a tumultuous period with many political power struggles and violence.  During this time, Israel had enjoyed continuing prosperity and successful trade with surrounding nations.  Their prosperity, though, had made them lax in their relationship with God and, in Hosea’s view, society was on a downward spiral of injustice and immorality.  The society was full of religious syncretism, in which competing beliefs and competing deities were fused with belief in YHWH (sort of a “watered down” version of the Torah, in essence).  For Hosea, the society was involved both politically and religiously in “affairs” in which Israel exhibited infidelity.

God tells Hosea to take “a wife of whoredom” and bear children.  The broken marriage reflects what Hosea saw as Israel’s broken relationship with God.  He really saw little difference between the political infidelity and the religious.  He saw them as interwoven and both in need of judgment.

In accordance with the divine command, Hosea chooses Gomer, who some scholars claim may possibly have been a temple prostitute, hanging around the temple waiting to be picked up by anyone who happened by, and they have three children whose names embody the judgment of God. It is possible, too, that the children, especially the second and third, are not Hosea’s, but rather the fruits of attachments that Gomer had with other men. The first child is Jezreel, whose name means, ‘God sows,’ to embody the punishment the people are soon to reap. The city of Jezreel had been the scene of much violence and had become a byword for violence and torture, hardly a happy name to give a first-born son. The second child is named Lo-ruhamah, ‘not pitied,’ to signify an end to the Lord’s pity and forgiveness of God’s people Israel. It is as though God has had enough of the people’s straying; God’s compassion has worn thin.

The third child’s name, Lo-ammi, is especially disturbing, as it means, ‘not my people.’ God’s continual way of saying to Israel ‘You are my people’ and Israel’s response ‘You are our God’ compose the covenant between God and Israel. But this third child’s name indicates God’s covenant with his people is now at an end. Their apostasy means a breaking of the covenant from their side, so that they can no longer be seen as God’s people.

But then the mood of the passage shifts abruptly, promising that at the very place where it was said the people were no longer God’s, they would once again be called ‘children of the living God.’ The change begins with “Yet”—even with all this stuff that has happened, God is still there.  It is as though the end of the covenant is too terrible to contemplate. Perhaps there is also a sense that the overarching love of God cannot be shut out even when the people fall away from their part of the covenant.  Hosea as a prophet is a striking figure. He takes upon himself something of the people’s sin, something of their pain. Through his marriage to Gomer and the birth of the children, he enacts the long-suffering love of God, who bears with his erring people far beyond their deserving. And who in the end opts for compassion and forgiveness as the way to life.

Now, I guess you could ask why in the world God thought it necessary to make Hosea live a life full of infidelity in order to deliver the message.  But, remember, even Moses had to get in there and wander in the wilderness.  The thing is, life with God does not mean that it is somehow sanitized and without difficulty or transgressions.  After all, maybe we’re supposed to squirm a little bit at our own unfaithfulness to God.  Life is life and sometimes it’s how we see God at work in our life.  The passage, uncomfortable as it may be, carries both the pain of unfaithfulness and the compassion of a God who still redeems—over and over and over again. And maybe within that redemption is a reminder that not everyone CHOOSES their life.  It is probably more likely that Gomer was a prostitute not for sex but for money.  Maybe this was her way out.  Maybe it’s a reminder that the world is not sanitized for our enjoyment and God knows that, that God knows how to get in there in the dirt of it all and redeem even the worst injustices that the world holds.  It is a reminder that God is God over all of Creation and promises to redeem the worst that might come along.  And THAT IS good news!

 

1)      What is your response to this passage?

2)      What, for you, does the possibility of being truly “God-forsaken” mean to you?

3)      What message could this hold for our own society?

4)      What message of hope does this passage hold?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)

Read the Epistle passage

This is sort of a densely-packed lesson but in it, the writer (more than likely not Paul) comes to the heart of the gospel—God’s gracious deliverance of humanity through the death and resurrection of Christ, and our sharing in that deliverance through union with Christ at baptism.  Because Christ shares fully the human condition, we share Christ’s destiny.

The letter begins with words of encouragement and a reminder of what it means to “receive” Christ, to “receive” the gospel.  The word that is translated here as “live” is actually closer to “walk”, which was a common way of talking about a way of life.  So this was directed at converts who are hearing from others that their spiritual “walk” is lacking in some way.

If we take our passage as a whole and include the verses in brackets we can see that these people are concerned about observances in relation to food, drink, festivals, new moons, and the Sabbath. They are also concerned with heavenly powers and authorities, including some kind of veneration of angels and mystical connection with them. There is also the recurrence of the common argument over circumcision as “proof” of one’s righteousness and belief. This may have been a sort of radical form of Jewish Christianity which still upholds the Law and insists that Gentiles observe it.

So the writer again issues a warning against others who threaten their faith.  He specifically warns against those touting “philosophy”, which for the writer implied those things based on human tradition and not on Christ.  “Tradition” here refers to those things that are human constructs that lack divine authority in his understanding.

Colossians grounds its readers in Christ, from being rooted in Christ and then ending it with the image of a body nourished by the head and growing through God.  The letter is a pretty broad canvas.  The crux of it, though, is unity and peace and how those things are at stake.  For the writer, God’s compassion spills into the whole universe and brings it together.  The image of Christ as universal and the church as the universal body of Christ is paramount here.  So these divisions and attempts to break apart what is sealed by Christ should be ignored.  The meaning of life has to do with the love found in Christ, not rules and regulations.  It has to do with this God who redeems our best and our worst.

 

1)      What meaning does this passage hold for you?

2)      How is this message still pertinent today?

3)      What does it mean for you to “receive” Christ?

4)      What does it mean for you that God redeems our best and our worst?

 

 

GOSPEL: Luke 11:1-13

Read the Gospel passage

The opening to our Gospel passage is a request that each of us deeply understands:  “Lord, teach us to pray.”  We want to know how to pray.  We want to have a deep and abiding prayer life that connects us with God and makes our lives richer and fuller.  How do you pray?  Who taught you to pray?  Why do you pray?  We want to find a way to make our prayers more meaningful and more worthy of what God really wants to hear.  Maybe that’s our problem.  We’re trying so hard to bring meaning to our prayer life that we’re not allowing our prayers to bring meaning to our life.  We’re trying so hard to find God that we don’t expect to experience a God who is already there.  God does not need our prayers; we do.  God does not have to be invited into our lives; we just have to open our eyes to God’s Presence.

The truth is, Jesus knew that.  He knew that people struggled to experience the real Presence of God and because of that, they also struggled with how to acknowledge and live with that Presence in their lives.  He knew that we struggled continuously with doubts about God and about what God wanted from us.  He knew that we struggle with what prayer should be.  So he begins where we are—in the midst of that silence that is God.  He began by showing the disciples what was at the very core of his own life—his relationship with God.  Because remember that Jesus had made prayer an integral part of his life.  How many times do we read of him “withdrawing to a deserted place to pray” or “going to the mountain to pray” or “spending the night in prayer with God?”  He prayed before he chose the disciples, when he fed the five thousand, and on the night before he was led to his death.  He even prayed on the cross, a prayer of centering and forgiveness.

What Jesus provided in answer to the disciple’s request is more than just a formula for prayer.  Jesus provided words to address God, words to praise God, and, finally, words to petition God.  The prayer begins by imploring God (and perhaps reminding us that this is God’s place) to take charge of our life and our world, to bring about justice and peace as only God can do.

The remaining petitions have to do with basic human needs, those things that are the very sustenance of our life—food, relationships with others, relationship with God.  They have to do with life.  The prayer does not include petitions for stuff, or comforts, or for things to get easier for us.  It doesn’t even ask God to make things clearer or more sensible to us.  It is a prayer that brings us into life with God.  It is a petition for those things that only God can provide and that we cannot live without.  It is an opening to the awareness that God made us, that we are God’s, and that God’s desire is not for us to be right, or to be good, or to be pleasing, but to be who we were meant to be.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said that “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

The prayer that Jesus taught us to pray has nothing to do with knowing the right words.  It really is more about persistence.  Jesus continues in this passage by reminding us to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking.  Far from characterizing God as some sort of celestial Santa Claus who always brings good little boys and girls the things for which they ask, Jesus seemed to assume that God is already in motion, that God has already answered every prayer, and that God has already opened every door that needs to be opened and is standing at the threshold inviting us to enter.  So praying opens our lives to the presence of the God who is always and already there and gives us the realization that God provides life’s minimum daily requirements so that all we need to do is open ourselves to being with God.

In her book,   The Breath of the Soul, Joan Chittister tells of another disciple who expressed the desire that his master teach him how to pray.  “Then here is how,” the Holy One said as he plunged the head of the disciple into a bucket of water and held it there while the disciple struggled to be free. “Why did you do a thing like that?” the disciple demanded to know as he came up out of the water gasping for breath.  “In order to teach you,” the Holy One said, “that when you get to the point where you know you need God as much as you need air, you will have learned how to pray.” ( Joan Chittister, The Breath of the Soul:  Reflections on Prayer (New London, CT:  Twenty-third Publications, 2009), 36.)

Well, that was a little more dramatic than what Jesus did, but I actually think that they were trying to get the same point across.  We are not merely called to pray; we are called to a life of prayerfulness, a life in which every breath we take and every move we make is attuned to the breath and movement of God that is already a part of us.  And in that way, prayer comes with responsibility.  As we enter that realm of God, we, too, are called to be a part of creating a world of justice and peace, of forgiveness, of providing bread for the hungry, and a shunning of those things that temptingly pull us away from where we’re called to be.  Prayer, then, opens us to love and that, too, becomes a way of sustaining our life.

There is a New York Times bestseller that was written by Elizabeth Gilbert that carries the title, Eat, Pray, Love.  The book was ultimately made into a movie.  This book  is essentially the account of a women’s search for meaning in her life.  Assuming that she could not find it where she was, she took off on a whirlwind adventure through Italy, India, and Indonesia, on a quest for enjoyment, devotion, and transcendence.  She finds it but she has to get out of herself and away from the chaos that she has created in her life to find what was there all along—to find the sustenance that is life—to eat, to pray, and to love.  She finds that she cannot exist without each of them and that they were in her life all along.

She says that “the search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order.  In the search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult.  You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope that something greater will be offered you in return for what you’ve given up.  Every religion in the world,” she says, “ operates on the same common understandings of what it means to be a good disciple—get up early and pray to God, hone your virtues, be a good neighbor, respect yourself and others, master your cravings.” [Goodness, that sort of sounds like that prayer we know so well!]  She goes on:  “We all agree that it would be easier to sleep in, and many of us do, but for millennia there have been others who choose instead to get up before the sun and wash their faces and go to their prayers.  And then fiercely try to hold on to their devotional convictions throughout the lunacy of another day…Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch.  Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.  If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be…a prudent insurance policy…I couldn’t care less,” she says, “ about evidence and proof and assurances.  I just want God.  I want God inside me.  I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.”( Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love:  One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 2006), 175-176.)

 

 

1)      What meaning does this passage hold for you?

2)      What does prayer mean for you?  What difficulties with it do you have?

3)      What would it mean for us to see prayer as a “minimum daily requirement”, as life-sustaining?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

Prayer is not merely an occasional impulse to which we respond when we are in trouble:  prayer is a life attitude.  (Wayne Mueller)

Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place…to which we may continuously return.  Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us…calling us home unto Itself.  Yielding to these persuasions…utterly and completely, to the Light within, is the beginning of true life. (Thomas R. Kelly)

If you begin to live life looking for God that is all around you, every moment becomes a prayer.  (Frank Bianco)

 

Closing

God, You who are Father and Mother to each of us, but nearer than our own breath; Make yourself the center of our world and our lives:  Reign over us and among us.  Let your creative and life-giving will and dream for us happen right now and right here in our world; Make every bite of bread a taste of your loving presence; Don’t make us relive our failures day after day, and help us not to make others relive their own failures.  And do not abandon us to our own violence, but show us the way out of the cycle of violence that threatens to destroy us.  Because your Reign and your Power and your Glory are finally all that matter.  Amen. (The Lord’s Prayer (Paraphrased), by Dr. Virgil Howard, (1936-2006)