The Park Road Pulpit
Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church
Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors
Praying with Jesus:
Russ Dean, August 24, 2003
Time management has become an obsession for Americans. Even though God has generously blessed us with all the time there is, we may be the only people in the world for whom “all the time there is,” is still not enough! Americans, who already take less vacation time than the people of any other industrialize nation in the world, have again, this year, shaved a few days off our average total. And, given cellular telephones, laptop computers, and wireless hookups, many people even work on the few days they do steal away from the office.
Stephen Covey has made an entrepreneureal fortune, capitalizing on our inability to control our own lives. Boiling his method down to a religiously perfect “seven habits,” millions of us have spent big money on his books, his name-brand seminars, his company’s nifty little day timers and their innumerably accessorized gadgets of every form and function – all in the name of becoming “highly effective people.” Step two in Covey’s formula for success is an exhortation to, in all things, “begin, with the end in mind.”
“Imagine your own funeral,” the leader of my seminar began. “What are people saying about you?” Begin with the end in mind. Without such a vision, whether for an individual, a family, a company or a church, a vision which he believes should be set forth in a “mission statement,” Covey says, we
"[fluctuate] from one center to another, the resulting relativism is like roller coasting through life..."[1]
When we began this summer’s series, we had such an end in mind. Convinced, as was Martin Luther, that in a world like ours we are actually “too busy not to pray” we began our series, whether desperate or delighting, confident or confused, angry or afraid, in good company with those first disciples who sought Jesus in request: “Lord, teach us to pray.”
We began this series with the assumption that “prayer is a discipline that is essential to faith -- to come to see the God above us, to come to relate engagingly with the world around us, to come to know the heart within us, we must learn to pray.” We began this series with the stated vision that: “Praying with Jesus [would] teach us to dismiss our fearful ideas of God and to disavow our selfish notions of praying,” for we believed that “such understandings can never lead us to a life of prayer, only to a life characterized by paranoia – that is, the fearful, timid, cowering approach to a distant Supreme Being that sounds more like fear-filled obligation or down-right begging.”
The goal of our series was to prove, through the lives of the faithful that, “Prayer is Relationship.” [2]
Just like Mr. Covey suggested, we gathered at the beginning, with the end in mind. Today, we gather at the end, with the beginning in mind. “How have we done?” As you have prayed this summer, what have you learned? Is God still a too-distant Judge? A too-stingy Giver? Do you still see prayer as some kind of magical formula for assuaging God’s anger, or generating God’s grace?
If you have missed any Sundays this summer (and many of you have!), let me tell you a bit of what we, your ministers, have learned. I do hope we will have an opportunity to dialogue.
“ …twentieth century Protestant Americans are almost fatally individualistic… [continuing] to fall into the trap of thinking of my spirituality and my prayer as a private matter…”
But, the “Our” is perhaps the most important word for today, for in it we are reminded that we are not alone -- not only is God in this with us… but we have one another. And that God is Abba (Father) to me and to you and to those who persecute us. God is Abba to our enemies and God is Abba to those with whom we are in conflict -- for God is “Our Father” and not mine alone.
“It is possible to conclude that the giving of the Lord’s Prayer to the disciples authorized them to say ‘Abba,’ (which really means “daddy”) just as Jesus did. In this way, Jesus gave them a share in his relationship with God.”
God is no distant tyrant, but one to be known in personal, intimate terms.
“To proclaim God as the God who is near, as Jesus did, is to put an end to the idea of heaven as God’s distant dwelling place and to reverse the relation of God and heaven. It is not that where heaven is, there is God, but rather where God is, there is heaven… For ‘Our Father, who art in heaven’ means precisely ‘Our Father, who art present here on earth.’”
The prayer is not “hallowed be my understanding of God.” It is Hallowed be your name.
[Like Moses]… in standing on [our, still] holy ground, in the very presence of a Holy God and saying Hallowed by your name, we have accepted a call to live holy lives ourselves. Don’t be afraid… be glad that you associate with the likes of God.
Maybe God’s kingdom comes, not with eschatological signs or apocalyptic fury, but in the poor and the weak and the oppressed and the outcast, in beggars and bums and panhandlers and prostitutes. When “bad attitude girl” came through the door at this summer’s United Baptist Association Vacation Bible School, Amy prayed “’Thy Kingdom come.’ You see this girl… is precisely the one, not only for whom the Kingdom of God has come, but in whom the Kingdom of God has come.”
“Thy Kingdom come” is going to disrupt our already busy schedules. “Thy Kingdom come” is going to cost us money. “Thy Kingdom come” is going to make suckers out of us. “Thy Kingdom come” is going to test all of our fears and challenge us in ways we cannot even imagine.
Will Campbell has said (as only Will Campbell can) “God’s not in Heaven and all’s right on earth. God is on earth, and all Hell’s broke loose.”
Here and now is of utmost concern to God -- not something out there in the future. It is life in the moment that is the most important time.
We find at the very center of Jesus’ theology this one, audacious request: God – give us life eternal, give us your sure, continual presence, give us all of the joy of heaven – and give it to us, today!
And… while this petition, for millions, expresses a necessary trust in God’s providential care for the sustaining grace of every day life, for millions more, like you and me, the prayer cuts back. If we dare to pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” our daily bread might well cry out from moldy, uneaten loaves – there is Grace Enough. Are you willing to share?
“Praying the prayer by heart is different than praying the prayer by memory. Forgiveness is an issue of the heart… Jesus made this point again and again. You cannot ask God to forgive, if you yourself are not prepared to forgive.”
“We can forgive – created in the image of God, we the capacity within us,” though “Forgiveness takes a long time.” And this forgiveness which is slowly possible means more than letting go of our desire to seek revenge. It means being able to hope and pray for the genuine well being of the one who has trespassed against us. We grow up into forgiveness… for a lifetime.
Temptation here refers to the ultimate test of faith. In life’s ultimate testing, will we stand firm? Or might we lose our faith, altogether? Jesus’ petition should be taken as the ultimate warning against a piety of self-confidence on the one hand, and a complacency of apathy or despair on the other. But [the fact that Jesus himself prayed this petition], is also our greatest hope.
Maybe what we should fear most, then, is not losing our faith in final tribulation, but losing our community. For another heart, another soul, another mind, another hand – will give us just what we need for any journey. A community of faith will walk with us, through the valley of the shadow, and pray with us…
“Deliver us from evil,” is remembering that God is ever present and that deliverance will come again. It is seeing God in hindsight during those dark moments in the past and believing that God is present even when you feel that God is not. It is “belief in God even when God is silent.”[3]
God’s deliverance does not happen with God opening the sky and releasing an army of angels, it happens by the good works of the faithful. We are the hands and feet of God.
Amy and I were lost in the woods. Wandering a wide, dusty logging road cut through the South Carolina mountains. There had been no sign of those comforting red “trail blazes” now for some time. With our traveling companions we debated whether we should turn back, in search of our forsaken path, or press on, hoping our road, the less traveled by, would, itself, bring us to our destination. With the men in charge of the maps and possessing a genetically ill-fated predisposition against ever repenting (that is, “turning around”), we pressed on. Now in silence.
In time, the road narrowed and climbed. Then, tucking under some pine growth, one lost soul noted something familiar in the trail. Footprints.
“We’ve been here before.”
Our journey had taken us up, down, around – and back. Back to the beginning.
Jesus was a “highly effective person.” He must have begun prayer and ministry and all of life – with the end in mind. And when his life ended, with those words, whispered from an executioner’s cross, “Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23.46), we find him right back at the beginning.
At his mother’s breast, his life was in the hands of another.
At John’s side in that river of baptism, his life was in the hands of another.
At death’s door, even having lived more fully than any other, his life was still in the hands of another.
For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory. Forever.
At the end of our praying, if we have prayed at all, for all the miles traveled in between, we will always find ourselves right back where we began. On our knees. Before God. In faith.
For, we cannot go it alone. We are simply not strong enough. Wise enough. Bold enough. Our own little kingdoms are too small. Our own power, too fraught with selfish desire. Our own glory, but a flickering flame. So, our praying lasts a lifetime, drawing us with every benediction full circle, ever more keenly aware of our great need. In prayer, we always End with the Beginning in Mind.
Yet, as Eberhard Ebeling reminds us,
In another sense… we can in actual fact stop praying any time, because we have completed our prayer when we do not merely say “Amen,” but when we believe it, that is, when we let God be God.[4]
For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory. Forever.
Do you believe?
May it be so!
PASTORAL PRAYER
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day, our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.
Amen.
[1] Stephen R. Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I have misplaced my copy of the book. This quotation was taken from the internet. I have assumed its accuracy!
[2] These quotations from the sermon, “Praying with Jesus – From Paranoia to Prayer,” Russ Dean.
[3] Michael Horvitz.
[4] Gerhard Ebeling, The Lord’s Prayer, p. 124.