You are going to pray? For me?

I was really excited for yesterday's sermon, which is probably not a typical comment for a sermon preached on John 17 (verses 6-19 to be exact), as it is a twisting, turning, repeating, circular prayer from Jesus.  And while our first reading, Acts 1:15-17, 21-26, while an important part to the narrative of Acts, doesn't give the preacher much meat.  But then in a text study conversation we were talking about prayer and stopping to pray for one another and I thought "what if we took the time to pray specifically for one another during worship? What would that be like?"  And a sermon was born.


Enjoy! And pray for someone else.

Have you ever had someone pray for you?  What was it like to have someone be in the same room with you and pray for you – out loud.  To hear someone talking to God in your name.  Whether they are giving thanks for you or asking for God to heal you or bless you or be with you? How about when you name is said during the prayers here as it is your birthday or anniversary week? 

For me at least, there is something so wonderful about having someone else pray for you.  And while it is great when someone says “I’ll be praying for you,” it almost brings tears to my eyes as that person prays with me there in front of them. It is humbling.  And yet it is honoring.  It is makes me feel like I cannot solve any problems on my own or fully celebrate any joys without others partaking. And I go through a series of emotions, almost like a rollercoaster that you have been on many times before, you know what is coming, the ups and the downs and yet you have to go through each before arriving at the next emotion.

My first thought is to shy away, to be embarrassed that someone else is praying for me. I then relax and realized that the words the other is speaking, even if they may not be grammatically correct or pass any public speaking course with all the umms and ahhs, they are the perfect words for that situation. And then I feel privilege to be in the presence of these words.  They are not spoken to me, but to God and I’m just the lucky one to get to overhear an intimate conversation between a believer and their God. And finally, when the prayer ends, there is almost a sadness that the prayer is over, as I long to continue to hear those words. It is not a longing in a prideful way, that the praise for me is over, but a longing that that moment, when all I hear are these words to God that are so powerful I can almost see them, touch them, is over. And often the prayer ends with silence and then a sigh, a sigh that is filled with both appreciation for the words that were offered and hope that I will be able to experience such a moment again. 

And I get the feeling this emotional rollercoaster, but a good roller coaster, is not just my own.  Twice in today’s reading people are being prayed for who get to overhear the prayer.  In our first reading from Acts a decision needed to be made of who would take Judas’ place as an apostle.  The vote came down between Joseph Barsabbas and Matthais. But before a single ballot was cast, the apostles and the 120 people gathered prayed. “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” I doubt that was the whole prayer, probably just the Reader’s Digest version.  But I wonder if during the prayer Joseph Barsabbas realized that this was not his calling. Or if Matthais felt the Holy Spirit wrapped around him.  And those who voted, did some of them changed their minds as they prayed? 

Then in our gospel today Jesus is praying for his disciples while they are with him.  Our reading is just part of this prayer which makes up the entire 17^th chapter of John.  It is the night before Jesus died and he is not praying to make his death not happen or at least less painful.  He is not praying even for his own well-being, that his life wasn’t lived in vain.  Instead he is praying for his disciples, that they may be God’s, that they may have his joy, that they may be protected from the devil and not too condemned by the world, that they may know the truth in God.  And I wonder if it wasn’t until this prayer that some of the disciples fully realized that Jesus was going to die, and he was going to die really soon. I wonder if it was during this prayer that some of the anxieties they felt were relieved. I wonder if it was during this prayer that some of the disciple found peace and strength to continue Jesus’ ministry after his death, and the same words just spoken to them, instead of God, could not have brought such comfort. 

I wonder that because prayer is a powerful thing.  And when you know someone else is praying for you, especially when you hear them praying for you, you feel power and peace that you might not otherwise feel.

So we are going to do something a little different in our prayers today, and I know it will bring a few of you out of your comfort zones and you will feel awkward about this, but hopefully the power in prayer will overcome that awkwardness.  Earlier I asked you to write your name on a note card and any prayer request you may have.  If you haven’t done that yet, please do it now.  I’m then going to collect them and redistribute them so each person gets someone else’s card.  Then during our prayers today, we are going to pray for each other.  I’ll start a petition and then invite you to pray out loud for the person whose name is on the card you receive.  You can say a long dissertation of a prayer, or you can just say the person’s name.  But if they also wrote a prayer request, please include that in your prayer. You may not know this person, or they may be your best friend. I then want you to continue to pray for that person throughout the week.  Again, it can just be the person’s name, or it can be a longer prayer.  And hopefully in a week when we gather again, we will be able to share stories about how both being prayed for and praying for others is opening our minds to how God is working in this world and through us. 

Motherly Advice

Yesterday was Mother's Day, which many pastors will tell you is a hard day to preach on because it is the 3rd most sacred day in the church (just barely behind Christmas Eve and Easter).  Our gospel was also from the farewell discourse of John (John 15:9-17 to be exact) which is also not an easy text to preach on because there are a lot of repeated phrases and confusing sentence structures.  But some how for me these two came together.  


Enjoy!

Happy Mother’s Day!  Now I am not a mother, nor do I pretend to be a mother – I will stick with the titles “aunt” and “godmother” and be just fine.  Jesus was not a mother either.  But I think he could relate to most mothers during our gospel passage today which is part of the farewell discourse in John chapters 13-17. Jesus had been with these disciples for a few years, in many ways he had raised them, and now it was time for them to go out in the world on their own – without him. So before they leave, well actually, before Jesus dies, he wants to give the disciples as much information as possible – like all those little nuggets of information our mothers have given us. Jesus saying “love one another as I have loved you” is kind of like our moms saying “Always wear clean underwear.” Actually it is a little more like “stop fighting with your brother”

Therefore this section of John can be pictured as a mom talking to her child as the son is headed off to college or daughter is prepared to go off to basic training.  The kids are about to experience life out on their own.  Mom will no longer be around to make them dinner, clean up after them, drag them out of bed in the morning or one of the other few hundred things that mothers do for their children each and every day.  And so we can picture this scene of Jesus giving these words of wisdom to his disciples before they head off into new uncharted territories.

But what does that mean for us?

Jesus spent a few years with these disciples and now here we are almost 2000 years later still trying to understand the same advice that Jesus gave to those disciples. Only unlike when we moved out of the house, and were still able to call up mom or dad and ask them for their advice, or for a little bit of cash to help us out till the end of the week, we can’t just call up Jesus and get more information.  We can’t call up Jesus and ask him to clarify who exactly he meant when he love one another, or what he means by laying down our lives.

Jesus is not going to have us over to make his world famous chocolate cake, give us more wisdom and advice and help us solve our problems.  Or maybe he will.

For some of us, our mothers are no longer with us, having died, but that doesn’t mean our mothers are no longer with us.  When you hear your mother’s favorite song, smell her favorite flower, bake a recipe that she passed down to you, see her traits in your own, whether physical or personality, your mother is still with you. And even though she is not able to answer you, you may still ask her for advice “mom what would you do in this situation?”

And we can do the same with Jesus, we can turn to Jesus in prayer for understanding.  We can turn to him to understand what it means to lay down our lives or who we are called to love. And just like one mother can raise multiple kids and tell them each the same advice but they all understand it differently, so it is true with Jesus.  For some of us, laying down our lives means giving up everything to be missionaries, for others that means giving generously of what possessions we have, and yet for others we might ignore the advice entirely and want to do our own thing.

We can still turn to Jesus for advice, but unlike many of our mothers, we have to ask for that advice to be given. 

Preaching Challenge

In my clergy text study group, occasionally preaching challenges are made. Most of them are made as jokes when irreverent comments are made during our bible study of the upcoming Sunday's passages; therefore no one expects anyone to actually take up the challenge to mention such a thing in their sermon.  But sometimes I enjoy a good challenge.  

This pass Tuesday during our text study as we were discussing the gospel John 15:1-8, I said that as someone who has spent little time on vineyards, the vines I think of are poison ivy that strangle the plants.  And a challenge was made that I should mention that in my sermon.  

Later when discussing the 1st reading, Acts 8:26-40, I brought up Deuteronomy 23:1, which shocked a few colleagues when I had them read it.  Hmmm well how can I not mention that if I'm going to preach on the Ethiopian eunuch?  

So enjoy my sermon of preaching challenges.  (Oh and btw I did read Deuteronomy 23:1, but the Message translation "No eunuch is to enter the congregation of God.")

I am the vine, you are the branches….being from not wine country, in fact spending very little time at any vineyard, other than in a tasting room, I get confused by this metaphor.  To me, who knows about poison ivy and kudzu, a vine is a parasite attached to the branch and if given long enough, the branch will eventually die as a result of the vine.  So before we go any further – quick biology lesson about grape vines.

The vine is the solid mass that is rooted to the ground.  And from the vine comes many branches that can then be trellised in order to spread out and grow and produce fruit.  Now the cool thing about grapes is that even though branches can be pruned in order to bear more fruit, branches can also be grafted to the vine. 

Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches.   We are anchored, attached, grafted to Jesus so that we can produce fruit for him in the world.  But we need to be connected to Jesus in order to bear fruit.  And part of bearing fruit is connecting other people to Jesus and to the church.

One of the biggest reasons people stop showing up to worship is because they never felt connected to that community.  Therefore church workers spend a lot of effort trying to connect new members to others within the community in order to attach people both to Jesus and to the church.  In order to make each person who officially becomes a member of the congregation to also feel like a member of the community.

So let me ask you, how do help connect people into this community?  What are your ideas to get people to not just come and worship with us, but to actually be part of this community?

These are wonderful ideas and I want to honor them and respect them, but I also want to challenge them a bit. Most often when we try to connect with people we try to find things in common with them – there is nothing wrong with that, it is human nature.  However a natural extension of that is for us to want the people who are new to change, to conform to be like us, without us, those who have already belonged, to not have to change at all. 

You can see an example of this in our first lesson today from Acts.  This story is most often referred to as the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch.  And in the little introduction in the Celebrate makes it seem as though it was only the Ethiopian who was changed by this encounter and not Philip.  “Led by the Spirit, Philip encounters an Ethiopian official who is returning to his African home after having been to Jerusalem to worship. Philip uses their encounter to proclaim the gospel to him. Upon coming to faith in Jesus, the Ethiopian is baptized by Philip.”  We assume that it is the Ethiopian solely who was changed by this encounter, that he has been converted to following Jesus and Philip, who was already part of the “in-crowd”, a follower of Jesus, left unchanged. 

But what if this is really the conversion of Philip and not the conversion of an unnamed Ethiopian Eunuch.  Here is this guy who would not have looked like one of the people whom Philip normally hung out with. He is a foreigner, and not just any foreigner but a distant foreigner, a different race entirely.  Plus he was a eunuch, someone who was mutilated at a young age in order to set him apart for service to the queen. As a result he would have been considered not a full man, and therefore unfit, unworthy, to worship in the temple.  DEUTERONOMY 23:1

And yet the man keeps trying!  He went to Jerusalem to worship, even when he wasn’t able to enter the temple.  He read from Isaiah and asked Philip what it meant.  He sought God even when the world was telling him that God didn’t care for him. 

So what if it wasn’t the Ethiopian eunuch who was converted that day by the side of the road and was baptized, but Philip?  What if it was Philip who changed the most from this encounter?  That because of this encounter, Philip realized that you didn’t have to look like everyone else in order to be a follower of Jesus.  That you didn’t have to be from the right part of town, or even the right country, to be baptized.  That the old temple rules didn’t matter in following Jesus. That the Spirit can use everyone, even the ones who don’t look like us. Especially the ones who don’t look like us.

We judge people right away – their accents, their clothes, their hairstyle, their family, their jobs.  And we start to make connections, trying to see how they are like us or who we know already who are like them.  But maybe it is when we are with people who are not like us, in fact people who pull us the most outside of our comfort zones, whether they be of a different gender, race, age, socioeconomic status, sexuality and sexual identity than us that we most experience God.  So yes it is wonderful to make these connections, to help people not just to become a member of this church but to this community.  Though we should also realize that we shouldn’t do this in order to conform the one individual to us, but so that we can all be changed by God’s presence in the new relationship.