prayer — Andy James

A Prayer for All Peoples

August 16, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Nehemiah 1:1-11; 1 Timothy 2:1-7
preached on August 16, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

A few weeks ago, when we were talking about the passing of the peace, I mentioned that it was one of the parts of worship that I was told by the pastor nominating committee that was non-negotiable in worship here. The other part of worship I was told that I could not get rid of was the prayers of the people!

The First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone has quite a reputation when it comes to the prayers of the people. One of my colleagues who preached here regularly before my arrival as pastor still tells the story of how someone many years ago once told her that she was a little sad that she had not managed to let Whitestone know about a particular prayer request. Still, she assured my colleague, “I’m not worried about it. The Whitestone church prays for everyone, so even if I don’t tell them, I’m sure they have prayed for my friend anyway!”

Our reputation regarding the prayers of the people is a very good thing. While the Word may stand at the center of our worship, the prayers of the people stand at its heart, embodying in this hour we spend together the deep reality that we are people who must look beyond this gathering, reminding us that there is much joy and sorrow in our lives and our world that we have to keep before us even as we gather for worship, and helping us to remember those who our world—and even us sometimes—might rather forget.

Even in a place where we understand the importance of praying for one another and our world, it is often useful to step back as we do today to think about how and why we do these things that are so important for us. Our readings this morning from Nehemiah and 1 Timothy give us a good sense of why the prayers of the people stand at the heart of our worship.

First, Nehemiah shows us what it is like to bear the prayers of the people before God. He was quite experienced at carrying things of great value and immense importance—his day job was serving as cupbearer to the king of Persia, the nation where he and other Jews were in exile. As cupbearer to the king, he was responsible for making sure that the king’s wine and food were safe for his consumption. But his role and position changed quite dramatically as his brother brought him the concerns of the people who remained at their former home in Judah, for he took these concerns before God in his prayer that forms the core of this reading today.

While I don’t want us to emulate Nehemiah’s prayer every week, we can still learn a few things from looking at how he prayed to God in this moment. He opened with extended praise and adoration of God and continued with an admission of his own sinfulness and the sinfulness of his people. Then Nehemiah called upon God to remember God’s previous promises, to recall the hope of the exodus and bring the people back together. Finally, Nehemiah asked that God be attentive to this prayer and grant the people the mercy that they need.

While we may not be praying for these exact things in our life together, we should certainly take note of how Nehemiah’s prayer focused not on his own situation but on that of others very much removed from his situation. The cupbearer to the king of the empire that ruled over his homeland was praying for the people who were suffering back home. This man who had accomplished much and made his way to a position of such power and importance took time out to remember others. If Nehemiah’s prayer teaches us nothing else, we can learn the importance of making space in our prayer for others, of remembering before God those whom we too easily forget, of praying for peace and reconciliation in ways that go beyond our expectations and open us to new possibilities in our world, of taking the opportunity in prayer to look beyond those immediately before us to consider those who might not have the words and space to pray for themselves.

The instructions for prayer in First Timothy give us a little further guidance about what we might include in our prayers. In giving his instructions to his pupil regarding proper worship, the writer here opens with directions for prayer, most notably that “everyone” should be included in those prayers, with special attention to “kings and all who are in high positions.” For this writer, prayer helps to move the world toward “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”

The church has taken his word seriously over the centuries, for John Calvin’s model prayers of the people include two paragraphs of prayers for government and civic leaders, one paragraph of prayers for church leaders, one paragraph asking God to turn all hearts to God, and one paragraph calling for mercy on the sick, ill, and those in prison. While our emphases in prayer have shifted a bit to include a little more for those in need and a little less for the civic powers of the world, we certainly keep this writer’s emphasis on prayer for civic leaders before us, too—and we here in Whitestone have certainly done our best to pray for everyone along the way, as my colleague so fondly remembers!

Our prayers of the people each week in worship build on these scriptural prayers to help connect us to one another and to God. As the Directory for Worship in our Presbyterian Book of Order describes so well,

Prayer is at the heart of worship. In prayer, through the Holy Spirit, people seek after and are found by the one true God who has been revealed in Jesus Christ. They listen and wait upon God, call God by name, remember God’s gracious acts, and offer themselves to God. (W-2.1001)

While I may be the one saying these prayers out loud as we gather for worship each week, the prayers of the people are exactly that, the prayers of all of us, the joys and concerns that we carry with us into our time together, the sorrow and the rejoicing that define our humanity and our world, the prayers that we bear forth from our lives to God. This time of prayer is a time for remembering: remembering the people and places where we have seen God’s love at work, remembering those times and places and people we are tempted to forget as we journey through the everyday, remembering how God’s wisdom comes in unexpected times and ways to show us a new way forward in our lives and our world. And the prayers of the people helps us to remember to pray for the world in our knowing yet beyond our control, when we remember those places in our lives and our world where we need God’s reconciling presence, when we pray for wisdom for leaders in government and society to live in the peace that God invites us to share, when we express our longings and seek God’s guidance for the fullness of the new creation to become real.

So this time of prayer that stands at the heart of our worship is truly the prayer of all people, a prayer for something more than what there is now, a prayer for a new and different way to take hold, a prayer for comfort and healing and hope amid anything and everything that comes our way. This prayer does not replace the prayers that we offer on our own, but it gathers up all that we bear to God in a prayer of this whole community, recognizing that so many of the joys and burdens that I carry with me are so much like the joys and burdens that you carry with you.

The opening and closing lines of the sung prayers of the people that we will offer in a few moments express so very well all that we do in this time:

There is a longing in our hearts, O Lord, for you to reveal yourself to us.
There is a longing in our hearts for love we only find in you, our God.

So may our prayers in worship this day gather up the prayers of all God’s people, that in this time of sacred sharing and this offering from the depths of our hearts we might know the comfort that comes from God amid all that comes our way, share the wondrous love of God that shines into every moment of our lives, and walk in the peace that God is making in our world as we join in God’s work of reconciliation and new life. Thanks be to God! Amen.

New

March 10, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
preached on March 10, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I’ve long been a fan of new things. As my car gets older, for example, I find it tough to keep investing in expensive but necessary repairs—at least until I calculate how much more a new one would cost! I remember that my mother gave me a long talk once, telling me that there was some value in old things and encouraging me to put up with older things for a bit longer before getting something new. I’ve gotten a little more practical as I’ve gotten older and had to pay for all my own new things, but that doesn’t keep me away from my love of the new—after all, according to some of you, my mantra is, “When in doubt, throw it out!”

So maybe it is my affinity for new things that makes our text from 2 Corinthians one of my favorites. All six of these verses are rich with the core tenets of our faith: justification, sanctification, reconciliation, you name it! But because I like new things so much, I am immediately drawn to verse 17:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new!

This idea of the new creation is a powerful one. It points us to a new and different way for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But this new creation is not just a fresh coat of paint on the walls of our lives or even a complete makeover of a few rooms—no, Paul insists that the new creation is an entirely different way of life rooted in Jesus Christ. This new creation demands that the old way of seeing and doing be set aside to make room for transformation. As Paul says it, we no longer “regard [anyone] from a human point of view.” Because our vision of Christ has been transformed, because our vision of him has been enlarged, because in his death and resurrection everything about him is different, we have to change how we see others and our world. As commentator Paul Sampley puts it, “Something so fundamental has changed in such a profound fashion that the old ways of looking, perceiving, understanding, and more profoundly, evaluating, have to be let go and replaced with a new way of seeing and understanding.” (New Interpreters’ Bible, Volume 11, p. 93)

This new way is the new creation—what I think is simultaneously the most wonderful and the most challenging element of the life of faith. Even with my love of new things, I’m not always convinced that I want to live the new creation. As wonderful as it is, it is also really hard! First of all, it’s hard to let go of the old way of life. I for one know that a more human point of view easily creeps into my relationships with others. I quite easily put the emphasis on what is best for me rather than what is best for the other—or I wonder why they aren’t doing exactly that and doing what is best for me after all! I look at people I disagree with or just don’t understand and prefer to have nothing to do with them rather than taking Paul’s call to reconciliation seriously. And I look around and wonder what good the old things might have, how any redemption might be possible in them, and think about my great mantra, “When in doubt, throw it out.”

Our world doesn’t make it any easier for us to set aside our human way of living, either. We are trained from our earliest days to make decisions about the “right” way—the right people to hang out with, the right clothes to wear, the right place to live, the right food to eat—and those who choose a different way are easily left out. We choose who to consider safe and who to make suspect on the pretense of safety—but the all-too-human characteristics we check never tell us the full story. And some lives seem more valuable to for one reason or another—because of their practice of faith, their wealth, their wisdom, their health, their skin color, their choice of friends or spouses—when in fact the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus show us that everyone is beloved by God, no matter what.

If letting go of the old wasn’t hard enough, embracing the new creation itself is equally if not more difficult. This new thing encompasses everything—it’s not just a little corner of our world, something to do when it doesn’t get in the way of what we like, or limited to whatever time we choose to commit to the church. This new thing is a radical departure from everything that we’ve gotten used to. It requires that we be open to reexamining the whole of our lives through the lens of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It insists that we set aside those things that just don’t measure up to this standard and instead focus on the new things that embody the way of Jesus in our everyday lives. And it demands open hearts and minds that aren’t just looking to recreate the past or hear only what we want to hear but that are truly open to seeing things differently and taking a new path for a new day.

This new way is always rooted in where we have been even as it points in a new and different direction. In his reflections on this text, my friend Casey Thompson suggests that Paul’s own life and ministry show him the way to the new creation.

Everything old to him is now new—mourning and crying and pain are no more. [Paul’s] life of persecuting Christians has given way to a life of pursuing Christ…. When grace unlevels Christians like this, they find themselves singing in a jail cell like Paul. Everything is now oriented from a God-drenched point of view, even though they once saw everything from a human one. They start describing whole new worlds, worlds that are conceived in imagination, but birthed by lives of faithful discipleship. (Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 2, p. 112-114)

Imagination and faithful discipleship are two of the most important characteristics of those who serve as leaders among us. Later today, as we install our newly-elected deacons and ruling elders, we recognize this challenge for their service with a seemingly simple question:

Will you pray for and seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?

Imagination, you see, is an integral part of what we do as the people of God as we live into the new creation. We imagine the world that God desires for us. We imagine how we might be more faithful disciples as we journey together on the road of service in the church. And we dream about how we can be a part of God’s new thing that is already happening all around us. We need all these other things that we ask of our deacons and elders—energy, intelligence, and love are critical to the life of leadership in this place—but without imagination we get stuck right where we are, moving nowhere new, repeating old mistakes, seeing people just like everyone else instead of like Christ.

Imagination isn’t the easiest thing for us. As children, we are encouraged to think outside the box, to dream about a different way, but then we are taught to color within the lines, to set aside our dreams and temper our visions with reality, to turn off our imagination and focus on reality. It’s no surprise, then, that imagination isn’t the easiest thing for us. But again Casey Thompson offers us a different way. He insists that the new creation that Paul describes here “is conceived in imagination—and imagination begins in prayer, in the images that God plants within us.” (Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 2, p. 114)

This way demands a lot less talking and a lot more careful listening, a deep attention to the nearly-unnoticed shifts within us. This way may not seem to be as productive, and we may not see immediate results at all, but it even when we can’t see it, it is making space for God to show us something new. In these days when we as a congregation are listening for God’s guidance for the path ahead, as we gather together to listen carefully to one another and explore the possibilities of something new for us, as we long for the new creation to become real here and now, for us in this time and this place, prayer and imagination must stand at the center. We must pray for God’s presence and guidance with us along the way—and we must make space for God’s imagination to take hold in us and through us. So I for one pray that you will join in this time of listening and speaking, in this practice of prayer and imagination, so that together we might gain even a little glimpse of a new way ahead and be a part of this new creation ourselves, building on what we have been to emerge to something new.

So may God’s grace abound all around us, may imaginative visions of love and grace and justice and peace shine brightly, and may God open our hearts and minds and guide our feet as we journey together the path of this Lent and the days ahead. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Up on the Mountain: Doing, or Just Being Seen?

February 6, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 6:1-18, the fourth in a series on the Sermon on the Mount
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on February 6, 2011

We here know what it feels like to seem to be doing things in secret. Although our doors are open every Sunday, people around Whitestone often don’t know what we are up to since we just don’t have a high profile. Hundreds of people walk past our door each and every day to get to school, go to work, eat lunch, or just enjoy a nice stroll when the weather is pretty, yet so few of those make their way in our doors! I for one often wonder if people would even notice our absence from the community if we ceased to exist, and my fear is that most folks would only notice us if our building were not here, half out of sadness for the loss of a beautiful building and half out of concern for what sort of thing might replace it. So when we talk about special events and the like, raising our visibility is a prominent theme – how can we help people know what we are doing and simply that we exist? What can we do that will help our neighbors and our neighborhood recognize that we are here and join in?

Jesus actually has a few things to say about visibility, but his words don’t seem to encourage us in our work of being seen. In the section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that we heard this morning, Jesus speaks pretty directly against doing things just to be seen. As he looked down from up on the mountain, Jesus offered a vision of God doing something radically new in the world, and he used three familiar practices of faith to suggest ways to live into the kingdom of heaven – but these were things to be done, not just to be seen.

First, he speaks of the practice of giving alms. Supporting the poor with small gifts was very familiar to Jesus’ first listeners, as it was a longstanding part of Jewish tradition and broader cultural practice of the ancient world. Jesus doesn’t attack the tradition at all – in fact, he encourages it – but he demands that its purpose always be kept in mind. Supporting the needs of the less fortunate must always be about responding to those who are in need of assistance, not about making the giver feel good or be appreciated or noticed. True giving is not about being seen making an important gift – it is about doing what is best for the other, and if the temptation is too strong to get a benefit for yourself, Jesus suggests doing it in secret, not even letting your other hand know what is going on! In doing things in this way, we point toward something greater than ourselves. Jesus then suggests that there is a reward from God for doing this – but this is not about storing up rewards for ourselves in heaven. Instead, it may be, as preacher Tom Long suggests, a reminder of our constant dependence on the infinite mercy of God:

All that we have, all that we are, comes by the mercy of God. So, when we are generous toward others, we are not writing checks on a limited account. We are drawing from an inexhaustible flow of divine grace; works of mercy never deplete the supply. (Tom Long, Matthew in the Westminster Bible Companion series)

After lifting up this practice of almsgiving and showing how it reminds us of God’s mercy and grace toward us, Jesus moves on to the practice of prayer. His words on prayer start out very much like his words on almsgiving, with an affirmation of the practice but a condemnation of how it is frequently carried out. Too often, he suggests, prayer becomes a matter of showing off – praying in public settings so that everyone can hear every word, using flowery words, focusing on the prayer itself rather than on those lifted up in it and especially the one to whom it is directed. Instead of all these things, Jesus suggests a very simple prayer instead. This incredible prayer is now so well known that we probably miss its radical nature and intent, but the reality is that the Lord’s Prayer points less to the kinds of requests for healing and protection that get lifted up so frequently in our midst and more toward asking God to make the way of heaven real in the world. In these words of the Lord’s Prayer, prayer becomes less about the one praying and his or her needs and more about becoming engaged with what God is doing to renew the world, not a series of wishes to be granted by an all-powerful genie but rather a practice of faith grounded in our hope to be a part of what God is doing all around us.

The final practice is one that seems a little more foreign to us Protestants these days: fasting. I must admit that I have never found personal spiritual value in this, nor have I tried it for myself. Nonetheless, for Jesus’ listeners and for many others of other religious traditions, fasting is an important part of the spiritual life, but Jesus insists that it be kept in the right perspective. Just as almsgiving and prayer should be rooted in real practices and not just in drawing attention to the doer, so true fasting seeks to deepen the internal spiritual life far more than it is noticed by others. So Jesus goes so far as to suggest that his audience ought to disguise the fact that they are fasting if they are tempted to find righteousness in the practice rather than its fruits, if they are more concerned with being seen than actually doing something to be a part of the coming kingdom.

There is definitely a fine balance at work for us between doing what enriches our faith and being seen at work by others. On the one hand, it shouldn’t matter that we are doing good things in our world in the name of the church, but on the other, we also carry a command to make the name of God known all around us. In our world, where good works abound but understanding of the Christian life seems awfully absent, where people enjoy looking at church buildings but almost never set foot in them for worship, it would almost seem more important than ever to be recognized for why we do what we do.

However, Jesus’ admonitions still apply today. We shouldn’t care for the needs of others just so that others will pay attention to us, let alone place conditions of being seen or heard on our help. Prayer should not be a tactic used to show off, suggest the superiority of one way of life, inject religious content into a properly secular moment, or even proselytize in the public sphere, for it should always draw attention to God and the new way that God places before us. And other spiritual practices like fasting must draw as much attention to the internal life that grounds them as they draw to themselves. Jesus doesn’t mean that we should only give to the poor in secret, only pray alone, or engage other practices that deepen our spiritual lives only in ways that they cannot be seen – he simply suggests that these practices must always point to something more if they are seen.

The three practices of faith that Jesus lifts up here – almsgiving, prayer, and fasting – are only three of a multitude of things we can do to deepen our spiritual lives and point to the true grounding of our faith and action. Other practices can also enrich our walk as we seek to engage more faithfully with what God is doing in the world – things like practicing Sabbath, finding spiritual companionship for the journey, singing the ups and downs of our lives, and even finding words to describe how God has been at work in our lives and our world. Things like these can help us to engage more faithfully with all the new things that God is doing all around us. If in doing these things, we can demonstrate to the world the quality of life in the kingdom of heaven without becoming smug or haughty or focused just on being seen, then we can and should be a part of what God is doing even now to make all things new.

Our visibility in these days certainly matters – people need to see and know what we do and why we do it – but that visibility is only a fruit of the incredible things that God calls us to do as the community of faith in the church. Next Sunday after worship, we’ll be talking a bit about this calling – and some specific ways to make it real through our own commitments – so I encourage you to make plans to join us after worship next Sunday for this important conversation.

And so from up on this mountain may we have a clearer vision of the kingdom of heaven – and how we can be a part of making it real – so that we can also help others to see it and invite them to join in through our life together. Lord, come quickly! Amen.