September 5, 2010
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Sermon: Serious Discipleship
Texts: Jeremiah 18: 1-11, Luke 14: 25-33
If I were to ask you to think of one thing you could bring to church this morning that would represent you and your work, what might that be?
Maybe you’ll say: a laptop, a calculator, paints/brushes, ladder, hammer, uniform, cookbook, a brief case, a desk calendar, a backpack, pens, pencils…what represents your work? Today, on the Labor Day weekend, we think about our work and its meaning. From the perspective of faith, we think about the definition of work and how it fits into our lives.
Much has been said about the “protestant work ethic.” What does that mean?’’ Well, it implies “hard work” as a necessary component of a person’s calling and worldly success and as a sign of personal salvation. This goes back to the teachings of John Calvin. We can also go back to the teaching of Martin Luther, the time of the Reformation, when there was a reconceptualizing of work.
Luther said that work should be thought of as a vocation. Vocation encompasses the whole of our relationships with the world. We are called by God to be in relationship: in our jobs, in our marriages, in our family life, in our friendships, in every way that we relate to others. We are called, ultimately, to give glory to God in all things. Luther led an attack on monasticism as the high calling of God so that ordinary people, the common person, would know that their work, too, was divinely ordained.
It is important to think about our lives, our work and our vocation so that we are lead eventually to know that all of this is about our worship. It is about, as Jeremiah will teach, letting God mold us and shape us into someone God would want us to be.
It is listening to Luke speak about what it means to follow Jesus. It is a serious call to discipleship. Jesus does not say much about one’s occupation. Jesus does say much about lifestyle, decision making and how we love God with all our beings.
So, sometimes, our work, which is a good gift of God, may be carried to the extreme of becoming our total life focus. This was the danger. When work becomes sinful or idolatrous, then we should pause and reorient ourselves to our purpose and God’s calling.
Matthew Fox, a true visionary for God’s reign in the lives of people, writes about the dangers of putting work ahead of commitment to Christ’s way. He says, “Work is also capable of creating the dark night…when, for example, our work contributes to the devastation of the planet, to the despair of the young, to hoarding when we ought to be sharing, to control and power games instead of celebrating, to putting people down instead of lifting them up, to injustice instead of justice.” (The Reinvention of Work)
The call of Jesus, a serious call to discipleship, is to remember that our relationship to God is not based on our occupation. God cares deeply that we examine our lifestyle and how we make decisions about what we honor in life. So, we ask what we honor and what is important to us. How do we let our “occupation” take its proper place in the scheme of life’s work to be a disciple, a follower in the way of Christ?
Speaking about what is important in life, a few years ago a nationwide survey asked, “What word or phrase you would most like to hear uttered to you with sincerity?”
You can probably guess what most people rated as first. People wanted to hear “I love you.” Second people wanted to hear, “You are forgiven.” When you’ve wronged someone those are precious words given and heard.
And, 3rd? Believe it or not, people want to hear “supper is ready!” Now, depending on whose home we are in, that may mean different things. When I was serving a parish in Massachusetts, it was at a time when my husband, Bill, did all the cooking for our family. He made fantastic dinners for our family, experimenting with recipes, so when we heard “supper is ready,” we knew it would be an opportunity to enjoy a delicious meal he had prepared for us and be together to enjoy being a family.
And, believe me, when I was working late in a busy church office and he called to tell me supper would be on the table in thirty minutes, I closed the office door and knew I’d look forward to good food and conversation with my family. Yes, life style, choices, balance, and awareness of how we honor God in our lives and put God first is the purpose of our lesson this morning.
Jesus called people to follow him because he wanted them to know life as a blessing, life filled with love, hope, joy and peace. He knew that keeping God at the center of life, being a serious disciple, would reveal the joys that life could bring. It was important work for a total understanding of this intent.
That’s why scripture could have its demands on people. No, he did not mean literally to abandon our families and despise them, or to be self-mutilating or to be economically destitute and disadvantaged. Please do not hear the message preached this way. Jesus wanted people to focus their thoughts, energies and abilities on developing a serious, committed relationship to God. He knew the faith journey, if it was to be a priority, had to be have work and commitment at its center.
How do we, then, define work, God’s work? Work, economist E.F. Schumacher, said was to give a person a chance to utilize and develop his or her faculties; to enable one to overcome one’s ego-centeredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Good work was essential, he thought, for proper human development.
What about the role of “work” in our faith development? The writer of James (New Testament) would tell us that faith without works is dead. Our vocation, our work, is to strive to let God mold us and shape into responsible, loving, caring persons in our faith communities.
When we work at being disciples (good economics), we are given the chance to utilize and develop our faculties; we are enabled to overcome our self-centeredness as we join with other people for a common task; and we are able to bring forth the goods and services needed for a created existence in God’s presence.
We rejoice in our role as workers in God’s vineyards and guests as God’s Table. Whatever your occupation this morning, celebrate your call to the vocation to belong to God and allow God to be central in who you are and who you are becoming each day.
We may very old or very young, but our work, indeed, is never done and it is loving the world. Winifred Holtby, an English novelist, expressed it this way in a prayer she wrote: “God give me work till my life shall end and life till my work is done.”
The poet, Mary Oliver, expressed it this way in her poem:
“Messenger”
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
Equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
Which is my work,
Which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
And these body-clothes,
A mouth with which to give shouts of joy
To the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
Telling them all, over and over, how it is
That we live forever.
(Mary Oliver, Thirst, p 1)
This Labor Day weekend, may we be grateful that God molds us and shapes us to be all God wants us to be and graces us follow and follow in serious discipleship.
A Prayer for the Workers of the World
Loving God, we remember before you all the workers of the world; workers with hand or brain; workers in cities or in the fields; those who go far from home or those who keep to the home; we remember employers and employees; those who command and those who obey; those whose work is dangerous and those whose work is monotonous or mean; those who can find no work to do and those whose work is in service of the poor or the healing of the sick or the proclamation of your goodness, here and abroad. We pray for the workers of the world. AMEN.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Shaped by Prayer
July 25, 2010
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Sermon: Shaped by Prayer
Texts: Colossians 2: 6-15, Luke 11: 1-13
One of my favorite writers, a teacher, talked about his life in an autobiography. He said, “At least 98 percent of my life has been spent in such gloriously mundane activities as grading term papers, diapering children and grandchildren, mowing the fields, washing dishes, going to the movies, reading books, writing books, carving out times with wife and children and trying to find my glasses.” (Robert McAfee Brown, Reflections over the Long Haul; a Memoir, c 2005) I certainly could relate to the part about “trying to find my glasses.”
If there is anything that God knows about us this morning, it is that most of our lives are lived in “gloriously mundane activities” like making a living, taking care of our families and tending to the daily activities of life. Our lives are marked by comedy, tragedy, accomplishments, regrets, heartbreak and great joy. I believe God wants to be with us, through all the marker events in life and the mundane activities.
We are reminded through words of scripture from our lectionary texts that life asks us to remember that God is with us but we must do our part.
1. That means, praying a prayer that Jesus taught us which says something, each time we say it, about our relationship to God and to each other.
2. That means being persistent in prayer.
3. That means remembering that persistence has names: asking, searching and knocking for help when we need it.
All of these three points are about doing “our part” and living a life as a Christian that is shaped by prayer and letting the life of prayer be central to who we are as Christians. Let’s take a closer look at each of these points.
1. The Lord’s Prayer
If there is any prayer we know well it is “The Lord’s Prayer.” There have been many books written about The Lord’s Prayer and many commentaries to help us understand the meaning of the prayer. There are numerous translations of the prayer into other languages and many versions, even in English. In today’s worship liturgy, we use a paraphrase of the prayer just so we will be mindful of the words in a new way.
OUR COMMON PRAYER (A paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer from Flames of the Spirit, edited by Ruth Duck, p 82))
God, you are life for us,
Holy be your name.
Your new day come,
Your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Give us this day our bread for the morrow;
And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
Strengthen us in the time of test,
And deliver us from evil.
For the power and the splendor and the fulfillment are yours,
Now and forever. Amen.
What do the words teach us? What meaning do they have for you?
In the Reformation period, when the Heidelberg Catechism was being written
(ca 1563) as an instruction to the people on the Christian faith, a section was developed on the meaning of prayer. Through the years there have been different editions and translations of the catechism but I believe this question is still an important one:
#116 Why do Christians need to pray?
A. Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. And also because God gives God’s grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, asking God for these gifts and thanking God for them.
Questions 119 through 129 of the Heidelberg Catechism then go into detail about the meaning of the parts of the Lord’s Prayer. Questions 116 introduce the whole section on prayer by telling us that prayer is an attitude of “thankfulness” to God.
Is that what you feel when you say The Lord’s Prayer? One of my favorite books on the Lord’s Prayer was written by Roberta Bondi. She called her book A Place to Pray. Her approach to the prayer is one of thankfulness.
She did not write it for an intellectual exercise in understanding the different parts of the prayer although that’s what she is trained to do as a seminary teacher and parts of the book do this. She wrote the chapters in the form of a letter to a friend who was having trouble praying the prayer.
In her personal writing, she found a way to pray the prayer as a means for healing our abilities to love God, the neighbor and ourselves. She remembers that in all Jesus teachings there is a purpose: we are invited to think deeply about God, about our neighbors and ourselves in unsettling and new ways.
Dr. Bondi says that when we pray “Our Father,” it is not a private matter. Whenever we speak these words, we are praying by virtue of our baptism as people of God devoted to walking in the way of Savior. We are in unity with all Christians who are saying “thank you” God for the gifts of life and our human family. She gave several illustrations of how her attentiveness to using the prayer for healing brought healing to some of her most private and precious relationships.
2. Persistence in Prayer
It is not surprising that Paul writes to churches usually mentioning his prayers of thanksgiving for them and his encouragement to be persistent in living a life shaped by prayer. The early church in our Epistle to Colossians was reminded by those who visited them to be persistent in how they lived the faith because they could easily be taken captive by other philosophies. The Letter encourages them to live their lives in Christ, to be rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith.
There are reasons for having a catechism and for putting worship and education and central to life in the church. There are reasons we study the catechism and continue to let it be part of our lives here at Immanuel. With our German Reformed heritage, we honor teaching the Heidelberg Catechism to our youth because we value persistence and commitment to the hard work of being the church.
Surely, we learn again, that persistence in prayer will keep people grounded. In the book Ethics by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we remember that it is not always simple to be grounded and know God’s will. “The will of God may lie very deeply concealed beneath a great number of available possibilities.” (p. 41, Ethics) Bonhoeffer seemed to be responding to the temptation (similar to people of the early church) to be lured by “false prophets” or competing philosophies.
And, we must add, that it is not only the knowledge the catechism provides or the systems of rules for interpretation, it is ultimately about the heart, our understanding, observation and experience of faith and prayer.
That’s why we pray and seek God’s will for whatever it is that confronts us as a social or ethical issue. Bonhoeffer arrested and murdered for speaking boldly about the evils of the State and the Church in Nazi Germany, urged people to seek God’s will through persistent prayer and openness to God’s grace. He says, “this grace is and requires to be new every morning.”(Ibid.)
Think about the many possibilities facing you for how you spend your time, your money, and your energies. Do you pray for God’s guidance in sorting through those possibilities? We do not want to minimize the ways that prayer can guide us to let God help us with our needs and show us our spiritual path.
3. As someone said regarding the spiritual experience, search for it, find it, and claim it! The scripture encouraged us to ask, search and knock.
Some people think that they are not so good at praying but we know that it is not about the words we use and the form we choose; it is about our attitudes and desires for prayer to be part of our daily lives.
Mary Oliver’s poem “Praying” helps us think about how we can pray and not be afraid to call it prayer. (p. 37, Thirst)
Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones, just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
Jesus wanted people to live lives shaped by prayer and to think of prayer as, not a contest, but a doorway. And this doorway will be opened to us when we sincerely ask, search, and knock in the right places.
The great spiritual teacher, Henri Nouwen, said, “Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you Beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply.” (Joyce Rupp, The Cup of Our Life, p 21)
The church invites us each Sunday (and hopefully through the week) to ponder our choices by praying continually and groaning inwardly as The Heidelberg Catechism teaches. The church invites us to hear the voice of the Holy One longer and more deeply as we discover God in the choices we make.
All this leads to a shaping of who we are and how we communicate with God and express to God our deepest thoughts and feelings. What gift we have this morning to name the ways we do this and to ponder ways for knowing God fully and God’s revelation to the world.
What a gift to think about what we will do next. Where will we ask, search and knock? Bonhoeffer said that the Sermon on the Mount (where we find The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 and other teachings on the life of prayer) is there for the purpose of being and doing. Sometimes we miss the “doing.”
Only in doing can there be submission to the will of God. He said that the error of the Pharisees did not lie in the extremely strict insistence on the necessity for action, but rather in their failure to act. “They say, and do not do it.” (Ibid, p 46)
The life shaped by prayer will seek ways to be “doers of the word and not hearers only.”
Let us close with Question and Answer 124 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Perhaps it sums up what we may hope to be and do:
Q. What does the third request mean?
A. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven means,
Help us and all people to reject our own wills and to obey your will without any back talk. Your will alone is good; Help us one and all to carry out the work we are called to, as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven. “
May God be with us as we try to know God’s will for our lives. May God shape us to be a holy people and may we find that doorway into thanks. Amen.
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Sermon: Shaped by Prayer
Texts: Colossians 2: 6-15, Luke 11: 1-13
One of my favorite writers, a teacher, talked about his life in an autobiography. He said, “At least 98 percent of my life has been spent in such gloriously mundane activities as grading term papers, diapering children and grandchildren, mowing the fields, washing dishes, going to the movies, reading books, writing books, carving out times with wife and children and trying to find my glasses.” (Robert McAfee Brown, Reflections over the Long Haul; a Memoir, c 2005) I certainly could relate to the part about “trying to find my glasses.”
If there is anything that God knows about us this morning, it is that most of our lives are lived in “gloriously mundane activities” like making a living, taking care of our families and tending to the daily activities of life. Our lives are marked by comedy, tragedy, accomplishments, regrets, heartbreak and great joy. I believe God wants to be with us, through all the marker events in life and the mundane activities.
We are reminded through words of scripture from our lectionary texts that life asks us to remember that God is with us but we must do our part.
1. That means, praying a prayer that Jesus taught us which says something, each time we say it, about our relationship to God and to each other.
2. That means being persistent in prayer.
3. That means remembering that persistence has names: asking, searching and knocking for help when we need it.
All of these three points are about doing “our part” and living a life as a Christian that is shaped by prayer and letting the life of prayer be central to who we are as Christians. Let’s take a closer look at each of these points.
1. The Lord’s Prayer
If there is any prayer we know well it is “The Lord’s Prayer.” There have been many books written about The Lord’s Prayer and many commentaries to help us understand the meaning of the prayer. There are numerous translations of the prayer into other languages and many versions, even in English. In today’s worship liturgy, we use a paraphrase of the prayer just so we will be mindful of the words in a new way.
OUR COMMON PRAYER (A paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer from Flames of the Spirit, edited by Ruth Duck, p 82))
God, you are life for us,
Holy be your name.
Your new day come,
Your will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Give us this day our bread for the morrow;
And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
Strengthen us in the time of test,
And deliver us from evil.
For the power and the splendor and the fulfillment are yours,
Now and forever. Amen.
What do the words teach us? What meaning do they have for you?
In the Reformation period, when the Heidelberg Catechism was being written
(ca 1563) as an instruction to the people on the Christian faith, a section was developed on the meaning of prayer. Through the years there have been different editions and translations of the catechism but I believe this question is still an important one:
#116 Why do Christians need to pray?
A. Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. And also because God gives God’s grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, asking God for these gifts and thanking God for them.
Questions 119 through 129 of the Heidelberg Catechism then go into detail about the meaning of the parts of the Lord’s Prayer. Questions 116 introduce the whole section on prayer by telling us that prayer is an attitude of “thankfulness” to God.
Is that what you feel when you say The Lord’s Prayer? One of my favorite books on the Lord’s Prayer was written by Roberta Bondi. She called her book A Place to Pray. Her approach to the prayer is one of thankfulness.
She did not write it for an intellectual exercise in understanding the different parts of the prayer although that’s what she is trained to do as a seminary teacher and parts of the book do this. She wrote the chapters in the form of a letter to a friend who was having trouble praying the prayer.
In her personal writing, she found a way to pray the prayer as a means for healing our abilities to love God, the neighbor and ourselves. She remembers that in all Jesus teachings there is a purpose: we are invited to think deeply about God, about our neighbors and ourselves in unsettling and new ways.
Dr. Bondi says that when we pray “Our Father,” it is not a private matter. Whenever we speak these words, we are praying by virtue of our baptism as people of God devoted to walking in the way of Savior. We are in unity with all Christians who are saying “thank you” God for the gifts of life and our human family. She gave several illustrations of how her attentiveness to using the prayer for healing brought healing to some of her most private and precious relationships.
2. Persistence in Prayer
It is not surprising that Paul writes to churches usually mentioning his prayers of thanksgiving for them and his encouragement to be persistent in living a life shaped by prayer. The early church in our Epistle to Colossians was reminded by those who visited them to be persistent in how they lived the faith because they could easily be taken captive by other philosophies. The Letter encourages them to live their lives in Christ, to be rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith.
There are reasons for having a catechism and for putting worship and education and central to life in the church. There are reasons we study the catechism and continue to let it be part of our lives here at Immanuel. With our German Reformed heritage, we honor teaching the Heidelberg Catechism to our youth because we value persistence and commitment to the hard work of being the church.
Surely, we learn again, that persistence in prayer will keep people grounded. In the book Ethics by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we remember that it is not always simple to be grounded and know God’s will. “The will of God may lie very deeply concealed beneath a great number of available possibilities.” (p. 41, Ethics) Bonhoeffer seemed to be responding to the temptation (similar to people of the early church) to be lured by “false prophets” or competing philosophies.
And, we must add, that it is not only the knowledge the catechism provides or the systems of rules for interpretation, it is ultimately about the heart, our understanding, observation and experience of faith and prayer.
That’s why we pray and seek God’s will for whatever it is that confronts us as a social or ethical issue. Bonhoeffer arrested and murdered for speaking boldly about the evils of the State and the Church in Nazi Germany, urged people to seek God’s will through persistent prayer and openness to God’s grace. He says, “this grace is and requires to be new every morning.”(Ibid.)
Think about the many possibilities facing you for how you spend your time, your money, and your energies. Do you pray for God’s guidance in sorting through those possibilities? We do not want to minimize the ways that prayer can guide us to let God help us with our needs and show us our spiritual path.
3. As someone said regarding the spiritual experience, search for it, find it, and claim it! The scripture encouraged us to ask, search and knock.
Some people think that they are not so good at praying but we know that it is not about the words we use and the form we choose; it is about our attitudes and desires for prayer to be part of our daily lives.
Mary Oliver’s poem “Praying” helps us think about how we can pray and not be afraid to call it prayer. (p. 37, Thirst)
Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones, just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
Jesus wanted people to live lives shaped by prayer and to think of prayer as, not a contest, but a doorway. And this doorway will be opened to us when we sincerely ask, search, and knock in the right places.
The great spiritual teacher, Henri Nouwen, said, “Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you Beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply.” (Joyce Rupp, The Cup of Our Life, p 21)
The church invites us each Sunday (and hopefully through the week) to ponder our choices by praying continually and groaning inwardly as The Heidelberg Catechism teaches. The church invites us to hear the voice of the Holy One longer and more deeply as we discover God in the choices we make.
All this leads to a shaping of who we are and how we communicate with God and express to God our deepest thoughts and feelings. What gift we have this morning to name the ways we do this and to ponder ways for knowing God fully and God’s revelation to the world.
What a gift to think about what we will do next. Where will we ask, search and knock? Bonhoeffer said that the Sermon on the Mount (where we find The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 and other teachings on the life of prayer) is there for the purpose of being and doing. Sometimes we miss the “doing.”
Only in doing can there be submission to the will of God. He said that the error of the Pharisees did not lie in the extremely strict insistence on the necessity for action, but rather in their failure to act. “They say, and do not do it.” (Ibid, p 46)
The life shaped by prayer will seek ways to be “doers of the word and not hearers only.”
Let us close with Question and Answer 124 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Perhaps it sums up what we may hope to be and do:
Q. What does the third request mean?
A. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven means,
Help us and all people to reject our own wills and to obey your will without any back talk. Your will alone is good; Help us one and all to carry out the work we are called to, as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven. “
May God be with us as we try to know God’s will for our lives. May God shape us to be a holy people and may we find that doorway into thanks. Amen.
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