Prayers Out of Left Field
Twelth Sunday After Pentecost
August 27, 2006
When I was a boy I was the worst player on the worst team in Cullman’s Dixie Youth Baseball League. It’s not much of a claim to fame, but you have to take what you can get.
It was in those days, in those lonely hours standing around in the outfield, that I developed a prayer life. Again, not much of a prayer life, but you start where you start. You see, in all my years of playing baseball I have no memory of actually getting a hit or of actually catching a ball during a live game. I managed to get on base occasionally thanks to youthful pitching skills, but otherwise never played an important role in a game.
And that’s where the prayers came in. My standing prayer was that no balls be hit in my direction. I knew I’d drop the ball and, since I wanted my team to win, I wanted the ball to be hit to someone with good eye-hand coordination, and one who could remember how many outs there were and the purpose of a cut-off man.
I know now that these were not the best use of my prayers. Clearly, I recognized that God was an important part of my life. It was to God, after all, that I turned in my panic and fear. But clearly my theology was not very well fleshed-out. I didn’t think through the implications of my prayer—what if the boy at bat were praying for a hit? Do such prayers cancel themselves out? I never stopped to wonder.
You may notice another peculiarity in my prayer. I wasn’t praying for the ability to catch the ball or to hit the ball or to do anything baseball-related with any skill. I’m not sure what that means. Was I questioning God’s ability to do something with such limited resources? I doubt that. I suspect that I simply realized my athletic limitations and didn’t want to bother God with requests that I didn’t feel strongly about. I didn’t really care if I ever became a good baseball player, but I didn’t want to let the other guys down. So call it a compromise prayer.
Mind you, I’m not recommending this approach to prayer. But I do raise it for two reasons. First, please don’t ask me to form a St. Luke’s softball team. And second, I want us to think about how we pray and what we pray for.
In First Kings today we hear the the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple. This was a ceremony echoed millennia later at the dedication of this church in 1857. Solomon prays for the Temple as a place of prayer, asking that God hear the prayers of those who come to its altar.
Note the structure of the prayer. Solomon does not begin as I did in the outfield with a simple request: “God, please do this for me.” No. Here’s what he did:
First he prepared himself for prayer. He didn’t simply leap into prayer. He thought about it first. He assumed the posture you see in a priest at the altar today, hands spread toward heaven. Then he began by praising God. “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you.”
He proclaimed God as the one true and living God—none other like him. Then he recognized that God had answered prayers in the past. He lists these answered prayers: 1) God had kept covenant with the Israelites and had showed them chesed, the Hebrew word for steadfast love. 2) God had been always at the side of his father, King David. 3) God had put Solomon onto the king’s throne as part of the promise that David’s descendants would rule as long as they walked in the Lord’s ways.
All this was part of the prayer before anything was asked. It’s an excellent prayer, one that puts God first. This pattern is retained in our Prayer Book today in the collects, those prayers that collect our prayers together. Most collects begin with an acknowledgement of God, usually either by acknowledging God’s goodness and might, or perhaps some characteristic of God that is relevant to what we’re praying for. Then we pray for something in particular and conclude with an acknowledgement of Christ, our savior and the mediator of all our prayers, of all goodness.
I’ll give you an example, the collect in the Prayer Book “for all Christians in their vocation.”
Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of your faithful people is governed and sanctified; Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before you for all members of your holy Church, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In this prayer we first recognize God in the Holy Spirit, which governs the church. Then, like Solomon, we ask that God hear and answer our prayers. In particular, we pray that all ministers may serve God truly and devoutly. And then we conclude by recognizing God in Jesus Christ.
This is a healthy mode of prayer. Like Solomon, we should acknowledge God’s goodness to us, no matter how lowly our state. We should first recognize that God indeed has the power to answer prayers and has answered our prayers in the past. Then and only then should we petition God for answers to our needs.
Of course, we should be ready for any answer. You may have heard the country song by Garth Brooks that claims some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. I don’t turn to Garth Brooks for most of my theology, but I suppose you could do worse in this case. Speaking of great theologians, did you see the Jim Carrey movie “Bruce Almighty”? Given the job of God, Jim Carrey’s character decides to simply say “yes” to every prayer. The result is that everyone’s prayer to win the lottery is granted—and the million dollar prize is split a million different ways. Nobody’s happy.
All our prayers will not be granted in the way we wish. Solomon’s father, King David, wanted to build the Temple, and the Prophet Nathan said, “Go ahead, God wants you to build it.” But God did not want him to build it. God said No. Solomon prayed for wisdom and not only did he get wisdom, he was granted long life to boot. One got a No, and the other got a Yes-And.
Solomon asked that the Temple be a house of prayer. Solomon asked that God hear the prayers of the Israelite and the prayers of the foreigner. Not that every prayer be answered in exactly the way that we wish—for remember, Solomon had been granted wisdom and he would have known that such a prayer would be foolish. No, he simply asked that God hear prayers and continue to fulfill his promises as God always had.
The writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians likewise urges us to prayer in the same way. “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints and also for me.” That is, pray at all times. Be filled with the Spirit. Don’t pray only for yourselves, but for all the saints, for all the church, for all your neighbors. And then he asks the Christians at Ephesus and elsewhere to pray for him. This is typical of Paul and all the epistle writers. Paul famously said in First Thessalonians: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing.” Less famously, he said just after, “Beloved, pray for us.”
I’ve often heard it said that most preachers have one or two sermons in them that they preach over and over, just in different words. I don’t know if that’s true. But if it is, I suspect you’ve just heard my sermon. You’ll hear it again, just in different words. And it will sound like this: “Beloved, pray at all times in the Spirit. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing. Pray for all the saints. And beloved, pray for me.”
Amen.
August 27, 2006
When I was a boy I was the worst player on the worst team in Cullman’s Dixie Youth Baseball League. It’s not much of a claim to fame, but you have to take what you can get.
It was in those days, in those lonely hours standing around in the outfield, that I developed a prayer life. Again, not much of a prayer life, but you start where you start. You see, in all my years of playing baseball I have no memory of actually getting a hit or of actually catching a ball during a live game. I managed to get on base occasionally thanks to youthful pitching skills, but otherwise never played an important role in a game.
And that’s where the prayers came in. My standing prayer was that no balls be hit in my direction. I knew I’d drop the ball and, since I wanted my team to win, I wanted the ball to be hit to someone with good eye-hand coordination, and one who could remember how many outs there were and the purpose of a cut-off man.
I know now that these were not the best use of my prayers. Clearly, I recognized that God was an important part of my life. It was to God, after all, that I turned in my panic and fear. But clearly my theology was not very well fleshed-out. I didn’t think through the implications of my prayer—what if the boy at bat were praying for a hit? Do such prayers cancel themselves out? I never stopped to wonder.
You may notice another peculiarity in my prayer. I wasn’t praying for the ability to catch the ball or to hit the ball or to do anything baseball-related with any skill. I’m not sure what that means. Was I questioning God’s ability to do something with such limited resources? I doubt that. I suspect that I simply realized my athletic limitations and didn’t want to bother God with requests that I didn’t feel strongly about. I didn’t really care if I ever became a good baseball player, but I didn’t want to let the other guys down. So call it a compromise prayer.
Mind you, I’m not recommending this approach to prayer. But I do raise it for two reasons. First, please don’t ask me to form a St. Luke’s softball team. And second, I want us to think about how we pray and what we pray for.
In First Kings today we hear the the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple. This was a ceremony echoed millennia later at the dedication of this church in 1857. Solomon prays for the Temple as a place of prayer, asking that God hear the prayers of those who come to its altar.
Note the structure of the prayer. Solomon does not begin as I did in the outfield with a simple request: “God, please do this for me.” No. Here’s what he did:
First he prepared himself for prayer. He didn’t simply leap into prayer. He thought about it first. He assumed the posture you see in a priest at the altar today, hands spread toward heaven. Then he began by praising God. “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you.”
He proclaimed God as the one true and living God—none other like him. Then he recognized that God had answered prayers in the past. He lists these answered prayers: 1) God had kept covenant with the Israelites and had showed them chesed, the Hebrew word for steadfast love. 2) God had been always at the side of his father, King David. 3) God had put Solomon onto the king’s throne as part of the promise that David’s descendants would rule as long as they walked in the Lord’s ways.
All this was part of the prayer before anything was asked. It’s an excellent prayer, one that puts God first. This pattern is retained in our Prayer Book today in the collects, those prayers that collect our prayers together. Most collects begin with an acknowledgement of God, usually either by acknowledging God’s goodness and might, or perhaps some characteristic of God that is relevant to what we’re praying for. Then we pray for something in particular and conclude with an acknowledgement of Christ, our savior and the mediator of all our prayers, of all goodness.
I’ll give you an example, the collect in the Prayer Book “for all Christians in their vocation.”
Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of your faithful people is governed and sanctified; Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before you for all members of your holy Church, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In this prayer we first recognize God in the Holy Spirit, which governs the church. Then, like Solomon, we ask that God hear and answer our prayers. In particular, we pray that all ministers may serve God truly and devoutly. And then we conclude by recognizing God in Jesus Christ.
This is a healthy mode of prayer. Like Solomon, we should acknowledge God’s goodness to us, no matter how lowly our state. We should first recognize that God indeed has the power to answer prayers and has answered our prayers in the past. Then and only then should we petition God for answers to our needs.
Of course, we should be ready for any answer. You may have heard the country song by Garth Brooks that claims some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. I don’t turn to Garth Brooks for most of my theology, but I suppose you could do worse in this case. Speaking of great theologians, did you see the Jim Carrey movie “Bruce Almighty”? Given the job of God, Jim Carrey’s character decides to simply say “yes” to every prayer. The result is that everyone’s prayer to win the lottery is granted—and the million dollar prize is split a million different ways. Nobody’s happy.
All our prayers will not be granted in the way we wish. Solomon’s father, King David, wanted to build the Temple, and the Prophet Nathan said, “Go ahead, God wants you to build it.” But God did not want him to build it. God said No. Solomon prayed for wisdom and not only did he get wisdom, he was granted long life to boot. One got a No, and the other got a Yes-And.
Solomon asked that the Temple be a house of prayer. Solomon asked that God hear the prayers of the Israelite and the prayers of the foreigner. Not that every prayer be answered in exactly the way that we wish—for remember, Solomon had been granted wisdom and he would have known that such a prayer would be foolish. No, he simply asked that God hear prayers and continue to fulfill his promises as God always had.
The writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians likewise urges us to prayer in the same way. “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints and also for me.” That is, pray at all times. Be filled with the Spirit. Don’t pray only for yourselves, but for all the saints, for all the church, for all your neighbors. And then he asks the Christians at Ephesus and elsewhere to pray for him. This is typical of Paul and all the epistle writers. Paul famously said in First Thessalonians: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing.” Less famously, he said just after, “Beloved, pray for us.”
I’ve often heard it said that most preachers have one or two sermons in them that they preach over and over, just in different words. I don’t know if that’s true. But if it is, I suspect you’ve just heard my sermon. You’ll hear it again, just in different words. And it will sound like this: “Beloved, pray at all times in the Spirit. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing. Pray for all the saints. And beloved, pray for me.”
Amen.
posted by Michael+ at 12:14 PM
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