Proper
18A 2014
Father Adam Trambley
Sept 7, 2014 St.John’s Sharon
In our gospel this morning, Jesus says, “Where two or three
are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Pretty powerful words. We know this promise of Jesus. We’ve heard it a number of times and even
people who don’t memorize Bible verses can often tell you that Jesus said where
two or three are gathered, I am there.
This teaching of Jesus is one of a number of his
instructions on the power of our prayers, especially when we gather together to
pray in Jesus name. Jesus isn’t saying
that he is never present when we pray by ourselves, or that the prayers of
people who don’t yet know Jesus are not heard.
But he is saying that when God’s children come together and call upon
the name of Jesus, he is with us, praying with us. And, he says, what we ask will be done by
Jesus’ Father in heaven. That simple –
come together and pray in Jesus name, Jesus shows up, and we get what we want.
For many of us, our natural inclination when we hear this
kind of statement from Jesus is, “Well, yes, but…” Maybe we are naturally skeptical. Maybe we’ve been taught that God is too
important to worry about our little prayers.
Maybe we believe that God worries about big thing like world peace and
famines, but not so much about or giving us the time we need in a busy schedule
to have a family dinner or finding our lost keys. Maybe we feel that when we pray, God doesn’t
really listen. Maybe we think God should
do what is right, and what we want, whether we ask him or not. Maybe prayer just seems an impractical and
complicated mystery that we’d rather not worry about.
I have to agree that sometimes prayer doesn’t seem to work
as straightforwardly as Jesus seems to describe. In my experience, however, much of the time
the difficulties are on our end, not God’s.
To begin with, we don’t often gather together two or three
people in Jesus’ name and pray. For a
variety of reasons, we are not accustomed to gathering together with our family
members, friends, co-workers, or church members to pray. We aren’t regularly lifting up our needs, the
needs of one another, the needs of our church, the needs of our community, or
the needs of the world. We did a survey
on prayer in the parish a few months ago, and one of the striking results was
how few people actually prayed with anyone else except as part of our Sunday
worship service. People do pray, but we
don’t have a culture that prioritizes time to get together with other
Christians and ask God for what we need.
This lack of prayer is rather amazing, because we’re willing
to spend gobs of time complaining to one another about our problems, when we
could be spending that time lifting our voices in prayer to God for
solutions. We have all sorts of reasons
why we don’t, from embarrassment to pride to not actually believing our prayer
will matter. Sometimes we even ask
others for prayers, but we won’t just stop and pray together in the moment. The consistent experience of people who do
decide to make time daily to pray with others, however, is that Jesus is
present with them, that God acts in their lives in pretty amazing ways, and
that life gets better. Maybe everybody
doesn’t always get everything they want, but the praying does matter.
We can see a great example of this in our parish life. Our first guiding principle is that we ask
for God’s guidance and power to do the work he has given us to do. We are at our best when we live into this
guiding principle, because when two or three or more have gathered together to
pray for God’s guidance and power for St. John’s or for specific ministries, we
have received it. Conversely, the things
that we’ve tried where those involved didn’t focus first on praying mostly
don’t come together, or resulted in petty conflicts or other unhelpful
results.
To give a few examples:
When we began praying weekly in the prayers of the people at 10:00 to be
able to minister to new members, people began showing up. For a while, that prayer wasn’t included in
the petitions and we didn’t see visitors for a season. Then we made sure it was back in and we are
back to welcoming guests. The community
lunches have been a work of prayer by various people from the beginning. Even our stewardship work to fund the church
has been prayed for, and somehow God has provided his church what we need,
sometimes in the most unexpected ways.
This past year, we received two trusts from a married couple who died
recently. They weren’t members here, and
their connection to St. John’s is tenuous – I’d guess that they learned to swim
here. But their trusts will probably
provide five to ten thousand dollars a year for our operating budget, funds we
need as costs increase. I don’t know how
to look at this kind of unexpected bequest except as an answer to prayer, and these two trusts are not unique in
St. John’s history.
Now beyond just not praying with people, our Matthew reading and our Romans reading give two other reasons why our prayers might not be getting through. Before his promise to be where two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus talks a lot about how church members should reconcile with one another. Then he says, that we are supposed to agree about what we ask for in prayer. I would think that we would have a hard time really agreeing together if we aren’t reconciled to one another. When we are resentful, hurt, scared, angry or otherwise divided from our brothers and sisters that have sinned against us or that we have sinned against, we are going to have a hard time agreeing with them in prayer.
Now beyond just not praying with people, our Matthew reading and our Romans reading give two other reasons why our prayers might not be getting through. Before his promise to be where two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus talks a lot about how church members should reconcile with one another. Then he says, that we are supposed to agree about what we ask for in prayer. I would think that we would have a hard time really agreeing together if we aren’t reconciled to one another. When we are resentful, hurt, scared, angry or otherwise divided from our brothers and sisters that have sinned against us or that we have sinned against, we are going to have a hard time agreeing with them in prayer.
Now I can imagine what you are thinking. You’re thinking, “Adam, we are going to get
together with the people we like and ask for things in prayer. We’re not going to ask people we can’t stand
to pray with us.” I fear that we’ve
forgotten our algebra. If a=b, and b=c, then a=c. If two of us are over here praying and Jesus
is in our midst, and two others are over there and Jesus is in their midst,
then, in a way, aren’t we all together with Jesus in our midst. So if we can’t reconcile with the Christians
praying over there, then maybe when Jesus shows up in the midst of all of us,
it’s kind of like Jesus taking the unruly children down the frozen food
aisle. This one wants chocolate ice
cream, this one rocky road, this one vanilla frozen yogurt, and the
sophisticated one demands gelato, so Jesus picks up a couple bags of frozen
peas and everybody goes home pouting.
Tell me this doesn’t describe the situation of our divided and
politicized denominations that can’t come together to pray for evangelism and
healing in our community and our world. I’ll say that some of the most powerful
answered prayers I’ve seen in the community have been when I’ve sat down with
people who think some of our church’s stances are immoral and whose liturgies
are, well, not quite up to the Book of Common Prayer. But
when we’re willing to reconcile in the midst of our difference, love God and
each other, and pray together, God show up in some powerful ways. I think our divisions as individuals also explain
some of the reasons we have a hard time getting our prayers answered when we
bother to pray. “Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that if
your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go
reconcile. In today’s gospel he tells us
how to reconcile if we have something against someone else. Experienced intercessors describe hardness of
heart as a huge barrier to prayer.
“Truly I tell you, if two of you agree…” Jesus says.
Another barrier to prayer is that maybe we don’t really want
Jesus to show up in our midst. Paul
talks about laying aside the works of darkness and putting on the armor of
light. Jesus is the light, and if he
shows up in our midst any of our works of darkness are going to be
revealed. If we are sorry and ask
forgiveness, he forgives us and leads us forward. But if we’d rather hold on to reveling and
drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, or quarreling and jealousy, we’re
probably not going to allow ourselves to be present with others in prayer in
such a way that Jesus is going to show up.
If we really want to pray, we have to be open to Jesus coming with all
his glorious, life-changing light. We
don’t have to be perfect to do so, but we have to be willing to allow Jesus to
make us perfect, and even that can be a hard choice.
Of course sometimes, we think we have done everything we are
supposed to do. We want to be the people
who God wants us to be. We have tried to
live in harmony with everyone and make amends where we have failed. We have gathered with others in prayer, and
even felt the presence of Jesus in our midst.
And still, we don’t seem to get what we ask for. Sometimes people talk about God answering a
prayer, but saying, “No.” I don’t think
God says “No” to us in that way. In some
cases we can look at a bigger picture and maybe figure out why we didn’t
get what we wanted. Maybe God has a
different schedule than ours, or God knows that what we are asking for isn’t
really what we would want if we had all the information, or maybe God has
something better in mind. Maybe God is
doing what we asked, but for some reason we can’t see it. Maybe God is doing miracles, and using our
prayers to accomplish them, but not the miracle we think that we need.
Then sometimes the situation is just incomprehensible to
us. Tragedies occur, even when we are
praying fervently together. Important
things that really matter just don’t work.
We are thrown back to the truth that God is not a vending machine, and
just because we pray a certain way doesn’t mean we can manipulate God into
providing what we want. We still live in
a broken world. We are surrounded by the
spiritual static of the sinful rejections of God’s presence in many times and places. Beyond that, sometimes our desires don’t
connect with God’s desires. Sometimes
our prayers don’t reflect our true desires.
And too often our actions don’t connect with our prayers. All we can do is live and pray as best we can
until we live into the fullness of the Kingdom of God.
Yet, in the midst of all of that confusion and brokenness, a
persistent fact remains. When people
live lives of reconciliation and repentance and gather with others to pray,
they mostly get what they ask for. They
may not get everything, but they experience God caring for them in the midst of
their simple daily lives, and they regularly experience various kinds of
miracles. People in our congregation
have these sorts of experiences. But
another, more troubling fact remains, as well.
Too many of us don’t regularly experience the blessing of God answering
prayers because we don’t gather with others, agree with them, and allow Jesus
to come in our midst. Jesus said, Where two or three are gathered in my name,
I am there among them.
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