A Conversation With God – Jesus teaches his followers how to pray - July 29, 2007

Two women were taking a break from their work, when they began to talk about their respective churches.

"I never knew you went to church," said the first one. "I'll bet you twenty dollars you can't even recite the Lord's prayer."

"Oh yes, I CAN," said the second.

"Well, then, let's HEAR it," said the first.

The second one began, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the, Lord, my soul to keep..."

The first listened with astonishment. "Wow!" she said. "Here's your twenty dollars. I was sure that you didn't know it!"

When, why, how are all aspects of prayer that people struggle with. This has always been a struggle for those who believe in God.

The disciples who followed Jesus, those who accompanied him everyday and shared his ministry, asked him how they should pray. They saw him praying by himself and needed to know whether or not the way that they prayed was the “right” way to pray. They likened their request to that of the followers of John the Baptist who asked him how they should pray.

Jesus patiently explained to them a prayer that they could pray regularly and be confident that it would be an appropriate way to communicate with God.

First, Jesus told them to say “Father”. Except the term that he actually used was a very informal and familiar one. He used the term Abba. This is the term that a child would use when addressing their father, sort of like dad or daddy. This implies a very personal and close relationship with God, not a formal and distant one.

Next Jesus told them to say, “Hallowed be your name”. Even though Jesus was informal and personal with God, he maintained respect and reverence for the creator of the universe using sacred language. He told his disciples to remember that it was God that they were speaking with.

Then Jesus told his followers to say, “Your kingdom come.” Depending on who was listening, they would take this very differently. Many believed that the kingdom of God was going to come very soon; certainly within their life time. Others really had no idea when the kingdom of God was going to be realized, but they were all told to recognize this as a promise that God had made to all believers.

“Give us each day our daily bread”. This was then offered and was seen by many as remembering the time when God rained bread, or manna, from heaven to provide sustenance to the people of Israel as they wandered in the desert. It is hard to know for sure whether or not Jesus was being literal in the request for bread, in other words, ensuring that all would be fed. It was also possible that Jesus was speaking of spiritual nourishment. He may have been telling them to ask God to fill them with the Holy Spirit. Either way, Jesus was telling them to ask God to give them what they needed to be filled.

The remainder of the prayer is a form of forgiveness and reconciliation. It basically asked God for each one praying to be forgiven for their sins and to give them the strength to forgive all those who sinned against them. Jesus was telling them to recognize that they did things to impede their relationship with God and other people. He told them to seek help in overcoming these barriers to a good relationship with God and others and by being able to be forgiven and forgive others, to build the strength to avoid sinning also.

Jesus then followed these simple instructions with a parable. This parable, like most, is somewhat challenging to understand. On the face of it, the story seems to suggest that just like the man in the story who pestered his friend for bread to feed his guests, if the disciples prayed enough and pestered God enough, they would eventually get what they wanted.

We all struggle to find the best way to pray and wish that we could pray more often. If only we knew what to say and when to say it.

We typically pray when we are at church. For most people that is once per week. Even if we are willing and able, we at St Simon’s would come to church and pray three times per week; twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday. This definitely limits our prayer life. This means that we would not be praying most of the rest of the week.

We also pray for the things that we want or need. If we pray for those things that we want or need, then I suppose we could be praying a lot more often, depending upon how long our list of wants and needs is.

Many people pray for others and this is certainly a wonderful way to demonstrate the love we have for others. Asking for God to intercede on behalf of others is a wonderful approach to prayer, though again, it can be very limiting.

Most of us pray for God to help us with something in our lives, especially when we are in crisis. Quite often this leaves us feeling very disappointed with our praying. When we are ill, we pray for God to take the illness away from us. When we continue to be sick, we believe that either God is not listening to us, or not answering our prayers.

When we are in financial difficulty, we pray for God to help us out of the financial problem by encouraging a win fall to drop into our lap-often in the form of a winning 6/49 ticket. Again, when we don’t win the lottery, we believe that God is not giving us what we ask for.

No matter how you slice it, typically our pray life is limited in time and content.

I remember reading about Pope John Paul II and about the time that he took to pray every day. It certainly changed my perspective on whether or not I had “the time” to pray. I figured that it was highly unlikely that my day was fuller than his. Therefore, I should certainly have been able to put the time together each and every day to pray.

Perhaps time is not the problem for any of us. I believe that it comes back to how and when to pray.

Jesus offered this prayer approach to his followers trying to help them to understand that prayer does not need to be difficult, that it should not be a complex undertaking. He also offered the parable, not as a suggestion that pestering God is what praying is all about. I believe that Pope John Paul II truly understood what Jesus was saying to the disciples in this passage from Luke: That they should pray often or even almost all of the time.

The persistence that he was referring to with the parable was to encourage the disciples to develop a close prayer relationship with God. He was telling them that they should pray as though they were in conversation with God. The beginning of the prayer was “Father” or Abba or dad. He was trying to tell them that they should speak with God like a parent or a friend or a mentor. He was trying to tell them that they did not need a formula or a request. What they needed was a relationship.

This is what Pope John Paul II did so well. He would just spend time with God; often only listening. Other times apparently, he would sound like he was moaning, as though in great pain. It was only the effort that he was making to be sincere when sharing important, painful, and challenging aspects of his life with God. The approach that he used was similar to a parent sharing their day with their child at the dinner table or at bed time.

This is as challenging or complex as it needs to be.

A colleague of mine who guides me in developing my spiritual life pointed out to me one day that the struggle that I was encountering with my prayer life was that I was trying to make it too difficult, that it was too constrained, even too boring. She offered me a book titled, “Praying Our Experiences”, by Joseph Schmidt. What a gift this book has been for me.

I came to realize that I can just have a conversation with God. Yes I can ask God to help me with things, like being more patient or forgiving. I also realized that I could just share things with God and even just quietly listen to God. This was my greatest challenge. Most people who know me will tell you that I suffer no lack of words to share. I can talk for hours. I do really have trouble waiting to hear what God has to say to me. The approach that my colleague and the book encouraged from me was to just start talking with God and find God in my every day experiences.

This was an epiphany for me. It opened a completely new way of approaching my relationship with God. I still struggle at times forgetting to actually address God so that I am conscious that I am not only talking to myself. I still have difficulty listening to God. I went on my first directed silent retreat in January of this year. What a challenge it was for me at first to sit alone with God and not to speak out loud.

Eventually though, it came. The thoughts and words of God came to me. In fact they began to gush forth. They came so fast that as I tried to capture them on paper so that I wouldn’t lose them, I couldn’t keep up! I tell you this as encouragement. I really did not believe before I went on the retreat that this could actually happen to me. I was convinced that I would have a relaxing time catching up on my sleep and my reading. My experience was neither fruitless nor boring; instead I was able to spend invaluable time just chatting with God. I am still working on speaking with God and listening to God on a daily basis.

When Jesus said to his disciples, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” He did not mean that we would have every prayer answered the way that we pictured or desired that it would be answered. God answers our prayers by giving us what God knows we need. Often this looks very different than what we envision it to be. Usually, it is much greater than we could ever have expected even if we cannot discern it at the time.

Jesus told his disciples, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” What a glorious promise that God has made to those who believe. It may not be anything like our minds eye depicted it for us, but it will always be greater than we could ever have asked or imagined.

The Better Part – Being Still with God - July 22, 2007

As I return from vacation and transition from vacation speed, where you try to limit your activities and relax, to work speed, where it seems you can never do everything that you need to do, I find that our Gospel reading this week a very apropos challenge for me.

In our passage from Luke this week, we find Martha running here and there doing many things. She invited Jesus to into her home and she was doing all that she could to be a good host. Her culture at that time stressed excellent hospitality whether the person being hosted was a family member, a friend, or a complete stranger.

It says in the Gospel that Jesus and his apostles were “on their way” and “entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home”. Jesus was not in his home village, he was stopping at Martha’s home to spend the night. Martha was running all around her house preparing refreshments, preparing a meal, and making her home comfortable for Jesus to eat and spend the night.

In that culture, the greater your guest, the more effort you put into your preparations. Martha believed that Jesus was the Son of God, so she was pulling out all of the stops to make his time in her home as memorable as possible.

As Martha worked feverishly to make preparations for Jesus, she noticed that her sister Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to him, laughing with him, sharing jokes and stories. Every time she passed Mary and Jesus in her busy work, her resentment toward Mary-and even Jesus-grew steadily. Finally, Martha just couldn’t take it any more. She finally exploded, not at Mary, but at Jesus.

Martha said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all of the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” Martha did not ask Jesus to tell Mary to get up and help her, she commanded Jesus to order her sister to help. Martha reached the end of her rope seeing her lazy, good-for-nothing sloth of a sister sit there and do nothing to help host their very important guest.

Martha did not get the response that she expected. Instead of Jesus saying that she was right, thanking her for all that she had done, telling her that he was sorry and, telling Mary to help her sister, instead he said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.” There is need of only one thing? Martha must have been confused and frustrated. Perhaps she was thinking, “what is the one thing? “. Have I already done the one thing? Am I finished then? Do I still need to do this one thing so that I can sit with Jesus also?

She was likely more distressed than she was before she commanded Jesus to get Mary to help. Then Jesus said, “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” She was likely steaming at this point; and why not?

I am sure that many or most of us can empathize with Martha. Haven’t we all been in situations where we were working ourselves like crazy and we kept looking over at someone who was not lifting a finger to help and we just wanted to yell at them to help us? Our thoughts were that the lazy person should get up and help us so that we could finish the work faster and then we could all enjoy ourselves!

Sue-Ann (my wife) and I often struggle when we have guests into our home for a meal. Our struggle is to be the best hosts that we can be, while spending as much time with our guests as we can. In the best case situations, we have several hours to prepare for our guests, making sure to clean up and tidy up and set out everything that we can before our guests arrive. Even in this best case scenario, one of us is inevitably in the kitchen most of the time making sure that the meal is just right and that it is ready at just the right time. One of us ends up with our guests, making sure they are comfortable, bringing them refreshments and entertaining them as best we can while our partner is making momentary appearances between tasks.

In the worst case scenarios, we have arrived home only moments before our guests after a long day and a long week of work, and we are both working feverishly to get our home in an acceptable form of readiness before they arrive. Once they have arrived, we run like crazy in and out of the room that our guests are in, to make momentary appearances between the many tasks that we are performing. We keep telling ourselves that we are making all of this effort on their behalf and doing our best to be good hosts. We try to at least call from one room to the next to make conversation with our guests and keep them from feeling totally neglected.

Back to our confused and frustrated host Martha …

What is that Jesus meant when he said that Mary had chosen the best part? Why did Jesus defend Mary’s choice to be lazy and unhelpful to her sister Martha? It says twice in this short passage that Martha was “distracted” by her many tasks. There is a clue in these statements about why Jesus said what he said. He did not say that he did not appreciate what Martha had done. He did not even question her choices. In fact, he did not say anything until she exploded and started making demands.

We can see in Martha a person who was always busy. Martha is not the kind of person who can leave something left undone if she believes that it is something that she should get done. She likely found things to do that could have waited until another time, but she did them along with those things that she needed to do for her guest. Martha was a multi-tasker and she got “distracted” from what she needed to do and that was to spend time with her guest.

This is what Mary chose; what Jesus called the “better part”. Mary decided that her highest priority was to sit at Jesus’ feet and just be with him. I am just projecting here, but I am guessing that she was very excited that Jesus had come to visit Martha’s home and that she could get time with Jesus away from the throngs of people that they encountered every day in his ministry. To make it even more wonderful, her sister Martha was so busy, that she, Mary, got to spend time with Jesus alone, one-on-one. This was even better than she could have imagined.

Jesus was trying to tell Martha that she and Mary both had choices and that Martha had chosen to do busy work and that Mary had chosen to just spend time being with Jesus. Jesus was trying to let Martha know as gently as possible, that it was more important to spend time with Jesus while he was there in her home, than it was for her to make things perfect for him.

This is the same when our guests come to visit us. If all that our guests wanted was a great meal, then they could just go to a nice restaurant and get a great meal. Or if our guests just needed a nice place to spend the night, they could go to a nice hotel and sleep there. What our guests want when they come to visit us is to spend time with us. They are not coming to our home to see us run around; they want to talk with us and laugh with us and share with us. Jesus wanted to spend time with Martha and Mary and just be with them. He wanted to talk with them, and laugh with them, and share with them. This is what Jesus wants to do with us also.

Last week the Gospel reading was the Parable of the Good Samaritan. This was a great example of what it means to love our neighbour. Jesus was asked “who is my neighbour?” and Jesus shared this parable. He was trying to tell them that everyone was their neighbour. This was not limited to those who lived near them, or worked with them, or worshipped with them. He was telling them that everyone that they encountered was their neighbour.

He was also offering them a wonderful example of what loving ones neighbour with action looked like. The parable was a very action-oriented story. He was telling his disciples that when we love your neighbour, some times it is more that just words or sentiments. It requires us to take action some times to demonstrate our love for our neighbour, especially when they are in distress. There was a lot of action in that parable. The action of the Jewish man being mugged on his way to Jericho was an action; as was the passing by of many people-including a priest, unfortunately. And then the actions of the Samaritan man who stopped to check on the man who was mugged and then taking him to safety and comfort, was shared as the main point of the story.

This week we read about the story of Jesus visiting Martha and Mary as an example of what it is like loving God. In this case, Mary has chosen to just be with God. It is a story of inaction. Martha is certainly creating a bee hive of activity and Jesus told her that Mary just being still with him and sharing herself with him was the best possible choice. The writer of Luke offers us all a wonderful story that presents an example of loving God by not doing anything except listening, and laughing, and sharing. The writer wrote two stories back to back, broken by a week in our lectionary, to present loving ones neighbour and loving God, one with action, and one with just being still.

In these back-to-back stories the two great commandments are offered to us; love your God and love your neighbour as yourself.

In the story this week Jesus emphasized that there is no great priority than to sit still and just be with God. Jesus said that Mary had chosen the better part. He said that Mary knew that the better choice in that situation was to spend time with him, to spend time with God. He was trying to tell Martha that Mary knew that Jesus’ visit was a special moment and that they should not squander the opportunity just being busy. He was telling Martha that Mary had been able to see that this was the most important thing that she could do at that time.

We can all get busy in our lives. There are so many things pulling at us and demanding our time and attention. We can spend a lot of time being busy in our lives, running from one task that needs to be completed to the next. We often start one task only to be distracted by something else that we need to get done, followed by another. We are certainly busy and even exhausted by the end of the day. We feel as though we have accomplished a lot, though we realize that some important things that needed to get done did not get done.

I have spent a lot of time and effort trying to master the precepts of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” established by Dr. Stephen Covey in his book by the same title. One of the areas covered in these habits is time management in the form of setting priorities. In his book, Dr Covey identifies 4 quadrants of activity. The first are tasks that are neither urgent nor important-things to be left undone unless we are truly bored and everything else is done. Next, he identifies actions that are urgent but not important. He mentions running to the phone every time it rings. Then he speaks of activities that are important, but not urgent. These can be long term or strategic tasks, like, writing our wills or planning for retirement. Finally, he offers the quadrant for urgent and important tasks. Here is where we find things that we need to do right now and that are very important to get done.

Mary’s decision to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to him and share with him falls into this fourth and quadrant. This is an activity that was both urgent and important. Jesus was available to both Martha and Mary on that very day. This was not something that might have happened again soon or perhaps ever again. Also, they had the Son of God visiting. How much more important could an event be than to spend time being with the Son of God. Mary chose the better part. Mary determined the “one thing” that was most important and very urgent. Martha chose to do things in the other four quadrants; many of which where not urgent and important. This was how she got distracted.

Jesus tells us that it is vital that we take the time to be still with God and just share ourselves with God. I have heard many say that we are no longer human beings, but “human doings”. We are always running around doing things, multi-tasking, and we don’t take the time to just be.

I believe that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus relishing in her great fortune to spend time with Jesus. She was probably finding it hard to believe that Jesus was visiting her sister’s home. Then to add to her great fortune, Martha was distracted by many things and she had Jesus all to herself. There were no great crowds, not even her sister to steal from this time she had with Jesus. She likely couldn’t believe that this would ever happen. She likely also believed that she did not really deserve this one-on-one time that she was having with Jesus.

To receive something that is both unexpected and undeserved is to define grace. When God offers to us something that we do not expect and feel that we do not deserve, something that is a gift freely given, we receive the grace of God. When we sit with God and just be still with God, we are offered the grace of God’s love. When we take the time to share with God and laugh with God and to relate with God, then we receive this grace that God offers to us. All we need to do is to make it our choice to do so. All we have to do is to make it a priority. All we have to do is avoid just being busy, just doing, and instead just be still with God. Because God offers us this grace, and when we make it a priority and just take the time to be with God and receive this gift of grace, thanks be to God. Amen.