This weeks sermon

Sermon on Prayer 2

February 5, 2012

Scripture: Matthew 26: 36 – 46

The scripture reading for today shows the deeply human side of Jesus.

He knows that Judas is planning to betray him. .. and will do it very soon.

He knows the skein of his life is unraveling... fast. And Jesus is afraid.

So he takes his closest friends to a quiet place to pray.

He is desperate.

He needs the peace and assurance that only God can give.

He needs to confide in God that he does not like the plan God has for his life.

He needs to remind himself that whether or not he likes the plan,

he is going to let God “be in charge.”

He needs God and he ALSO needs his friends and wants their prayers.

Jesus does not want to be alone. He needs their prayers.

Jesus said, “My soul is very sad. This sorrow is crushing my life out.

Stay here. Keep watch with me and pray.” “Don’t leave me alone.”

Then Jesus falls on the ground and prays, "My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this.“

Then Jesus looks to his friends for company, comfort and prayer.. and he finds them sleeping.

The time is short and the situation desperate. He wakes them up and says,

“Pray for me.... right now.”

The humanity of Jesus and of his disciples is right there for us to see.

Jesus is praying for what he wants ... and he isn’t going to get it.

Jesus asks for prayer and support from his friends and they can’t stay on task.

Is this an example of prayer gone wrong?

No... it is an example of what REALLY happens when life is difficult and frightening.

Prayer is difficult.... but as necessary as the air we breathe.

God DOES have the answers. They may not be the answers that we want.

But they are the answers that are ours.

And, in the end, with God’s help, we learn (a little at a time) to give it all to God...

all of it... the “right” and the “wrong” of the situation... give all into God’s keeping...

and surrender our life into the heart of God.

This story is an example of what of what REALLY happens when life is difficult and frightening.

Your friends promise that they will stand by you ... through thick and thin ... and then they don’t.

They mean to be there for you. They do love you.

But, when anxiety is high, prayer is difficult, steadfastness is difficult, courage is difficult.

Although we may be deeply disappointed, God honors the attempt to pray

forgives the failures and calls us to keep on praying.

“Pray always.”

Pray when the conditions are easy.

Pray when everything has gone haywire.

Pray well. Pray badly. Just pray.

Just pray ... because prayer is powerful. What happens when you pray?

After you’ve said all the words you want to say and you’ve got no more words left...

When the silence settles in and the presence of mystery can be felt in your bones.....

then... when you are empty... the Holy Spirit begins to pray in you.

When you are done with your own agendas and you surrender to silence.....

then God prays in you .... in words deeper than your understanding....

then the mysterious presence is felt at the level of an inner vibration...

a humming of the heart strings.

I remember a story by contemporary spiritual writer Annie Dillard. ..

a story about a burning moth.. (from Holy the Firm, p. 14ff. by Annie Dillard). Annie is camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Every evening she reads by candlelight.

And... as you well know, the light of the candle attracts moths. Here is her story.

One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held.

I must have been staring at the candle,

or maybe I looked up when the shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all.

A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspread, flapped into the fire,

dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled and fried in a second.

Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, enlarging the circle of light in the clearing

and creating out of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater,

the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine.

At once the light contracted again and the moth's wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke.

At the same time, her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burnt away

and her heaving mouthparts cracked like pistol fire.

When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone,

gone the long way of her wings and legs.

Had she been new, or old? Had she mated and laid her eggs? Had she done her work?

All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax---

a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle's round pool.

And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick.

She kept burning.

The wax rose in the moth's body from her soaking abdomen ... to her thorax ...

to the jagged hole where her head should be, and widened into flame,

a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk.

That candle had two wicks, two flames of identical height, side by side. The moth's head was fire.

She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.

She burned for two hours without changing, without bending or leaning –

only glowing within, like a building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls,

like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God,

while I read by her light. (end of Dillard story)

To pray, full bore, no holds barred, is to empty your guts, ... to make room for God to pray in you.

to empty your guts to make room for the full power of God.

To pray is to suck-in the power of God, to burn with the fire of God passing through you...

to burn from the inside... to burn without being burned up.

Prayer is the deep and powerful connection to the source of all life. AMEN.