Sermon 4/15/18
Nehemiah 1
Strengthen
Your Core: Prayers
Some
of you know that our RipIt folks in our exercise ministry have been
participating in a challenge since January, a challenge that draws to a close
in the next few weeks. Folks have been trying to eat in healthy, wholesome
ways, and been pushing themselves to be more physically fit, all the while
trying to build each other up in teams, encouraging each other, challenging
each other. Amber, our fearless leader, and some of our other fitness buffs
will tell you that one of the areas of focus in physical fitness is having a
strong core. There are lots of exercises that emphasize strengthening your core
muscles, because with a strong core, so many other areas of fitness are enhanced,
and, reciprocally, you’ll have a harder time having strong arms and legs if you
don’t have a strong core of your body to support them. And so Amber is
constantly reminding us to focus on our core muscles when we exercise. It’s not
easy, of course. But it’s important.
When
my nephew Sam was a baby, he was a bit late in learning how to walk. There was
nothing physically wrong with him. He just was, well, a bit floppy. You would
sit him down and he’d just slump right over. He had no muscles to hold himself
up. When my brother and sister-in-law took him to the doctor, they figured out
that this was probably simply because Sam had never been set down on the ground
in his life. Ok, that’s maybe an exaggeration. But Sam, the first child, the
first grandchild, the first nephew – we all held him a lot. So baby Sam had to have some physical therapy sessions that
focused on strengthening his core. He’d have to sit on a big yoga ball, and my
brother would roll him around from side to side, holding him in place on the
ball, so that Sam would have to engage all his core muscles to stay on the
ball. With that and some other similar exercises, Sam was walking in no time.
He needed those core muscles to get himself moving.
In
the same way that we need to develop a strong physical core, we also need a
strong spiritual core. We need our souls strong, ready to hold us up through
the challenges of life, a core that reminds us who we are and who we are
following when we are bombarded with constant “opportunities” to go in different
directions than God. And I think that to focus on our spiritual core, to find
practices that strengthen our core, we have to turn no farther than the words
we say again and again: when we become members of the church, when we celebrate
baptisms, and when we renew our own baptismal vows each year. Next month, after
spending most of this school year working hard to learn, and explore their
faith and the teachings of Jesus, and understand what it means to be United
Methodists, our confirmands Ayse and Peyton and Shea and Taylor will become
adult members of the congregation. And when they do that, they will, as we all
have many times, pledge that they will support the ministries of the church
through their prayers, their presence, their gifts, their service, and their
witness. Prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. And so for the next
five weeks, as we lead up to Confirmation Sunday, we’re going to be exploring
these themes, these practices together. Because as they are confirmed, again,
we have the opportunity to recommit ourselves too, affirming one more time that
we will commit to these practices, these core-strengthening spiritual
disciplines in order to strengthen our faith and the faith of our congregation
as disciples of Jesus.
Today,
our focus in on prayer. We say in our membership covenant, “As members of the
body of Christ and in this congregation of The United Methodist Church, we will
faithfully participate in the ministries of the church by our prayers.” So, how
exactly do we do that? How are we
doing that? How could we be doing
that? Are you strengthening the church and your own faith life through prayer?
If you’re not, can you take steps to start? What would that look like? I think
about the opportunities we have to support each other, the whole congregation,
and our personal spiritual growth through prayer. Each week, there is a place
on your bulletin worksheet to write down prayer requests that emerge during
worship. I hope you not only write things down here, or make a note on your phone,
or whatever works for you, but that you also then actually return to these
names, these requests in your prayers throughout the week. We have a fellowship
group on facebook, aside from our regular facebook page, that is a place folks
share prayer concerns. We have a monthly prayer ministry, on Thursday
afternoons. We’ll meet this coming Thursday at 2pm in fact. In that group,
we’ve been praying through our church mailing address, inviting folks to share
with us what is on their hearts for themselves and their families. I’d love for
you to join us in that prayer time if you’re free in the daytime. And of course
we have other opportunities – prayer during worship, prayer at meetings and
events, prayer in our own devotional life.
There’s
been a lot of push back lately against the phrase “thoughts and prayers,” and I
understand why. Sometimes, in the face of tragedy, leaders offer up their
“thoughts and prayers” but fail to act, fail to work for changes that could
prevent future tragedies, or minimize them. And so I’ve heard people saying, ““We
need more. We need more than thoughts and prayers. We need action. We need
people working for change. We need strategies and solutions.” As people of
faith, I think we need to be attentive to those voices, those calls to action.
And I think: Yes, this is just what is in line with the message of the
scriptures: prayer paired with action. We pray for God’s guidance, God’s
direction, God’s presence, and then, confident
that God hears our prayers and equips us as we need to be equipped, we act
as God’s agents of change, of compassion, of grace in the world. Pray and act. I think of baby Nolan, Natalie
Towne’s grandson for whom we’ve been praying since he was diagnosed at birth
with leukemia. We pray – we pray a lot.
But we also hold some benefit fundraisers, because we know that God has called
us to be a part of the very answer to prayer that we are seeking.
As
we turn to our scripture for today, we see prayer and action together in our
reading from Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a book of the Bible you might not be very
familiar with. Nehemiah was written in the late 5th century BC, and is a unique
book among books of the Hebrew Bible because it is primarily told in the first
person point of view. We hear directly from Nehemiah. The events he describes
take place after the Israelites had been exiled to Babylon, conquered by the
Babylonians, and after the Israelites had finally been allowed to return to
Jerusalem. But all is not well, “back to normal,” and Nehemiah returns to
oversee the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.
Nehemiah is
the cup-bearer to King Artaxerxes in Susa, the capitol of Persia. Cup-bearers
were positions of high status. Because of the constant fear of plots to harm
the ruling king, a person had to be considered highly trustworthy to hold the
position of cup-bearer. The cup-bearer had to guard against poison or tampering
with the drinks served to the king, sometimes even required to taste-test for
the king. But this role also brought the cup-bearer a degree of closeness and
confidence with the king. Cup-bearers had influence with the king.
Nehemiah,
cup-bearer to Artaxerxes, learns that the wall of Jerusalem had been destroyed.
As our text opens, we find him praying to God after receiving the news. He
prays that God will give him strength and success as he asks Artaxerxes to let
him return to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of the walls. After our text
for today, the king agrees, and Nehemiah is appointed governor of Judah. He
rebuilds the walls, he wards off enemies, and he rebuilds the community to
conform again with the law of Moses, making many reforms, including reforms to
combat oppression of the poor, like cancelling past debts and mortgages. He
meets with a lot of opposition, especially from the Jewish nobles, but he
eventually prevails.
But our focus
today is specifically on Nehemiah’s prayer. Before any of the events unfold,
right in the first chapter of Nehemiah, we read his prayer, his starting point,
before he begins to carry out what he believes is God’s purpose for him.
Nehemiah’s prayer is beautiful and flowing, but we shouldn’t be put off by the
beauty of his words. The heart of the prayer is always what matters to God,
just as a child’s “I’m sorry” or “I love you” is as powerful to a parent as an
adult child’s more eloquent communication. Essentially, what Nehemiah says is
this: “God, you are always faithful. I’ve screwed up, my family and my people
have screwed up, and we see the consequences, the separation we’ve experienced
from you because we’ve failed to follow you. But we’re going to try again. You’re always faithful. So please be with us
and help me communicate my plan to my king.” Nehemiah has a sense of what he
thinks God is asking him to do. He asks God for strength to get it done, for
God to help him convince the king who will have to allow Nehemiah’s journey. He
admits that without God, he screws up. And he remembers God’s faithfulness,
God’s promises, and places his trust in that faithfulness, those promises. And
then, confident because of his relationship with God, Nehemiah gets to work on
just what he has offered to God in prayer.
If
you read the newsletter this month, you’ll know that our Council of Stewards
and Council on Ministries are reading a book together right now called Simple Church, a book that talks about
how important it is for congregations to have simple, clear paths for
discipleship. In other words, a congregation should have a way that everyone
knows and can share and participate in that makes it clear how you would come
to know Jesus and be a disciple of Jesus. Often, authors Thom Rainer and Eric
Geiger say, churches don’t send any clear message about how people should go
about being disciples. We might talk about being disciples a lot, but we don’t
make it clear to people that are trying to
be disciples of Jesus just how they might go about doing that. I think we’ve
got a lot to learn from this book, and we’re trying to think together deeply
about how we are doing, and how we could
be doing at helping folks come into a relationship, new or deeper, with
Jesus. As we work through this together,
creating an intentional discipleship system in our congregation, we’re going to
face challenges and changes, undoubtedly. And so I know that prayer – our
constant conversation, our constant communication with God – is going to be an
essential part of our journey. I hope that you will pray for our congregation,
and be ready to act, so that we can connect more people to a life-changing path
as followers of Jesus.
When
we talk about prayer as part of our commitment in this family of faith, we’re
committing to praying with a purpose: to strengthen the core of our own
personal faith, and to strengthen the core of our congregation. We pray to say:
God, help us do your will here, in our own lives, in the life of the church.
God, be our strength here. We pray to ask God for help in keeping the core of
who we are and what we’re about as a congregation and as disciples of Jesus at
the center of everything we do. We pray for courage to follow wherever Jesus
leads, and wisdom to help others follow with us.
Each
week, as we consider these core acts of discipleship, these core faith
practices, I want you to think about how you will make this vow your own. When
you say that you will commit to supporting the ministries of this church with
your prayers, what do you mean specifically?
“As members of the body of Christ and in this congregation of The United
Methodist Church, we will faithfully participate in the ministries of the
church by our prayers.” Let’s do just that. Amen.
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