Sermon for Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "Are You There God? It's Me, Beth," Luke 11:1-13 (Proper 12C, Ordinary 17C)

Sermon 7/24/16

Luke 11:1-13

Are You There God? It’s Me, Beth*

            In my years of pastoring, I have witnessed people put to use so many different gifts that God has given them. I’ve seen people develop and implement Sunday School programs, lead people on mission trips near and far, preach sermons, conduct or sing in or play in great works of worshipful music. I’ve seen dinners coordinated that feed hundreds of people. I’ve seen capital campaigns undertaken that have raised thousands of dollars for church projects. I’ve been blessed by seeing parishioners in my congregations step forward to do some truly amazing things with God’s help. But there’s one area in our spiritual life together where I’ve sometimes experienced deafening silence. And that’s when I say, “Would anyone like to close us in prayer?” Not everyone, of course, is hesitant to offer prayer. But I would say that of all the things that make people react with that kind of look students get when they don’t know the answer and the teacher is looking for someone to call on? Offering a prayer tops the list.  

            I’m not sure exactly why this is, but in part, I think we must have this collective belief that prayer involves finding just the right combination of words in order to be acceptable to God and the gathered community of faith. Maybe this is because pastors too easily slip into the role of professional pray-ers, and we pastors spend too much of our time in churches and church meetings and church books, so that church-y phrases just roll of our tongues with ease, and everyone else starts thinking they have to pray in just the same way.

            I can tell you that you’re not alone. When I was first guest preaching, and in seminary, and in my first years of ministry, leading congregational prayer and other prayer times was on the list of things that made me most nervous. Only habit – doing it over and over and over again – eased me of my anxiety. Prayers in my childhood came a bit easier, though. When I was in elementary school, and I was having a hard time with questions about God, my mother told me that I should pray by telling God about my day. I took her at her word, and did exactly that, in a very literal way. “Dear God” – always ‘Dear God’ as if I was writing God a letter – “Dear God, today I got up and had cereal and went to school and at lunch and had recess and came home and did my homework and played outside and . . .” If I made it through this recitation, I would then do my “God blesses” – “God bless my mom and dad and Jim and TJ and Todd, God bless Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Bill and Aunt Shari and cousin Becky and Ben” – and then, if I made it through all of that, I would end with the Lord’s Prayer, because, well, we always say the Lord’s Prayer! Usually, though, I fell asleep somewhere between telling God about my day at school and telling God about my evening. But it was a daily routine that I stuck to faithfully for a long time. My personal prayers have always retained this form though – something like a diary entry, or a letter to a friend, only directed to God. How about you? How do you pray? Is prayer easy for you? Challenging? Nerve-wracking? As easy as when you were a child?

            We’re not alone in wondering about how we should pray. Even those in Jesus’ innermost circle sought direction about the best way to speak to God. Today, our gospel lesson opens with Jesus praying. He does that a lot in the gospels, often seeking out time and space for conversation with God. When he’s done, his disciples ask him to teach them to pray like “John taught his disciples.” We don’t know how John – who we know as John the Baptist – taught his disciples. But we do have Jesus’s teaching on pray. Jesus responds with what we have come to call “The Lord’s Prayer,” although Luke’s recording of it is a bit more simple than the way most of us have memorized it: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” Simple. God, you are holy. Bring your reign to earth. Give us what we need for each day. Forgive us our sins – and we are forgiving those who have sinned against us. Keep us safe from harm. Boiled down, this prayer captures the heart, the essence of many of our prayers, doesn’t it?  

            Then Jesus continues with a story: Imagine that you needed some bread immediately because company has come unexpectedly and you have nothing to serve, and all the stores are closed. So you go to your friend at midnight, asking for some bread. Even a friend might be likely to respond: Hey, It’s midnight, we’re all asleep already, leave us alone! But, Jesus says, not because of your friendship with this person, but rather because your friend JUST WANTS YOU TO GO AWAY AND LEAVE THEM ALONE, your friend might give you what you ask for! Because of your “persistence,” says Jesus, your friend will respond to your need. Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Finally, Jesus says, if we humans, who are sinful and faulty and imperfect, can still give good things to our loved ones, imagine how much more God, who is Love, who is goodness, desires to give to those who ask!

            I am struck by the word “persistence” in this text. Is getting God to answer our prayers really just a matter of asking enough times? Can that possibly be the case? God will answers our prayers if we ask enough times that God gets sick of us asking and gives in? That word that we read as persistence – this is the only place it appears in our scriptures. And I’m afraid “persistence” is a kind of softened-up translation. It actually means something more like shamelessness or unembarrassed boldness. Those words actually help me understand better what Jesus is saying.

            When I think of people who are shameless or unembarrassed in their boldness when it comes to asking for what they want, I think of the way very young children ask for things. Did you fix yourself a nice plate of something to eat? Most children will not be afraid to ask you to give them something off your plate. And they might not just ask for one bite. They’ll boldly ask for and accept as much as you’ll give. Did you just buy a child a pile of gifts for their birthday or Christmas? They won’t hesitate to ask for the thing you didn’t buy! Most children aren’t afraid to tell you what’s on their wish list. When I think of unembarrassed boldness, that’s what I think of. No fear. No hesitation. No tentative, “maybe, if it isn’t too much trouble, might you consider listening to my request?” Sure, we learn to temper our requests as we get older, or if we get in trouble for our shameless requests, or when we learn about things like what’s rude and what’s polite. But I don’t think we start out that way.

            And the crazy thing is: Jesus tells us that when it comes to talking to God, we don’t have to be afraid to be shameless. We can be unembarrassedly bold. We can ask for exactly what is on our heart. Because prayer is our conversation with God. It’s building a relationship with God. And what God desirpes is that we will lay our hearts bare, with no fear, no hesitation. What God desires is that we’ll show to God everything about ourselves, every hope and dream, every longing. If what we’re seeking isn’t what God hopes for us, God can work that out with us. If God wants to shape us and mold us and form our hearts so that we long after the things that will bring us abundance and joy, so that we’ll long for the things that make for peace and wholeness, God can do that with us. But it starts with us knowing, trusting that God so wants us to be shamelessly honest when we open our hearts to God.

            I think Jesus teaches us to be persistent, shameless, bold with God not because our repeated prayers are simply a way to change God’s mind, as if God, who is goodness itself, doesn’t already desire to give us good things. Instead, I believe that one of the purposes of prayer is to change us, to change our hearts, as through prayer, through conversation with God, we draw closer to God. We build our relationship with God. And because of that, we’re changed. One of my favorite preachers, David Lose, writes this:     

What if prayer isn’t simply a petition I send to God but rather is part of a more active and full relationship with God. Prayer, from this point of view, is less like putting a message in a bottle – or, for that matter, in an envelope or email – and setting it adrift in the sea and more like the regular conversation we have with others with whom we are in relationship  … [Imagine] our whole lives – our thinking and acting and very being – offered to God as a prayer … How would we act if our prayers were offered to God confidently, trusting that God will respond so much more generously than any earthly parent? Perhaps I wouldn’t just sit back and wait for God to answer but would start moving, get to work, actually start living into the reality of what I’ve prayed for. So rather than pray for someone who is lonely, maybe I’d go visit. … At times prayer is words we say alone in moments of thanksgiving or desperation. At times prayer is words we share with others, gathered in the sanctuary or around a hospital bed. And at other times prayer is action and work as we try to live into and even bring about those things we’ve prayed for. All of this can be praying shameless, praying, that is, confident that the God who came in Jesus understands our hurts and disappointments because that God took them on. (1)

            I know this: my best relationships, the ones I can count on, the ones that last – they’re the ones where I’ve been able to be the most honest. I’ve been able to share my griefs, and ask for help, and share my celebrations, and share the dreams that I’ve barely let myself hope would come true. God’s desire is that our very best relationship would be with God, that we would know that we can knock on God’s door at midnight, and always find God ready to let us in. As I read through the scriptures, I’m struck by the frank conversations between God and God’s people. From Abraham and Sarah to Moses, and the psalmists, through Jesus’s prayers on the night before he was crucified – the scriptures are a testimony to people shamelessly, boldly bearing heart and soul to God. And then, friends, we find those same people, trusting in God and God’s goodness, getting to work, ready to work with God to bring about the world for which they prayed. Jesus describes a pray-er who is taking action: asking, searching, knocking. How much more, how much more does God want to give us? Ask – and be ready to find out! Amen.

(1)   David Lose, In the Meantime, http://www.davidlose.net/2016/07/pentecost-10-c-shameless-prayer/

* - A nod, of course, to Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Although the content of my prayers were different than Margaret's at that age, my prayer style was similar!

Sermon for Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, "Bigger Barns"

Sermon 8/1/10

Bigger Barns

As some of you know, I’ll soon be moving to a new home – I’ve been renting an apartment in Fayetteville, and I’ve been given the opportunity to rent the parsonage of a church in Syracuse that isn’t being used by their pastor instead. Getting ready to move again has made me think about all my moves since I left seminary. My biggest move was going from Oneida to New Jersey. I actually used movers and a moving company for that move. They came to my parsonage in Oneida and they walked around the many rooms of the parsonage with some handheld devices, clicking away entries based on what I have: 5 armchairs. Click. 3 televisions. Click. 4 couches. Click. 7 bookshelves. Click. 12 little end tables. Click. Most movers estimate based on pounds – how many pounds of stuff do you have to be moved? Well, at that time, I had over 7000 pounds of things to take with me to New Jersey, a number that I found a little embarrassing, frankly. I’m one person. OK – I will give my excuses – I do have a lot of Todd’s stuff, and occasionally Todd, that I have to transport from location to location – that has to be one or two thousand pounds right there. And I had a piano – that’s probably four or five hundred pounds – I looked it up online at the time, just to make myself fee better. But somewhere between four and five thousand pounds of stuff was all mine. I don’t think of myself as someone who has a lot of stuff. But when it’s time to pack all the stuff, weigh all the stuff, move all the stuff, I’m suddenly aware of exactly how much I have. Do I need 7000 pounds of things with me to make a home? To have an acceptable amount of things to fill up a house? To live my life? How much in that 7000 pounds of stuff is really important to me in any way? I pared down when I moved into this apartment in Fayetteville, but now that I’m heading back into a big house, will I need to start adding pounds to my possessions?

            Our gospel lesson enters as an answer to these questions, a stark, direct answer. Our gospel lesson from Luke is one of my very favorites. It is the first passage I ever preached on, twelve years ago tomorrow. I have preached more times on this text than any other – this is my fifth time preaching this text! And because of that special place in my history, I know the text well, and the words of the passage are always close to my heart and mind. “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions . . . These things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

            Someone in the crowd calls out to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” This like would have been the younger brother calling out – the older brother would by law get a larger share of the inheritance, and by law be responsible for handling the assets and giving the younger brother his share. (1) The younger brother, then, was looking for help getting his due. But Jesus doesn’t want to be judge and arbitrator, he says, and instead tells them a parable, beginning with a warning: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Jesus tells about a man who was wealthy, whose land was producing abundantly. He had no place to store his crops, they were so plentiful. What should he do? He says to himself, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But that very night God speaks to the man, requiring of him his life. “This very night you life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Jesus concludes, “So it is with those who stores up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God.” How did the younger brother respond to this parable? We don’t know. Perhaps he heard Jesus saying that his older brother shouldn’t try to take more than his fair share. Perhaps he heard Jesus telling him not to worry about how much he was getting – that how much he had wouldn’t really matter in the end anyway. But a more important question is what we hear in Jesus’ words.

            What does your life consist of? Jesus says something we know – our life doesn’t consist of our things. Human life is made up of something else than that. We are not our stuff. But what does our life consist of then? What are we made up of? And how do we know? What evidence do we have that our life consists of more than what we have? What in our behaviors, our actions, and our attitudes can we point to that says we know our life is more than our stuff?

            The problem with Jesus’ parables – or should I say, the problem with our understanding of Jesus’ parables is this: from our 21st century perspective, having a whole collection of Jesus’ parables, and knowing enough about Jesus to know what he taught, what he valued, what his basic messages were, we know enough to pick out who are the “bad guys” and the “good guys” in the parables. We know in the parable of the Good Samaritan that the good guy is, well, the Good Samaritan. We know in the parables about Pharisees and tax collectors that the Pharisee is the bad guy and the tax collector is the surprise good guy. And we know in this parable that the man building the big barns is the bad guy. After all, God calls him a fool! The rich man is the bad guy! We shouldn’t act like him. We shouldn’t build bigger barns. And then, happy with our clear understanding of the parable, we can go on our way.

            But Jesus’ parables aren’t as simple as good guy and bad guy. The Pharisee is never really just a bad guy, but someone standing in the need of God’s grace. The tax collector is never a saint, but someone who has found out a truth about God and life and decided to live it. We always seem to fail to see ourselves in the parables because we’re never ready to admit we’re as bad as the bad guys, and never able to see ourselves acting as good as the good guys. And if we can’t really see ourselves in the parables, then we can’t really hear what Jesus is saying.

            Is the rich man a bad guy? Let’s see exactly what he’s done. The possessions he’s accumulating are not exactly luxury items. We don’t read that he’s bought a summer home or a second camel or hired his own musicians to entertain. He’s rich, that’s true. And he has a lot of grain – that’s food. He has so much grain that he stores it, and gets bigger barns even to store it in. And finally, he feels relieved to have so much grain. Finally, he can relax, eat, drink, be merry, enjoy his life after working hard to get to this place. He has a little security for himself. He has security for his family, because, of course, they will inherit what is his when his life is demanded of him. He knows that he won’t go hungry now, even if a famine strikes. The Bible talks about times when famine wiped out whole families, whole nations. Living of the land was risky. This man was prepared. He had plans. Is that so bad? Are we much different?

            I have a pension plan myself, of course. The pension plan for United Methodist Clergy is a good one – I may not get rich now, but I have the security of a good pension plan when I retire. In fact, the denomination is working very hard to make sure that clergy outside of the US have the same strong pension plan. We want to know we have a secure future, that we’ll be able to feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, house ourselves, and provide for our family, far into the future. Most of you probably have retirement plans, or are already enjoying the benefits of retirement savings or social security, things you worked hard to put in place. Isn’t this all the rich man is doing? I think about the financial status of this congregation. Our financial team tries very hard to keep us on track and aware of the deficit we have to cover. We’d like to be thinking about our future. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had had a bit of grain saved up, so to speak? So that an unexpected event wouldn’t send us reeling? I know how that feels, I understand why we want to be ready for anything. Secure. Can’t you see yourself in this rich man, with his barns of grain? Can’t you understand him?

            And yet, God calls this man a fool. Jesus warns us against all kinds of greed, and says our life consists of more than our many possessions. And he says that if we are not rich toward God, but instead focused on storing up treasures for ourselves, we’re in trouble. Where’s the line, then? How much grain can we save up for ourselves without being in trouble with God? Are medium sized barns ok, just not extra large?

Of what does your life consist? What’s your life all about? We know that our life doesn’t consist of stuff, of money, of possessions, of assets, of retirement funds, of pension plans, or even of the lack of all those things. But it would be hard to tell that we know this by any hint of our culture, our society, our work ethic, our financial priorities, our goals, or what we think it will take for us to finally be able to “eat, drink, and be merry.” As a rule – and sure there are exceptions – but as a rule, we’re just not happy with what we have. I’ve read that most people believe they would be happy if they had just 20% more than they have now. But the catch is this: that’s true at every level – no matter how much you have, you’re always convinced just a little more would make you happy. And so it is never enough. There’s always something on our wish list. Maybe a tangible thing like a newer car or a better laptop, both things I’ve acquired in the last six months. Maybe something less concrete like better health insurance or more vacation days. But there’s always something we think we need, or want, and we’re convinced that if we could just get to that thing, just get to that point, just get to that status, just get to that place of being settled and secure, we’d be set. We could eat, drink, and be merry. And maybe then we could be disciples. Then we’d be in a good starting place to follow God. During my first year of ministry, when I went from being a seminarian surviving on a $4000 a semester work-study job, to a full-time pastor with a full time salary, making so much more money then I’d ever made in my life, I was sure I’d be set. I felt so very rich. What else could I want? Four years and 7000 pounds of stuff later, I still have a wish list.

            What do our lives consist of? What will we offer to God? There’s nothing in my house that God wants except my soul. And the shape my soul is in will probably have an awful lot to do with what it is my life really consists of. How is your soul? What does your life consist of? What do you still want to check off your wish list before you’ll finally be in the right state of mind to think about discipleship, to think about answering God’s call? The things you’ve been working so hard to prepare, to store up, to save up – whose will they be? Take care! God’s abundance is so much richer than the treasures you have here, and your life is so much more precious than you think, and God wants that life – your life – right now. What does your life consist of? What kind of soul will you give to God?

            Amen.