Deep Within

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

October 17, 2004

I begin with a joke.

A pastor and an alcoholic bus driver arrive in heaven at the very same moment.

The pastor is shocked when the bus driver is greeted with great accolades and immediately asked to come inside while the pastor is told to wait outside for a moment. After a while the pastor is brought inside and he immediately asks God why he had to wait after performing God’s work on earth while the bus driver with the drinking problem was given a hero’s welcome.

God says, “Pastor, when you spoke in church everyone went to sleep.

When the bus driver was on the job, everyone was praying.”

This activity we call prayer. It is vitally important to God, to our world, to our very own souls.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells the story of the persistent widow. We can hear this account and caricaturize the widow: she who was so persistent, so nagging, such a bother that finally the judge does what she wants simply to buy serenity.

We make her to seem shallow at the expense of this teaching.

Hear this. In the time of Jesus, widows were so very vulnerable. When their husbands died, they did not inherit their husband’s estate. All that the husband owned went to the son, if they had a son, or the husband’s brother, if the couple had no son.

To be a widow was to be so very vulnerable. Widows had to rely on the good intentions of the community in which they lived. And often, their only recourse if they were wronged, was to enter the courtroom and plead their case before a judge. A judge who was instructed by Jewish law to be a discerner of God’s justice, and interpreter of God’s vision for the community.

We are told by Jesus that this judge to whom the widow turns is known to be a man who neither feared God nor respected men – note that women are invisible in this phrase. The judge to whom the woman turns for justice has forgotten his call to be God’s instrument. He is arrogant and seems to wish to dodge the challenge of seeking to mediate justice.

And this woman will not go away. She comes so many times, convinced as she is of her case, that he finally relents and rules in her favor.

There, says Jesus. So it is with our prayers before God. If even the most contemptable of God’s servants can finally be shown to pay attention to constant petition, surely God, who is boundless love and longing for us, surely God will hear and respond to the ways we come to God in prayer.

What Jesus wants his listeners to know in the very core of their hearts is that prayer matters. It matters greatly. The access we are given to the Holy through the sharing of our hearts in prayer is stunning in its power and scope. It matters. To God, to our world, to our very souls, prayer matters.

And we forget, we people of faith. We forget that we are threaded together into the heart of God through our prayers. We fall asleep in our sanctuaries, squandering the power and gift of prayer, while around us those who know the way of desperation – on swerving busses or in combat in Iraq - take up the power and gift of conversation with God.

I wrote recently about a movie I cannot encourage you enough to see: “What the (bleep) Do We Know?” It is showing at the Edina Theatre. Much of the content of the movie has to do with the power of our thoughts, our intentions, our prayers.

One of the scientists interviewed about the power of prayer shared this true story.

City officials in Washington DC were becoming increasingly concerned about the rates of violence in their city. It seemed that nothing could stem the tide of hatred and fear that erupted all too often in gunfire and the destruction of lives and property.

They tried so many ideas in an attempt to bring the city to a more peaceful state.

Finally the city leaders came up with an idea. Having heard that the power of prayer was able to effect amazing things, they decided to invite 4,000 people to the city with a goal in mind. They asked each of the 4,000 to pray for a 25% decrease in violence. They asked the 4,000 individuals to hold the city in compassion and light and to pray throughout the summer for peace.

At the end of the summer, city officials gathered and explored the facts and figures collected.

And they discovered this. There was, through that summer of intentional prayer, a 25% decrease in violence in Washington DC.

What is keeping us from joining our God in the kind of conversation that has so much power?

Perhaps it is because we do not know quite where to begin. Is there a way to pray? Will God be displeased if we do it wrong? How do we know we are doing it right, anyway?

My answer to you is this: just do it. Talk to God. Every morning before you arise and every night before you go to sleep.

Share with God your willingness to be God’s creature in the day to come. Give to God yourself – your stumbles and your greatness and your hopes – and ask God to use you in the day to come. Visualize, in your prayer, the things the day will bring, and thank God for the goodness of being in partnership with the Holy to build a better world.

At the end of the day, review what you have experienced, what you have seen and heard and tasted and done, and give it over to God’s keeping. Share with God the gnarls in your stomach that come from the feeling that you are not enough. Give over to God the failures and frustrations of the day and trust that God will work them into your soul in such a way that you will be able to learn from them.

Give thanks for the wonders you have seen and created.

Know your prayers to be powerful enough to bring to God your beloveds and those you do not know and all who long for the touch of holiness.

Just do it. Morning and night and every time during the day you have the presence of mind to remember.

Pray without ceasing.

I asked you, in the last Heartline article, to hold three things in prayer, along with your other prayer concerns. Together, I asked us to pray for three things:

Pray for peace.

Pray for God’s vision to be unleashed through our ministry here at Richfield United Methodist.

Pray for the wisdom to see and appreciate the blessings we encounter every day of our lives.

I am asking you. Do you believe in the power of prayer? Will you join in prayer together? I ask you to sign up on the bulletin board in the narthex. My goal is that we will have 75% of us praying through the first of the year. We will join our heart in the power filled grace of prayer.

Listen. If Washington DC can experience a 25% decrease in violence, we can surely join together as a people of faith here to lend peace, blessing, and purpose to this church and world we tend.

Please sign up on the board.

Because it matters. In our own lives, and in the life of this church and global community we share. We pray because we can: for ourselves, for each other, for God’s world.

In closing, I share with you a story told by Maxine Outlaw in her book Pray Like Hell.

“You’d think a seminary student would know how to pray. But when I was in seminary, prayer seemed to be a separate activity, apart from the rest of life. There was the spiritual and the physical world, and I had somehow chopped them in two.

During my seminary education, I hit a very difficult time. I was struggling with a lot of depression; the world was a dark and fearful place. Faith offered little comfort. Prayer did no good I could see. A friend told me about a woman who frequently prayed with seminary students and said that I should go see her.

The day I went to meet Joan, I felt like I was consulting a psychic. I was a little embarrassed that my life had come to such a pass that I needed expert spiritual help. I mean, I was a student of theology, for God’s sake. I should be able to think my way out of the darkness.

I went to her home. Joan answered the door. She was at least 75 years old. She wore polyester stretch pants and a sweater. Joan was the least mystical person I had ever met.

“Sit down,” she commanded, “and tell me why you’re here.” I obeyed instantly. I tried to look calm and strong, and somehow holy because, after all, I was in seminary. Then I looked into her steel gray eyes. I dissolved. As I wept, I told her how dark and fearful my life had become, how I was unable to pray anymore, how I didn’t think I could go on with seminary.

“So,” she said, unmoved by my devastating spiritual and emotional predicament, “more than anything else, you’re just afraid. You’ve got a lot to deal with, but what most comes across is fear. We’ll pray about that.”

“You know, of course,” she asked, “that God always answers prayer?” Joan wasn’t at all sure that I knew.

“You have to expect God to work in the world,” she continued, “and that’s faith. You don’t have much of that right now; I can tell by how you’re looking at me. That’s okay I’ll do your praying for you.”

She stood behind me and placed her hands on my head. “O Lord,” she began, “this one’s so afraid of the dark, she can’t see you working anymore. Be near her always. Keep all harm and evil far away from her, and let your light shine to heal her darkness. For I pray in Jesus’ name, knowing, O Lord, it will be so. Amen.”

Joan taught me to pray. She wasn’t crazy. Far from it. She saw the world as it really is – a place filled with good and terrible forces at work in the most ordinary lives on the most ordinary days. There was no good-goody warm and fuzzy Christianity about her faith. Joan’s experience of Christianity was a matter of cold, hard fact, as much a part of the real world as you and me, the trees, and the sky.”

God’s heart reaches toward us always with this invitation: would you pray with me, please?

Amen