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Picture it in your mind, will you, the first few words in our Gospel story: "Jesus was praying in a certain place…" What do you see? How do you feel watching Jesus pray? What is different about Jesus as he prays? What do you want to ask Jesus about prayer? As you imagine, as you ponder, hear these lines of elegant prayer/poetry set to an ancient tune that has a powerful connecting force of its own: Eternal Spirit of the living Christ,Jesus was praying in a certain place… and after he had finished… one of his disciples said to him, Lord… teach us… teach us to pray… As I put myself into the disciple who spoke these words, the disciple who has been soaking up Jesus' awesomeness for a while, the disciple who has been out there in the villages sharing that awesomeness with those who will listen… As I put myself into the story… I add my own requests… Lord… you've taught us your good news and how to take it on the road, how to bring healing and hope into other people's lives... But the way you are in touch with God (2 fingers tightly entwined)… We want to know about that, too. Teach us to pray, Jesus. Tell us how you do it, how you approach our God and stay in touch, how you tap into that powerful well of energy that is our God… Jesus… I know not how to ask or what to say… I only know my deep need… …and that you're the one to teach me… We declare in our statements of belief that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, that Jesus was and is as completely human as each of us is, that he knows our needs as deep as life, our yearnings to be whole, to be cherished, to be important, to have full stomachs and good friends, to overcome our self-serving tendencies, to fight the evils of our world, and to live in alignment with God's goodness… …and that Jesus, completely human, is so astoundingly in touch with God… that we look at him and we look at God… and can't tell the difference… human and God, one and the same… Teach us, O Lord, to pray as you pray, to be in touch with both God and humanity so thoroughly, so completely. Lord, teach us… teach us to pray… And Jesus gives his disciples, then and now, a pattern and a story… a pattern of prayer we have held onto for dear life and a story about persistence, or as Martin Luther might say, a story about living our lives as open-handed beggars in the presence of a good and gracious God. It seems the disciples should have all they need to be in touch and to stay in touch to pray as Jesus prays, to stay with God as Jesus stays, to walk with Jesus and learn from his words and his ways... But learning doesn't seem to be enough… Jesus' disciples soak in all they can but still end up giving in to their darker sides… as do we… Learning, imitating, growing, being energized by Jesus' strength, it was all good… but still when the rubber hit the road, when their lives were on the line, when Jesus no longer looked so closely in line with God… then self-preservation trumped all the learning. Walking next to Jesus was not enough. They needed Jesus to step inside their skins. Mouthing the same words Jesus prayed was not enough. They needed Jesus to pray for them, with them, inside them. Come, pray in me the prayer I need this day;Jesus can come and pray in us because of the astounding miracle God pulled off… a multiplication of loaves, really… One life of teaching, feeding, healing came to an end and began once again, as the Spirit of Jesus came to life in each of those disciples and in so many more disciples to come. One life in one body became God's life in so many bodies… Jesus can come and pray in us because God planted his Spirit here, in our open beggars' hands, here, in our yearning hearts, here, on our hopeful, praying lips. We gather with other disciples who have also received such heart transplants that that power might be multiplied even further, that we might together be in touch with God so fully so empowered by Jesus' Spirit that we live and pray and pray and live in unceasing communication with the God who longs to lead us. Still we struggle to know the difference between our own inner voices & and the voice of Jesus planted in us, so we share our convictions with other Jesus-followers, holding them up to the patterns Jesus gave us and holding one another accountable to Jesus' life-giving vision and the power to heal God implanted within us. Still we pray in community that God would unite our spirits & and lead us forward to pour out our lives as Jesus did to pour out that very life of Jesus for the sake of the world God so loves. Come with the vision and the strength I needCan you take all this talk about prayer and about the Spirit of Jesus out of the realm of belief statement and head knowledge… and make it tangible… real in a different way? Can you visualize prayer as happening not just in your mind but involving the rest of your body? Let's try our hands… Can you open up your hands in your lap… (closing your eyes, if that helps you to focus) …open your hands, palms upward, and imagine that these are Jesus' hands? that these are the hands that touched the untouchables and hugged the eager children, the hands that broke bread with Zacchaeus, and embraced the risen Lazarus and jubilant Mary and Martha, the hands that held and healed so many broken bodies and spirits… And if these truly are the hands that held humanity and the hands he stretched out to God, then these hands have power. Can you feel the power on your fingertips? Can you picture God as an unending source of all-loving energy that permeates the universe, as far away as the stars and as close as the air we inhale? And can you feel that these hands of Jesus in your lap can access this power? Ask and it will be given you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you… Can you picture in your mind an energy flow, a circular flow of power between the Jesus in you and the life source of the universe? Can you feel it in your hands? Can you imagine that the spirit of Jesus in your neighbors' hands is connecting with your own and that together we are connecting to God's amazing power to love in a way that not one of us could do on our own? For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened… Can you feel your open hands begging to God, God give me your spirit that I might hold it… and know it… and be changed by it… and fueled by it… and share it in a big way? Can you hold the connecting power of Jesus' prayer in your hands and then imagine that power surging through your whole body, re-energizing you in your faith-relationship to God? The power of prayer can become tangible for us in so many ways, and this is only one way, and it may not be for you… in which case I invite you to think or feel through a way that works for you a way that helps you sense the connection to God's loving power and to the power that arises from this praying community. For a minute or two now, let's be listening to one another, listening to God, listening to the voice of Jesus, soaking in God's energy and radiating it out again… as we share a few moments of silence before joining in prayerful song… (ELW 402) …in the powerful name of Jesus…Amen. |
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