On Prayer

On Prayer

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 24, 2016

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I have a confession to make. Now, I know that some preachers believe that a pastor should never admit that he doesn’t know something, or that he struggles with something, or that he ever does anything wrong, especially not in a sermon. Well, I actually think that honesty is the better policy, so I have a confession to make. I struggle with prayer. I mean, I struggle with the common notion that the reason we should pray to God is so that God will do something we want God to do. I’ve heard of people who insist that that is true. This is second hand hearsay, but I know a woman who says she has a friend who swears that every time she’s in downtown Seattle looking for on-street parking, and she prays to God for an open parking place, she finds one. Now, I don’t go to downtown Seattle nearly as often as I used to, but I know that finding on-street parking there is essentially impossible. I don’t even bother looking for it. But this women is convinced that when she asks God to find her a parking space, she finds one. I have so many problems with that notion that I hardly know where to start to list them. Is God really concerned about something as trivial as this woman finding on-street parking so she doesn’t have to pay a parking garage? I sure don’t think so. More importantly, is that really how prayer works? Ask God for something—anything—and you’ll get it? Apparently a lot of people think so.

A lot of people think so, and it’s not hard for them to quote Scripture verses that seem to support their belief. We heard some of those verses just now. In our passage this morning from Luke Jesus says “Ask and it will be given to you.” And “everyone who asks receives.” And “seek and you will find.” Sure sounds like Jesus is saying “sure. Just ask God for it. For anything, and God will have nothing better to do than give it to you.” You need a parking place? Sure. God is the cosmic parking lot attendant. You need to pass that exam in your college course? Sure. Don’t bother learning the material, God will essentially take the test for you. Of course, sometimes our requests to God are more serious than that. You need a loved one to recover from a severe illness? “Sure,” God says, “I’m the cosmic physician who can cure all illnesses.” That’s what these verses sound like, isn’t it? Ask, and whatever you ask for will be given to you. ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find.” Case closed, right?

Well, some of you know me well enough by now to know that I don’t think the case is closed. If it were, I probably wouldn’t be preaching on it this morning. I don’t think the case is closed for a couple of reasons. First of all, I just don’t think life works like that. I think that human experience just doesn’t support that simplistic a reading of these lines. We humans just don’t get everything we ask God for. I could ask God to deliver a Rolls Royce to my driveway by the time I get home today, and there certainly will be no Rolls Royce in my driveway when I get there. On a more serious note, I prayed that my first wife would recover from breast cancer. She didn’t. She died of it fourteen years ago next Sunday. I suspect that many of you have spoken or thought similar prayers for loved ones who passed away. Some Fundamentalist preachers might tell us that we just didn’t pray hard enough or long enough. Well, sorry. That’s not how it works. Thinking that that’s how prayer works shifts the blame for things for which we pray that don’t happen onto us when we have absolutely no control over the situation. Thinking that that’s how prayer works, that that’s how God works, destroys faith. It destroys faith because that isn’t how prayer works, and it isn’t how God works. My first big problem with believing that all we have to do to receive anything at all is to ask God for it is that life doesn’t work that way and God doesn’t work that way. God simply is not a cosmic Santa Claus.

Beyond that, I don’t think that our Gospel verses this morning actually say that prayer works that way. It sure sounds like they say that, at least upon first reading or hearing, but I don’t think they say that for a couple of reasons. First, these verses are awfully vague. “Ask and it will be given you.” What will be given me? We can read into the verse that the thing I asked for will be given me, but the verse doesn’t actually say that. In that sentence the pronoun “it” has no referent. It doesn’t refer back to anything. Then we have “Seek and you will find.” Seek what? Anything? Find what? Precisely what you’re seeking? I guess we can read that into these lines too, but they don’t actually say that. I think maybe Jesus was playing a bit of trick on us here. He wanted us to think that that’s what he’s saying when he really isn’t.

Which brings us to the second and more important reason why I don’t think these verses actually say that God will give us whatever we ask for. There are hints in them that God actually gives us something else. First, in the parable of the obnoxious neighbor who won’t stop bothering his neighbor in the middle of the night, Jesus doesn’t say that the annoyed one will give the annoying one whatever he is asking for. He says that the annoyed one will “give him as much as he needs.” As much as he needs. That certainly isn’t necessarily the same as what the persistent neighbor is asking for. Maybe he’s asking for a lot more than he needs. Maybe he’s asking for less than he needs. Maybe he’s asking for something other than what he really needs. Jesus says the neighbor who doesn’t want to get up and give him anything will in the end give him “as much as he needs.” Maybe that’s how God works. We get we need, not necessarily what we’re asking for.

Yet I think there’s a more profound truth in these lines than that. See, all of these lines lead up to a climax at the end. This passage on prayer ends with Jesus saying “how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Not “give whatever she’s asking for to one who asks him.” No, not that at all, but rather “give the Holy Spirit” to those who ask. In the way that these verses end lies the truth about prayer, I think. What we get what we really need. When we pray we receive the Holy Spirit. In other words, we get a strengthened awareness of the presence of God in our lives. I understand these verses to be saying seek the presence of God in your life through prayer, and you will find it. Ask for God to send the Holy Spirit into your life to comfort, guide, and challenge you, and you will receive it. Knock to have door opened so that you can enter into life in the Holy Spirit, and the door will be opened.

See, God knows what we really need in our lives. It’s not to find on-street parking in downtown Seattle, as much as we might want to find on-street parking in downtown Seattle. It’s not to receive any material thing. It’s not even to recover from illness and avoid death, for God knows that we all die and return home to God sooner or later. No, what God knows we need is God’s loving, sustaining, inspiring presence in our lives. What we need more than anything is to live in intimate connection and familiarity with God. It is really to know God present with us offering all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit as we do whatever it is we do, as we face whatever it is that we must face. That’s what prayer gives us. Prayer is the primary way in which we come to know God and God’s presence in the world and in our lives.

There are lots of kinds of prayer. They don’t all work equally well for everyone. One way may work well for one person and another way for another person. Here in our worship we usually do three different kinds of prayer. We offer our prayers for ourselves, others, and God’s world. That’s called intercessory prayer. We recite the Lord’s prayer. That’s a kind of vocal prayer that connects us with the ancient Christian tradition and with Jesus Christ. And we sit, however briefly, in silence. In silence we listen for God. In silence we wait for the stirrings of the Spirit. I personally think that silence is the most profound prayer of all, but each of us needs to find the kind of prayer that works for us. If a kind of prayer really works for you it really doesn’t matter what kind of prayer it is. However you pray, don’t expect miracles, at least not any earthly kind of miracle. Expect the miracle of God’s loving, forgiving, sustaining presence with you in everything you do and everything you say. That’s what prayer can give us. That in the end is the power of prayer, the power to connect us with our loving, forgiving, sustaining, and challenging God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Where Was God?

Where Was God?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 17, 2016

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

July 14 is Bastille Day in France. It is that nation’s big national holiday. It is to the French what the Fourth of July is to us Americans. Nice is a resort city on France’s Mediterranean coast not far from France’s border with Italy. Three days ago, on July 14, thousands of French people together with many people from other countries gathered in Nice on the Promenade des Anglais, a broad paved area next to the Mediterranean beach, to watch fireworks over the sea. It must have been a joyous occasion. Families were there with their children. I imagine young lovers out enjoying being together as they celebrated their nation and watched a spectacular show. Probably there were older people there for whom the Bastille Day fireworks over the water had been an annual tradition for many years. It all seems so wonderful. Thousands of people out for a celebration in a beautiful place.

Who would not love to have been there? Who could imagine doing anything to ruin such a joyous occasion for so many people? I can’t imagine why anyone would ruin it, but three days ago someone did. A man who lived in Nice had gone out and rented a refrigerated truck. Perhaps not as big as the rigs that clog the freeways throughout Europe, but a good sized truck nonetheless. He drove to the Promenade. He turned off the lights. He waited until the fireworks show was over. Then he drove that truck straight into the crowd of people on the Promenade. He zig zagged as he plowed people down, trying to hit as many of them as possible. At last count he killed 84 people, all kinds of people, men, women, and children. He severely injured scores more. It turned a scene of joy and celebration into a scene of unimaginable horror. The police shot and killed him, but not before he had killed and maimed all those innocent people. I don’t think those of us who weren’t there can even imagine what it must have been like. It was horror way beyond our experience. Horror that will live in the memory of the survivors and of the French nation forever.

Now, I don’t know about you; but I know that when terrible things like this happen many people instinctively ask questions about God. Some ask Why would God do this? Others ask How could God let this happen? I have a question too, but it’s a slightly different question. When terrible things happen, whether caused by human sin or by natural phenomena like earthquakes and tsunamis, I ask: Where was God? Had God abandoned the places where tragedies occur or the people who become the victims of them? I never think God causes tragedies. God doesn’t. God is a God of love and care Who wants a whole life for every one of God’s creatures. I could never love or seek to serve a God who caused things like the horror in Nice or so many other places. I know God through Jesus Christ, and Jesus just simply would never cause people to suffer and die. Jesus would never run over children with a truck. So let’s start by letting go of the notion that human tragedies are somehow God’s doing. They aren’t.

So if God isn’t in these horrible events as cause, where is God when they happen? Frankly, I don’t quite understand why so many Christians have so much trouble answering that question or why so many of us answer the question by blaming God for what has happened. I don’t understand those things, you see, precisely because we Christians know God in and through Jesus Christ. The answer to where was God when that truck mowed down all those people in Nice the other night lies precisely in the story of Jesus Christ that is the foundation of our faith. So let’s look at that story and see what answer it gives us to the question of where was God.

We start with two essential facts. First, there was an actual person named Jesus of Nazareth. Second, that person was God Incarnate. He was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, become human, as human as we are. When we see Jesus we aren’t seeing just another person. Yes, he was a human person, but he was also so much more than that. He was Immanuel, God With Us. As God Incarnate he lived a human life. He taught us about God through his words, but perhaps even more importantly he taught us about God through his life. And he taught us about God through his death.

A great tragedy happened in Nice the other night. Another great tragedy happened on a hill outside Jerusalem so many years ago. That tragedy was the crucifixion of Jesus. As a human being Jesus was unfairly arrested, unfairly tried, unfairly tortured, and unfairly nailed to a cross to die a slow and miserable death. All of those things happened to Jesus as a man, but they also happened to Jesus as the Son of God Incarnate. All of those things happened to Jesus, and in Jesus they happened to God. The Romans thought they were executing just another human troublemaker. We know they were executing a lot more than that. They were executing the Son of God.

A terrible tragedy happened to Jesus, and God didn’t stop it. God didn’t cause it either, but God didn’t stop it. Why not? Here’s the only answer to that question that makes sense to me. God didn’t stop it because in and through Jesus Christ God wanted to show us definitively how God relates to human life. To show us how God relates to all of human life, the good and the bad, the joyous and the tragic, the times of peace and love and the times of unspeakable horror. In Jesus God shows us how God relates to everything that happens to us and everything that happens to anyone anywhere in God’s beloved creation. In Jesus Christ God shows us precisely that God does not intervene in the life of the world to stop tragedies from happening. Why God doesn’t do that is a difficult question that I don’t think anyone has answered satisfactorily. I think it has to do with the nature of creation as creation, but that’s a topic for another day. What matters now is that our inability to understand doesn’t  change the reality that God does not intervene in the life of the world to stop bad things from happening. How do we know that? Because a very, very bad thing happened to God’s Incarnate Son, and God didn’t stop it. If God’s not going to stop tragedy for Jesus, God’s not going to stop tragedy for anyone else either.

No, God didn’t stop the brutal execution of Jesus, but God was anything but remote from Jesus’ suffering and dying. God was Incarnate in Jesus, so as Jesus suffered and died God was fully present with Jesus in his suffering and dying. That’s how God relates to human suffering and death. Not by preventing them. Not by judging them. By being present with God’s children, all of them, when they suffer and die. By being present with us as we suffer and die. In Jesus Christ we know that God is not remote from us when things get bad. Rather, God is unshakably present with us, in solidarity with us, in all of the bad things that happen to us. In suffering and death God is present, suffering and dying with us. In suffering and death God is present with us, holding us up, helping us bear what we must bear, and giving us hope for better things on the other side of our suffering and death. Sustaining presence. Unshakable solidarity. That’s how God relates to human suffering and death. Thanks be to God!

More than ten years ago I gave a sermon along these lines after a terrible earthquake in Indonesia caused an enormous tsunami that killed a couple of hundred thousand people in places that border the Indian Ocean. In that sermon I asked Where was God? And I answered on the beaches, in the water, with the victims. That’s where God was, not stopping the tragedy but being present with God’s people in it. Today I give the same answer to the question Where was God on that promenade along the Mediterranean when a madman plowed into the people with a rented truck. Where was God? On the promenade. With the victims. Suffering with the victims, then welcoming the victims home after their deaths. God is in the hospitals suffering with the injured, holding them, hoping they recover but ready to welcome them home too if they do not. With the victims. That’s where God always is. That’s where God wants us to be too.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God Incarnate, was the ultimate victim of human hatred and injustice. God was in him, showing us how God relates to human tragedy. God is with the victims of terror. God is with the victims of natural disaster too. God is with us, each and every one of us, when we need God the most, when we suffer, and when we die. Folks, that is the best news there ever was or ever could be. We know that suffering and death are inescapable parts of human life. They were inescapable parts of Jesus’ life, and they are inescapable parts of our lives. And God is there. With us. Holding us. Getting us through, and finally welcoming us to our eternal home with God. Where was God in Nice that horrible night? With the victims. God is always with the victims, and God is always with us. We aren’t victims like the people on that promenade in Nice were, and I don’t mean to suggest that we are; but we are God’s beloved children, and God will never abandon us. God will be with us always, come what may. We see that great good news in Jesus Christ. Hold onto it. Live into it. It will get you through. It will get you home. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Who Is My Neighbor?

Who Is My Neighbor?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 10, 2016

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

As you know, the weekend before last I was in Detroit to attend the 2016 Annual Meeting of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, the denomination to which this church belongs. Yes, the National Association denies that it is a denomination, but never mind. It is a denomination, and we belong to it. Sometimes there are coincidences in what appears in the lectionary that we use for particular Sundays. This is my first Sunday back with you since I went to that meeting in Detroit, and the Gospel reading for today is the Parable of Good Samaritan from Luke. That’s a coincidence that, frankly, feels like providence because the theme of the NA’s Annual Meeting this year was “Who Is My Neighbor?” That question of course comes from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, so that parable popping up in the lectionary for today gives me a chance to talk with you both about that parable and about the NA’s recent Annual Meeting. Nice. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.

At the Annual Meeting in Detroit the theme design for the meeting with the words “Who Is My Neighbor” were all over the place. That question was mentioned many times. One preacher I heard on Sunday morning at the NA church in suburban Royal Oak, Michigan, preached on it. The preacher at the big afternoon worship service at First Congregational Church of Detroit preached on it, even though it was easily 100 degrees in that sanctuary; and I think I have to say this about what I heard. I heard a lot of well-intentioned people ask the question “Who is my neighbor?” I also heard a well-intentioned answer many times: Everyone is our neighbor. People said it over and over again. They’re right of course. That is one of the major lessons we can take from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. If the hated Samaritan acts like a neighbor, then everyone is our neighbor. I heard that truth proclaimed many times in Detroit.

Here’s what I didn’t hear: I didn’t hear any specifics, or at least not many. No one really talked much about what the word “everyone” in that answer means. Now, I don’t know why no one addressed that question with the specificity I think it calls for, although I’m willing to guess. See, we church people are so afraid of offending anyone. There was a wide range of theological and political opinion among the people attending that meeting. There were very liberal progressives like me and Norm Erlendson, and there were some people who are essentially theological Fundamentalists and staunch social conservatives. I know because I talked to some of them. And we church people don’t want to offend anyone. So we mouth general principles and avoid specifics that might offend someone who doesn’t really think that everyone is her or his neighbor. Well, I’m old enough and independent enough that I don’t worry as much about the truth offending someone as I used to. Yes, I am called, like all preachers are called, to speak the truth in love and to have a pastoral concern for all of the people of my church. And I hope what I’m going to say doesn’t offend any of you. This morning I’m going to give you some specifics that I didn’t hear in Detroit. I think our answer to the question Who is my neighbor doesn’t mean much if we get specific in our answer. So here goes.

What does it mean when we say everyone is our neighbor? On its face that’s an easy question to answer. Everyone means everyone. Linguistically speaking “every” means all without exception. The word “every” functions to mean none excluded. I heard people in Detroit say everyone is my neighbor, but I wondered how carefully they had thought that statement through. Sure, it’s easy to say that some people are my neighbor. My family. My friends. Maybe people who live in my neighborhood. People who agree with me. People I like. Sure. They’re my neighbor, and I can treat them the way the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable treats the beaten man left for dead on the side of the road. “Everyone” certainly includes them.

It includes them, but here’s the thing. It includes a lot of other people too. It includes people we may find it really hard to love or even to like. For me, for example, it includes the Missouri Synod Lutheran church across the way here with whom I have profound and really important theological disagreements. For all of us it includes the undocumented people from Mexico, Central, and South America who are all around us. It includes the world’s Muslims. Yes, there are things about Islam that I don’t like along with a lot of things about it that I do like, but just because I don’t agree with them about everything doesn’t mean they’re not my neighbor. They are. Here’s a harder one: What about the Islamist terrorist who kills innocent people and would kill us if he could? Is he our neighbor? Well, if everyone is our neighbor then he is too. What about Micah Johnson, the deranged man who shot all those police officers in Dallas the other night? If everyone is my neighbor, then he is too. See, Jesus never said treating everyone as your neighbor was easy. He never said loving your enemy was easy. He just said do it, that’s all.

One of the lessons of the Parable of the Good Samaritan truly is that the person we hate may be more of a neighbor to people in need than we are. I know you’ve heard this before, but Jesus making a Samaritan the hero of his parable really is remarkable. Jesus making the priest and the Levite the villains of his parable is too. They were leaders of the Jewish faith in the temple in Jerusalem. They’re supposed to be the good guys. In making the Jewish religious leaders the bad guys and the Samaritan the good guy Jesus turned his audience’s world upside down. Jesus’ audience was made up of Jews. Jews in Jesus’ time despised the Samaritans. The Samaritans were the descendants of the tribes of Israel that the Assyrians wiped out in 722 BC. They traced their lineage back to the Hebrew patriarch Jacob just like the Jews did, but their faith tradition was not purely Jewish. That’s why the Jews hated them. The intense dislike between the Jews and the Samaritans in Jesus’ time echoes through the Gospels. For the Jews the Samaritans were just plain bad, and here Jesus goes and turns one into the hero of his story while the good Jewish temple officials are the bad guys. If he were to retell that parable today he might well make an Islamist the hero of the story. Or an inner city gang member covered in gang tattoos and having a criminal record. He’d surely use somebody he’d know we wouldn’t like. That’s what he did for his Jewish audience with the Good Samaritan. He’d do it for, or to, us too.

So: Who is my neighbor? Everyone is. The people we find it easy to love and much more importantly the people we find it a lot easier to hate. Hate is not a Christian value. It is never a Christian value. Love is the Christian value, and only love can get us out of the vicious cycle of fear, anger, and hatred that our country is stuck in right now. Who is my neighbor? The Black man with whom I have so little in common. The Asian woman whose ways are not my ways. The Pakistani Muslim whose faith and culture I can’t even really understand. The transgender man who used to be a woman who I can’t understand but can love. The Christian who says woman can’t be priests or pastors and all gay people are damned. As hard as it may be for me to accept some of them, they’re all my neighbor. They’re all your neighbor too.

So let’s not be satisfied with generalities. If we say all are welcome, let’s understand what that really means. Actually, I don’t think all are or should be welcome here. People who hate others. People who disrupt the services and meetings of our church with their own personal agendas or uncontrollable behaviors. But all are welcome does still means something, just like everyone is my neighbor means something. It means people we don’t know are welcome. It means people we can’t understand are welcome. It means people not at all like us are welcome. It means people we don’t like are welcome. It’s so easy to welcome, to be a neighbor to, people just like us. That’s not what Jesus tells us to do. He makes a hated Samaritan the hero of his parable. Who’s our Samaritan? Who’s the person we don’t want as a neighbor, the person we don’t want to love? Jesus says that person is our neighbor. Jesus says love that person. He didn’t say it was easy, he just said do it. With his help, with lots of prayer, and relying on God’s grace, I think we can. Amen.