As we begin this morning, let’s take a little survey – how many of you have every prayed one of these prayers – feel free to raise your hand
Now I lay me down to sleep
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner.
The Lord is my shepherd
Bless us, O Lord in these thy gifts
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Our Father, who art in heaven
Thank you!
Help me!
God is good, God is great and we thank him for our food
By some accounts, these are the ten most familiar or popular prayers. It seemed that many of them were familiar to you as well. Perhaps, this is because research from the Barna Group says slightly more than four out of five adults in the U.S. (84%) claim they had prayed in the past week. That has been the case since Barna began tracking the frequency of prayer in 1993. More than half (55%) of Americans said they pray every day, according to a 2013 Pew Research survey, while 23% said they pray weekly or monthly. Even among those who are religiously unaffiliated, 21% said they pray daily.
I imagine many of us pray. Some of us begin our days with conversation, reflection, or listening to God. Some of us end our days this way. Some of us set aside time and space in the rhythm of the day to pray – others of us pause throughout the day as circumstances point us towards God to pray. If the Barna Group and Pew Research Foundation statistics are replicated in this room – many of us can say – But I DO Pray….
This morning, I invite you to take a new step. My challenge to you is to consider your prayer as something you offer to God. If stewardship is managing what God has given us, so that God can use us for God’s purposes – how is your prayer opening you up for God? When we rely only on God as comic vending machine or Santa Claus – dispensing what we perceive that we need or want, we miss out on how God might use us in incredible ways. We miss out on how we might be shaped and molded more into the image of God.
This morning, we begin a new sermon series, You are a piece of the Puzzle – going deeper in our relationship with God through stewardship. Over the next five weeks, we will look at how you and I are called to manage what God has given us. In that management, God calls us to offer back a portion, the first fruits to God for God to use. As we begin this series, I am reminded of how some persons have a bad taste in their mouths when it comes to stewardship. Some have had a bad experience with being pushed into some expectations. Others have had poor teaching around what stewardship is. Many of us feel uncomfortable about talking about some of the topics we traditionally associate with stewardship like money and time. Knowing this, I ask you to take a step of faith with me. If you find yourself a bit turned off, would you hang in, keep coming to worship, and contemplate some of the ways that God might being speaking to you as we look through a different lens at how we use what God has gifted us with.
Our gospel and epistles lessons both call us to the discipline and gift of prayer. In both, we are reminded that our prayer is a joy and commitment to God. Jesus reminds the disciples of then and now, that prayer is a relationship with God, to be undertaken in the quiet of one’s heart, allowing us to be vulnerable enough to be changed – not just in the publicity of open square heaping up theological phrases and concepts. And then, he offers the gift of the Lord’s prayer.
The earliest renderings of the biblical manuscript was without punctuation. Commas, periods, dashes, and other punctuation are actually much more recent innovations. However, the shaping of the prayer in Matthew, the Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father as we might call it, is suggestive not as 8 petitions strung together as quickly as you can – but rather a form for prayer and quietude, listening for God between each line, perhaps each word. Consider the experiment this week of pausing between each stanza or word of this familiar prayer to allow God space to be heard.
What are we listening for, exactly? What is answered prayer? Barbara Brown Taylor, noted author and preacher suggests “The problem, I think, is that divine response to prayer is one of those beauties that remain in the eye of the beholder. What sounds like an answer to one person sounds like silence to another. What seems like a providentially big fish to someone registers as blind luck for someone else. The meaning we give to what happens in our lives is our final, inviolable freedom. Only you can say whether God answered you. If you have any sense, you will ask someone with more experience than you to help you decide what the answer means, but even then the choice is yours. Are you still waiting for God to answer you, or is your life the answer you have been seeking, hiding in plain view?”
Let me share with you a story of unanticipated answered prayer from my experience. I serve on the Board of Directors for the Wesley Foundation of the Conference, our arm of Campus Ministry as related to Drexel University. For one of our evening meetings, I found myself driving around, not far from Rittenhouse, looking for a parking spot. Now, if you have driven around in the city, you know that streets are often headed in one direction and parking is often on the street, parallel parking. There are signs on the street indicating that parking to the right might be legal and parking to the left might be illegal at certain times and under certain conditions.
I drove around the full block once with no sign of a legal parking space. I drove through the center of the block, wishing that maybe there was a hidden parking lot – no luck. So, I drove around the block again. No luck. Now, I am not usually a parking place pray-er. This says more about me than it does about God. I have often imagined that I should be more patient and if I find myself looking for a parking place, this a great time to cultivate patience. But the board meeting was starting and patience, I was less interested. So, I prayed. Twice more I drove around the block.
I decided to make my block larger, when I received a text message from a fellow board member telling me that she had found parking a block up. I drove up to that block when I saw a spot. I thought this is great! My prayers were answered, just like I asked and all is right with the world.
Silly me – I was short-sighted in remembering that prayer is not just about solving a problem, but about offering oneself to God. As I pulled into the spot, I noticed a middle-aged white woman in business casual dress waving wildly at me in my side-view mirror. As I stopped, I wondered why she was doing this. I barely had a chance to speculate when I saw she was accompanied by two women in full burqas, a garment that some Muslim women wear for modesty sake. It is black, covering everything on a woman from hair to toes, leaving uncovered a woman’s eyes. I found myself nervous.
Unexpectedly and instinctively, I found myself nervous. I rolled down the window carefully, taking mental stock of what was in my car. The first woman informed me that I was parked illegally. She pointed to the sign and a portion of my vehicle was on the illegal side of the sign. Some of my fear seemed to be accurate. Then, as the two ladies in the burqas came closer offering smiles and waves, she offered me her parking spot. I accepted eagerly and as she started to walk away, there was excited chatter among the group. The woman turned back around and asked me how long I was staying. Would I accept the unused portion of her parking ticket? She handed it to me eagerly. The group got in their vehicle and pulled out. As I pulled into my prayed-for spot, I am pretty sure that my prayers were answered in a different way than I expected.
God showed me an area of growth; I did not realize that I had. In my prayer of begging and listening, God also reminded me of my need to be holy as God is holy, to seek love as God is love. God reminded me of who God calls me to be. Perhaps, you find yourself thinking, But I Do Pray… As you consider how you will commit yourself over the next year in our stewardship puzzle, consider how your prayers might open a window for God to use you. Each time you receive a prayer request, whether it is from our email prayer chain, a friend asking you to pray or praying through the news. Turn to God. Offer your full mind and heart to that need. We cannot know exactly how God will use even us for responding to needs, transforming the heart, and even the transformation of the world.
This is the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/01/5-facts-about-prayer/
Taylor, Barbara Brown. An Altar in the World,, 182.
https://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/156-five-out-of-seven-core-religious-behaviors-have-increased-in-the-past-decade-according-to-barna-survey#.VCfD6vldUxE