Scripture:
Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider how to
provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet
together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and
all the more as you see the Day approaching.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-28
Rejoice always, pray without
ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of
God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise
the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is
good; abstain from every form of evil.
May the God of peace himself
sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept
sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one
who calls you is faithful, and he will do this. Beloved, pray for us.
Greet all the brothers and sisters with a holy kiss. I solemnly
command you by the Lord that this letter be read to all of them. The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Matthew 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard that he
had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them,
a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which
commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first
commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the
prophets.”
Sermon:
Let
us pray:
Patient
teacher we give you thanks a morning of welcoming new members. And we
give you thanks for this time of worship. Guide us now, in the words
of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, to follow the path you
have laid before us. Amen.
Growing up, my mother led the
church every Lent in taking up a practice. Originally it was to be a
new spiritual practice every year, but the very first one they tried
stuck and they continue to do it year after year. They call in
“prayer partners.” When you walk into church during Lent, you get
a slip of paper that you are to write your name on. Then the slips of
paper are collected and at the end of the service, they are passed
around in a basket for everyone to take a name. You have to make sure
it’s not yours, but that week, you commit to praying for whoever
you chose at some point every day. Growing up, our family put all our
prayer partners together on the Lazy Susan on our kitchen table, and
every day before dinner, we would light a candle and take turns for
praying for all of them together.
I thought it was a nice
tradition. So I stole it when I started serving a church as a pastor.
I passed out slips of paper every week, encouraged people to pray,
and got a lot of good feedback from folks. But I didn’t know the
transformative power such prayer had until the first year I started
this at Presbury.
One week, a parishioner who
let’s call Maria, got another parishioner who we’ll call Tamara’s
name. Maria was one of the matriarchs of the church at that time, a
widow with more money than most in the congregation. She loved music
and when her grandkids came to visit. She struggled with her health,
but always spoke about blessings rather than her struggles. Tamara
also did not talk much about her struggles, which were many. She was
older and lonely. She wished her family would visit more, but she was
also surrounded by affection and respect at the restaurant where she
still worked. She was retirement age but she was unable to retire.
She also never complained and lifted up blessings frequently, but she
was generally quiet. Maria prayed for Tamara, not knowing quite what
Tamara’s prayer concerns were since there was only room on the
paper for a name, not an explanation, and then she came into church
next week and reached into the basket for a new prayer partner. And
she got Tamara. Again. Now, Presbury is not a large church. And both
Maria and Tamara sat on the same side of the church and I usually
tried to switch the baskets to mix up the possibilities of whose name
people would get. But Maria had Tamara two weeks in a row.
And so this time, as Maria
prayed, she also felt a deeper connection to Tamara. She began to
wonder how she could reach out to her. So she decided to send her
flowers to work, and signed that they were from her prayer partner.
And by the end of the week, Maria gave me cash in an envelope to give
to Tamara anonymously.
Tamara told me about the flowers
and cried, and then cried again when she opened the envelope. She
wanted me to tell her who her prayer partner was so she could thank
her. I couldn't, but even if I could, I'm not sure I would have.
Because I think that though what Maria did for Tamara was special, in
some ways it is the normal next step on our discipleship journey when
we are praying and worshiping together.
For
the past few weeks, we have been talking about Discipleship Pathways,
which are those ways that we can draw closer to God. A disciple,
remember, is a follower, in this case a follower of Jesus. Disciples
of Jesus set out on a path to become more and more like Jesus,
especially when it comes to how we relate to God and one another. The
past few weeks, we have talked about how serving God and others and
how generosity and giving help us grow and mature in our spiritual
lives, help us to become more like Jesus. Worship and prayer are
another pathway to help us encounter the living God.
Prayer are worship are two of
the ways we are most often drawn into life in the church. Worship
attendance is often one of our basic litmus tests for Christians,
right? Prayer is ubiquitous to the point that even people who don't
know much about God or even go to church still admit to praying,
especially in times of need. With this framing, they seem more like
entry-level tasks of discipleship than life-transforming ways to
deepen our discipleship. But worshiping together and praying together
are not just for beginner Christians anymore than our Gospel lesson
today about the greatest commandments to love God and neighbor are
ones we check off our list of how to become a Christian when we get
join the church.
Loving God and neighbor are easy
to say, easy to understand, but hard to do. So it is with prayer and
worship. We have scripture to tell us the words to say--- heck, my
personal prayer life consists more of breathing than it does
composing actual words in my head. We have alarm clocks to wake us up
and cars to hop in and drive to get us to worship once a week. But to
let prayer and worship change us? That is another story. But think
about Maria and Tamara, how both of their lives were enriched through
prayer and worship. They found a deeper connection to one another and
to God.
This connection is something
that we don't just need as Christians, but that we need as human
beings. Aaron and I listened to a podcast about loneliness this week.
Britain's prime minister Theresa May was quoted in the podcast as
saying that in Britain, “Two hundred thousand older people have not
had a conversation with a friend or relative in more than a month.”
Apparently Britain has appointed minister for loneliness because
research suggests it is a growing health epidemic, as dangerous as
smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. It is a risk factor for premature
mortality. In fact, they called it a public health crisis.1
While listening to this podcast,
I kept thinking about this pathway to discipleship. I'm sure that
like me, you have heard people say that they worship just as well at
home in the quiet or in the woods alone as they do in church. They
can read the Bible by themselves, and they don't need anyone to pray
for them. And while sometimes being alone is important, research like
this reminded me at least that we are not created to be alone. And it
follows that loving God, worshiping God, even praying are not things
we are supposed to do alone either.
Of
course, when we pray and worship together, we take a risk. You have
heard C.S. Lewis' assertion that “prayer doesn't change God--- it
changes me”? But we don't like change. We don't want to change. We
want to God to listen to us and do what we want. But prayer and
worship in community? That's risky. Too many moving parts. When Maria
prayed for Tamara, she felt compelled to do something. She couldn't
just go about her daily routine like nothing had changed after
praying for Maria. Both of them entered deeper into discipleship,
both found a closer connection with God, and began to live with the
hope and expectation that God was working in and through them. Prayer
and worship are not solitary activities. They must be done in
community, for community.
Connection
is important, to our health apparently, but also to our faith. Our
connection to others makes possible our connection to God. Many of
you know that Rev. Beth Richards and I went to a conference to learn
about Stephen Ministry, a one-to-one caring ministry designed to be
led not by pastors but by people in the pews. Calvary is starting up
Stephen Ministry again as a way to help foster those connections.
People who are going through a hard time--- grief, illness,
loneliness, for instance--- are paired with a Stephen Minister who
will pray for them and meet with them weekly just to listen. One of
the people at the conference who was a Stephen Minister herself but
had had her own Stephen Minister in the wake of a diagnosis said, “I
knew God was with me, but I needed someone with skin on.”
This
is what the discipleship pathway of worship and prayer does: point us
to the God who is ever-present with us by putting us alongside others
with skin on who God is working through. Does that mean that your
prayer will always be transformative if you start praying with a
friend? Does it mean that everytime you join us for worship here at
Calvary you will immediately feel closer to God? No, not always. But
being here, praying for and with each other, and worshiping together
clears a path to allow us to move ever closer to that ever-present
God.
So after sharing about this
pathway, I really think you needed me to give you some homework to
help you work on it throughout the week. I didn't cut up pieces of
paper to have all of you exchange prayer partners, but you aren't
leaving empty handed today. Today, you have prayer partners right
there in your bulletin. Our list of new members. Take that page out
of your bulletin and put it in your wallet, in your car, on your
bedside or kitchen table. Put it somewhere to remind you to pray for
each of these folks every day. Shake their hands today and remember
their faces to say hi next week. Go online or call the office and
look up their address and send them a welcome card. Who knows? Maybe
you will find yourself more connected to God by connecting to one
another in prayer.
To echo the words from our 1
Thessalonians reading today: Beloved, pray for us. Me, yourselves,
the person sitting next to you in the pew today, and our new members.
Pray daily. And show up here next week to see where God is leading
each of us, drawing us ever closer in love.
1The
Loneliness Epidemic, accessed 27 January 2018,
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/01/23/the-loneliness-epidemic
