Pray for Us

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