Psalm 146:1-10

Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, my soul. I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— he remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. The LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD.

1 Timothy 6:2-19

These are the things you are to teach and insist on. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen. Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

Good morning. It’s a high honor to be asked to speak this morning, one that I perhaps don’t deserve, but, well, here we are. You’re out there, and I’m up here, so I’ll do my best, with God’s help, and your kind indulgence, to share some thoughts on the subject of prayer—how and for what we should pray.

Some very helpful people have generously given me a little advice on what to do when giving a sermon, and I’m grateful for that. One bit of advice was, “You can’t go wrong with a parable”.  That struck me as sound advice, and so, here is a somewhat modern parable that you may have heard before:

The Parable of Freddie and the Pony

Freddie was a little boy who wanted more from life than he was getting. So one Sunday, his parents sent him to church to see what he might learn there. Little Freddie learned that God is all-powerful, and about the power of prayer. He learned that God loves us, and sent Jesus, his son, to show us his love for us. He learned that, when he wanted or needed something, he should take it to God in prayer.

So Freddie ran home after church, and dashed upstairs to pray: “Dear God, I know you have the power to do anything, and I know that you and Jesus love me, and want only good things for me. What I’d really like is a pony. So if you could send me one tonight, I’d be very grateful, and tell all my friends how wonderful you are.”

He prayed the same prayer that afternoon, and again that night. He could hardly sleep all night, and when he opened his eyes in the morning, he was astonished to see that right there in his room was –no pony. There was no pony in the closet, under his bed, in the bathtub, or in the backyard. Needless to say, he spent the rest of the week scratching his head, trying to understand where he had gone wrong.

The next Sunday he went back to the church to find out what he had missed. He learned more- about Jesus, about the Golden Rule, acts of kindness, sin, confession of sins, and forgiveness.  Again, he ran home as soon as the service was over, hugged his parents and told them he loved them, and apologized for the things he had done wrong that week. Then he ran to his room, and cleaned it within an inch of its life, and when he was done, he cleaned his sister’s room for her. He washed the car and vacuumed the whole first floor of the house. Then he went to his room to pray. “Dear Jesus, this is Freddie. I’ve tried to be the best I can be today, and I hope it was good enough for you. So I’d still really, really like that pony. And I’d like a western saddle, red, and a cowboy hat, and some spurs.

Freddie slept like a log, because he had worked very hard that day. The next morning, he was rewarded for all his hard work with a total lack of anything remotely resembling a pony of any kind, size, or color. Not to mention no saddle, no cowboy hat, and no spurs.

The next Sunday morning, Freddie took his allowance money and the money his father gave him for the collection plate, and decided to go to the movie house instead of church. They had a double feature of gangster movies that day, and Freddie paid very close attention. When it was over, he ran home as fast as he could. He slammed the door and dashed upstairs to his parents’ room. He took the statue of the Virgin Mary off his mother’s dresser, and brought it to his room. He put duct tape over her mouth and hands, wrapped her tightly in his pillowcase, tied that up with his shoelaces, wrapped it with more duct tape, and put the bundle inside his gym bag in the back of his closet, underneath his sleeping bag and behind the stack of comic books and baseball cards. Then he shut the closet door, very, very tightly, pulled his bureau in front of it, and went to his desk, where he began to write: “Dear …Jesus…About that…pony–…If you…ever want…to see…your…mother again…”

How should we pray, and for what?

Now, we laugh at that story, because, well, it’s funny. It’s funny because it’s absurd—using gangster threats to control the Almighty. But what really makes it funny is the universal truth that underlies the absurdity of it. Now, most of us have probably never tried to extort God quite the way little Freddie did, and yet, we all understand the impulse at some level. There are just times when it’s simple human nature to look at some situation and wonder, “How can God be letting this happen? It isn’t fair. It isn’t right.”  Like Freddie, in some way it seems we should be able to use God to make the world the way we think it should be.

Now, it’s easy to see the defect in Freddie’s selfish request for a pony, and we do smile with understanding when Tevye sings in “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan—if I were a wealthy man?”, but the truth is that the vast majority of the prayers we pray are not for our own personal gain or comfort. They are for the health and safety of our friends and family, for those we don’t know personally, and even for those with whom we have great differences. And there are certainly times when God does not seem to respond to these, our most selfless, most Christian prayers, in the way that we think is right.

As a child of the sixties, the backdrop of my formative years included Saturday morning cartoons. Among those was an old favorite, “The Jetsons”. Amid all the (now very dated) futuristic settings, the plot line always turned around George Jetson and his family having done something to jeopardize his precious job at Spacely Sprockets, owned by the little bald dictator, Mr. Spacely. No Saturday morning was complete without Mr. Spacely’s booming voice announcing, “Je-et—SON!!!!….Yer PPHHII-ERED!!!”

If we think about it, I would bet that most of us have known someone, either close to us or at some distance, who seemed to live an exemplary life, who followed the guidelines in the Bible, refrained from destructive habits, treated others with kindness and compassion, lived a humble and thoroughly Christian life. And nonetheless, they were faced at some point with physical ailments, or catastrophic events out of their control that came along and destroyed their lives like a wrecking ball. It is at these moments that we are most likely to find ourselves, in effect, shouting, “Je-e—SUS!!!!….Yer PPHHII-ERED!!!!”

Indeed, it is absolutely natural to feel a sense of betrayal when, in Rabbi Kushner’s famous words, “bad things happen to good people”. After all, what good is a contract with God if we keep up our end, and God doesn’t take care of us in return? Isn’t that the deal?

Someone else gave me another welcome piece of advice for this morning—when all else fails, quote C. S. Lewis. The following, from his lecture series, “Mere Christianity”, wandered across my path a while ago, and just sat there staring me down until it became one of my favorite passages:

 “People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I don’t think that’s the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. “

So, if Lewis is right, prayer is not a part of a quid-pro-quo contract; there is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor, nothing we could ever do to justify the daily miracle of the life He has given us; that is his to grant by His grace, and it is our choice to move toward or away from Him of our own will.

But where does that leave us with respect to How and For What we should pray? Should we do away with prayers for intercession? Are we wasting our time bringing God our lists of Things That Need Doing? I really don’t think so, and I hope none of you get that impression. But perhaps there are some things that we need to remain mindful of when we bring our concerns to God in prayer.

 First, the easy, familiar one, and one of the most important—God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no. When we bring our concerns to God, we have to let go of our attachment to our idea of “How It’s Supposed to Be”.

That leads us to the second thing; the tension in our minds between “What Is” and “What is Supposed to Be”.  That tension can come from disappointment or shame at our own failings, anger at the failings of others, or frustration or rage at events out of our control.  It is the kind of tension that takes up an enormous amount of energy, and can make us frantic, preoccupied, and eventually paralyze us. Every once in a while, we all find ourselves so wrapped up in anger or frustration that it feels overwhelming. Those are the times when Giving it Over to God in a simple act of prayer can feel literally like a great weight has been taken off our shoulders. If you’ve experienced it, I don’t need to explain it; if you haven’t, I can only say I recommend it highly.

There is a song I learned from a Gaither family recording that has been bouncing around my head all week. I’ll sing a little of it for you, and if you know it you can join me.

“LEAVE IT THERE; LEAVE IT THERE…TAKE YOUR  BURDEN TO THE LORD, AND LEAVE IT THERE;  IF YOU TRUST AND NEVER DOUBT, HE WILL SURELY BRING YOU OUT; TAKE YOUR BURDEN TO THE LORD, AND LEAVE IT THERE

Now that song can rattle around YOUR heads for a week!

So when we “take our burdens to the Lord”, what exactly are we doing? Are we just dumping it in His lap to deal with? I think the essential core of what we do in prayer is to be found in the Serenity Prayer, which has been so helpful to so many, so often.

“God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The Strength to change the things I can, And the Wisdom to know the difference”

It’s like putting all our “stuff” on the table with God, and asking him to help us sort it all out, and either act where we can, or adapt and comfort each other where we need to do that. So often, the simplest prayer is the most helpful: “Good Lord, show me the way”.

When we let God take up the burden of all the tension between our expectations and reality, it frees up a lot of energy, energy that we can ultimately put toward accomplishing God’s purpose. And we may need that energy, since, as I’ve heard from the wisest among us, God sometimes uses adversity to shape us into the tools he needs to do His work.

And lastly, let us stay mindful that the greatest part of prayer is not what we say to God, but how we listen to Him. When we have the humility to bring him our concerns and open ourselves to His plan for us, we are moving closer to Heaven. Truly, listening for God’s vision and will is the heart and soul of prayer.

Christ calls on us to seek out God, not to change the world to suit our needs, but, rather, to change ourselves to help meet the world’s needs.

Thank you for your indulgence, and for your inspiration as we all grow together in the love of Christ. God bless us, every one.