My daughter sent me an email on prayer yesterday, which happened to be the sermon topic I was working on for this weekend.  That was kind of a mysterious coincidence.  The writing had a few expletives in it, but they were not actually written out.  Instead, they were sharps and stars and exclamation points, asterisks, ampersands and the like.  I will share the message,  and I will just say “bleep!” where those bad words are.

It went--

How to tell if you need to pray at work

When a co-worker comes in a little too happy, singing “good morning” to everyone and you think, “Somebody needs to slap the (bleep!) out of her.”  --You need to pray at work.

When someone comes in and announces “Office meeting in 5 minutes,” and you think “What the (bleep!) do they want now?  --You need to pray at work.

When you’re in the elevator and it stops to pick up someone who stood for 5 min. waiting for the darn thing, only to go down one floor, and you say “that lazy (bleep).”  --You need to pray at work.

If you avoid saying more than hello or how are you doing to someone because you know it’s going to lead to their whole (bleep!) life story…  --You need to pray at work.

If you have ever thought about punching, kicking, poisoning, or choking the (bleep!)  --You need to pray at work.

And—If you know all the words that have been bleeped out, you definitely need to pray at work!

Most of us would not question that we need prayer—at least sometimes.   Our questions might, instead, be a matter of how much prayer, and when, and what kind of prayer?  How do we know HOW to pray?   Those are the stumbling blocks for us.

Yet most of us, I suspect, have vivid memories of certain times in our life when prayer either became essential… or was conspicuously absent. 

I know I’ve had some times when I considered prayer essential.  I recall one plane flight when Jerry and I were coming back from overseas by way of Newark and Detroit.  The flight from Detroit to Phoenix was the roughest I have ever experienced.   The pilot appeared to be trying to dodge storms, but we lurched, and we dropped, and we shifted and were literally thrown about within our tightly drawn seat belts.  A 12-year old girl, who was traveling alone, sat next to me.  The turbulence was so bad, it stressed the flight attendant out, so that when the young girl told her she didn’t feel well, the attendant very emotionally shot back that she couldn’t do anything because she had to get into her seat belt.  My seat mate burst into sobs.    I had been praying intensely already, privately, never one to feel totally secure on a normal plane ride, let alone this!  So I gently put my hand on her back and asked her if she wanted me to pray with her.  She said “yes,” and together we prayed with a calmness of approach that was clearly from beyond me.   The frightened young girl managed to get through the remainder of the difficult flight comfortably as we continued to talk.   As we exited that plane, the experienced pilot told Jerry it was the roughest ride he’d ever seen.

There have been other times—too many of them--when I’ve simply said “Help me” to God for circumstances beyond my control, times of pain and suffering when even my ability to form words has been crippled. Times when I’ve desperately needed prayer.

My growing up experience was mostly that of learning ritual prayers.   At a young age I was taught “Now I lay me down to sleep…” and “God is great and God is good, and we thank Him for our food…” as standard prayers for appropriate times of the day.  Later I added “God bless everybody” to the mealtime prayer.  It seemed important.   I did learn the Lord’s Prayer as a small girl, too, and prayed it on a daily basis.  And yet I remember family gatherings with my grandfather present.  His disciplined and heart-felt prayers went on, and on, and on…

With our own children, I remember most the intercessory prayers we did together.  When someone we knew was very sick or otherwise in need, we would group together as a family on the sofa and pray for that person.  Those times are treasured memories that became an important part of our children’s faith development.

Maybe you were much like me, or perhaps you didn’t learn about praying ‘til later in life, or when you started coming to church.   We’re all different--unique, coming from varied experiences and backgrounds, some negative, some positive, but together today in this place because we intentionally made a decision to come.   You had a choice to come here and be a part of this worship service and that’s a first step, if not one of many.  (And you knew there’d be prayer!) What life experiences of prayer have you brought with you?  I wish we had time to share them all, because we could learn so much from each other’s experiences.

The stories of prayer that you all bring must be vast and varied because a recent Gallup poll tells us that 9 out of 10 people in this country pray regularly; 3 out of 4 pray every day.  I suspect the statistics in this church are much higher.   Some noted theologians, and some others—the really big pray-ers—may pray as much as 4 to 5 hours very day, often rising as early as 4 a.m.!   A Gallup poll also revealed that more Americans will pray this week than will exercise, drive a car, have sex, or go to work.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was known for his hours of daily prayer time, while his mother, Suzannah, with a multitude of children and total lack of privacy, would pray for long periods sitting in her rocking chair with an apron over her head.

And yet, for most of us, there is a recognized gap between prayer in theory and prayer in practice.  Prayer is considered as high in importance, but rated as low in satisfaction.   For some, prayer is a form of blessing, but for others, there are still way too many unanswered questions.  There seems to be so little that we really know about prayer!

We ask—does God hear my prayer? –my list?  Or does God know it first?  Does prayer work?  --when what I prayed for doesn’t happen?

Did I fail?  Did God fail?  Can I trust God will hear?  Where is God in the silence?   Can I know that prayer is answered in some way—and how?  Do we need to understand how prayer works?   Does prayer really change things?  How can I let my body--and my home—be an example for prayer?  What is God’s will for my life? 

Prayer is perhaps best described as a mixture of misgivings and hope for most of us.  Do we cringe when we hear stories of needless, perhaps repetitive, prayers?   Is God ever absent—or punishing?  Does prayer change us—or God—or both?   If prayer is ritual, does God hear those prayers?  Surely he wants our authentic self.

An article that appeared in the New York Times was shared with me by one of our  members.  The title read:  Friends for Life:  an Emerging Biology of Emotional Healing.   Written in the context of a man with advanced cancer who had lived unpredictably long, with the support and love of many friends, the article described a study done in the emerging field of social neuroscience.  It was a study of how people’s brains interact.   The most significant finding, from this study, was the discovery of “mirror neurons,”  a class of brain cells that “track the emotional flow, movement and even intentions of the person we are with, and replicate this sensed state in our own brain by stirring in our brain the same areas active in the other person.”  In other words, there is a “tendency of one person to catch the feelings of another, particularly if strongly expressed.”  It’s a brain-to-brain link between people.  Think what implications this study has for relationships.  Think what implications for prayer.  Emotional closeness allows the biology of one person to influence that of the other.  Especially consider the implications for intercessory prayer!

When I perform wedding ceremonies, an important part of my message is that the marriage is like 3 cords, interwoven together—the husband, wife, and God.   The Gospel of Matthew, in 18:19 says “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.”  While the “mirror neuron” study still has much more to come,  the potential of future findings in this area is more than exciting.  I believe science can help us understand scripture—and prayer--in a new way.   “Old” words can have fresh and expanded meaning that we could not have thought of before, great as those words were and still are. 

Friends, this is the point where we enter into the mystery of it all.  There is so much we simply do not know about prayer.   Our scripture today in Philippians refers to “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.”  We are assured that peace will be wonderful, because the words joy and rejoice are mentioned throughout, but we may not understand it.  We may simply need to trust.

As I’m reflecting on all this, preparing for today and deciding how to share with you my thoughts on the mystery that is prayer, I glance at a note I’ve written down on a message by a Psalmist.  That Psalmist describes thunder as the voice of the Lord, who strikes the earth with flashes of lightning.  At the same time, thunder suddenly moves in all around me, crashing loudly, as I sit in my family room in Prescott, as if in affirmation of that description.  I am reminded of the statistic I’ve heard that lightning strikes somewhere on earth 100 times every second.   While it has rained not long ago, I can’t remember hearing thunder for quite a while.  The storm is brief—and then it moves on.

The mystery of prayer brings us to the mystery of God.  Bill Hybels refers to it as “entering the zone of the unknown.”   I like that.  Prayer is not predictable; it is not known, and God is not predictable or known.   Oh, I don’t mean to leave out the scriptures which are so full of absolutely wonderful information and which teach us so much about God.  But friends, you know that every time we think we know God, we get a glimpse of how really vast and awesome God is, and how little we still really know.   Our knowledge and insights are based on the scriptures, and we have wonderful traditions that we add to all our experiences, put it together with reason—science and knowledge that seems to fill our brains—and God is still so much more than any of us can possibly imagine.

Which means prayer… is so much more than any of us can possibly imagine.  When we attempt to limit the options and outcome of prayer, I believe we are simply attempting to limit God, with our earthly and human perspective.  However, there’s another component interacting here that we must remember.  This God that we may be attempting to limit, whether we recognize that in ourselves or not, is so interwoven with our lives—just as the cords in the marriage vows I spoke of—that we are depriving ourselves—and others that we might influence-- as we do this.

It’s here that we get into that whole issue of the power of God and whether God is really almighty or not, an issue I really don’t even like to discuss.   You see God, in God’s infinite love, gave us all the power of choices and control over our lives.  Yet that love is the greatest power there is, superseding all other power, and nothing has as much of that power as God.  As the scriptures say, God is almighty.   God’s love is the power that never ends, that heals, that guides, that strengthens, forgives—the power that gives and keeps on giving, beyond all comprehension.  It’s the power that works in and with us, and it is the essence of the power of prayer.

Prayer is like scuba-diving; you really don’t see everything that’s under the water until you immerse yourself.  It’s like a geode---not much to look at from the outside, but spectacular beauty when you “crack it open” and get inside.   It’s a virtual treasure box, waiting for you.

2 Cor. 4:18 tells us to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

As we trust and allow God’s love to work in our lives, with humility and grace, we are reminded that God is always with us, and perhaps this is the most important aspect of our prayer life to remember.  The remarkable, totally awesome, completely loving, God—God, as revealed by Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior—is ALWAYS with us.   As we say that, we need to internalize it every minute of every day, in unceasing prayer, because it is of the most critical importance for all of our lives.  Remembering that in every minute, indeed every second of our day, and conducting our lives as though we really believe it, with true humility as we reflect on it all, is probably the greatest key to expanding our prayer life. 

There are small magnets in the narthex that we would like each family to take home with them, one per family.  The magnets contain words of the Footprints poem that is printed in full in your bulletin.  As we internalize that God is with us in all of our life, and as we attempt to grow in knowledge and insight of God and God’s ways, our prayer life will become fuller and richer and  closer to that which our God wants for us.  Our God loves us deeply, and our response is to love God deeply in return.

As you take your Footprints prayer magnet with you, put it on your refrigerator to remind you of God’s constant, loving presence, and thank God in prayer for God’s presence.  Examine closely the other prayer options listed on your insert, for your involvement.  Choose where you might participate.  Expand the mystery; grow in prayer.   It is together, in prayer and love, using our gifts, that we will build the kingdom that Jesus described in the prayer that he taught his disciples.   That prayer, too—the Lord’s Prayer-- is printed in your bulletin; it is the summary of all that we must do and pray about, to bring about God’s kingdom.  Memorize it, if you haven’t already.  Say it daily. Keep it in your heart, teach it to your children, and live it in your life.   Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Carol Mumford on October 15, 2006.