SETTING THE CONTEXT

The infant Christian movement has been growing and spreading. In the beginning the movement was mostly Jewish Christians, but now Christianity has spread into the Roman Empire. Now the Jewish-Christians are in a minority. Do they have to give up their Jewish culture to be Christ followers? The letter to the Hebrews affirms their Jewish heritage using images and stories from their history. In the passage, Jesus is called the High Priest, but that term is foreign to us. The high priest was the spiritual head of Israel.ⁱ The task of the priest was to approach God on behalf of the people. The priest brought what the people offered- grain or animals, prayers, symbols of their repentance, their cares and deepest needs and he brought them into the presence of God.ⁱⁱ Only the high priest was allowed to enter the holy of holies, the place where God resided on earth. Jesus was the eternal High Priest, the reflection of God’s glory.

Read Hebrews 4:12-16

Jesus and his disciples were walking towards Jerusalem through Jericho. He meets a man named Bartimaeus. My New Testament professor said that the word “Timaeus” means roughly dirt bag. Bar Timaeus means literally son of dirt bag.ⁱⁱⁱ What does that tell you about his status? Let’s see how Jesus treated him.

Read Mark 10:46-52

THE SERMON

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said, “God does not call you to a devotional time, but to a devotional life.” When you join the church we ask you to make five promises. We ask if you will “faithfully participate in PUMC’s ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness?” and every time we receive new members we all recommit ourselves to living those same five promises. Prayers, presence, witness, service and gifts are practices that help you live a devotional life. They help you connect and stay connected to God through Jesus Christ. They also help us serve God’s purposes as a community. With all of our prayers, presence, witness, service and gifts we are able to be in ministry in ways we could never be alone. Over the next five weeks we are going to reflect on each of the five promises. Today I am going to talk about prayer. Prayer is an essential part of our Christian life. It is an act of faith. Sometimes praying comes easier than other times.

When I was in my twenties living in Colorado, one weekend I was meeting some friends at a ski resort for a couple of days of fun. When I got to the road high up in the mountains going north, the weather had turned into a blizzard. I made the decision to keep driving. Now I was driving a Toyota Corolla with no chains, no cell phone in those days and just me. All alone in a blizzard on slick curvy mountain roads with long spaces of seeing no one, I started praying. Soon I saw more and more cars stuck on the side of the road and my prayers became something like, “I will never do something this stupid again Lord, I promise. Please just get me one more mile.” I prayed that mile after mile after mile slipping and sliding until I made it to the resort. It was easy to pray that day.

My brother’s wife had a stroke a while back. Many of you prayed for her. My brother who is not a church go-er said he never prayed harder in his life than the days following her stroke. He turned to God and prayed in his desperation. He now wears a cross with that date, the day he got her back engraved on it and he prays regularly now. You see any time we pray it is an act of faith. It is an acknowledgement that we are turning to and trusting a Higher Power. We are turning to God.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples were on the road to Jericho. Having been in poor third world countries, it is not hard for me to imagine dirty matted hair beggars hands outstretched with pitiful looks on their faces congregating on the roads near the city to beg. I must admit in all honesty I might well have been one of those people shushing Bartimaeus. Who would think that Jesus would stop for a begging dirt bag? (Remember that Bartimaeus means son of dirt bag.) Jesus does stop and asks Bartimaeus an extraordinary question, “What do you want me to do for you?” Now why would Bartimaeus need to tell Jesus what he wants, surely Jesus can discern it on his own. Some people make a similar statement about prayer. Why do we need to pray if God is all knowing? When we have to articulate what we want then we have to be clear about it. We have to admit to ourselves and to Jesus the source of our need. We all know how much humans like to deceive themselves. Don’t we all do that sometimes? So answering that question in prayer is for us as much as it is for Jesus, it is about nurturing an honest relationship. “What do you want me to do for you?” when we are praying for healing or for something in our lives that is a good question to ask ourselves.

The Hebrews passage tells us not to be afraid but to pray boldly. If you think about it approaching God, the creator of the universe or even Jesus the Christ is an awesome thing. “Who are we that you are mindful of us, O God?” to paraphrase last week’s Psalm reading. But the writer of Hebrews encourages us to be bold. Jesus, who knew suffering, who knew times of trial understands us. We can approach him with boldness to receive mercy and find grace. As preaching professor and scholar, Thomas Long says, the writer of Hebrews “wants them to move past fearful prayers, tidy prayers, formal and distant prayers toward a way of praying that storms the gates of heaven with honest and heartfelt cries of human need. He does not want them to pray like bureaucrats seeking a permit but like children who cry out in the night with their fears, trusting that they will be heard and comforted.”^iv Praying does not have to be a neat and tidy thing. It can be a gut wrenching cry.

Prayer is also conversing with God. It is when we turn to God to listen and to share. Just as communication is the life blood of a relationship, prayer is essential for a growing relationship with God. I put an insert in your bulletin with the acronym PRAYER. It stands for Pause, Reflect, Ask, Yield, Enjoy, Restore; these are the components of prayer. Prayer involves honestly sharing ourselves with God. There are so many ways to pray. We can pray formally like we do when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. We can pray asking for something for ourselves or for others like my brother and I did. We can pray fessing up to God our sin so that God can restore our relationship. We can pray using our breath. The directions for a breath prayer are on your insert. We can pray by just having a running conversation with God. Here are some other ideas to help you get praying regularly into your life. You can establish a regular time and place to pray, for instance I pray while I swim. I change my stroke every seventh lap to pull myself back to prayer because my mind has a tendency to wander. Keep a prayer list, as you walk through your neighborhood pray for your neighbors. Pray the news. After the broadcast or after reading the newspaper, pray for the people and events mentioned.^v Pray at stop lights for the people in the cars around you. (This would be especially good if you tend to be impatient in traffic.) Go into the reception area by our church office and pray over a quilt. You don’t need to know the details about the person, you can lift them up in love and trust. When our grandson was so sick, the prayer quilt meant so much to us for we saw him literally wrapped in your prayers in our time of fear and it gave us so much comfort. We are asking you to pray for our church and our church leadership not just our local church but for Christ’s body, the church, as it radiates out bigger and bigger. We make so many decisions and need people to answer God’s call in so many ways, that your prayers are critical for us to stay on track and discern God’s will. Your prayers for our church and our church leaders bind us together in love.

There are many ways we can live out the first of our five promises: prayer. We have enclosed commitment cards in your bulletins and I ask you to make a commitment to pray, write it on the card and put it in the offering plates today. If you want to pray about it more, you can bring it back anytime in the next four weeks. Twenty six leaders in our church have already made 45 commitments to pray weekly or daily. Won’t you join us as we approach Jesus with boldness?

Let us pray.

Blessed Savior, you desire all people to come to you in love and devotion. Inspire us we pray so that we might know the power of your forgiveness and the hope of your resurrection. Help us to grow in faith as we deepen our practices of prayer, presence, witness, service and giving so that our lives are a continuous offering of devotion to you. Amen.

Sermon delivered by Rev. Nancy Cushman on October 11, 2009.