"Connected By Prayer"
Our relationship with God isn't maintenance-free.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 6, 2003
Text: John 15:1-12
I don't know if this ever happens to you, but I have a song in my head and I can't get it out. Every time I pause from speaking (which I know is very rare) or when there is a moment of silence, all I hear is this song, over and over and over in my mind. It is Shania Twain's "Up!" Have any of you heard it? Even in the bathtub last night I found myself tapping the faucet to the beat. At a stoplight while driving into the office this morning: "Up-up-up-it can only go up from here." And I'm thinking: "Yes, it could go up if this song would just get out of my mind!" It's just there, repeating itself over and over again. It must be catchy, I guess. (Though I'm not sure I like anyone knowing that I listen to Shania Twain.)
When you get something in your mind and you can't get it out - it might be something familiar. It might be a phrase. It might be a tune. It might be a lyric - you realize the power of repetition, of saying or hearing something over and over again so that it becomes part of your psyche.
At the early service this morning we were celebrating in the Taizé manor - that is, repeating prayers in a mantra form. Phrases like: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus, Himself, suggested fully five times that if we ask for something in His name He will grant it. For repetition is part, not only of the Christian tradition, but also of the Jewish faith. If something is worthy of praise and remembrance, you repeat it and cherish it.
Repetition in and of itself is not enough. It is not sufficient to make something important or powerful. This was brought home to me when I was about 10 years old and had a very strict homeroom teacher named Mrs. Dodswell. Unfortunately in those days (I know it's hard to believe), I wasn't particularly astute. I wasn't a very good student and I didn't do my homework so I was always in detention. The only way that I felt I could get out of detention was by proving my piety through other means. So in class, knowing I hadn't done my homework, I thought I would impress Mrs. Dodswell by reciting the Lord's Prayer.
"Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name," over and over again I repeated it. There was only one problem: Mrs. Dodswell touched me on the shoulder and said, "Andrew, I don't know why you're praying to the Almighty so much. I'm to one who decides whether you're in detention."
Even if you repeat something by rote, over and over again - a mantra, a phrase - this is not effective prayer in and of itself. This is not a magical way to impress God. But there are some people who think that if you continually repeat things, God will somehow hear you whether you believe it or not.
Jesus gives us some very clear guidelines for prayer. He takes the disciples to one side and says to them: "I am the true vine." They would understand, of course, that the vine was a symbol for Israel, and Jesus was, in a sense, putting Himself in the place of Israel as the means of their being connected to God. He describes the disciples as branches that bear fruit and makes a very clear analogy. He said: "As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me." In other words: A branch needs to remain part of the vine if it is to bear fruit, if it is to get its nourishment and its sustenance and its strength. So you, then, as the branches of God's kingdom must remain in the vine - in me - if you're going to bear fruit, if you're going to do great things.
Therefore, Jesus sets down the pattern for what it means to be a disciple and a person of prayer. What He is really saying is, above everything else, that prayer is predicated on the relationship that each and every one of us has with Him. As a result of that relationship and that relationship alone, we are able to bear fruit. Unfortunately, throughout the history of humanity some people have tried to find alternate routes to understanding God and God's will in their lives.
We're living in an age when people - young people, in particular -are craving some guidance in their lives. They want to bear the fruit of the kingdom but they want to look at other avenues - other means, alternative sources - to do it, such as the old Egyptian and Babylonian rite of casting lots to find out the will of God. Babylonian soldiers used to throw arrows on the ground and go in the direction they pointed when they fell. They would cast lots to see where their lives would lead.
I think people do that even in the modern era. They use superstition, they use all kinds of methods - seeking and searching for guidance in their lives. Sometimes people look for signs as a way of understanding the will and the purpose of God. There used to be a study called phrenology, which was the study of the shape of the human head. Through the study of the shape of the human head, character and intelligence could be determined. So much so, that some phrenologists at the beginning of the last century used to study the wrinkles on your forehead and through them determine how wise you were. Well, I don't know about you, but the older I get the more wrinkles I have, but I don't seem to be getting any wiser!
There is this tradition of looking for signs and symbols. There was another, more horrible Babylonian tradition, of reading the livers of those who died to determine what direction they would go in the afterlife, what kind of condition they would be in and whether they would live eternally.
In the Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 21, verse 21, we read that one of the kings of Babylon did the same thing: "For the king of Babylon will stop at the fork in the road, at the junction of the two roads, to seek an omen: He will cast lots with arrows, he will consult his idols, he will examine the liver. Into his right hand will come the lot for Jerusalem." It sounds gory, doesn't it? But people in those days were looking for signs. Many people even today are still looking for signs rather than praying. They're looking for signs in astrology, for example.
There is a very interesting statistic taken at York University: 45 per cent of undergraduates polled read their horoscope every day, and 20 per cent of them actually followed its guidance in their academic, personal and social lives. Now, I'm casting no aspersions on York University; this could apply I'm sure to most campuses across the country. The point I'm trying to make is that young people are looking for guidance - some arrow, some direction - they'll look to the stars, they'll look to signs, they'll look to crystals, they'll look to all kinds of things to try to find a way to know the path, to bear the fruit, to have a rich and rewarding life.
These things have been around for thousands of years, but the true way of knowing the way in your life is through prayer. The real and the honest seeking is not through looking at signs and casting lots but in renewing the relationship with God daily through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said to the disciples: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you." Earlier in John's Gospel He said: "You will receive the Comforter, the Helper and this Helper will guide and direct you and point you in the way that you should go and bear witness to the truth." We don't need signs if we have a living and a vibrant relationship with the power of God's spirit.
We also know that in the midst of all this that we need to set some clear priorities in our lives. I read a story some time ago about an artist famous for painting the most beautiful sunsets. The artist had a problem: as he painted, the sunset would change. Unlike painting a bowl of fruit or a person or something that stands still that you can come back to, he said, a sunset is only there for a moment and you need to capture it. If while you are painting it you spend your time concentrating on the barn that's in front or the trees in the background, then you will have lost what is central to the painting. First, you paint the sunset, then you fill in everything else. Then the artist said (and I thought this was remarkable): "But even as the sunset continually changes unless I have so focussed on what that looks like, unless I have made that my supreme and central image, it will disappear and the painting will mean nothing."
My friends, that's what prayer is like. Prayer is focussing on the sunset. It is focussing on the things that really matter. It is making sure that those things that really matter are central. Never mind the extraneous things that you can come back to. The sunset is the most important thing.
How do we know what the sunset is? How do we know what we should be praying for and what is central? Here Jesus gives us the clue: while the Spirit might be the means whereby we are connected to God, the Comforter, the one that guides our hands along the brushstrokes of life, it is He who is the true vine. It is He and His love and His teaching. It is His example that constitutes the sunset to which we should look, and the Spirit is the power and the means by which we can do so. For if we are not connected with the vine, no matter how fruitful the branches might be, we might be painting barns and trees and not sunsets. That is why it is important that even in our relationship of prayer we stay connected with the vine at all times.
But there is something more. There are times when our words in prayer are not enough. Sometimes our words actually let us down and we don't know what we're saying. Sometimes we come to God and we ask for things with all the eloquence and the power of language, but we are asking for the wrong things. Words are not enough at times.
This was brought home to me by a couple of quotations by famous people that show how our words can be completely off-base, even at the best of times. Joe Theisman, the great quarterback, who played both in Canada and the United States, once said this in an interview: "Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein."
I mean no disrespect to former presidents of the United States, but Bill Clinton once said: "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." My favourite one from an American vice-president: "We are ready for an unseen event that may or may not occur."
Sometimes our words, even from the brightest and the best, just don't say what we really want them to say. There is a need at times, then, for our prayers to be silent. To renew the relationship that we have with the true vine.
In a book called "Prayer is Good Medicine" there is a wonderful story of a minister from a Methodist church in Iowa aptly named the Reverend Goodfellow. When the Reverend Goodfellow moved to his pastorate in the agricultural heart of Iowa, he visited farmers and saw they were struggling. They were struggling due to drought, overused land, the growing world population and diminishing topsoil. He was worried about the number of industrial accidents that happened on farms, which are the most dangerous places to work in the world.
He decided that, as a pastor, he wanted to set up a way for the community to pray for its members. So he went around to farmers and gave them the names of other farmers to pray for, and those other farmers would pray for still other farmers, and within three years the community around the church where Reverence Goodfellow served had 12,000 people praying for one another in the community. Twelve thousand. Often they didn't know who they were praying for personally but they prayed nevertheless for the whole of the community and lifted it up. To the astonishment of the Reverend Goodfellow, as this happened, the number of accidents diminished amongst the farmers. The crops yielded a greater return. More seeds were actually bearing fruit and the community lived with a greater degree of peace.
Now, this was not magic. This was prayer. Reporters asked the Reverend Goodfellow, in a cynical way: "Do you think that this is the kind of thing that Jesus would really want?"
He responded: "Every single week in church we repeat this phrase: 'Give us this day our daily bread.' Well, we in this community took it seriously."
Often they did not have, as they said, the right words to say. Often the farmers had little or no formal religious training, but in praying for one another and supporting one another in the bond of prayer, amazing things happened.
The problem is, as I said last week, we often don't ask. If words are not enough, so, too, it is important to remember that just having a relationship is not enough, if you don't renew it daily. It's like any relationship you have with another human being: If you don't communicate, eventually the relationship evaporates. I notice that even when I'm away from Marial for a week we realize that so many things have happened to us. We have to check in with each other and recount all the different things that have taken place. Even in a matter of days, a relationship can change, because the experiences that we have differ and the need to communicate those things and to catch up is so important.
Our Minister of Christian Development and Education, John Harries, has been away from us for 14 months. As we were talking this morning John said: "Now, which order of service should I be using? And which microphone do I now have? Where should I sit?"
John had been away, but the rest of us had just kept going. John used to know which mike and which order of service, but in a matter of a few months much had changed, and even now we're in the process of catching up and renewing our relationship. So it is with God. There is a need for us, if that relationship is to grow, to be connected with that vine daily - prayerfully and eternally.
Leslie Weatherhead shows the power of that relationship in a story about a crusty, old Scot who was sick in bed. He invited his local minister, sometimes called the domine to come and visit him. The domine noticed that there was a chair on the other side of the bed. The domine said: "I see you've already had a visitor."
The man in the bed smiled and said: "No, you're my first visitor."
So the domine said: "Well, what is that chair doing there?"
The man said: "Well, some years ago when I was having even greater difficulties, I asked my minister what I should do because I found that I didn't know how to pray. He suggested that I take this chair and place it next to my bed, and every time I need to pray I visualize Jesus sitting in that chair next to me. All I need to do is talk to Him as if He were there in that chair listening."
The domine thought this was a wonderful idea and so they had a word of prayer and kept the chair there and then he left.
Early in the morning his daughter phoned the minister and said: "My father died during the night. But something really strange happened. You see, I found him, not lying on the bed, but lying across the bed with his hands on the chair next to it. Isn't that strange?"
The domine said: "Not really."
So strong was the relationship, so real the spiritual presence of Christ, that it was as if He was there. The branch was attached to the vine and the vine was the source of life.
My friends, one of the greatest gifts we have been given is the gift of prayer. It is a living and a vibrant and a wonderful relationship. Let it take root in our minds. Let it dwell in our hearts. Let it burn in our souls, for it is our way of communicating with the Lord who love us so much. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.