THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
June 5, 2005
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. M. Anthony Seel, Jr.
Matthew 6:7-15
"A Heart Full of Worship"
A woman was getting a pie ready to put into the oven when the phone rang. It was the school nurse: Her son had come down with a high fever and would she come and take him home? The mother calculated how long it would take to drive to school and back, and how long the pie should bake, and concluded there was enough time. Popping the pie in the oven, she left for school.
When she arrived, her son’s fever was worse and the nurse urged her to take him to the doctor. Seeing her son like that--his face flushed, his body trembling and dripping with perspiration--frayed her, and she drove to the clinic as fast as she dared. She was frayed a bit more waiting for the doctor to emerge from the examining room, which he was doing now, walking toward her with a slip of paper in his hand. “Get him to bed,” he told her, handing her the prescription, “and start him on this right away.” By the time she got the boy home and in bed and headed out again for the shopping mall, she was not only frayed, but frazzled and frantic as well. And she had forgotten about the pie in the oven.
At the mall, she found the pharmacy, got the prescription filled and rushed back to the car, which was locked. Yes, there were her keys, hanging in the ignition switch, locked inside the car. She reached into her pocketbag, found her phone and called home. When her son finally answered, she blurted out, “I’ve locked the keys inside the car!” The boy was barely able to speak. In a hoarse voice he whispered, “Get a wire coat hanger, Mom. You can get in with that.” And then the phone went dead.
She began searching the mall for a wire coat hanger--which turned out not to be easy. Wooden hangers and plastic hangers were there in abundance, but shops didn’t use wire hangers anymore. After combing through a dozen stores, she found one that was behind the times just enough to use wire hangers. Hurrying out of the mall, she allowed herself a smile of relief. As she was about to step off the curb, she halted. She stared at the wire coat hanger. “I don’t know what to do with this!” Then she remembered the pie in the oven.
All the frustrations of the day collapsed on her and she began crying. Then she prayed, “Dear Lord, my boy is sick and he needs this medicine and my pie is in the oven and the keys are locked in the car and, Lord, I don’t know what to do with this coat hanger. Dear Lord, send somebody who does know what do with it, and I really need that person NOW, Lord. Amen.”
She was wiping her eyes when a beat-up old car pulled up to the curb and stopped in front of her. A young man, twentyish-looking, in a T-shirt and ragged jeans, got out. The first thing she noticed about him was the long, stringy hair, and then the beard that hid everything south of his nose. He was coming her way. When he drew near she stepped in front of him and held out the wire coat hanger. “Young man,” she said, “do you know how to get into a locked car with one of these?” He gaped at her for a moment, then plucked the hanger from her hand. “Where’s the car?” She had never seen anything like it--it was simply amazing how easily he got into her car. A quick look at the door and window, a couple of twists of the coat hanger and bam! Just like that, the door was open.
When she saw the door open she threw her arms around him. “Oh,” she said, “the Lord sent you! You’re such a good boy. You must be a Christian,” He stepped back and said, “No ma’am, I’m not a Christian, and I’m not a good boy. I just got out of prison yesterday.” She jumped at him and she hugged him again fiercely. “Praise God!” she cried. “He sent me a professional!”
Do you believe in prayer? The women in our story did.
• According to a 1993 study by the Barna Research group: Most people who pray offer their prayers several times a day (52%). About one out of three people say they pray once a day (37%) when they pray. The remainder say their prayer frequency depends on the day and their circumstances.
• According to a 2001 study by the Barna research group While 96% of those who identify themselves as born again Christians pray in a given week, 72% of Americans who don’t identify themselves as born again report that they have prayed in the past seven days.
• Why do people pray? Once again according to Barna research in 1994 and 1991 studies says; Americans believe in the power and impact of prayer. Four out of five (82%) believe that "prayer can change what happens in a person’s life." (1994) Nine out of ten adults (89%) agree "there is a god who watches over you and answers your prayers." (1991)
“The Lord’s Prayer”, as we know it, was given by Jesus to be a model for us but unfortunately over the centuries for too many Christians it’s become a mechanical, routine part of worship. Let’s take a fresh look at the prayer our Lord taught His first disciples and see what new insights God may have from it for us this morning.
The disciples lived for three years in the presence of Jesus Christ; they witnessed Him praying many times, and yet seeing Him pray didn’t necessarily transfer the ability to pray to them. So, in the Gospel of Matthew, they ask Jesus to teach them and He responds with the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus says,
v. 9 "Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven…
Richard Nixon is in the news this week thanks to the release of the name of Mark Felt as Woodward and Bernstein’s famous source for Watergate. One positive aspect of Nixon’s life is that he enjoyed family dinners with his daughters Tricia and Julie. JFK enjoyed having his children play in the Oval Office while he worked. FDR and Eleanor had six children; President Harding had a daughter with Nan Britton and President Van Buren had four sons. Yet all of these fathers had their problems from lying to extramarital affairs and some sins in between. There wasn’t a perfect person or father among them, just as there isn’t a perfect person or father among us here at St. Andrew’s today.
Yet, there is one perfect father. He has made Himself available to all of us through the agency of prayer. Presbyterian pastor Douglas Rumford calls prayer "our essential connection with God" (SoulShaping, p. 164). As such, prayer is the essential action of our spiritual lives. God is eager to be in fellowship with us, and prayer is one of the most effective means of our being in fellowship with God.
First and foremost in this model prayer given to all Christians by our Lord Jesus Christ is
God. We address our prayer to God our Father in heaven. When we accept what Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, did on the cross for our sins, God becomes our Father and we
become part of God’s family. Jesus Christ becomes our elder brother, and God becomes
our Father. The Spirit of Christ is also the spirit of new birth that brings us into
relationship with the Father and the Son. Through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit,
we become children of God our Father.
Notice that the first word of this prayer presupposes that it is a prayer of the Christian
community. Jesus instructs us to pray to God our Father, not God my Father. Even when
we pray the Lord’s prayer privately, we acknowledge that we are part of the family of
God. Our private prayers are part of the prayers of the entire Christian community.
Prayer ties us in communion with God and all Christians. As Louis Weil of The Church
Divinity School of the Pacific reminds us, "Authentic communion can never be an act of
private piety because it is essentially an action of the whole Body" (Gathered to Pray, p.
10). The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer of God’s entire family.
In the Lord’s prayer, we acknowledge that God our Father is in heaven, but this does not mean that He is not on earth. One of the great paradoxes of our faith is that God is transcendent, that is, totally beyond us, and God is also immanent, that is totally with us.
God is in heaven and on earth, continuing His work of sustaining and renewing His creation.
Jesus prays next,
v. 9c hallowed be your name.
One night a father heard his young daughter speaking, although she was alone
in her room. The door was cracked just enough so that he could see that she
was kneeling beside her bed in prayer. Interested to find out what his daughter
would be praying about, he paused outside her door and listened. After
tuning in to her speech he was puzzled to hear her reciting the alphabet: "A, B,
C, D, E, F, G…" She just kept repeating the alphabet, over and over again. He didn’t want to interrupt her, but soon curiosity go the best of him and he entered her room.
"Honey," he asked, "what are you doing?"
"I’m praying, Daddy," she replied.
"Well, why are you praying the alphabet?" he asked.
She explained, "I started my prayers, but I wasn’t sure what to pray. I decided
to just say all the letters of the alphabet and let God put them together however
he thinks best."
Thankfully, Jesus puts the words together when He teaches us how to pray. The second phrase of our model prayer, like the first phrase, is about God. It reminds us that God is holy. As our series booklet tells us, the word hallowed means "holy." According to the great nineteenth century South African church leader Andrew Murray,
"The word Holy is the central word of the Old Testament; the name
Father of the New. In this name of Love all the holiness and glory of
God are now to be revealed. [With Christ in the School of Prayer, 29]
God our heavenly Father is hallowed; He is the most holy one. To hallow also means to give honor, glory, reverence or praise. We begin this prayer to God with the salutation, "Our Father," then the address, "in heaven," and then follows a phrase of praise, ’hallowed be your name." Prayer is a form of worship, and we begin the Lord’s prayer with a statement of worship: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name."
Our series booklet gives us three truths from the beginning of the Lord’s prayer.
[Note: series booklet is Seven Essentials of Prayer by Tom Ward, Sr., distributed by Partners in Ministry – www.partnersinministry.org]
Truth #1: "We cannot truly worship God in prayer unless we know Him as our Father.
Without this family relationship, "we cannot truly worship God in prayer." Unless we know God as our Father, we cannot truly pray to Him. We come to know God as our Father after we receive His Son as our Savior and Lord. As we grow in our knowledge and love of Jesus, we learn to worship and adore our divine, heavenly Father.
Truth #2: "We now have the privilege of worshiping God the Father through prayer."
To worship God in prayer is one of the great privileges of the Christian life. Adoration leads off the Lord’s Prayer, and the old formula, ACTS, A-C-T-S: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication is a good pattern for us. Truth #3 flows naturally from Truth #2:
Truth #3: "Because God the Father’s name is so holy, we need to worship Him with adoration when we pray."
The Lord’s Prayer begins in worship, and in this auspicious beginning it is the model for all prayers. Adoration of God is the best starting place when we pray. Whether it is the hallowing of God’s Name in the Lord’s Prayer, or some other act of praise, acknowledging who God is at the beginning of our prayers is the right way to start.
I am convinced that the vitality of our lives in predicated upon the vitality of our prayers.
Serious prayer is an act of deep communion with God and worship. As Anthony Bloom, a Russian Orthodox bishop explains,
Prayer is essentially standing face to face with God, consciously
striving to remain collected and absolutely still and attentive in
his presence, which means standing with an undivided mind, an
undivided heart and an undivided will in the presence of the Lord;
and that is not easy. [Living Prayer, pp. 57-58]
Anglican bishop Michael Marshall once said that prayer is one of those activities of life that we are all called to do and that we will never be good at. When it comes to prayer, Bishop Bloom rightly says, we are all beginners (ibid., p. 113).
Brother Lawrence, whose works make up the Christian classic, The Practice of the Presence of God, advises us to make our hearts a chapel, where we can go at any time to speak with God. If we make our heart a chapel, it doesn’t matter where we are, we can always be in the conscious presence of God.
Prayer is an act of worship, and my hope is that our study of the Lord’s Prayer will lead you into a deeper place of worship with our Lord. You’ll find some helpful prayer suggestions in our series booklet. May you pray with an expectant attitude, which was our sermon topic last week, and a heart full of worship.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, teach us to pray as our Savior taught His disciples. As we come into your presence, give us humble and contrite hearts, conscious of our deep unworthiness, of our unutterable need, and of your power to help us. Grant us wisdom to watch for your answers, and the grace to thank you for every give that we receive from your hand, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [adapted from Prayers for the Church Service League, p. 3]
