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What does it feel like to have
someone praying for you? By name, in person, one-on-one?
John Indermark remembers a childhood experience of being in
the hospital for surgery when he was ten years old. He says
he remembers a priest praying for him: “I seem to recall
that as he came and stood at the foot of my bed, I felt a
mix of wonder and fear. I did not know him, but he prayed.
For me. He took time to bring my name and need before God.
That I knew. That I still know. That I carry with me in
ministry.” (John Indermark, Traveling the Prayer Paths of
Jesus, page 93)
I don’t know about you, but I
know about me, and I know what a blessing it is to know that
someone is praying for me. In my first appointment in that
little country church in Hawthorn, Pennsylvania, we had a
weekly Wednesday night prayer meeting. Actually, we had
three prayer meetings in each of the three churches—one on
Wednesday and two on Thursday. Of course, we didn’t have
kneelers in the pews, so the pattern was that everyone would
kneel at the seat of their pew, facing the back, and
everyone would pray out loud, at once. This “season of
prayer” would go on for a few minutes, then gradually die
down, almost as if on cue, and Archie Neill’s voice would be
the last. He was one of the oldest members of the church and
perhaps he had the most to say, but I think there was an
unspoken understanding that he would get the last word. And
whenever Archie would pray, one of his petitions was always:
“Lord, we pray for our preacher and his wife as they labor
here among us.”
Another one of the saints in
that congregation was Percy Copenhaver, my first Lay Leader.
He was a retired coal miner, not well-educated, poor in
grammar, but deeply formed in the walk of faith. I was young
and eager and had made some mistakes, and to be honest,
there were some folks in that church who weren’t
particularly patient or forgiving. It came to a head in a
contentious Board meeting one night. After it was over, I
was upset and I went out for a walk late at night around
that small village. Percy’s light was still on, so I walked
up on his front porch, and it was as if he had been waiting
for me. He was sitting there in his recliner, his well-worn
Bible on the end table. I walked in and started to fuss. I
paced and fumed, and he smiled and cried with me. And I will
never forget, after a while he stood up and put his hands on
my shoulder, and with tears in his eyes he said, “Listen,
son, you’ve got your whole ministry ahead of you. Don’t let
it get you down.” He prayed for me, and in many ways, he
saved my ministry that night. In the words of John Indermark,
Archie and Percy “prayed. For me. They took my name and need
before God. That I knew. That I still know. That I carry
with me in ministry.”
Throughout the thirty years
which have passed from then to now and right down to today,
I have been humbled and blessed. And I am convinced that my
feeble attempts at ministry have been saved by the prayers
of others.
“So,” Indermark asks, “who prays
for you? Who lifts up to God your life, your journey, your
hopes, your fears?” (page 94)
And
what if that someone is none other than Jesus himself?
Last week we looked at what
should really be called “The Disciples’ Prayer,” since it is
in fact the model Jesus offered to us, saying, “When you
pray, pray like this…” This week we look at what
truly is the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer our Lord prayed
around the Last Supper table, just hours before his agony in
the garden, the brutality of the beatings and the suffering
of his cross.
In this prayer, Jesus prays for
his disciples—the ones God has given him, the ones
who have received his word, the ones who will carry
his word into the world. He prays for the eleven who remain
and he remembers the one who has left. Even Judas makes it
into Jesus’ prayer in a kind of regretful, pained
acknowledgement of the loss of one who had traveled with
him, prayed with him, ministered with him, and now goes to
betray him. Jesus prays for his disciples…
And he prays for us.
Jesus looks across the miles and millennia and prays for
those who would follow, for those who would believe because
of the disciple’s word, and he prays for you and me.
1.
His first prayer is that we would all be one.
With a kind of rapid redundancy
and blinding repetition, he prays, not only for his
disciples, “but for those who will believe in me through
their word, that they may all be one; even as thou Father,
art in me, and I in thee, that they may be one even as we
are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become
perfectly one.”
St. Paul will pick up the theme
when he calls the Ephesians to “the unity of the spirit in
the bond of peace with one hope, one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and
in all and through all.” (Ephesians 4:5)
And when we hear our Lord’s
Prayer and look at the life of the church today, you can’t
help but wonder what it must do to the heart of Jesus.
Every once in a while I listen
to talk radio, just to get my blood pressure up. Just listen
to the arrogant, self-righteous rhetoric of most of the
religious media these days: critical of anyone who doesn’t
share their pet positions, degrading other Christians who
hold different political views, sure that they are right and
everyone else is wrong, and often misrepresenting and
misquoting and exaggerating someone else’s position in order
to show how unchristian they are. In a day when our nation
and world are divided by heated political rhetoric and
religious fundamentalism, there is a desperate need for the
church to model the kind of inclusive community where we can
discover a unity beneath our diversity and oneness amid our
differences, the gracious community in the Body of Christ.
Jesus’ prayer for the church is
that we would come together across the divisions, bridging
race and clan and national allegiance, liberal and
conservative, pro-life and pro-choice, creationist and
scientist, management and labor, city and suburban, rich and
poor, black and white as one body in Christ; that we come
together celebrating our diversity and sharing our
differences, but building upon the strong foundation of our
common faith in Jesus Christ.
Lord, make your people one,
Let your will be done.
Finish, O finish the world begun.
Lord, make your people one.
Let me share with you a brief
conversation which took place in an airport boarding area.
Two people in quite similar suits with equally similar
briefcases sit down side by side. They strike up a
conversation:
I see you are reading the
Bible.
Yes, I am.
May I ask, is it King James or
RSV?
King James, of course.
So is mine. Is yours the
red-letter edition?
Yes.
Thomason Chain Reference?
Of course.
So, then, you are a
Christian?
Yes, I am.
Born again?
Definitely.
Baptized?
Yes.
Immersed or sprinkled?
Fully immersed.
Pentecostal?
Yes, I am.
Holy-roller?
Yes.
Pre-millennial or
post-millennial?
Pre-millennial.
And in your worship, do you use
old-style hymns or contemporary music?
Contemporary.
Organ or praise band?
Praise band.
Video screens?
Of course.
And what about the preacher?
Well, I’m the preacher.
Oh, so am I!
Wonderful.
Seminary-trained?
Yes.
And do you preach with notes or
without?
Without.
Wooden pulpit or Plexiglas?
Plexiglas.
Plexiglas pulpit! Well! It’s
obvious we have NOTHING in common!
And
Jesus’ prayer is still…“That they may all be one.”
Just look
at this band Jesus gathered at this Last Supper table:
-
Fiscally conservative Matthew, the former task
collector, across the table from bleeding-heart liberal
Phillip, who was always ready to give away the farm.
-
Macho
men like Simon the Zealot gathered with the band of
women like Mary Magdalene and the other women.
-
Sons of
Thunder James and John, alongside reflective, thoughtful
Thomas, the doubter.
Jesus claims them all as a gift
from God, and around the table he creates a new community of
love and grace.
One of the best new books I’ve
read lately is Brian McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy.
His sub-title is “Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical,
Post-Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/ Poetic,
Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative,
Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist,
Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-Yet-Hopeful,
Emergent, Unfinished Christian.”
He says Jesus didn’t come to
create an “in” group which would banish
everyone else. Jesus wanted to create a “come-on-in”
group which sought to welcome…not to conquer or badger or
vanquish others, but to save them, redeem them, bless them,
love them, befriend them and embrace them. (Brian McLaren,
Generous Orthodoxy, page 247) And when the church is
wasting its time and energy, fighting with itself, we deny
the desire and prayer of our dying Lord “that they would all
be one…”
2.
So that the world might believe.
Jesus says he has sent his
disciples into the world in the same way God the Father has
sent him. Now he prays for us to be one, “so that the
world might believe.” Christian unity and fellowship
within the body have one clear purpose—to enable the
church’s mission and witness so that the world might
believe. Sometimes we get it all turned around…as if unity
and fellowship within the life of the church was for our
benefit, to make us feel good, comfortable and caring.
I remember another one of the
small churches I served early in my ministry. I remember a
woman named Goldie, truly one of the saints, who helped
create a warm, caring fellowship within the congregation.
She was pure gold. I can remember her saying, “Oh, we just
love our little church…it’s just like family.” And it was.
If you were part of the family, it was wonderful. But if you
were an outsider—a newcomer, a stranger or a visitor—you
could also tell it was “like family.” It felt as if you had
dropped in on someone else’s family reunion and you knew you
didn’t belong. No wonder it has remained, to this day, a
small, family church.
Unfortunately, that’s typical of
all too many congregations. Just last week Bishop Michael
Coyner was addressing a meeting of the General Board of
Discipleship in Nashville. Bishop Coyner said:
There is one number in our
denomination which keeps going up. It’s the number of
churches which have not received even one person as a new
member by profession of faith. That number is up to 43
percent.
Describing too many of our
churches and too many of our members, another participant in
the meeting said:
We are producing a generation of
religious consumers who are always looking for what the Lord
can do for them, instead of committed disciples who are
looking for what we can do for the Lord.
(www.umc.org, “U.S. Churches Face Crisis,” by Linda
Green, 3/21/06)
Jesus calls us together as one,
not just so we can enjoy the cozy comfort of a little
family. Jesus calls for oneness, unity in the life of the
church, so that through our life together, the world will
come to know the love of God made known in him. Unity within
is for the purpose of mission without. Oneness in the body
serves the purpose of witness in the world.
Jesus
prays for us to be one…so that the world may believe.
Today is our annual “One Great
Hour of Sharing” in support of the United Methodist
Committee on Relief. But the fact is, “One Great Hour” is
shared across the Protestant denominations and models our
participation with many other Christian bodies in shared
concern for God’s world.
One great hour of sharing.
One in compassion and caring.
One in Christ.
So that the world might believe.
John
Indermark says:
Things can get dicey out there
in the world…dangers do abound. But our trust in Jesus’
prayer allows us to step out in faith and to continue
stepping forward. Christ holds us in prayer.
So Jesus prays for those whom he
sends. So may we pray as those who are sent. Go in peace.
Amen.
(Indermark, Traveling the
Prayer Paths of Jesus, page 108)
NOTES:
The “dialogue” between the two
men in the airport has a source. I just can’t find it. I
heard it somewhere and recreated this from memory, and
though I have tried to find the source, I haven’t been
successful. If anyone can find the original source, I
welcome the information.
The statistics on the
denomination are really more troubling than just the number
of professions of faith. For a current report on our
membership statistics, go to http://research.gbgm-umc.org
and read the “Background Data for Mission” documents.
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