“Things That Bite and Itch”

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Stephen Poos-Benson

July 25, 2010

 

 

Luke 11:1-13

            One day he was praying in a certain place.  When he finished, one of his disciples said, “Master, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”  So he said, “When you pray, say,

            Father,

            Reveal who you are.

            Set the world right.

            Keep us alive with three square meals.

            Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.

            Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.”

 

            Then he said, “Imagine what would happen if you went to a friend in the middle of the night and said, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread.  An old friend traveling through just showed up, and I don’t have a thing on hand.’

            “The friend answers from his bed, ‘Don’t bother me.  The door’s locked; my children are all down for the night; I can’t get up to give you anything.’

            “But let me tell you, even if he won’t get up because he’s a friend, if you stand your ground, knocking and waking all the neighbors, he’ll finally get up and get you whatever you need.

            “Here’s what I’m saying:

 

            Ask and you’ll get;

            Seek and you’ll find;

            Knock and the door will open.

 

            “Don’t bargain with God.  Be direct.  Ask for what you need.  This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in.  If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate?  If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider?  As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing—you’re at least decent to your own children.  And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?”

 

 

            My sermon today is about prayer.  Don’t you love the title:  “On God Giving Us Snakes, Spiders, Mosquitoes, Scorpions, and Every Other Summer Thing that Bites and Makes Us Itch?”  When I wrote this a month ago, Mitch asked me if I was sure that was my sermon title.  I’m going to teach you about prayer by telling you about my weekend.

            I had a long weekend and I drove my son, Taylor, to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.  He’s thinking about transferring there so we went to see the campus.  After being there for most of a day, we decided to go see the Grand Canyon.  We were stopping and staring and we got to camp on the East Rim.  I had a bucket-list experience.

            I play the Native American flute so right at sunset, we sat on the edge and I played my flute.  Taylor told me it was kind of cool.  A guy came by and told us that his wife and kids had brought him to the Grand Canyon for his 60th birthday and that a helicopter ride had been cancelled twice due to thunderstorms so instead, they had come to the rim to watch the sunset.  He said that hearing me play my flute had made his birthday special!  It was a bucket-list experience for me to watch the sunset over this great, beautiful expanse.  It was mystical.

            The next morning, we got up and I heard something that made me laugh.  Someone came to the park ranger and asked:  Do you have a Walmart here in the park?  I couldn’t even make up something so stupid!!  You’re kidding me, right?  You can’t get along without a Walmart?

            Let’s talk about prayer.  Jesus is praying and the disciples ask him, “Master, teach us to pray.”  So he teaches them about prayer. 

            You’re disciples of Jesus; do you know how to pray?  I’m surprised that’s not something we take for granted.  I think if we sat around and talked, many people would say I think I know.  How often do you pray? 

            There’s a poll that says the majority of Americans pray.  In fact, I read a very interesting poll from Marriott that did a survey of American vacation habits.  More Americans, this summer, say that they pray while on vacation more than they do when they are not on vacation.  They say they turn off their computers and smart phones so they can have more quality time with their family and friends and have more time to pray. 

            What is the content of your prayers?  Are you a list-maker?  Do you say God, I want this, I want this, this, this?  Is that how you pray?   Where do you pray?  Jesus talked about needing to find a place to pray.  Do you pray when you drive?  Do you pray with your eyes open, with your eyes closed?  Are you clear with your prayers?  Do you mumble with your prayers? 

            Do you think prayer works?  Periodically, many people ask me if I think prayer really works.  I think where this comes from is if you make lists of things that you want, oftentimes they don’t happen or you pray for things and they get worse.  In this passage, Jesus says be direct, ask God for what you want.  If a little boy asks for a fish, you’re not going to give him a snake.  If a little girl asks for an egg, you’re not going to give her a spider.  Jesus says, using this analogy, share with God what it is that you need, knowing that your God is a good and gracious and loving God.  That God is not going to scare you with a snake or a spider.  Sometimes, I feel as though God has given me snakes and spiders and cockroaches and great white sharks and everything else. 

I’ll never forget what happened to change my whole view of prayer was when I had just become the Senior Pastor of this church at the age of 31.  A young man in the congregation had just been diagnosed with Guillain Barre disease and his life was hanging in the balance, in the hospital.  I liked this person; he worked with the kids.  This church was in shock and so we did exactly what Jesus said. We took out the scriptures, we gathered the elders together.  We had special worship services here and we were praying for him around-the-clock.  We asked God to please save him, restore him—and he died!  I almost cashed in my pastor chips.  I asked for a fish—you gave me a snake.  I wanted an egg and you gave me a scorpion.  Why, God?  Why? 

That sent me on a prayer journey to try to understand what is prayer about?  Here I am about 20 years later and prayer is a central part of my life.  I begin every day with prayer.  I close the day with prayer.  I pray throughout my day.  I pray with my eyes open, I pray with my eyes closed.  I pray when I sit on my couch.  I pray when I drive, with my eyes open.  I pray when I sing.  I pray when I laugh.  I pray with my guitar.  I pray with my flute.  I pray when I lift weights.  I pray when I run.  I pray when I cycle.  I pray when I do Taekwondo.  My whole life is prayer. 

I’ve got to the point where if you asked me, Steve, teach me how to pray, I would tell you a few things.  I would tell you kind of what Jesus talked about and then I would expand upon it.  I view prayer as a phase 1 and a phase 2 of prayer life.

I’m going to start by assuming that you don’t know how to pray or that you think you aren’t good at it.  I’m going to start right there because I think a lot of people think they aren’t very good at it.  Prayer is like diving into a pool—you just start--even if it feels a little clumsy.

I’ll never forget when I started Taekwondo.  I was a big 45-year old guy in a white suit with all of these little kids and I felt stupid.  Master Rankin told me it’s like taking one step at a time; like learning to walk all over again.  It’s kind of like prayer.  Learning to pray is like learning to be all over again.  It’s about a relationship with God.  I believe that God desperately wants to be in a relationship with us and God is going out of his way to establish this relationship with us.  Prayer, no matter how you want to define it, is the avenue by which God is going to communicate with you. 

I tell people:  Just start praying!  Talk to God!  If you need to rant at God, rant!  If you need to laugh with God, laugh.  If you’re a list maker, then do it because we have a good, loving, gracious God who wants to be in a relationship with us.  Jesus says be direct about it; don’t beat around the bush.  This is not a cat-and-mouse game.  Just like a good and loving parent wants to know exactly what the kids want—just kind of pour it out.   God wants us to pour it all out. 

I love what Jesus says:  “Be at it” fervently.  I love this analogy.  Jesus says it’s like somebody who comes to visit in the middle of the night and you have to serve them dinner.  No bread?  You knock on your neighbor’s door.  Do you have bread?  The guy is in bed and says to go away.  Jesus says who cares?  If you make a big enough racket, eventually this person will get up and give you bread.

This analogy is like God.  If you have something you need, God says go to the Pearly Gates and knock.  I love the image of God sleeping and asking what is that noise?  God, I need something.  God says can’t it wait until the morning?  You say no, now!  God says what?  Then you engage and it’s that type of a fervent relationship that Jesus is after. 

Prayer is about you diving into that.  However that’s going to look for you--dive in, talk.  Don’t worry if prayer works or not.  If you’re making a list and checking yes, checking no—playing a cat-and-mouse game—don’t do that.  Don’t worry about that.  Engage the relationship.  That’s phase 1 and if all you do is phase 1, that’s good.  But if you’ve been praying for a while and want to know if there’s more to prayer than this, then I invite you to think yes, yes there is.  If you do this, and this is all you do, it’s kind of like shopping at a heavenly Walmart in a divine state park, pushing your cart and saying I need this, I need this and this and this.  You get the stuff you want and check out when there is a Grand Canyon to go soaring in.  Part of it is you have to be willing to leave the heavenly Walmart and go start exploring what the Grand Canyon of spirituality might look like.  There’s not a lot of rules or regulations about what this is, but it’s about trying to find what it is that makes your soul soar.  What is it that makes your soul soar? 

For me, it’s a lot of different things.  When I teach people how to allow your soul to soar, it begins with breathing.   Learning how to focus on your breathing and learning how to allow yourself to let go of the fear.  A lot of times, what gets us going in a spiritual Walmart is our fears.  We’re afraid of things and we want God to give us x, y and z.  It keeps us bound up and locked up.

One of the things that was kind of pivotal for me in my whole development of prayer is in Matthew 6.  Jesus said, “Your heavenly Father, Mother, already knows what you need before you pray.”  God already knows what you need before you pray so it’s like you don’t need to go to the heavenly Walmart because God already knows.  God is already there in the midst of whatever it is that you are going through. 

Lance Armstrong and his Tour de France team, wore black jerseys to symbolize that there are 28 million people in the world who have cancer!  God is in the midst of those 28 million lives and the 28 million families and friends that are touched by those people who have cancer.  God is there in the midst of that.

As you know that God is there in the midst of it, the breathing allows you to let go of your fears and instead to focus on God’s presence.  Find those things that help you soar like running and cycling, sitting meditation, walking meditation, knitting, sewing, painting, drawing, writing, computer programming, golfing, surfing, skiing—where something happens and you know you are someplace else and you are surrounded by a heavenly presence to let you know you are not alone. 

I try to read a poem a day by Rumi.  Rumi says that too often our prayers are like a chicken pecking at pebbles:  I want this, I want this, I want this and this and this.  He said instead, prayer should be like thirsting for the ultimate water and then waiting for the tide to come over us. 

It’s hard to do this in a sermon.  It’s kind of like wetting your appetite.  You will have to come and talk to one of us.  All three of us practice what is called Contemplative Prayer.   We have a class.  You can read.  I want you to think about what it means to go beyond the spiritual Walmart and go sit at the edge of the Grand Canyon. 

Since many of you were there before I was, you know the expansiveness of the Grand Canyon.  The sun was setting.  I was sitting on the edge, playing the flute, and there was a thundercloud off in the distance and it got red.  The canyon to my right glowed an orange-red as the sun started slanting in the sky.  As it went behind the rocks, the whole canyon glowed and I was playing.  As I was playing, right below me, three California condors rose up and just soared.  I felt like they were drawn by the music.  I had this sense that I kind of disappeared and I had a feeling that I was flying and I felt completely surrounded by the presence of God—the ultimate water.