Sermon for Sunday, October 17, 2010
21st Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 18:1-18

Then Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray always and not to lose heart.

Image for Intercessory Prayer
Story of hiking:  Could look ahead to see a stiff wind speeding wisps of mist up from an unseen edge.  Came to edge of precipice.  Standing there took your breath away, both the sight – the plentitude of peaks and valleys spread out before us – as well as the wind, a wind whose chill hit our chests and sucked the wind out of us.  What a sight!  We could see the trail winding up on a knife-blade of a ridge up to the summit, but neither of us thought it prudent to continue.  After a few more buffets and gasps from the cold wind, we headed back down.

This experience of climbing – of exertion sometimes easy sometimes difficult, of glimpses of beauty, of gradually ascending higher, of coming to a place where the trees thin and then disappear, and sometimes coming to wind-swept precipices from which you must retreat lest you get dizzy – this is what intercessory prayer is like.

Consider what John Henry Newman (19th century Church of England priest, then Roman Catholic priest, bishop and Cardinal) wrote about intercessory prayer:

“O mystery of blessedness too great to think of steadily, lest we grow dizzy.”

Almost every parish has a person with the gift of intercession
In almost every parish there is a person – sometimes several people – who are drawn to undertake this adventure of intercessory prayer, who are willing to make the climb, seek out the precipices, and stand there as long as they may, before they must climb down..

• Could be anybody – young, old, men, women, busy professionals or retirees. 
• Pray with list of people from the Sunday order of service.  They may have a small notebook with prayer requests.
• Clergy get to know them and ask them to please pray.  A colleague: “So-and-so really has a gift for intercession.  Surprising things have happened when I’ve asked them to pray.”

What does it take, to be this person?

• Deisre to know God better.  à Not “to know more about God.”  To know God better, to enter into relationship.
• Time.  To a certain extent, we can pray in the “interstices” of our day, but time is needed.
• Regularity.  To develop this relationship takes regular “visits.”
• Willingness for mutuality in the relationship.  To ascend into the mountain takes a willingness for God to desire us (as God desired to visit with Adam and Eve in the garden, as God desired his people Israel, as Jesus desired James and John to leave their nets and follow him.)

The great challenge of the intercessors’ prayer

• To “lose heart.”
• To imagine that one’s prayer does no good, prayer is a waste of my time, there are so many other better things I could be doing rather than prayer.
• Jesus knows this challenge, and so tells the parable of today’s gospel lesson of the widow and the unjust judge.  Keep on praying; the judge will finally listen and grant justice.  “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?  Will he delay long in helping them?  I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them!”

Story:  Two great intercessors, one quite hidden, the other more famous.

• Priest I know, a man now in his late 80’s, whom I met in Santa Barbara.  I visited his church once while church shopping.  He noticed me a newcomer, and we got to talking.  He asked what he might pray for in regards to me.  I told him, “A job,” thinking he would never really pray for me.   I returned to that church several months later, and he came and spoke to me again – he had remembered my name!  I was stunned.  And then he asked how the search for a job was going.  “I’m impressed that you remember, not only my name, but that I was looking for a job.  How did you remember?”  “I’ve been praying for you.”  Turns out he keeps a small Moleskine notebook in his pocket at all times and writes down prayer requests and prays for them. 
• Vida Dutton Scudder.  (Died, 1954.)  Was a Smith College graduate who then went to Oxford, and returned to teach English literature at Wellesley College.   She was a powerful combination of social activist and intercessor.  She helped to lead striking textile workers in Lawrence, as well as protests against both world wars.  And she was an active member of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, a group of Episcopal women – whose headquarters are up in Newbury – given to intercessory prayer.  Scudder authored many books, on both political and religious subjects.  I leave you with a quote from one of her writings:

If prayer is the deep, secret, creative force that Jesus tells us it is, we should be very busy with it… [If there is one sure way “of directly helping the Kingdom of God, that way is prayer.  Intercession may be the mightiest force in the world.”

Sermon for Sunday, October 10, 2010
20th Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 17:11-19

“Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him.”

In today’s gospel text, only one of the ten healed lepers returned to give thanks to Jesus. 

• Tells us a very important truth about giving thanks:  Giving thanks does not come naturally, but must be learned
• Why would we want to learn thanksgiving?  What’s in it for us?
• How do we learn thanksgiving?

Define terms:  Not talking about saying “thank you” for a gift somebody has given us, or sending a “thank you” note after somebody has you to dinner.  Nice things to do, but our focus today is on doing what the one leper did:  Thanking God / Giving glory to God.

Why would we want to learn thanksgiving?

• Giving thanks is extremely salutary for our souls.
• Giving thanks turns us from looking inward to looking outward; turns the focus from us to others and to God; keeps us from worrying about what we don’t have, and helps us focus on what we do.
• Don’t most of us wish to turn from “inward” to “outward,” to live lives not only for ourselves alone? 

How do we learn thanksgiving, turning our life outward?

• We give thanks to God when we pray, when we worship, when we serve and when we ourselves give (passing on to others something of what we ourselves have received)
• These are great disciplines – and they are necessary to grow into fuller thanksgiving – but today going to give us an even more basic first step:
• Pay attention!
• Pay attention to all that happens in your life, the “good” and the “bad.”

Pay attention to “good” things as well as “bad.”

• Pay attention to “good” things:  to the splendor of the whole creation, to the beauty of this world, the wonder of life, the blessings of friends and families, the tasks that demand our best efforts, the accomplishments that bring satisfaction. 
• When we think on these “good” things our souls are turned, and we are inclined to return and give thanks.  (This is the easy part!)
• Pay attention, too, to the ‘bad” things:  our disappointments, our failures, our fears, our hungers, our sense of abandonment.
• These are important to pay attention to because they lead us to acknowledge our dependence upon God alone.
• As we pay attention and see all that God has done for us, and as we pay attention and see God present for us in our disappointments and failures, then we might, like the lepers, call on Jesus from a distance.  As we continue to pay attention, we might even, like the one, turn back and meet Jesus, and – as we grow in thanksgiving for all that God has done for us in Christ, as our lives become thanksgiving – we might fall at Jesus’ feet and give glory to God

We the baptized are called to live lives of thanksgiving.

• Every Sunday, we gather for Eucharist, which means “give thanks.”
• Called to give thanks for all that God has done for us, for our disappointments and failures, but above all for the redemption of the world by our Savior Jesus Christ
• In Jesus’ dying and rising, and in our baptism into his dying and rising, God has given us grace to “triumph over every evil, and to live, not only for ourselves alone, but for him who died and rose again.”
• He has made it possible for us to turn our lives inside out, to live for others, and to live for God.

Leave you with an image and verses from a hymn:

• Great image:  Hunched woman in Luke 13. Luther:  woman is image of spiritual growth and development à move from hunched over on self, to standing up straight and seeing the Lord who heals us.  With Christ, this is what can happen in us.
• Hymn that speaks of our becoming aware of all that God has done for us, and the possibility of our lives being thanksgiving

 

There's a wideness in God's mercy
like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in his justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner,
and more graces for the good;
there is mercy with the Savior;
there is healing in his blood.

[There is no place where earth's sorrows
are more felt than in heaven;
there is no place where earth's failings
have such kind judgment given.
There is plentiful redemption
in the blood that has been shed;
there is joy for all the members
in the sorrows of the Head.]

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

Sermon for Wednesday, October 6, 2010
William Tyndale, Priest, 1536

As tonight’s collect so genteel-y puts it, Tyndale had a “consuming passion” for the translation of the scriptures into English.  Another biographical source is more blunt:  Tyndale had an “obsession” for producing an English translation of the scriptures. 

What is the cause of Tyndale’s “obsession / consuming passion?”  One anecdote about Tyndale, perhaps apocryphal, suggests that Tyndale’s drive to translate the scriptures came at least in part from something not far removed from obstinacy or pride. 

It is reported that, in the course of a dispute with a prominent clergyman who disparaged Tyndale’s proposal to translate the scriptures into English, he said, "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost."

I like to think that Tyndale’s consuming passion to translate the scriptures came from his own experiences of having read the scriptures, and a desire to pass on to others what he himself had experienced.  What Tyndale experienced in reading the scriptures is joy – even to the point of laughter.  Consider the following, from Tyndale’s writings:

Evangelion (that we call gospel) is a Greek word; and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy: as when David had killed Goliath the giant, came glad tidings unto the Jews, that their fearful and cruel enemy was slain, and they delivered out of all danger: for gladness whereof, they sung, danced, and were joyful.  In like manner is the Evangelion of God (which we call the gospel, the New Testament) joyful tidings; and, as some say, a good hearing published by the apostles throughout all the world, of Christ the right David; how that he hath fought with sin, with death, and the devil, and overcome them: whereby all men that were in bondage to sin, wounded with death, overcome of the devil, are, without their own merits or deservings, loosed, justified, restored to life and saved, brought to liberty and reconciled unto the favour of God, and set at one with him again: which tidings as many as believe laud, praise, and thank God; are glad, sing and dance for joy.

This Evangelion or gospel (that is to say, such joyful tidings) is called the New Testament; because that as a man, when he shall die, appointeth his goods to be dealt and distributed after his death among them which he nameth to be his heirs; even so Christ before his death commanded and appointed that such Evangelion, gospel, or tidings should be declared throughout all the world, and therewith to give unto all the repent and believe all his goods: that is to say, his life, wherewith he swallowed and devoured up death; his rightesouness, wherewith he banished sin; his salvation, wherewith he overcame eternal damnation.  Now can the wretched man that knoweth himself to be wrapped in sin, and in danger to death and hell hear no more joyous a thing, than such glad and comfortable tidings of Christ; so that he cannot but be glad, and laugh from the low bottom of his heart, if he believe that the tidings are true.

I love this quote from Tyndale! In it he grasps the forest that is so easy to miss for seeing the trees; that is, that the scriptures are all about joy.  Yes, there are many challenging, perplexing, confusing and even frightening passages; but the main thrust of the scriptures is this joy, gladness, and laughter from the “low bottom of [the] heart” of which Tyndale speaks.  I like to think that it is this joy and gladness and laughter that Tyndale must have experienced when he encountered the scriptures, and his obsession in translating them arose from his desire to pass this joy and gladness on to others.

For those of us who are reading the Bible in The Whole Bible Experience, I know it has been rough going as of late – the violence of the books of Numbers, and in Samuel and Kings; and the seemingly obscure laws of Deuteronomy and Leviticus have been anything but joy-inducing.  But if we can persevere and see the fulfillment of these scriptures in the person of Jesus Christ when we come to the gospels, I trust that we will at least glimpse something of the joy, gladness and laughter from the “low bottom of the heart” that Tyndale wished to pass on.  And for all of us who are here tonight and have heard the word of God, I invite you to engage this Word more fully on your own, if not in Whole Bible Experience, then with another reading program, however intense (or not!).  William Tyndale thought it worth risking his life to bring the scriptures to every man and woman.  Not only would he be delighted by the continuing fruits of his work, but I know that, if you persevere, you will find in these scriptures the same joy and gladness that Tyndale found.  And, who knows, in reading them and in receiving the goods from the inheritance that Christ has given us – his devouring death; his banishment of sin; his overcoming of eternal damnation – you, too, may laugh from the “low bottom of your heart."