Sermon – July 25, 2010

Sermon Delivered By Reverend Ginger Gaines-Cirelli – July 25, 2010

Luke 11:1-13

“Don’t just do something, sit there!”  This is one way of describing the

teaching we received from last week’s reflection on the story of Jesus

in Martha and Mary’s home.  “Sit and listen” was the invitation.  And

this week, we pick up the text with what immediately follows: a series

of teachings on prayer.  This makes sense, of course, since one way to

describe prayer is as conversation with God.

Over the years, I have taught a course on prayer—both at the local and

district level.  As I was preparing for today, I came across an

interview with Dr. Roberta Bondi, a retired church historian who has

written extensively on prayer.  Bondi highlights three obstacles to

prayer that I have heard again and again from those who have taken the

course I have offered.  First, folks feel intimidated by the very idea

of prayer and often worry that they are not “doing it right.”  Second,

people tend to think of prayer in terms of duty, that is, as something

that they are required to do (and, while that may be motivation for

some, it creates a real obstacle for many).  And third, so many of us

have images of God in our heads and hearts that are off-putting—that is,

images of God as scary, judgmental, distant, even abusive.[i]

In today’s Gospel text, Jesus provides a concrete response to each of

these issues.  Jesus acknowledges that it is helpful to have a

“formula,” if you will, when we pray and so he gives us some words to

use.  (You’ll notice that Luke’s version of what we call “The Lord’s

Prayer” is different from the well-known prayer from Matthew.)  It is

helpful to have a guide sometimes in our praying, especially when we

struggle to find the words to express the deep longings of our hearts.

The Psalms, devotional guides, the traditional prayers of the Church,

forms of meditation and Lectio Divina, the Lord’s Prayer, all of

these are gifts to us to help us, perhaps, feel a bit less

intimidated—like it’s not all up to us to figure out how to pray or how

to find the words.  Jesus gives the disciples the words to use.  When

you pray, this is what to say.  One can imagine the disciples solemnly

nodding and thinking to themselves, “Here endeth the lesson…”

But then Jesus goes on to tell the somewhat convoluted parable of the

sleepy friend—at least it sounds convoluted in translation.  My friend

and colleague Patrick Willson describes the parable this way:  “Suppose

your friend comes unexpectedly to visit late at night.  Your friend has

been out on the road all day and half the night with nothing to eat, so

what are you going to do?  You’re going to put something on the table

for your friend, aren’t you?  Isn’t that what friends do for each other?

…There’s a problem, however: you don’t have anything in the house to

eat…The refrigerator is empty, the pantry is bare.  What are you going

to do?  You go to another friend.  What are friends for, anyway?  You

run next door.  Next door is your typical first century Palestinian

friend bedded down in his typical first century Palestinian home.  It

has one room.  Mom, dad, all six children, half a dozen chickens, the

dog and a goat all sleep in the same room.  That is the way it is if you

live like most people lived.  If you were wealthier, you had a spare

bedroom for the goat.  So you come pounding on the door asking for

bread.  What’s your friend going to do?  He’s going to give you some

bread, isn’t he?  If he won’t give you bread just because you’re such

good friends, he’ll give you bread just to get rid of you because if you

keep pounding on the door you’ll wake up the dog and if that happens

everyone is finished sleeping for the night.  Sure, you’ll get what you

ask for!”[ii]

This, my friends, is a funny story, an “earthy” story.  And it is about

friendship and the way that real life is lived together with friends.

By sharing this story with us, Jesus accomplishes at least two things.

He reminds us to lighten up a little bit for one, and he also teaches us

that prayer is about friendship.  In our relationships with our friends,

there are times that we may act out of a sense of duty on their

behalf—when they are in need, for example—but mostly we relate to our

friends out of a sense of love and care and mutual support; we spend

time with our friends because with true friends we can be ourselves, we

can be real, we can share our struggles and our successes.  True friends

are honest with us; they don’t let us off the hook; they remind us of

who we are and of who we can become; they help us when we are down and

out, wanting us to ask for what we need.  They are there for us.  They

laugh with us!  What if prayer is like that?  Friendship with God…

If our images of God are fearful and judgmental, it can certainly be

difficult to imagine developing a friendship with God.  I mean, who

wants to befriend someone who just makes you feel badly about yourself

or who intentionally hurts you?  Jesus goes on to teach us that God is

not out to get us or trick us.  We know how much we mess up our

relationships and  how we can do things that are harmful to others, but

Jesus reminds us that, even still, when it comes to our children, we

would never intentionally harm them.  The comparison to a loving human

parent helps us understand the nature of God—as a loving parent who

wants us to be well, to grow, to have what we need.  Perhaps, if we can

risk letting go the fearful images of God and believing that this is so,

friendship with God is possible after all.

When we take the teachings and example of Jesus on prayer into account,

we learn that what it’s really about is developing a relationship with

God; spending time with God; becoming close to God, in the same way you

become close to your human friends.

And, I believe, we also learn that we’re invited to see that friendship

as both important and serious and also full of delight and laughter.  I

can’t help but think of the group here at St. Matthew’s known as “The

Angel Gang,” who meet every week just to be together, to share life,

jokes, food; to share the struggles of living with illness and pain.

What I have heard—and experienced—in that community of friends is that

they laugh!  A sense of trust and “being with,” a delight in the

personalities of each person, an earthy honesty about real life, a deep

solidarity with one another’s suffering—all this is bathed in laughter.

This is friendship.  What if prayer is like that?

We often turn to God only when we’re afraid, sad, or suffering.  And, of

course, as with any friendship we can bring our grief, our questions,

our doubts, our anger, our confusion, our confession, our guilt,

trusting that we will still be held and loved.  But today I believe that

at least  part of Jesus’ teaching is that we can also bring our joy, our

praise, our celebrations, our silliness, the mundane and the absurd

parts of life, all of it.  If friendship and closeness with God is the

goal, then it’s as much a matter of showing up as anything else.  Just

being there, being close, being real—all the time.  You can bring words

or silence, weariness or energy.  You may find yourself saying, as you

have said to a friend, “I don’t really know what I need or what to say,

I just need to be with you.”  Sometimes you may spill out words that you

don’t understand—as poet Kathleen Norris says, that may be “true

prayer.”  “The ability to say, ‘I mean these words even if I don’t know

what I mean.’”[iii]

A friend is one with whom you can be more you somehow regardless

of where or how you are at the moment.  What if prayer is like

that?

One of the places I turn when I need to be reminded of the day-in,

day-out invitation to close friendship with God is a fourteenth century

Sufi mystic poet named Hafiz, whose earthy style and insistence on the

sacred presence showing up everywhere delights me.  One of the first

poems I memorized from the collection of his writings entitled, The

Gift, is this one:

God

And I have become

Like two giant fat people

Living in a

Tiny boat.

We

Keep

Bumping into each other and

L

a

u

g

h

i

n

g

.[iv]

I

can imagine Jesus quoting these words as well.  My guess is that there

was more laughter involved in Jesus’ life than we have often

considered.  And it certainly seems that he and God were so close that

they couldn’t help but bump into one another.  What if prayer is like

that?  Like two giant fat people living in a tiny boat, so close that

they can’t help but bump into one another…Perhaps the question to ask

today is this:  What obstacle keeps you from being that close to God?