Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany – 05 February 2006

St Paul Lutheran Church, ABQ NM – The Rev. P. L. Holman

Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Cor. 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

“Pray Like It All Depends on Prayer”

            Have you not known?  Have you not heard?

            Has it not been told you from the beginning?

            Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

As Isaiah did in anxious time long ago, the prophet calls us to a place of peace today.

Lift up your eyes on high and see (close your eyes and imagine a star-lit sky): who created these?

            He who brings out their host and numbers them,

calling them all by name;

            Because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.

This past week Jan Krakow and I spent four days in Colorado Springs at the annual gathering of pastors and other rostered leaders of our synod.  We gathered each day for morning prayer, then later in the day for Eucharist.  Even though one of our presenters focused us each day on prayer and spirituality, some of the worship leaders all took us through the service like we were speeding down the interstate late for our next appointment.  When former St. Paul pastor Jeff Louden led us the final morning, it was a refreshingly different experience.  Jeff is certified in outdoor education, a true soul of creation.  When he prayed us into the day he named the winter stars by name, inviting us to imagine the heavens and the grace of God revealed therein.  He named Simeon and Anna, whom the church remembers on February 2^nd each year as saints who waited patiently for the revealing of the Lord’s Messiah, saints who heard and hoped and saw and sang in joy of the presence of God’s hope incarnate…we remembered them and thanked God for the wisdom of all the elders.  The words of Jeff’s prayer gathered us in like the prophet Isaiah’s words, gathered us into the embrace of God and gracefully set us upon the path of the day.

            Have you not known?  Have you not heard?

            Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Why do you doubt, Jacob, saying, “God doesn’t know me, God doesn’t care?”  

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?

            The LORD is the everlasting God.

Yesterday marked the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Imprisoned and hanged in 1945 for his role in a failed plot to kill Adolf Hitler, Bonhoeffer lived and taught out of the conviction that Jesus Christ is the incarnate, crucified and resurrected presence of God, personified in the church and existing for others in the world.  He believed that Christian discipleship involved actively “following after” a living Lord.  Prayer is central to such a life because one can’t have a living relationship with anyone without conversation. 

Prayer as conversation with God – that is the image Mark’s Gospel gives us of Jesus.  After healing in the synagogue he goes to Simon’s home.  There he heals Simon’s mother-in-law, and many others.  In the morning, Jesus got up while it was still dark and accompanied by constellations of stars seen and unseen went out to find a deserted place to pray.  The living God needed to reconnect with the God of the living to renew his strength for the journey, to replenish his reservoir emptied by the challenges and changes of his life.  The time of conversation, all too soon interrupted by Simon and friends, was enough.  The teaching and healing resumed.

Jane Vennard, a United Church of Christ pastor and spiritual director, invited us into the conversation posture by asking us to name our earliest memory of prayer.  How did you learn?  What words did you pray?  What do you expect to happen when you pray?  What is the image of God you carry into the time of prayer?  The answers given by the group this past week were as varied as their ministries.  To be honest about our earliest experiences, to name them and reflect on the ways we bring them forward, can open us to a deeper relationship in conversation with God now.  Vennard emphasizes that prayer is not something we DO – it is simply being in the presence of God.  Like being in the presence of a loved one or a friend, in the midst of sacred space or under the canopy of the stars, the time apart of prayer offers us opportunity to sit with the day, the burden, the blessing, the doubt, and in the sitting know the real presence of God...to invite God into the chambers of our hearts – to find that center, and to live from it.

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?

The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is mysterious.

He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;

I was asked to preside at closing worship for the RMS Middle School Youth Gathering in Colorado Springs two weeks ago.  Pastor Dan Bollman was the preacher – I knew this would be fun.  What I didn’t know until late Saturday night was that my assisting minister (of sorts) would be a clown (for real).  Master clown Dick Hardell suited up and interpreted the offertory for us as well as the words of institution (in silence).  It was really neat to “get the message” by watching him ponder a large empty washtub, then after searching around for an offering put it on the ground and step into it himself.  When it came time to consecrate the elements for communion, Pastor Hardell turned to the manger that was on stage where he found an oblong loaf of bread.  After cradling it (and wringing out what we perceived to be the end result of a very baby-like activity), he took off the blanket, attached the loaf to the cross on the altar using a crown of thorns, and tore it in half.  Ah yes, “this is my body given for you.”  Then he took the chalice, and having removed the bread and crown from the cross, silently enacted a pouring of the cross into the cup.  “This is my blood that is shed for you.”   His dramatic actions became the prayer of us all. 

This all this happened after a drama of another sort took place, one completely unplanned.  During the prayer of the church, as I stood with arms outstretched offering the petitions, someone in the front row suddenly collapsed and cries of “Doctor! We need a doctor!” rang out across the ballroom.  I could feel the wave of murmuring begin to grow as 1000 people struggled to understand what was happening.  But as quickly as that began so quickly it ended.  “My sisters and brothers, we are in prayer, which is a very good place for us to be right now.”  As I was saying that two band members, one of whom I knew was first aid trained, leapt from the stage and quickly had matters in hand.  “My friends, let us center ourselves back in prayer, and pray that our fallen friend will be speedily restored to health.”  By the time I looked over again they had carried the girl out and the paramedics had been called.  What a gift to have the awesome power of pray in times like that.  That youth had fallen exhausted, and our job was to wait in prayer, to wait for the LORD and renew our strength for her sake.  As if the worship planners had known of this detour all along, our worship closed with a song that began, “Go out and pray like it all depends on prayer.”  Indeed. 

Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,

            They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

The word for “wait” in Isaiah’s text comes from a root word with two interesting connotations.  One is “braid or plait” – unlike our notion that waiting is inactive, to wait for the LORD means to be woven or braided into a bond of strength and purpose.  Waiting is weaving time.  Time in prayer is time to reweave the frayed ends of our lives, time that offers strength for the journey.

The other connation is that of reservoir.  Waiting is reservoir-filling time.  Those who wait on the LORD, the prophet says, shall mount up with wings like eagles, with wings like the hand of Jesus extended to lift them up.  This image of Jesus healing so many at sundown gives me hope as I learn about dementia and the likely progression of my mother-in-law’s disease.  How ironic that “sundowning” is the term used to describe the sense of increased anxiety and confusion as evening approaches.  Here is grace – that even in sundowning the LORD she has loved all her life, the One who healed so many at sundown, is with Lois to lift her up, to center her when we cannot, to center us in the midst of this chaos we cannot understand trusting the mystery of God with us in the midst of it all.

Have you not heard?  Take time to pray, to be in conversation with God.  Make prayer a central focus at home, the trellis upon which the beauty of your life together can unfold.  Pray into the center of your life so that living from that center others may see and hear and come to know the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.  Pray like it all depends on prayer.  It does.