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Ritual
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
We are in our ritual series here at Commons. This is a bit of a different angle from some of the more deep exegetical stuff that we regularly do here. But as a church, we believe that these practices that we are talking about this month matter to the life and health of our church. And Kevin opened up last week. He started us off.
Speaker 1:He did a great job talking about something right in his wheelhouse, worship and singing. It was great, and we were encouraged to create along with the creator. Thank you to Kevin for having a heart for that, but also the ability to communicate that well to our community. I also feel like he was too soft on us. So I don't know if you were here last week, but he closed talking about different postures, and we sang a song at the end and he said, maybe you wanna try holding your hands like this as we sing this song.
Speaker 1:You don't have to, but it's just an idea. And I would have made you all do it. I would have made you. You have to try this. The point here is that Kevin's just a lot nicer than me.
Speaker 1:But I'm up today to talk about prayer. It's a pretty expansive topic, to be honest. But I'm excited that we get to talk about this together. We did a series on the Lord's prayer last year. So I can't talk about that too much because that's cheating even though I will point to that a little bit this evening.
Speaker 1:And it's great that we participated in that prayer together as a community tonight. And so where do we start with prayer? Well, what I'd like to do is about thirty minutes of silent prayer here right now, and then I'll just come up at the end and pray at the end. But I'm not allowed to apparently. That's not how it isn't that how we should do a message on prayer maybe?
Speaker 1:It's interesting to have this conversation about prayer in the time of immediate technology that we live in and have access to right now. Because really if we could just text God real quick and get an answer, that would be great. It's a great time to be a pastor in one sense. Since I don't have the entirety of scripture memorized, if someone says, hey, where's that story of the Ethiopian eunuch? I can Google it just like you can.
Speaker 1:It's in Acts chapter eight just so you know. You're welcome. And I wonder though if it's equally as desirable. If someone said, hey, can you please pray for my grandpa? And I could say, yep, just a sec.
Speaker 1:Text on my phone. Yeah, done. Got it. Sent. Isn't that what we all sort of crave in some way when it comes to prayer?
Speaker 1:And my question is, do I get frustrated with God not getting back to me immediately? The same way that I do when I'm frustrated and waiting for my brother to text me back about something. Well, Kevin said last week, he wanted to remove some of the guilt and shame around worship. And today, I want to do something similar. We want to spend some time removing some of the stigmas, the guilt, maybe the mistrust or even shame around prayer.
Speaker 1:And before we go too far ironically, let's pray together tonight. Lord of love, you are in this space already and you are waiting to hear from us and us from you. Would you honor the attention that we give you in these moments? Provide us with a portion of your peace as we sit in this space, as we talk about what it looks like to connect and communicate with you and why. In this time together, would you help us notice you?
Speaker 1:The ways that you're calling us to more of yourself. The ways that you are trying to increase our awareness of the needs of others. Form us more like yourself. Align our hearts to yours. Help us see the world more like you do.
Speaker 1:Help us to care for it and its people in any ways that we can. In your powerful name we pray. Amen. I've been a pastor for about fifteen years. So if I have come to your place for dinner or you to my place for dinner or a barbecue or something like that or if there's a potluck here at church or if somebody ordered pizza and someone feels like we should pray before we eat, I'm the person that gets asked to do that.
Speaker 1:It's really all I do around here actually. On Sundays, I kind of smile, shake people's hands, and then pray for meals. And, it's in my job description. It's really all I have to do. Like Jeremy says, it's good work if you can get it.
Speaker 1:But there are some stigmas about praying out loud. Something like that. Praying out loud in a group before a meal. Praying out loud in public. Or even praying out loud up here in a space like this.
Speaker 1:And so we're gonna talk about that a little bit tonight. But I wanna spend more of our time on what it means to pray as an individual, to pray as a child of God. So just a few quick thoughts on public prayer or praying out loud. How many of you if I said right now, hey, can someone just run up here real quick and I'll hand you the mic and you can pray for the room? How many of you would be like, yeah, great.
Speaker 1:No problem. Right. Okay. A couple. Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay. So there are some of you that are like, yeah, no problem. And the rest of you would be like, oh, you would avoid eye contact. You would mean you would not look and look at me. You would look away.
Speaker 1:You'd say, hey. It doesn't mean me. Someone else will do that. Or maybe this is more more easy for you to connect with. How many of you have maybe been in something like a small group or in a home church now?
Speaker 1:And if there's ever a time of prayer at the end or sometime during that gathering and the level of discomfort is just palpable. I call those moments game of prayer chicken, where you're waiting for those other people to pray. Maybe your internal monologue is something like, I'm not gonna say anything. I'm not gonna say anything. Someone else will say something.
Speaker 1:I don't have to say what would I even say? I don't have really anything to say. Okay. Two people prayed. That seems like enough.
Speaker 1:Let's just close it. Close it up. Someone say amen. Somebody say amen. There are some people in this room right now that are like, what?
Speaker 1:People think that? I always pray in groups out loud. It is not a big deal. And bless you because you are right too. We need your confidence in your voice in those spaces because not everyone is either confident, comfortable or feels capable praying out loud.
Speaker 1:But can we use this as the first release of any shame or stigmas about prayer. It's okay. You don't have to pray out loud in a group setting. It's okay. You, the people who might point to Jesus's teaching on prayer in Matthew six where he says, go pray in your closets alone, not out in the street corners like the hypocrites.
Speaker 1:You hold on to those verses like, you know, you need to bring those up and say, no. No. You're praying wrong. You're supposed to pray by yourself. But the difference there is there is a difference between what Jesus is teaching against in that chapter and someone leading in prayer in a healthy way.
Speaker 1:Leading with a voice that is not there to impress anyone or show off or especially not make anyone feel less than, But leading in prayer with a voice that genuinely verbalizes some of the common hopes, fears and thoughts of a community. This is important and it's this type of leading prayer that we would aim for when we pray out loud in a setting like church. Not sounding off and sounding impressive but finding and leading the common voice of the community on behalf of the community in a space together connecting with God. So the bottom line is praying out loud or in public is not for everyone and those that prefer to pray in quiet alone feel release and free from the oppression of those verbal people that just don't understand you. So that's great.
Speaker 1:If you come to my house for dinner, I won't make you pray for that meal either. I can just do it. Used to be my wife who I would get to pray, but she started praying and just kind of like praying way too long for a meal. She would start and then it would be like fifteen minutes later. She's prayed about everything you could imagine, fifteen minutes and then, well, I the food's cold at that point and like, well, we're not as grateful because the food's cold and and she would also always forget to pray for the food itself.
Speaker 1:She'd go fifteen minutes and then be like, amen. Oh, yeah. And thank you for the food. Amen again. It's kinda how she prayed.
Speaker 1:So she doesn't do that anymore. Just kidding. She can pray if she wants to. One of my favorite small moments of prayer and scripture is from second chronicles 20 and Jehoshaphat is praying for deliverance from an opposing army and they're quite sure that they're doomed, but they sort of still hope in God. But they aren't a 100% either way.
Speaker 1:Maybe God will deliver us. Maybe we're gonna get destroyed. And Jehoshaphat prays and his closing line is something that resonates with me in a pretty profound way. He says, we don't know what to do so we are looking to you. Prayer is this huge concept and our experiences of it are extremely varied.
Speaker 1:There are people in this room right now that have a depth of prayer in their life that some of us may never find and that's beautiful for them. Hopefully for those folks today will be an encouragement and a reaffirmation of the goodness that is connecting and communicating with God in your lives. But for the rest of us, there is a varied range of experience and attitude towards prayer represented in this space right now. And what better way to name that and acknowledge this range than with a few gifts. If you will humor me, please.
Speaker 1:I have some gifts on the screen. These might help you find your place on how your experience of prayer is or has been. So first, maybe your experience of prayer is something like this. Don't know. Don't really think it works.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's you. Maybe. Nothing. Maybe some of you try to pray, but you fall asleep every time. You just can't quite connect with the prayers.
Speaker 1:Maybe some of you think I have prayed and something really worked. It was really cool. It blew my mind. Maybe that's your experience. It's kind of a range here.
Speaker 1:Again, I don't know how that happened. That's amazing. Different kind of shoulder shrug. Different kind. This one is a lot of us, I think.
Speaker 1:Like I prayed, let's get the answer. I call this the judge Judy prayer. And finally, this one is the best representation for me personally. Maybe you have tried to pray or set up prayer as a practice in your life, and you just didn't quite make it. Maybe.
Speaker 1:Maybe you resonate with this. If you notice, he fails so badly, he doesn't even put his arms out to brace himself. He lets himself fall on his face. I feel like this is me not just in my own prayer life, but in a lot of things that I try in life. Regardless of where you might find yourself on this beautiful spectrum that I laid out for you tonight, I wanna move quickly to acknowledge that part of prayer is praying for others.
Speaker 1:Praying on behalf of others. Whether it's out loud in a group setting or quietly inside your own mind, your own heart, we have examples of this truth. It matters that we pray for others. Historically, prayer for others has been a significant ministry of the church and a priority of the church. In the coming weeks commons will be putting some things and people in place to help make prayer on Sundays more attainable and available for people.
Speaker 1:The gospel of John records in chapter 17, Jesus prays an entire chapter for us. He prays for others. I don't know what your experience of this is. Maybe someone has prayed for you and maybe you have sensed a powerful something happening. Something of that mystery.
Speaker 1:Maybe your experience of having someone pray for you or you praying for someone else is maybe represented in this tweet that I'm gonna read that really shows my sense of humor, but it kind of makes a point. Please stop praying for my grandpa. You're making him too strong. He broke out of the hospital and the cops say the tasers don't even work on him. I don't know if you've experienced something like that in the power of prayer.
Speaker 1:Or maybe this is just another example where you resonate with the shoulder shrug. And that's your experience. But as someone who believes the gospels as the story of Jesus and as someone who believes that the apostles went throughout the first century praying for and healing the sick just as Jesus did. I might not get it fully and I might not have seen it firsthand. I might not have been healed like I noticed or I might not have prayed for healing and noticed it in these ways.
Speaker 1:But I have to believe that it is important and that it does something. And what we can know is God desires healing and wholeness for his children. And I don't know what to say when it comes to why does it sometimes seem to work and sometimes not. If you prayed for your mom to be healed and she passed away anyway, and your friend prayed for her mom to be healed and her mom made it through. This is common.
Speaker 1:It's worth a much longer and more personal conversation than what we can do from the front on a Sunday. For those of you who have given up on prayer or even given up a little bit on God because of something like this, I'm sorry. What I have to say here is this, it takes faith to pray again. It takes unimaginable faith to hope again if you have prayed for healing and healing didn't come as you expected. But trying, opening up those lines of communication again, that builds faith and character.
Speaker 1:My faith growing just because I had a few prayers answered exactly the way I thought they should be. To me that's not faith, that's logic. That's even just math. But trying again, opening your heart again to the creator, beginning to trust and maybe even hope that prayer matters that takes true faith. I said before that we can't do this message without talking about the Lord's prayer.
Speaker 1:Because it is Jesus's answer to his disciples when they ask him, how do we pray? It's really concrete and it's very helpful to us. But like I said, we did that series last year. So what instead I want to point to in that story is how Jesus gets there in the first place. Luke chapter 11 starts Jesus comes back to his disciples from a time of prayer and they say to him Jesus teach us how to pray.
Speaker 1:We have to pay attention to this because these are men who would have already been praying for their whole lives. They saw something in the communion between Jesus and the God that they wanted to know as well. Teach us to pray. I imagine them asking this with a little bit of desperation, little bit of hope, a little bit of wonder. They noticed something in the connection and the relationship between Jesus and the father.
Speaker 1:So what if you are the person in the story today who doesn't want to pray out loud maybe which we already said is okay. Who resonates with the Elmo shoulder shrug. Who's been discouraged after praying for something and it didn't work the way you thought it would or not maybe you're not aware of the ways and people that are praying for you. Why would I encourage you to pray today? We come to the deepest reason for prayer.
Speaker 1:We are invited to know God and God wants you to know your worth to him. There's this horrible old way of communicating love represented in this, somewhat facetious analogy of a husband and a wife later on in life and the husband says, hey, when we got married I told you I loved you and if I change my mind I'll let you know. This is terrible. It's terrible. It's not a way to communicate love in any way that we would think is acceptable.
Speaker 1:It's logical though, but it's terrible. God did not do the work to create you and then is just waiting around for you to die and come to heaven or whatever that looks like. God is so good and God knows how good God is and God wants you to experience the goodness that he's made of. Now, we have said this line very frequently as of late from this teaching platform. God is always for you.
Speaker 1:In this case, God is for you finding him. God is for you hearing him and God wants to hear from you. Being a dad helps me understand some of these things in newer and brighter ways and I understand not everyone is or can be a dad, but hopefully you might find some sort of connection in this imperfect analogy. Analogy. But I have a newborn baby girl at home.
Speaker 1:Her name is Penny. And right now, I'm just keeping her alive because that's most of my job. So she's tiny and she can't really do anything for herself except sleep. So I feed her and I keep her warm and these are all important parts of being a dad. Basic dad stuff.
Speaker 1:It's really easy. No, I'm just kidding. It's not easy. But she can't talk. She can't talk.
Speaker 1:She can communicate in her own way. So I can care for her in these ways. She can cry when she wants me to feed her. She can scream when she's cold or she can smile and she wants to smash my heart into a billion pieces. But I want her to tell me about who she is and what she's thinking about.
Speaker 1:What she's wrestling with. What she's hoping for or what she's scared of. I want to have those conversations really bad And most of all, I want her to know how much I love her. So badly, I just want her to know that. I want her to know her worth to me.
Speaker 1:Please hear that as an encouragement. Because the way that I feel about Penny is a glimpse into how much the God of love feels about his children. All of us in this room. Maybe with a tinge of hope or encouragement, let's finish with a few suggestions about prayer. I'm paraphrasing Richard Foster.
Speaker 1:It's impossible to learn to pray from a book or a sermon. We learn to pray and meditate by praying and meditating. And Henry Nouwen says it maybe even a little bit better. The only way to pray is to pray and the only way to pray well is to pray much. And what about posture?
Speaker 1:Do I have to kneel at my bed at night? Do I have to lay on the floor? Do I have to clasp my hands, close my eyes? There is no law of posture. I say how does your body, how does the position of your body best help you try and spend some time with God?
Speaker 1:Also, there's maybe a portion of us in this room. Don't feel bad if you try to pray before you go to sleep and you fall asleep. This is another way that we want to release you from any shame or guilt. You might feel terrible about that, but be released of it and keep praying that way because maybe in those moments you are getting some sort of peace and it's helping you fall asleep and I would say be grateful for that. But maybe try another posture sometime when you're more awake.
Speaker 1:Whether it's listening to music, sitting in silence, reading, writing, listening to poetry, talking out loud in your car or your shower. The point is what are the moments where you can be still and know that God is God. Now that line comes from Psalm 46 and maybe you've heard that before but what does that even mean? Kierkegaard starts us off by telling us that prayer is not talking it is listening. But then I think for a lot of us the danger is if we're not just to talk maybe that means I just have to think about God.
Speaker 1:But again prayer is not just thinking about God. Sometimes we give thinking about God too much credit and comedian Emo Phillips says, I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body and then I realized who was telling me that. Prayer is not isolated from intellect or thinking. Ultimately prayer comes hard and I say that line and everyone's like, that's nice. What does that even mean comes from the heart?
Speaker 1:How do I explain what this means? I'm gonna quote Henry now and again for this. We have to realize that here the word heart is used in its full biblical meaning. In our Melu, the word heart has become a soft word that refers to the seat of the sentimental life. Expressions such as heartbroken and heartfelt show that we often think of the heart as the warm place where the emotions are located.
Speaker 1:In contrast to the cool intellect where our thoughts find their home. But, the word heart in the Jewish Christian tradition refers to the source of all physical, emotional, intellectual, volitional, and moral energies. When we pray from that place, from that heart, the goal is that we will let prayer remodel the whole of our person. Richard Foster says, we are unwilling to change we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic in our lives. The closer we become to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ.
Speaker 1:Being still and knowing that God is God. On one hand it's mysterious being invited into that stillness. But on the other hand it's about being reformed in practical ways that do genuinely end up affecting our actions in the way that we live. Because we hope to pray so that our hearts will become closer to that heartbeat of God and that our heart would better mirror the heart of God. There's a Russian mystic named Theophan the recluse and he says, to pray is to descend with the mind into the heart and there stand before the face of the Lord ever present all seeing within you.
Speaker 1:So, do I have some suggestions for you? Yes. Are they more relatable than what some Russian mystic said? Hopefully, they are. Even though I love that quote.
Speaker 1:Just a couple suggestions, pray the Lord's prayer regularly not just once a month when we do it here in church. Also paraphrase the Lord's prayer into your own Please try silence. It's a great starting place. It's really hard. It takes lots of time and practice but it's beautiful and we are met there when we commit to it.
Speaker 1:There's the Jesus prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God have mercy on me a sinner. This is an ancient prayer that puts us and Christ in the right positions and it opens us up to something. It's repetitive and it's it simulates breathing. It's simple and powerful and try reciting that throughout your day.
Speaker 1:And Eugene Peterson says reading the Psalms is how most Christians for most of the Christian centuries have matured in prayer. These are just some of my favorite suggestions because I'm on stage and I get to suggest some. There's so many more and there are so many others that they may connect with you better than they connect with me or someone else in this space. Either as a starting point or as a fresh start or something new in your life. Discipline is like a dirty word to some people.
Speaker 1:They don't like that unless it refers to working out which clearly I use that word in that context all the time. Practice is maybe a better word but it's still not everyone's favorite word. The bottom line though is this, please be encouraged. Please feel invited to pray not because you're not doing it enough or because you have to do better or try harder but feel invited to pray because the one who invites us is inviting us to know the heights and depths of a character that is made from the deepest of all love. And that God of all love wants so badly for us to find out how much we're worth to him.
Speaker 1:Because it's beautiful that humanity's greatest desire to be fully known and fully loved is actually met in God. So no guilt and no shame. No form of prayer that's the one right way because everything that we are right now is exactly what God loves. So let's find him and spend time with him. Would you pray with me one more time?
Speaker 1:Lord Jesus Christ would you help us find encouragement from tonight from the rest of our time Encouragement that you are the God of love who invites us into your presence. That your presence is good and welcoming and invites us just as we are. Invites us to know you the goodness of everything that you are. God help us feel released from the guilt and shame. Give us some courage despite what our experiences and attitudes might have been in the past.
Speaker 1:Give us some courage to try again. Find some hope. Reach out. Open our hearts to you, the creator of us. Would you honor that if we do that?
Speaker 1:In your name we pray. Amen.