Keep Praying

Luke 11:1-13  
7-24-16

 

On his final trip to Jerusalem,

Jesus is teaching his disciples about ministry.

And disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray

Just like John the Baptist taught his disciples how to pray.

I wonder what John the Baptist’s prayer was like.

My guess is that it was very different from Jesus prayer.

 

The prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples,

is just about the same one that we pray every week.

There’s a little more of it in Matthew

It’s almost hard to think anything objective

about this prayer because it’s so familiar to us,

It’s almost a part of us.

 

Jesus prayer is more of an outline than an full-blown prayer.

It sets out the things that we should be praying for:

-That God's name would be holy,
-That God’s kingdom would come to us.
-That God would give us what we need to live every day
-That we be forgiven.
- And that our time on earth is would not be too hard.

That’s pretty much it.

It’ beauty is in its simplicity.

 

But maybe more important than

what Jesus taught the disciples to pray

40 Nights 
Jeorge Cocco Santangelo

is how Jesus told them to pray: Persistently.
Don’t give up. Don’t stop. Don’t take a break.

Keep doing it. Jesus says:

 

“Ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find, 

knock and the door will be opened.

Everyone who asks receives.”

 

This piece of scripture 

has always given me trouble.

And I know I’m not the only one.

Now I know that many people throughout history,

many in this room even, have had prayers answered.

Miracles. Things that should not have happened

and prayer is the only reason.

 

But there are also many prayers that have not been answered.

 

For thousands of years, Christians have prayed for peace

for justice, but once one problem is solved,

another springs up somewhere.

People have knocked their knuckles bare,

asking for the illness to go away and their loved ones to live
And still people die.

 

People have prayed to overcome addictions that they never beat.

That they would be able to make the rent.
And yet people become homeless.

There are people who have prayed end their abusive relationships,

and it just doesn’t happen.

 

People around the world have been praying for the

people of Ukraine and that the aggression against them would end.

But this war does not seem to be close to ending.

 

Lots of good, honest, genuine prayers that really seem in line

with God’s will for this world have not been answered.

All of us at times have wondered what God was doing .

All of us have sometimes felt like we’ve asked for an egg,

and God gave us a scorpion.

 

And to suggest that prayers that don’t get answered

are just not done with enough persistence or faith

or that their not the right type or quality of prayers,

is ridiculous and cruel and not the point.

  

Even Jesus, in this very Gospel, fervently prayed that God would

take away the pain and death that he knew was coming to him in his

crucifixion, and God did not, but still Jesus tells us to pray.

 

As I said last week, it’s important to

remember the question that was asked, and this question was “how do we pray?” The answer Jesus gives is “all the time.” Even if you don’t get what you want, there is purpose and power in your prayer.

 

Jesus tells them the parable:

“Suppose one of you has a friend and you go to him at midnight

and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread”

 

So do you often knock on people’s doors at midnight?

Would you do it to ask for some bread to entertain guests?

I know times have changed, but even back in Jesus time,

I think that knocks at midnight were reserved only for emergencies.

Three loaves of bread to entertain some people is not an emergency.

I would be uncomfortable and very apprehensive to do that.

That is unless they were a very, very good friend.

 

Then I would know that I could knock on their door at midnight

and have a silly request and they wouldn’t call the police on me,

or gossip about me the next day with the neighbors,

or think any less of me in the morning.

 

That would actually have to be a best friend, a family member 

a parent even. One who would see my problems as their problems.

So the best gift of Jesus story would not be actually

getting the bread for entertaining guests.

The best gift would be knowing you had a friend

who’s door you could knock on at midnight.  

And that is the best gift of prayer.

 

So many of us only wait until those terrible crisis situations to pray.

We only come to God with our most desperate problems.

We ONLY knock on that door at midnight and hope to get an answer.

 

But prayer is the conversation between us and God

and conversation is vital to any good relationship.

It’s not just coming to God with emergency needs

(have you ever had a friend like that?!)

Prayer is us telling God our thoughts and hopes,

our worries and concerns, our joys and delights.

Prayer is sharing our secrets with our friend.

And it’s also God sharing God’s dreams and hopes with us,

God sharing God’s reassurances and forgiveness with us.

It is how God reaches us and teaches us loves us.

 

And prayer is something that we share with each other too.

No matter what denomination, or religion,

no matter what our political ideas or opinions,

prayer is something we share with every person of faith

and a lot of people without faith too.

We pray to remind ourselves that we are God’s children.

 

We might never get the satisfaction of knowing why or

prayers didn’t get answered, but the more we pray, the more

we have the satisfaction of knowing that God is with us.
Even through the most challenging times of our lives.

 

Elie Wiesel was the Jewish writer who survived

the Holocaust and was at Auschwitz.
He remembered that while he was in the camp,

the older prisoners created a rabbinic court of law

and the purpose was to indict God.

 

Their charge was that they had been faithful,

they had prayed, they had done what God required and still

they were suffering unimaginable pain and anguish.

 

The trial lasted several nights.

Witnesses were heard, evidence was gathered,

and a unanimous verdict was reached:  They declared God guilty of crimes against them, creation, and humanity.

 

Wiesel said, “Then after a long silence, the Rabbi there

looked up at the sky, and said 'It's time for evening prayers,'”

Even though they were angry and found God guilty,

They still recited the evening prayer service

as they had done every night.

They prayed because it was time to pray.

 

We pray in joy, we pray in sorrow, we pray in anger,

we pray because we have no one else to talk to.

We pray quietly, loudly, in desperation, and just because.

We pray at the appointed time in our worship.

We pray before meals, and in the morning, and at night.

We pray sometimes because there is nothing left to do.

We pray even though we don’t always feel like it.

Sometimes we pray just because it is time to pray.

 

I’m guessing the biggest difference between the prayer that

John the Baptist taught his disciples and the one that Jesus taught,

and Jesus prayer would be the first line of Jesus prayer:

“Our Father.”

The disciples knew that Jesus had a special relationship with God,

But in this prayer, Jesus is telling them, and us, that we do too.

 

God is that one we can trust with all our problems.

All our hopes and dreams and disappointments.

The one that we can go to at any hour of the day or night.

God is our special friend at midnight,

 

Let’s pray to God now:

Gracious God, our heavenly father, and mother, and friend.

We thank you for always being there for us.

For knowing our faults, our troubles, our mistakes and sins

and loving us always anyway.

We thank you for the gift of prayer,

the prayers that we share in private

the prayer that we share together with others.

We thank you that we can knock on

your door at midnight and always get an answer. Amen.

For All the Marthas

 Luke 10: 38-42    July 17, 2022

 

Are any of you here do-ers?

Do you relate to Martha?

Do you like to get things done and be productive?

Do you like to keep yourself busy doing things?
Do you like to get ahead of things?

One Thing
Molle Walker Freeman

Do you like to make and complete a to do list?

Do you like to be responsible and accomplished?

Do you like serving others with helpful tasks?

Making a difference? getting that check list done?

Turning your faith into action in solid and real ways?

Good.

 

Your service is valued, and necessary.

I’m not here to tell you to stop doing that

and I don’t think Jesus is telling you to do that either.

And not just because I’m a pastor and churches

depend on people like you doing things.

But because Martha’s way is one way to serve.

God needs our work and tasks.

I’m not going to scold anyone for being like that.

I don’t think Jesus was at Martha’s house to do that either.

 

And why would we want to do that?

We serve a God and a Messiah who was incarnational.

Whose love wasn’t just an airy fairy kind of statement of love.

It was real, it was solid and practical.

The Word became flesh and lived among us

and our words are expected to become flesh too.

 

We say that love is not just feelings or sentiment.

Love is shown in day in, day out actions.

Wiping snotty noses, giving hugs, taking out the garbage.

We just got finished with Jesus parable of the Good Samaritan.

Being a neighbor is stopping to help, tending wounds,

and lifting someone out of the dirt.

It’s not just saying “God loves you, but I’m going

to hear a lecture on Jesus, so I don’t have time for your problem.”

 

So Martha putting together an olive and cheese platter

and sweeping the floor for her guest was not just idle busy work,

it was her way of showing her love and respect for a special guest.

It was also very much her job and duty, and not really a choice she made.

 

In Martha’s time,

women were not expected to just sit and talk to guests.

They were expected to be up and doing stuff,

making the meal, getting what guests needed, cleaning up

 

Martha is doing exactly what is expected of her.

She is filling the role that women had filled forever.

Maintaining the home, making the food, and raising the children.

 

And frankly, we’re not too far away from that mindset.

In my last church one of the major objections of opening

up their child care center in 1980 was that in doing so,

the church was encouraging women to work outside the home.

 

In Martha’s time and beyond, women did all the home

stuff so that men could run the business that got what house needed

and also so the men could be the spiritual guides for the family.

 

The man was to attend and participate

in the prayer services, he was to go and spend

the afternoon at the synagogue and listen to the teachers,

and contemplate God’s will for everyone

and then come home and teach his family.

The men were supposed to sit at the teacher’s feet.

The men were disciples, the women were supposed to

serve so that the men could do that.

 

So then we come to Martha’s home.

And it’s referred to as Martha’s home which is very interesting.

and she’s doing exactly what is expected of her.

She’s doing the “right thing”.

She’s filling her duties, she’s earning her keep

She’s doing what is necessary to keep the system running.

 

It’s Mary who’s not acting appropriately.

She’s not doing, she’s just sitting and listening.

She probably looks lazy and presumptuous by a lot of

people’s standards those days.

Certainly, she’s not doing what was typical for a woman to do.

 

So Martha wants help yes. But I think she’s got this.

What I think Martha mostly wants is for

her sister to come back and be normal again.

She wants her to fill her expected role.

And she wants Jesus to back her up on this.

“Jesus, are you just going to let her be crazy like this?

You’re the teacher, tell her to get back to what she should be doing.”

And the first hearers of this story

would probably have been with Martha.

Mary is acting weird. Jesus, tell her to stop it.

 

But Jesus won’t. Jesus actually says that

Mary has made a good choice.

This is exactly what Mary should be doing.

This is exactly what women should be doing.

And maybe Martha could do that sometimes too.

To come and sit at Jesus feet and hear words of

love and forgiveness and not worry about the world,

not worry about the world’s expectations,

about the role that she’s supposed to fill.

 

I don’t think this story from Luke’s gospel

is a statement from Jesus about how the church

should be weighted towards worship and learning

instead of hospitality and service to the outside world.

Although some preachers have tried to do that.

 

And I don’t’ think that Jesus is scolding the doers of the world,

the social workers, the service project people,

the habitat for humanity, or food pantry people,

the Sunday school teacher, or anyone who is moved

to do the work that needs to be done

this is not Jesus telling everyone to just sit down

and pray and read the bible.

And I don’t think the world is divided into Marthas and Marys

We’re not divided in to busy workers and contemplative thinkers

and this is not Jesus saying “yay” for the Marys of the world

and “nay” to the Martha’s.

I think the truth is that we’re all Marthas and Marys.

 

We all have that Martha side of us.

We are driven by our need to fill our role

We live under the pressure of what the world

wants and needs us to do, at home, at work, at church,

in our communities.

 

We stress about our to-do list and get frustrated and distracted.

We set out to accomplish what the world expects us to accomplish,

and when it doesn’t happen we get filled with anxiety,

and self-doubt and we wonder whether

we’re worthy of Jesus company.

 

But also have that Mary inside us.

That part that often needs to be coaxed out.

To be reassured to be told that

just sitting and being is good enough.

 

Sometimes when we’re the one who is running distracted,

Jesus reminds us “Martha, Martha.

You’re trying to do too much.

I don’t need you to do everything.

Your presence with me is enough.”

 

Jesus reminds all of us at times,

it is enough to just sit at Jesus feet,

and hear the word of God --

the word that says that we are loved

not for what we do,

but just because we are God’s.

It is enough just to sit and be with Jesus.

 

Who is My Neighbor

 Luke 10:25-37 July 10, 2022 Rev. June Wilkins

 

The good Samaritan is one of the most familiar of Jesus’ parables

So much so that the term Good Samaritan is a cliché in our language. 

There’s “Good Samaritan hospitals” There’s “good Samaritan laws”. 

Even someone who’s never heard of this story – or even the bible– 

knows what a “good Samaritan” is.

It means someone who does something good for a stranger in need.

 

That is usually our understanding of this parable too.

Be nice to strangers. That’s the whole thing. 

No need to go on with the sermon, right?

 

But does Jesus ever just give a nice story with a swell easily

Wrapped up moral, does he?

Of course not.

 

Especially not to a lawyer who it says is trying to test Jesus.

Now when it says lawyer,

it’s not exactly like we understand lawyers today.

Back in Jesus’ day, Jewish lawyers were those people who

understood and interpreted the law of Moses.

They were religious leaders too.

 

The question this lawyer asks doesn’t seem too outrageous.

It’s a question that we all want to know the answer to:

“What do we have to do to inherit eternal life?”

But Jesus knows that this man knows the answer, already.

He works with the law every day. He has studied and interpreted it.

It’s an answer that the lawyer has heard since he was a boy.

So Jesus throws the question back to him.

What’s written in the law, lawyer?

 

And the lawyer says it:

“Love the lord your God with all your heart soul strength and mind

and love your neighbor has yourself.”

 

Jesus says, Sure that’s perfect.  Now go do it, that’s the hard part.

 

And I’m sure if the guy had left it at that,

we probably wouldn’t have heard about this story

But the guy doesn’t leave it at that. 

 

It says that the man wanted to justify himself.

In other words, he wanted to make sure that he had

already done what was necessary to inherit eternal life.

He wanted to check it off his list.

He wanted to go away knowing that he was

secure and had earned it already.

 

This shouldn’t be foreign to us, we do it all the time.

Just read the bible for a little while and see how you do it in your head.

 

So the man asks the question to justify himself,

“Who is my neighbor?”

The man was hoping that Jesus would answer with something like:

“Your family, your friends, the people who live next door,

anyone who looks like you, those who are culturally similar,

or at least tolerable to you, those people who don’t make you feel uncomfortable, 

the people who you already like.

That is your neighbor” He would have loved for Jesus to tell him that. 

He would have been able to justify himself.

 

But Jesus doesn’t let him do that.

Jesus never gives a simple comfortable answer.

Jesus always has something up his sleeve.

 

So Jesus tells the story of a traveler

on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

This was a notoriously dangerous road.

Someone was bound to get robbed and beaten up on this road.

And the story does not disappoint.

He’s left on the side of the road half dead.

 

Then Jesus says that a Levite and a Priest go by.

As you might know, Levites and priests are the Jewish 

religious leaders the dedicated temple workers,

the ones that everyone looks up to and assumes

will follow the law and ways of God.

 

But when they come across this other guy in the road who needs help, 

they both cross to the other side of the road to avoid him.

Now we don’t know why. Maybe they were in a rush.

Maybe they were afraid, it was a bad neighborhood after all.

Maybe they didn’t want to get involved. There could be

countless reasons why. Think of all the various reasons

that you or I have not helped a person in need when we’ve

seen them. The point is, the church people did not help.

 

And then here’s where Jesus delivers the whammy.

Now everyone knows, since the beginning of time,

that all stories happen in threes.

 

And if the first two guys fell through,

then the last would be the hero of the story.

So the people hearing Jesus story

are ready for the hero to come in.

And that hero was a Samaritan.

 

Samaritans were hated by Israelites.

They were originally Israelites, but years ago had stayed behind

in a gentile land and married gentiles.

The Good Samaritan
Dinah Roe Kendall

They were looked down on by Jewish people,

They were seen as second-class citizens.

 

Most Jewish people didn’t include Samaritans

in the scope of God’s favor.
For a Jewish person to call someone a Samaritan was an insult.

 

And yet that is how Jesus’ story goes, The Samaritan comes near, 

the Samaritan is moved with pity. The Samaritan helps the man, 

takes care of him and saves his life. 

The Samaritan is the one who fulfills the law to love your neighbor as yourself. 

The Samaritan is the one who acts like a neighbor. 

And is also the one that the hearers of the story should be like, 

should emulate, should aspire to be like.

A shocker to all that lawyer, and the disciples

and all the other people hearing this story.

 

For Christians, this story might be rephrased:

A person was beaten up and left for dead,

A great pastor crosses to the other side of the street to avoid them,

and a beloved church member crosses to the other side to avoid them,

just then – and then we can fill in the blank ourselves

-- whoever we look down on, whoever we might believe

should be living up to God’s grace a little more,

whoever we consider a second-class citizen.

Not worthy of the treatment we receive. . .

an ex-convict, an atheist, a Russian soldier, an illegal immigrant,
an activist, the prostitute, the teen who rifled through your car last week and stole all your loose change, just then, that person, whoever you think is ruining America, whoever you don’t want moving in across the street from you, that person is moved with pity

and comes over to help the one in the road.

Now, this a super-clever story on Jesus part.

Jesus could have easily made the Samaritan the person that

was beaten up and left on the road for dead

And then the moral would be to help that person.

That is often the position that we put people who

are oppressed, hated, or outcast when we’re trying to include them.

We make them people that need help because

they’re so hopeless and they’ll never get anywhere

without our good guidance like ours.

They just need help to learn to be like us.

Learn our way. Poor, poor Samaritan.

 

But no. Jesus takes the Samaritan, the hated one,

and puts him in the role of the one who helps

The one who is to be admired, emulated, imitated, learned from.

Jesus tells the lawyer, “Go and do likewise.”

Go and be like him. Find your eternal life in that whole arrangement.

 

Remember, the original question was

“What must I do to gain eternal life?”

And here is another layer to this amazing story.

Jesus is saying with this story that our salvation will not

be found with the religious leaders,

or the religious institutions.

 

Our salvation is found in the outsider,

the one who is despised, outcast, pushed aside.

Our salvation is found in the second class citizen,

whoever that may be at the time.

Not just to look and to help and have pity on,

but to emulate, to learn from, partner with.

That’s the new system Jesus has ordained.

In other words, for the people of God,

Salvation is found by looking outside the people of God.

 All this with a simple story about a man who gets robbed.

 

Jesus tells this man that we cannot put a box or limits on God’s love. 

God will be working wherever God is needed, God will be on the dangerous roads, 

in the streets of the city, in another country.

 

God will even work through those that we have labeled as unholy,

even through those that are not in our little exclusive group of saved people. 

And, on occasion, God will even work in and through us,

the people of Christ’s church

 

Jesus is love and mercy,

Jesus has rescued us, cleaned our wounds,

taken us to a safe place, and paid for our protection.

Jesus was the one who was despised and looked down on

and he was crucified for it.

 

Jesus has shown us how to be neighbors to each other,

by being our neighbor first, even when we don’t deserve it.

 

And that love and mercy

is what moves us to go and do likewise.

 

The Laborers Are Few

 Luke 10 1-11, 16-20

Come Unto Me
Wayne Pascal

July 3, 2022

 

The first church I was pastor at

had an attendance of about 350 people when I left.

They had choir of about 30 people and

four paid section leaders, three organs,

a preschool with nearly 200 children,

over 30 young people in the youth group.

150 children would come to Vacation Bible School.

I had to do a count for some reason and

the church had 36 paper towel dispensers.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

 

But every moment of my 8 years at that church

that congregation worried because we weren’t bigger.

Because  we didn’t have as many people

in church on Sunday as we used to,

or because our confirmation classes weren’t as large.

 

There is something hard wired in us,

maybe it’s in this country, that tells us

that bigger is better. That the largest

companies and institutions have obviously

done “something right” to get the customers,

or the attendance, or the money, or the notoriety and fame.

We have the same feeling about churches.

 

It’s a train of thought that is hard to get off the track of.

That is what we all are supposed to aspire to,

and all are supposed to be.

The first will be first, and best, and that is how

we all do God’s will, by being biggest, or bigger

and then, and only then, will we do our best work.

 

We look back on the “good old days” and

those good old days are usually “good old days”

because those are the days when we were bigger.

Size matters. And bigger is better.

 

But today in Luke we’ve got Jesus sending his apostles out

into the world to spread the word of God around.

There aren’t too many bits of advice from Jesus on how

the church should look or behave in the world, so this one sticks out.

 

Jesus doesn’t so much give them the content of their message

as much as the method they should use and what they might find.

He admits that he’s sending them out into the world

like lambs in the midst of wolves.

And yet he sends them out only in groups of two.

 

In other words, go lean. Only two people,

There were 70 of them. Jesus could have sent them out

all together so they could stave off those wolves.

They could have had power in numbers, at least they

could have had a choir and a softball team.

 

And Jesus he gives them some further instructions,

“Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.”

In other words, don’t even bring any lunch money,

no extra clothes, no change of shoes,

And don’t bring your large paid staff, or programs,

And no paper towel dispensers.

 

Just don't carry any of it, Jesus says.

You don’t need any of that.

You just need you, and not a lot of you either.

Just you. Just two of you. That’s all you need.

 

We have confused what the world values with what God values.

We have confused the stuff of our institutions with ministry.

We have tried to make the earmarks of success in the world

the earmarks of success in the ministry of Jesus Christ.

But that doesn’t always work in the kingdom of God.

 

Sometimes maintenance of a large institution

forces churches to put the work of the Spirit second.

Often the expectations of a larger population forces us to

second guess God’s call to us.

A lot of times, people fall through the cracks in a larger church.

 

I’m sure there are large churches that do great ministry

but I know there are large churches that do things

that greatly wound many of their people.

And there are small churches that fall into those same

categories. I’m not saying that one is better than the other.

What I’m saying is that size doesn’t matter to Jesus.

 

The world wants more and more and more.

But Jesus doesn’t ask that of us.

What does God demand?

Two of us. Two people meeting another person

is all we need to do God’s work.

 

We have been meeting about our church,

talking mostly so far about our past and history

and this week we said Goodbye to the people we miss.

Those who have left or died. We are realizing 

that we are not the size were at one time. Almost no church is.

We can’t do things the way we used to do it.

Good. That will force us to think and be present.

Size doesn’t matter.

We are amazing and resilient and a powerful force

for Jesus here on this Island at all sizes.

 

Jesus doesn’t need us to be big.

Jesus just needs us and our voice to

carry his message into the world.

Two by two, carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.

We are perfect for ministry just as we are.

 

We are at our best in the church when we are vulnerable.

When we lose our defenses, our agendas, our programs,

and our pre-conceived notions. When we come together,

person to person and relate to one another.

When we come to our neighborhoods with empty hands

and say, “what do you think we should do now?”

When we bet our lives on the movement of the Spirit

and the generosity of those we touch.

We can do that no matter what size we are.

 

There is a pastor who was talking about their congregation.

They have 10 people in the pew on a good Sunday.

And a couple of those 10 people do a ministry

visiting inmates in the prison that is near them.

They met an old man there named Joe who

was in prison for a murder he committed when he was young.

He’s in prison for life and will never be released.

The pastor led a bible study about Moses and Joe

was moved by the fact that Moses had committed

murder and God still used him to do things.

He said he wanted to be used by God to do good things.

The pastor said that a couple weeks later, he opened the 

mail in the office and it was from the prison. Inside there were

15 little money orders from all different prisoners.

The money was to send the one child they had in the church


to summer camp. Size doesn’t matter.

 

The kingdom of God has come near us.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Thanks be to God.