17 Pentecost 07 Proper 20

A young boy called the priest of an Episcopal church across from his home to ask the priest to come by to pray for his mother who had been very ill with the flu. The pastor knew the family and was aware they had been attending another church down the road. So the priest asked, "Shouldn't you be asking Pastor Simon down the road to come by to pray with your mom?"

The young boy replied, "Yeah, but we didn't want to take the chance that he might catch whatever this is that Mom has."

I’m going to talk about something I hope you catch – Prayer. Our second lesson from St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy says “First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all.” The word “supplications” has as its root meaning a prayer that rises out of a need and a pleading to God to supply it. The word “prayers” has in mind the idea of worship and reverence toward God. It is communicating with God as an act of worship. The word “intercessions” appears only twice in the New Testament. It implies an advocacy, but also of empathy, sympathy, compassion, and involvement.

“Thanksgiving” expresses an attitude that we have for the salvation that we have received from God and that which he offers to others who will receive it.

People often wonder why I talk so much about prayer and why I insist on our members praying. The main reason I do so is because Jesus insisted on it and practiced it. If you were to read the whole book of Luke you would be tempted to rename it the Gospel of Prayer. It is about the prayer life of Jesus.

The other evangelists say that Jesus was in the Jordon and the Spirit descended on him as a dove. Luke says it was while Jesus was praying that the Spirit descended.

The other evangelists say Jesus chose twelve disciples. Luke says it was after he spent a night in prayer that he chose the twelve.

Two of the Gospel writers, Matthew and Mark, say Jesus went on a mount and was transfigured. Luke says it was while he was praying.

Matthew, Mark, and John say Jesus died on a cross. Luke says that even when he was nailed to the cross Jesus was praying for those who persecuted him.

Three of the gospel writers describe Jesus’ death. Luke alone describes Jesus, at his death, praying to the Father to receive his Spirit.

It seemed Jesus was praying constantly. On one occasion the scripture says that the disciples went to bed and Jesus went to pray- as was his custom. It was Jesus’ custom to pray.

I was thinking, Jesus is the Son of God and he was definitely anointed for his ministry. If Jesus needed all that time in prayer, don’t you and I need time in prayer?

It is interesting that the Word of God says in verse four of our reading that God our Savior desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. It doesn’t say that he desires some to be saved, or only those predisposed to Christ. No, he desires all people to be saved, pagans, unbelievers, Hindus, Muslims, Episcopalians, all people. How are they saved? The Bible says that salvation is found in no other name than the name of Jesus. That is why we are told to go into all the world and tell them about Jesus. That is why Jesus died on the cross, because God loved THE WORLD so much that he sent his only Son that all who believe in him will have everlasting life. We are to pray for a lost world to come to know Jesus.

Obviously, in some inscrutable sense, God's desire for the world's salvation is different from His eternal saving purpose. We can understand this to some degree from a human perspective; after all, our purposes frequently differ from our desires. We may desire, for example, to spend a day at leisure, yet a higher purpose compels us to go to work instead. Similarly, God's saving purposes transcend His desires. (There is a crucial difference, of course: We might be compelled by circumstances beyond our control to choose what we do not desire. But God's choices are determined by nothing other than His own sovereign, eternal purpose).

St. Paul goes on to say that there is one mediator between God and human kind, not Buddha, not Mohammed, not Hare Krishna, not Joseph Smith, not L.Ron Hubbard, not anyone but Jesus, “who gave himself as a ransom FOR ALL.”

The Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms defines the term “mediator” in this way – “Christ, as the God-man, is the person who fulfills the conditions requisite to the reconciliation of God and sinful mankind. His human nature is capable of performing a redemptive act representative of and in the place of mankind, and the divine nature is capable both of sustaining the human nature throughout the ordeal of its saving work and of rendering the work performed through the instrumentality of the human nature of infinite value by reason of the infinite worth and power of his divinity.” In other words, the only way humanity could be reconciled to the holy God is by a person who is both man and God doing what we humans could not do to bring us to peace with God.

Our prayer is to be offered to God through the Mediator. Our prayers do not need to be offered through a saint or an angel or through the Virgin Mary, because there is one mediator between God and man. Now I’m not telling you that you can’t pray to a saint or an angel or to Mary, I’m simply asking, if there is one mediator between God and man, and Scripture encourages us to pray through him, then why would we feel the need to bring our requests to God through anyone else but Jesus?

Sometimes people think that God is so busy that he only can listen to the prayers of those closest to him like a saint or Mary. Sometimes we think that since we are part of a communion of saints and we ask saints on earth to pray for us that we should be able to ask saints in heaven to pray for us. We have somehow convinced ourselves that either we are not worthy to bring our requests to God or that perhaps someone holier than we are will have a better chance in gaining an answer to our prayer.

The New Testament is clear that Christ has broken down any barrier that has existed between God and the people of Christ. We have access to the Father by His Holy Spirit. St. Paul encourages us to present our requests directly to God. We need no other mediator between ourselves and God. No where in Scripture do we find people praying to someone in heaven for someone on earth. We do find prayers being offered on earth for the needs of others. But we are all praying through one Mediator.

You may be saying right now, “I want to become a person of prayer but I’m just not wired that way. I wasn’t born with the patience to pray.

The story is told of a group of tourists visiting a picturesque village in Europe when they saw an old man sitting by a fence. In a rather patronizing way, one of the visitors asked, “Were any great men born in this village?” Without looking up the old man replied, “No, only babies.”

Many of you want to be people of prayer, but you feel like a baby when it comes to prayer. May I suggest that is a good thing? At least you know you haven’t arrived and you have a long way to go to grow up in prayer. I suspect that there may be some here that wonder if prayer really works or if it makes any sort of difference.

Dr. Raymond Edmond, one time professor at Wheaton College, was in his day known as one of the greatest Christian educators in this country. He tells of an experience he had while he was in Uruguay as a missionary.

“I hadn’t been there long before I was sick and dying. I was so near death that they had already dug my grave. I had great beads of sweat on my brow and there was a death rattle in my throat. But suddenly I sat straight up in my bed and said to my wife, “Bring me my clothes.” Nobody knew what had happened. I was healed.

“Many years later I was retelling the story in Boston. Afterward, a little old lady with a small dog-eared, beaten up book, approached me and asked, ‘What day did you say you were dying? What time was it in Uruguay? What time would it have been in Boston?’

“When I answered her, her wrinkled face lit up. Pointing to her book, she said, ‘There it is, you see? At 2 a.m. God said to get up and pray – the devil’s trying to kill Raymond Edmond in Uruguay.’ And she had gotten up and prayed.”

Duncan Campbell told the story of hearing a farmer in his field who was praying. He was praying about the nation of Greece. Afterward, he asked the farmer why he was praying. The man said, ‘I don’t know. I had a burden in the spirit and God said, ‘you pray, there is someone in Greece that is in a bad situation.’ I prayed until I got a release.’ Two or three years later the farmer was in a meeting listening to a missionary. The man described a time when he was working in Greece. He had been in serious trouble. The time? Two or three years ago. The men compared notes and discovered it was the very same day that the farmer had been burdened to pray for someone he didn’t even know in Greece.

These are just a few of the stories of answered prayer. Some don’t pray because they have never seen an answer to prayer like these. Some don’t pray because they have become convinced that prayer is a waste of time.

If, as Andrew Murray taught, Christ intended prayer to be the great power by which his Church would do his work, then certainly the neglect of prayer by the Church is the greatest reason for its powerlessness. He added, “Satan will bring forth all his power to prevent us from becoming people of prayer.”

Always remember, that we never merit prayer’s answers. We do not earn God’s response by anything we do. We do not get answers because of physical exertion, praying in a loud voice, or working up some sort of emotional experience. We pray because Jesus and the Apostles tell us to pray. We have faith in God and we leave the answers up to God.

I want to challenge you to pray for the Church in a way you have never prayed for the Church. Pray for those who are outside of the Faith that they may come to the true Faith. Pray for those who are outside of Christ that they may come to the light of the gospel and be saved.

I echo the final words of our second lesson today, “I desire then that in every place men and women should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or quarreling.”