PRAYER WELL-PRAYED. Is. 56:1, 6-8; Rom. 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matt. 15: There is a very sweet man he s probably across the street right now in

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1 PRAYER WELL-PRAYED Is. 56:1, 6-8; Rom. 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matt. 15:10-28 There is a very sweet man he s probably across the street right now in the education building at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting a big bear of a man whom I ve gotten to know pretty well over the years. He has been in recovery, which is to say not using drugs, for some 16 or 17 years and has built a good business for himself. This man comes from a terribly broken family, where there is much drug abuse and where members are in jail for all sorts of violent crimes, including murder. He cares about these people and tries to do his best for them, but the circumstances are bad and he worries about his relatives. This man comes in to see me occasionally to inquire about using space in the church for an event and usually ends up staying for awhile. He is an ignorant believer. In saying this I mean no disrespect, but it s a fact. He s vaguely Christian, some church or other in his background somewhere, but mostly his faith is superstition in the name of God. The last time he was in we talked about prayer. He s a pray-er, who prays that God will do all sorts of things for him to improve his life help him lose weight, get him out of a bad relationship, fix his family, make it all better. He would deny that he is looking to God to help him win the lottery, but if you talk to him for awhile, you will see that he does think

2 that this is the kind of thing God can do in answer to prayer. I don t have any sense that he prays beyond his immediate needs and relationships. It would not occur to him to pray for people in Zimbabwe or Iraq or for an end to hunger in the world or such, not because such prayers wouldn t be at least as worthy as prayers to win the lottery, but because these things do not affect him directly or urgently. I do not mean to suggest that he is not a good man. But he is religiously ignorant and thinks of prayer as a kind of magic to get God on his side and afford him the benefits such influence might bring. I mentioned to him that the best wisdom of people who have throughout the centuries thought most deeply about prayer and made a practice of it Jews Christians, Muslims, people of all the great religious traditions is that prayer is not about getting God on my side but rather about getting me on God s side. It is God s will that is to be done, and it is my job to pray that this would be so and act according to what I pray. This is unfortunately something that is either not known or frequently forgotten by the great mass of believers, the consequence of which is that religion is made into superstition and wishful thinking. In the voice of God Isaiah writes, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. It s the phrase for all peoples that is of central importance in this passage, the message being that the religion of Israel is no longer a tribal religion, a faith that belongs only to Jews. Isaiah speaks to a wider religious vision, one that is available to all who would choose it. Those who choose it will, Isaiah (again in the voice of God) promises, be joyful in my house of prayer. It took a long time for Israel to learn this lesson, and it seems that

3 even Jesus, some 730 years after Isaiah, still did not know it, at least as he is represented in the story of the healing of the daughter of the Canaanite woman. A Canaanite is not a Jew, and Jesus first response to the appeal of the Canaanite woman is that his power is dedicated only to the help of Israel and specifically to those he calls the lost sheep of Israel. He goes on to suggest rather heartlessly that those who are not his people are hardly better than dogs, which is a great insult that adds to the poor woman s injury in having a sick daughter. There are commentators who will tell you that this is all show on Jesus part to teach his disciples that his ministry is to all who are faithful to the vision of God he brings, but I think it might be better to read this passage and others like it in the New Testament more realistically as indicating a change of mind in Jesus. He had been brought up and trained to think that the love of God was the exclusive possession of those who received the law of God through Moses. But in the course of his travels and his meditations and the controversies that he has with religious authorities as represented in the New Testament by the Pharisees, it seems he came to understand his mission and message differently. The story of the healing of the Canaanite woman s daughter thus represents a turning point for him. But let s go back to the business of prayer, for prayer is, after all, the business of you who come to this place which is dedicated as a house of prayer. This should not be taken to suggest that prayers get heard here better than anywhere else, that a person has a better chance of getting prayers answered by God in this place or even of better communicating with God in this place than in

4 other places, that this is somehow a privileged site, like a convenience store with a record of selling winning lottery tickets. This is a house of prayer in a very specific sense, and it is this: those of us who come here do so to pray that we would be as Christ to our neighbors and that the world would reflect the love of God as we know it in the life of Christ Jesus. That is the intention of the prayers to which this place is dedicated, whether the prayers are the liturgies we use or the hymns we sing or our meditations on the biblical lessons or matters raised in the sermons or by participating in the sacraments or by actually saying our prayers together in public. We who come here are being schooled in prayer in the practice of praying together. We may come with some very particular concerns about our lives and the lives of our loved ones, particular fears and hopes, demons we want cast out. The answer to these prayers is the peace of mind that comes in the knowledge that we are the creatures of God s love, which is experienced in being together in this community helping one another to live faithful lives, whatever our circumstances. This will, I suppose, be cold comfort for those who come looking for magic and special interventions on their behalf, but that is not, as I say, the wisdom of prayer, and plainly, it is not the way things work. As part of our worship, our prayer, today we are celebrating the baptism of Claire Jasper Xiaorong Krueckeberg, a little girl with a lot of name, child of Mary Cornish and John Krueckeberg by way of China. The sacrament of Holy Baptism brings Claire into the Christian community of the Church, the body of Christ. There is nothing magic in this. Baptism is not medicine for original sin to make the baptized acceptable to God as she otherwise would not be. Baptism is

5 initiation into the Christian faith. Promises are made in the case of infant baptism, parents, sponsors, and congregation promise to bring the baptized up in the faith, to teach her the form of life called Christian, which is the practice of compassion, the attitude of hope, an unquenchable desire for justice. This involves education and study and prayer to create in the baptized the habit of godliness. If we fail Claire in the promises we make on her behalf, it is less likely that her baptism will take, in the sense of coming to mean anything to her. Or it is possible that all concerned would do a good job, but that life would get in the way somehow and Claire would never come to take responsibility for her baptism. Or it may be that we would all do out part and Claire would find a faith that would produce in her a life of grace and mercy and peace, that she would be in Luther s homely phrase a little Christ. And it is for this that we pray on this her baptismal day, a prayer that is a model for what prayer properly is for Christians: viz., the means to a living faith which will sustain one in all the circumstances of life, a faith which inspires in us the best of intentions and the strength to act upon them. Critics of our way of worshiping will say that it is formal and lacks spontaneity, or more ingenuously, that it is not sufficiently entertaining. They are right in their criticism. This worship in this house of prayer is instruction for the real business of worship which goes on outside these walls every day, every hour of our lives, worship that takes place in our homes and out on the streets and in the world of current events, worship that is prayer well-prayed and a life welllived in the name of Christ Jesus. This is how we pray. Amen.

6 The 14 th Sunday after Pentecost, August 17, 2008 Emanuel Lutheran Church