“Conversations with God” - sermon from July 24, 2016, on prayer and praying

“Conversations with God”

Sermon, Year C, Proper 12, July 24, 2016

© Rev. David J. Huber 2016

Plymouth UCC, Eau Claire, WI

Focus Scripture: Luke 11:1-13 and Genesis 18:20-32

The story of Abraham and God having a conversation here is one of asking, seeking, and knocking with God. Abraham has the audacity to petition God. Like many of our prayers, God’s ultimate answer is “no,” but Abraham asks. To be in conversation with God and speak what is on his heart. Abraham speaking what is on his heart. God is planning to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

But first, I want to take a little tangent here from the prayerful part of this text just to avoid continuing the story that has grown around this story that God’s anger with Sodom and Gomorrah was solely or mostly about homosexuality, or other sexual issues. Let’s expand that a bit. In the Genesis story, God does not offer specifics about the wickedness of the people, just that they have fallen into wicked ways. God doesn’t say what they’ve done, only that they have fallen into evil ways. To get the answer, we have to go to the prophet Ezekiel, who gives us an answer to what Sodom’s sin really was: 

Ezekiel 16:49 [this is God speaking through the prophet Ezekiel] “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

They had fallen away from God’s way of loving your neighbor. Their sin was that they did not help the poor and needy; that they had excess food and were not sharing it. It was a sin of failing to show hospitality, and a sin to fail to love their neighbors by feeding the hungry and taking care of those in need. They failed to live up to God’s standards that we would love our neighbors and take care of one another.

That’s not particularly pertinent to this sermon, but it’s hard to read this story without wanting to mention that the sin here is not homosexuality, but their failure to take care of the poor and needy. It is important to know and remember, in case you hear - as we often do - someone blame homosexuality as the sin of this city. Now you have a way of challenging them, and reminding them that, no, the sin was that they, as a community, particularly the monied and powerful part of that community, failed at the primary duty that God sets before us: to care for the least of these, for those who are the most vulnerable and powerless. So, end of tangent, and back to the sermon.

God says to Abraham that God is going to destroy the cities.

But Abraham sees the terrible nature of what God proposes, and so he implores God in this conversation not to do so. And what is prayer, but conversation with God? That is all prayer is: it is having a conversation with God. For all that we may think that prayer is something tricky or requires a certain skill or takes training - and I know a lot of us are fearful of praying in public, whether it be saying a table grace at our potlucks or praying publicly at other times - it is not a tricky thing to do. It’s just conversation. Letting God know what is on your mind and heart. Your joys and concerns. We do that every Sunday, taking our joys and concerns and putting them in prayer. Your disappointments and your thanksgivings. Your fed-up-ness with the evils of the world, or your fed-up-ness of your own mistakes or proclivity to do wrong, or your sufferings that are not in accordance with how your values say the world ought to be, or your sufferings from health, or things happening in your family, your community, the world…. Whatever it is that is on your mind or heart, offered to God in a conversation. 

It doesn’t have to be flowery Shakespearean speech or beautiful language. It just needs to be honest. It needs to come from the heart and your mind. As you would speak with a friend in conversation. However you would speak to your friends, talk to God that way. Not like talking to your boss or the Queen of England or something…. Nothing tricky or difficult about it. 

Give it to God, and then listen for God’s response. Which rarely comes in speech. It rarely comes directly sas speech, but it does come from the people around us and what they say, or through scripture, or an event. Listen. Have that conversation, and then listen for God’s response. 

So Abraham is in conversation with God. This is a very prayerful conversation. Abraham doesn’t like what God is planning to do. “But what if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Would you destroy them with the city, just because you are angry at some of the people?”

Abraham is reminding God of God’s sense of justice. They have been in a relationship for a long time. 

And God says, “No, for the sake of fifty I will not.”

Then Abraham says, “Well, what about forty-five?” And God says, “No, if there are forty-five.”

Well, then, how about forty?

Thirty?

Twenty?

Ten?

One might think this is trying God’s patience. But it is being persistent. God continues to respond to each of Abraham’s interruptions. “Are you really willing to take out innocents, God, just to punish those who maybe deserve it? The innocents don’t deserve it.”

This is coming out of Abraham’s anguish, maybe even anger, at God, that God would plan to do something like this. Many of the Psalms, too, are prayers of anguish and anger and lament at God. How could you let this happen? Or “Remember your covenant with us, God!” Prayers of lament: This is happening to me, God, and it is not good. Or, This is happening to us, and it is not good.  These prayers of lament. Offer that to God as well. They are reminders to God that God, also, must be faithful. Conversation with God. 

The entirety of who we are, our joys and concerns, our hopes and pains, whatever it is, offer it in conversation with God.

One of my very favorite comic book writers and artists is Will Eisner. He wrote especially of the human condition and the human struggle. Don’t be fooled by the term “comic book writer and artist”, he was a serious literary guy as well. He did comics from the 1930s into his old age until he died in 2005. In his later years he did graphic novels of very serious story telling about aging, life, the life of cities. Some of you older folk might remember “The Spirit” that ran in Sunday newspapers from 1930s to the early 40s. Will was Jewish, and grew up in poverty in the tenements of New York City in the South Bronx, after his parents immigrated to the U.S. He was born and grew up in conditions that weren’t particularly good. Lots of poverty around him, and rough times. Then after Eisner got married, he had a daughter. She died of leukemia when she was a teenager. He turned his anguish over her death into what became a very important book called “Contract with God”. I highly recommend that you read it. In this book, a faithful young Jewish man, Frimme, writes a contract with God promising that he (Frimme) will be faithful by living a life of good deeds. He does live a life of good deeds, and becomes successful. He moves from Russia to New York City, and everything is going well for him and he attributes all his success to being a man of good deeds, but mostly because of God upholding the covenant. He is very faithful and believes that God is upholding the covenant, the contract. But then his daughter dies when she is a teenager, much like Eisner’s daughter. Then he abandons his faith because he is so angry at God. Throughout the story are moments of prayerful anguish that the man has with God. The debate he has with God, like Abraham and like Moses and others we read in the Bible. He laments, “Why did this happen? How dare you break the covenant?” He lets all of his anger and anguish at God. 

Read it to find out how it ends. It’s really a very honest and faithful take, I think, on how our relation with God can be be fully honest. It doesn’t just have to be “Thank you, everything is okay.” Or pretend that God only wants to hear our thanks and praise for the good things in our lives. 

God is big enough to take our anger and our suffering. God doesn’t want just our thanks and praise as though everything is okay, though if we are honestly thankful, then offer it. God also wants all of who we are, though. Be honest about all of who we are with God.

Abraham is, I think, angry at God here. They’ve had a long relationship. Abraham has put a lot of trust into God, and now God seems to be willing to do something that goes against God’s nature.

Abraham is aware of this because Abraham has been paying attention, listening to God, being in prayer with God.

If you were here last Sunday, you heard the story of Jesus in the home of Martha, in which her sister Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens while Martha does all the work. She is cooking the food, cleaning the dishes, doing the chores, and providing the hospitality. Martha becomes angry at Mary, and she asks Jesus to intervene. But Jesus says, “Mary has chosen the better way.”

If you want to know more about that, you can last week’s sermon or listen to it online. 

In that instance, at Martha’s house, the better way was a time of paying attention. Of listening to Jesus, hearing the word, finding her focus in Jesus. Martha’s busy-ness was not rooted in Jesus, it was rooted in something else - her need to serve, perhaps, or something. Spend time in prayer to find our focus again.

Something we often lose in the church. We get focused on the programs or the building or the budget or other distractions, and we lose our focus on Jesus as the reason for why we do what we do, and why we are gathered. We do what we do, which is to make and grow disciples and grow in faith and bring God’s love to other people, because of Jesus. To follow his example, to do what he asks us to do.

Mary has chosen the better way. Then immediately after that brief interlude at Martha’s home, the Gospel moves to Jesus and his disciples being out together, and they ask him about prayer. Like they are asking Jesus, “We’ve just witnessed the interchange between Martha and Mary. Clearly it is important to pay attention, to listen, and to spend time in the word, and to spend time in prayer. So teach us. Teach us how to pray.”

Jesus teaches them what we now call the Lord’s prayer. Which is an incredibly efficient prayer that covers all the bases in few words. It begins by saying to God that YOU are the holy one, God; we are here to be about YOUR realm and doing YOUR will, not ours, here on earth. Give us enough for today, because we recognize that you are the one who gives, and that we don’t need more than we actually need. Forgive our sins, because we know we can’t, and help us to forgive others with the same generosity that you show us. Keep us from temptation. Keep us focused on you and paying attention, so that we don’t stray. So that we don’t go into ungodly places with our lives. We pray this to you because we know that you are the one who is the ground of our being, and the only one who deserves the glory.

Then Jesus continues by telling his disciples about “ask, seek, knock” and God will listen. He says, “Will a father give a child a scorpion if she asks for an egg? Or a snake if he asks for a fish?” Of course not! He’s saying, “Look to the most good and honorable person that you know, and know that God is more good than that! God is more loving than the most loving person you know.” Keep that relationship going with God, by going to God in prayer. 

Keep that relationship going. With prayer meaning “conversation”. Remember that GOD is the prime mover, not us; and that we don’t have to go it alone, nor should we try. The faithful way to go is to ask God to come along with us on the journey. Or even better yet, to first ask God how we can go along to where God is moving, where God would have us go. To ask how we can join Jesus on his (our) journey. It is easy to forget to include God in what we are doing. I know I often forget to include God, or to seek God’s counsel first. It is easy to fall into doing what I think ought to be done, and then maybe at the end of it, then remember God, “Whoops, I screwed that up, God; perhaps you can fix it for me.”

Not to say, “Jesus, do this for me”, but to say, “Jesus, help me do for you what you want from me.”

Let’s take it as “ask, seek, knock” means, basically, that we’ve remembered to seek God’s counsel, and to include God in our plans, and that we can go to God with all that we are. All our hopes and dreams, our sufferings and angst. Focus our minds on Jesus and to root our plans in God’s vision and who God is. We may discern that through paying attention to the word, and through prayer. Praying can help us focus our minds to find, to hear, and to be aware of the answer. To do that so that we may more faithfully act as God would have us act. In that holy conversation of give and take with God, in honest dialogue with the God who loves us and who loves the world, and who does want to hear from us because God cares for us. 

Don’t be afraid to pray. Don’t be fearful to pray to God. Whether you do it silently in your head, or if you are with a group of people and someone says, “Would you like to lead the prayer?” You can do it! It might be scary at first, but just think of it as having a conversation. Whatever is on your mind or your heart. It should not be a terrifying thing to do, or a scary thing to do, but it is a beautiful gift that God has given us because God cares for us all. 

May you have a good and faithful prayer life. 

Amen.