Prayers of the Heart

Scripture for Sunday - Luke 18:1-8

Sermon - Prayers of the Heart

What does prayer mean to you?

Do you pray?

Why do you pray?

The scripture assures us that unlike the widow who must deal with an unjust judge, who cares not about God or people, "Will not God grant justice to God's chosen ones who cry to God day and night? Will God delay long in helping them?"

I fear that many would answer, "Yes, God has delayed long in granting justice."

What do we do with unanswered prayers?

Do we lose heart? The purpose, the writers of Luke give for Jesus telling this parable.

I believe the Christian tradition has misrepresented the purpose and trivialized the power of prayer.

Fred Craddock tells a story of being invited to attend a prayer meeting at a home in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta. He said the group shared "weighty" prayer concerns like a date coming up on Friday night and the purchase of a new car, and one man announced they had had 75 answered prayers since the group started meeting. Then one of them turned to him and asked, "What do you think, Dr. Craddock?" Craddock, usually more hesitant to criticize anybody's praying, was offended by the superficial and mechanistic reduction of Israel's God to what Paul Tillich called, "the Cosmic Bellhop." He couldn't help himself. He said, "Do you mean to tell me when people are starving in Africa and the poor are suffering in India and parents in Latin America can't sleep through the night wondering if the death squads will visit them, you folks are praying about dates and new cars?"

A rabbi friend once asked me why we Christians prayed about every little thing. I told him it was like his children asking for what they wanted. And while children might get angry and frustrated when the loving parent said no, over time they trusted that parent to know and provide what was best for them and to protect them from harm. But, I said, if your children are still begging you for candy bars and new toys when they are thirty, something has gone seriously wrong with their growth. In the same way, Christians ought to mature in what they ask for from God.

And many do mature, but still...from time to time people ask me why God hasn't answered their prayers. And, usually these aren't superficial, selfish prayers, but prayers for a loved one who is sick or prayers for justice in a situation at work. And usually, I find myself wishing God would answer their prayers and I join my prayers to theirs. And while I wish it were different sometimes, I do not believe prayer works that way. Prayer is not a means of forcing or enticing God to step in, even when it seems to us so clearly the right thing for God to do. Prayer is more than that. Much more.

I don't know about you, but a lot of things knock me off balance. And only a re-centering in the love of God returns me to the sense of well being and hope for healing which God alone can provide. Prayer is not getting God to run errands for us or to choose us over any other human being, for God loves no child more than another. No, prayer is putting ourselves at God's disposal, and submitting to God's will, and finding our peace in God's presence.

I have a lot of books on prayer, which is like having books on fishing. They don't do any good if you don't get out and fish. A lot of people struggle to establish a regular habit of prayer, but feel they have failed. The formulas they have been given don't work for them. One prayer book that has been helpful, and that I have read, is Prayer and Temperament which matches praying styles with personality types. It says different people pray in different ways, and can learn more about themselves from the way they pray and can learn to pray better by knowing themselves better. No one formula or style works for every person.

Some people pray with their heads and need devotional material that helps them think about God.

Some people pray with their hearts and feel their way into God's presence.

Some people pray with their feet and encounter God in the persons they serve.

Introverts prefer to pray alone, while extroverts pray better with another person or ten or twenty.

 The point is: find a way that works for you and pray your way into it. Keep your connection with God vital and active and discover the peace it produces in your soul.

And don't forget to listen, not only for what God says to you, but for what God says to you through the prayers of others.

In a chapter of Cry Pain, Cry Hope called "Who Hears Prayer?" Elizabeth O'Connor tells of visiting an overnight shelter for street women. Many of the women were old and infirm, some were addicts, and some were mentally ill. Because they had to go back into the street in the morning regardless of the weather, the mood often turned hostile at the break of day. O'Connor writes:

In the long narrow hall where the women were having breakfast, an old woman with a gentle face kneeled to pray. She was in the way of another woman who taunted her, "Get up woman. God don't hear your prayer." The praying woman did not respond and her taunter said again, "God don't hear your prayer woman. God don't hear your prayer."

I asked myself, "Does God hear her prayer?"

Then I remembered. God is in me and where I am God is. The real question was, "Did I hear her prayer?" What would it mean to hear her prayer?"