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| I carved this little guy 5" tall from plaster of Paris and vermiculite in September 1967 and used him for the children's time with this message to talk about praying. |
Philippians
1:1-18
May
5 and 6, 2018
King
of Glory Lutheran Church
Sprit
of Peace Lutheran Church
© 2018
Formal prayers mark the steps as
we move through our corporate worship. We give people opportunity to express
their joys and concerns in a shared prayer. As familiar as we are with this, many
people are intimidated by the prospect of leading public prayer. Together as
church we seldom talk about our private prayers. We are a little squeamish
about something so personal and intimate as our confidential conversations with
God.
Luke reports Jesus praying more
than the other Gospels. So for him to tell that the disciples asked Jesus to
teach them to pray is not at all surprising. (Luke 11:1)
In Romans 8:26, Paul acknowledges
that “we do not know how to pray as we ought,” but rather than scolding for
that, he assures us that the “Spirit intercedes (for us) with groans too deep
for words.”
Three patterns of prayer in the
Bible have enriched my own practice of private prayer.
When the disciples asked Jesus to
teach them to pray, he gave them what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” I suspect he
repeated this several times, as it occurs as a model prayer in Luke and in the
Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the
Psalms, “the prayerbook of the Bible,” suggesting Jesus learned to pray from
them, and they shaped and informed Jesus’ praying. He got me started on a
routine of praying with the Psalms I have followed for 48 years.
By my count, the New Testament
Epistles include 15 prayers that I find particularly challenging. They push me
to pray well beyond my comfort zone.
Today’s reading from Philippians
includes one of those prayers in verses 3-11.
When we started the service by
naming people for whom we are thankful, we were following Paul’s pattern of
being thankful for the people of the Philippian church. Not that we shouldn’t
be thankful for the things we enjoy, but our prayers grow as we are thankful
for the people who have been part of our lives. When I start making an
inventory of people for whom I am thankful, I begin to feel joy welling up from
within me.
Even all these years later, I
feel joy as I remember how my 6th grade teacher Bill Miller sparked
a love of learning in me, and as I remember how my 11th and 12th
grade English teacher Margaret Abbott invested herself in cultivating my
writing. As you are thankful for the people who have contributed to you, your prayers
will grow in joy.
Paul was thankful for the people
of the Philippian church who had been partners with him in the Gospel. I have
been very thankful for those with whom I have been privileged to serve in
ministry: among them Jim Kraft and Phil Olson in NJ, Anita Dunlevy in TX, Julia
Jordan Gillett in OK. I must tell you I am thankful for Pastor Tim who has
nourished my journey with Jesus this year.
Paul was in prison when he wrote
to the people of the Philippian church, and he longed to be with them. Who are
the people you ache to see face to face? Candy and I are planning to go to PA
in June for our grandson Isaac’s high school graduation and are anticipating
seeing them. Thank God for the people you’d like to see.
Sometimes when I listen to
prayers, including my own, I chuckle as they sound as if we think God is so
stupid that God needs us to inform God about what needs attention in our lives
and in our world and needs us to tell God what to do about them. If we start
praying the things Paul asked God to do for the Philippian church for ourselves
and the people we care about, our prayers will take us to a new depth of
listening for what God wants for us, beyond what we want for ourselves, those
we love, and even our world.
Overflow with love
Overflow with knowledge and
insight
Determine and discern what is
best for making decisions and taking action
To be pure and blameless. Rather
than thinking of that as superficial moral piety, I suggest what Søren Kierkegaard
wrote in his book Purity of Heart is to
Will One Thing. Based on Jesus’ Beatitude in Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they will see God,” he suggests if the only thing you want
in your heart, unmixed with other desires, is to see God, you will indeed see
God.
Produce a harvest of
righteousness
I want to end by giving you an
opportunity for guided private prayer informed and nourished by the prayer of
Philippians 1:3-11. I know that sitting together in silence can be difficult
and feel awkward, but I hope you will find this experience enriching. If you
wish you may have a Bible open to Philippians 1, but that is not necessary. We
will begin with a few moments for you to gather your thoughts about praying
from the passage. If you wish to make a few notes, that is fine but not
necessary. Then I will suggest people for whom you may pray for a few moments
in silence using what you gained from the passage. You may relax and trust me
to keep moving.
·
For
yourself
·
For the
people of this congregation
·
For
others who follow Jesus in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, in the United States, and
around the world.
·
For
people who make no claim of a relationship with Jesus, though they may have
some faith in God.
In the name of Jesus, I will read
the prayer of Philippians 1:3-11 aloud as our shared prayer. I will invite you
to say “amen” at the end.
3I thank my God every time I remember you, 4constantly
praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, 5because
of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. 6I
am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring
it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
7It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold
me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my
imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8For
God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ
Jesus.
9And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with
knowledge and full insight 10to help you to determine what is
best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11having
produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the
glory and praise of God.
Together we say, “Amen.”
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