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July 29, 2007 Luke 11:1-13 & Psalm 138 Don Evans Faithful Disciples To the faithful saints of Bethany United Church of Christ, I bid you the peace that Christ so lovingly bestows. When I first saw that this weeks Gospel lesson included the Lord's prayer, my first thought was "Don, you better not mess this one up!" That was said with an explanation point emphasized. After I got over the initial worry I turned to look at any tips I could find. The subtitle in Luke about today's lesson is "Perseverance in Prayer", but the focus statement in the lectionary notes was "Faithful disciples". Now I'm not one to complain about anything that will help me get a handle on the message. But, it took more than a few minutes of reading and study before I settled on my own course. So, I suppose I chickened out a little and instead of taking one path or another I decided to talk about both. I pray it won't be confusing for you or me as this sermon unfolds. "Disciples". That can be a scary or intimidating word. After all it is a word intimately connected to God. It is a word one might be even tempted to put up on a pedestal because of it's significance. The first twelve disciples after all actually walked with, talked with, ate and with Jesus, God in the Flesh. So, who are we that we could even consider ourselves disciples. How are we to measure up with the apostles? Goodness sakes, these are the guys that really were the body of the early church. The referral to the Apostles is the most common association of the word disciple. If we are to be faithful disciples we had ought to look at the qualities and other attributes of the first twelve. I came up with ten points and I am sure that this is not the definitive word on the subject. It also is not a play on David Letteman's top ten lists. 1st, they had a very up close and intimately personal relationship with Christ. 2nd, they were faithful. They followed him where ever he went. That included both hostile and friendly towns. They gave up their lives of certainty for one that was everything but certain. They were indeed faithful unless of course they fell asleep when Jesus was praying, or forgot his power when confronted by stormy seas and they even abandoned him when things got really tough. 3rd, they were bold - well at least most of the time. 4th they were prophetic as as in forth telling. They were the ones carrying the Good News forward as exemplified in the letters of Peter and Paul. Yet at times they were reluctant as well. 5th, they were respectful of the power that was God's and God's alone. Their ministry was carried forward in the name of Jesus. 6th, they were forgiving. That was part and parcel of their ministry with Jesus and for Jesus. Forgiveness of sins was an integral part of their teaching and healing. 7th, they were agents of God acting as intercessors for others. They prayed for sinners both great and small, rich or poor, male or female regardless of social status or nationality. 8th, they were human susceptible to all the frailties in mind and spirit as you and me. They also made mistakes as in the lapses of faith mentioned earlier. 9th, they were both students and teachers. This brings us to the truest meaning of disciple. In its absolute simplest terms disciple means student. However, disciples are pupils of some teacher. They are accepting in mind and practice of the teacher. Our Apostles truly accepted the word of God in Christ and practiced those teachings in their ministry. Their were Christians by their deeds. Last but not least is the tenth attribute I came up with. They wanted to "get it right". They yearned for guidance in their plea, " Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples". I bet many of you are way ahead of me in seeing how we also share in the characteristics of the first twelve disciples. We have a commonality that is refreshing as well as challenging. We too are or can be prophets. Prophets can be grouped into two categories. Those that foretell of things to come or those that tell of the connectedness of their faith faith to current living situations. That is forth telling. We can tell others of what our faith means to us and how it has helped us in our daily trials. Even though we haven't walked with Jesus physically like the Apostles, we too can be faithful and have a deep personal relationship with Jesus. That relationship can be as simple as "Here I am Lord, help me." We can act as intercessors for others. We of course do that on a regular basis in our prayers and missions. We can ask in prayer for ourselves as we see in the Lord's prayer. We of course are students or we would not be here in worship today. In what we learn we can share just as Peter, Paul and the others did. We also want to get it right. That is one of my fears in preaching. I am fearful that I might say something that will lead someone astray from the true meaning God intended of the scriptures. My prayer before writing each sermon is "Let my words be yours". So the word disciple is not quite as scary when thought of in different ways. We are students of Jesus. We are willing to learn. We are willing to accept in mind his teachings. We are willing to put into practice the things we have learned, sometimes boldly and even sometimes timidly. We are willing to learn from the Master Teacher. My favorite of the Gospels is Luke. Normally he is succinct and to the point. His shortness, particularly in these verses, seems to have both an impetus to "Get it right" and an urgency about them, almost like folks you have to do this now! So, in his version of the lesson, it is "When you pray say.." as the initial instruction and ends "And do not bring us to the time of trial"; short and direct. The body of the prayer is also a bit shorter than Matthew's but both start with recognition and respect of God. In Luke's version the first part of the petition is "Forgive us our sins". Sins is simpler but in our language it is a more encompassing word than debts or trespasses. Debts can lead some into thinking in monetary terms and tresspasses tend to be thought of a just personal affronts. It is the tradition at Edinburg United Church to use the sin version during the period of Lent when the focus is about our sins. Of course both the Gospels call for forgiveness on both sides of the fence. God's forgiveness of our sins and for us to forgive others. However, short and to the point it is it lacks some additional instruction that is found in Matthew. Matthew's writing adds instructions prior to and after the prayer. The prior admonishment is to take your prayers to the father in private and to not use empty phrases but to pray what is in your heart. While it doesn't exclude corporate prayer like we have in our worship it does however emphasize the importance of a personal connection between us and God. I think this was a nice way of saying to follow the KISS principle. The ending admonishment emphasizes the importance of the forgiveness portion of the prayer. If you forgive others God will forgive you but if you don't forgive others God won't forgive you. Part of our human nature, at least for many people, is to to carry around unneeded thoughts about others and to harbor grudges against people who have wronged us. This is a challenge for many of us. In this weeks Ravenna paper there was an article about Patricia Porter,the mother of Jesse Davis, who was murdered a few weeks ago in Stark County. I cannot comprehend the emotions that one must feel when another person takes the life of someone you dearly love. Nor can I imagine how hard it would be to heed God's instruction for us to forgive. However, we can learn by Patricia's example of how she is dealing with the situation. Even before an arrest was made she promised God she would forgive the person who committed this terrible act. She also is saying that Bobby Cutts (the alleged murderer) and his family deserve prayer. Most would say Bobby surely needs prayer but few would say he deserves it. Her last statement in the article really shows her faith. I quote" I feel like if God can't forgive Bobby Cutts, then he can't forgive any of us". Is she a faithful disciple or what??? My former minister taught me something many years ago. She said that if you are having a hard time forgiving someone pray for them first. By doing that enough times the forgiveness will follow suit. I have found that to be true but it is not something that is necessarily easy to do. I would like to return to the personal relationship aspect in our prayers to God. Remember the attribute about being bold? We can also be bold in our prayers. We find a good example of this in the Genesis story of Abraham bargaining with God. God had set his sights on destroying Sodom but Abraham kept asking God if he would destroy the city if there were a certain number of righteous people there. He kept at it continually reducing the number until he got to one. He managed to save Sodom at least for a while anyway. It is also OK to question God. Job of course is the best example of this. We can use questioning as a process in helping us to come to terms with the situation we are in. Job finally was able to resolve the issue of himself being caught up in his own self righteousness. This is also a lesson that God remains faithful to us. I would like to digress a little and talk about the O.T. lesson in Psalms. King David was practicing a good bit of what the N.T. lesson is calling us to do. In verse two he is bowing down and recognizing and praising the power of God. That's a pretty close parallel to "Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done." In verse three we see the personal relation of calling on the Lord as we see in the asking for our daily bread in the Lord's prayer. When we ask not to be brought to a time of trouble, we see that King David recognizes that God can indeed save us in his words "You stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me". Our usually said version of the Lord's Prayer "is deliver us from evil". We know that Jesus is sitting on the right hand of God. Jesus, the right hand of God, was he telling his disciples then to ask for his intervention on their behalf? - something to ponder - After the Lord's prayer the lesson continues in the perseverance of prayer on a personal level and about good gifts. When one reads about the guy not getting up to help a friend in need one is tempted to think of him in less than flattering terms. What kind of friend couldn't get his lazy butt out of bed and give his friend some bread? That might have been easier said than done. In those times it would have been an ordeal to arise and not arouse everyone else in the household. It might have also been a security issue as well. More to the point though, is persistence. Because of persistence the man's need of bread would be met. The lesson here is simple enough; keep asking, keep searching and keep knocking. By doing so God will answer by opening doors, providing answers and providing for our needs. God won't do it all for you. You have to be willing to do the asking, searching and knocking. I experienced this with a good friend of mine. He is a man of faith. When he was in need of a new job, I would from time to time tell him where he could apply or where he could mail a resume. He simply said "God will put me where he wants me". I was able to remind him that he needed to knock on a few doors first so that God could open the right one for him. I once had the ideal job in mind and wanted it more than anything. I I was really disappointed when I was not able to get hired. God knew better than me. Over time as I learned more about that particular career, I discovered it was a position that I was glad I did not get. It wasn't the job itself that would have been the problem but the beaurocratic-self important organization itself. As I grew older and a little smarter, I realized that God really had been looking out for me by keeping that door closed and opening a different one instead. As parents we know how to give good gifts. God gave us Jesus and God gives us the Holy Spirit. As children of God could we ask for a better parent? I think not. Who else is present in our lives 24/7, anywhere we are whether we are having good times or bad? So, where do we go from here? We can boldly go where disciples before have gone. We go with the Holy Spirits presence enabling us to forgive others and to intercede for the needs of others in prayer and mission. We go continuing to be students of Jesus and as prophets forth telling our faith. We can go now in faithfulness to our personal relationship with Christ our teacher and in faithfulness in our prayers both to the special prayer Jesus taught us and in our daily prayers. We go as role models in discipleship because others will know because of our faith. We are indeed known as Christians by our deeds. Amen |
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