For what shall we pray?

     After reading the gospel for Sunday I said a prayer of thanks that I had, weeks ago, decided to preach on the reading from James this week.  The Mark text, you see, is one that makes you cringe when you read it.  Jesus delivers rather harsh words to his disciples and they are uncomfortable to think about.  It would be better to tie a millstone around our neck, cut off our hand, leg, and gouge out our eye than to put a stumbling block before a little one who believes in Jesus?  Yikes!  Let us pray that we never do such a thing!
     Which, actually, is a perfect segue into the James text.  Prayer.

Praying Hands.  Sculpture at Oral Roberts University

    

  Are any suffering? 

Pray

Cheerful?

Pray

Sick?

Pray

Confess your sins

Pray

Be healed

Pray

     Prayer is one of the main, most ancient disciplines of a Christian - a mark of one who talks with God, one who listens for God's voice, one who lives a cruciform-shaped life.  And, according to James, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.  We are given the example of Elijah who prayed for no rain and caused a drought, and then prayed for rain and it came.

     There are stories of prayer being powerful and effective all over.  In fact, just yesterday I spoke with a woman who had been on hospice care because her cancer had become so far advanced it was all but over.  She was on several prayer lists at several churches, with the prayer for healing.  (Keep in mind that very often when I pray for healing for someone on hospice it is more a healing of spirit and mind, and physical healing that can come only through death.)  Except she is, today, cancer free.  Doctors are baffled.  Hospice says it is a miracle.  James says it is powerful and effective prayer. 

     We pray each Sunday as a community - for God's work in the world; for peace, justice, and unity; for healing; for creation; for faith.  We pray the Lord's prayer - for reconciliation; for everyone to have enough; for God's will and kingdom.  We pray each day, and someone once said that it is usually one of two prayers: Help, help, help! or thank you, thank you, thank you!  

     Yet if we have such a powerful and effective means by which to bring healing, praise, and forgiveness, for what then, shall we pray?  How shall we pray for each other?  The world?  Do we believe that prayer is truly powerful and effective?  When we pray for rain during droughts, for instance, do we all start carrying umbrellas?  When we pray for healing, do we cancel the hospice?  When we pray, do we expect anything?  

     God's promises are powerful and effective, and God has promised to listen to those who pray.  God has promised to answer.  God has promised.  For what then shall we pray?

What does this mean?

     For the mystery this week I concede to Martin Luther:

What does this mean?

If you've ever been through confirmation you may recognize this question for it is the central question of Luther's Small Catechism.  After each commandment, each petition of the Lord's Prayer, each article of the Creed, and in study of the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, he famously asks (by means of teaching) "What does this mean?"
     Which happens to be the mystery for me this week.  Our texts from Jeremiah, James, and Mark are a strange set of texts with a prophecy about the death of Jeremiah (which we interpret as a prophecy of Jesus' own death), an exhortation to be wise and peaceful from James, and Jesus teaching that the greatest in the kingdom is a servant of all and one who welcomes a little child in the name of Jesus welcomes the Triune God.
     What does it mean that Jesus' teaching about welcoming children comes directly after he talks about suffering, death, and being last of all and a servant of all?  In thinking of the implications I begin to get a little queasy.  I don't think this is just a kind of welcome that says on the church marquis, "All are welcome!"  I don't think this is the kind of welcome that greets a new face and says, "Glad you are here today."

JESUS MAFA. Jesus welcomes the children,
from Art in the Christian Tradition,
a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. 

     This sounds like the kind of welcome that might start to raise eyebrows.  It may not seem that way by reading the text, because we welcome children all the time.  This may be off, but at least from my perspective we have children's sermons, we attempt to make our worship folders more child friendly, we don't mind the sounds of children noises (this may be the hardest one), we are glad kids are in worship and fellowship sharing their laughter, crumbs and spilled milk, thoughts, ideas, and prayers.
     But in Jesus' time children were not viewed this way.  Children were little more than property, valued only for their ability to produce, work, or earn income in any other way.  Children, in our reading from Mark, represent the least, the last, and the oppressed.  Welcoming children, then, was one of the ways Jesus became the least of all and servant of all.
     So if it's not really about welcoming children in worship or church today, what does this mean?  Well, I think we can begin by asking ourselves who the least, the last, and the oppressed in our society are.  Then comes the hard part of asking ourselves what does it mean to welcome these people?  And I'm not just talking welcoming people to worship on Sundays or Wednesdays.  What does it mean to welcome these people into your lives every day?
     We like to be great, to honor those who succeed, to scorn those who fail, to play up our strengths, to hide our weaknesses.  Welcoming the least, the last, and the oppressed goes against everything our society holds dear.  Which is why, I think, our James text talks about the wisdom from above.  "Wisdom from above first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy."  
     This is the kind of servant wisdom Jesus asks of his disciples.  This is the kind of radical welcome that God encourages.  This is the kind of least-is-greatest attitude that the Spirit stirs up in us.  This is the kind of lesson that makes us ask of ourselves and of our communities: what does this mean?

What is my cross?

     In my very first class of my very first day of my very first semester of college, I found myself sitting in a large lecture hall, down in the front row on the left side of the center section.  Dr. Dolphin stood up and welcomed us to Biology 201.  He then promised us that not all of us would make it.  This was the biology class for those individuals on a pre-med track.  It was the hardest of the hard, where the best of the best would succeed and the rest would inevitably drop out or fail.
     And it was hard.  4 exams, 40 questions each.  Hundreds and hundreds of flashcards for memorization.  At the end it turns out that I made it.  Barely.  By the skin of my teeth.  (And in fact I did end up taking it again to get a better grade.)

photo by Erika Uthe

     In our gospel lesson for Sunday, taken from Mark 8, it feels as if Jesus is the professor and the disciples are the students.  Jesus is telling his disciples up front: this is going to be hard.  I am the Messiah and whoever wants to become my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.  In these words I hear Dr. Dolphin's voice, "not all of you will make it."
     Is this the Discipleship 201 lecture?  Is this the hardest of the hard where only the best of the best will make it? At least Jesus is right up front here - being his follower, his disciple, will mean self-denial and possibly suffering.  It will mean losing your life.
     It is no wonder the disciples, Peter particularly, took Jesus aside and told him he must be mistaken.  Actually, it was probably a little stronger since it says he 'rebuked' him.  Classic case of the student knowing more than the teacher.  And, in reality, aren't we all like Peter?
     In our North American culture, it is thought that having it all together is a sign that surely you have God's favor and that surely you are a strong Christian.  So when things start to go wrong, many just put on a show, plastering on a smile and pretending that all is well when in reality they are silently suffering.  Or, they simply stop coming to worship, they opt out of everything 'church' and sit at home, suffering with their questions of why.  Why me?  Why this?  Why now?
     Our gospel for this week flies in the face of everything we have previously considered 'Christian' and says to us the exact opposite.  To be a follower of Christ isn't to have it all - all together, all you want, all going perfectly.  Indeed to be a follower of Christ is to trust in all - all circumstances, all things, all times.
     Now if this sounds tough and unpleasant that's because it is.  And it is hard.  Jesus' disciples, in the end, abandoned him at the cross.  They were weeded out of Discipleship 201 - the final exam came and these followers failed.  And so do we.  It is easier, more pleasant, and generally what we think of as self-preservation that lead us to abandon our own crosses, and in so doing completely miss Jesus in our lives.
     What then are we to do?  If these disciples, who lived, ate, learned, and walked with Jesus couldn't even pass, who can?  Well - in reality none can.  But for the grace of God.  Because of the cross, because of God's grace poured out through it, we can all pass with flying colors.  Through the cross we are invited to live with our own, and to acknowledge that in those 'cross moments' Christ has not abandoned us, but is hanging solidly with us.  Because he bore his cross, we bear ours.
     So now, in the course of Discipleship 201, even though we continue to fail exam after exam, even after we show up to class with incomplete homework, and even with our inconsistent performance, Christ gives us the passing grade we need.  He continually invites us back to lectures, lessons, and second-chances.  He continually works to remind us that he is with us, cheering us on, and reassuring that in Discipleship 201 there may be failed exams but there are no failures in his course.
     In the end, he simply stands (or hangs rather) and loves us into taking up our own crosses.  These reflections have gotten me pondering my own Discipleship 201 syllabus.  What has Jesus been teaching me?  Where have I been missing him on the cross because I've been looking for him everywhere else?  And mostly I've been pondering, what is my cross?

Where does my flesh get in the way?

     "I don't need to defend God."  That is a statement one of my colleagues makes regularly, especially when things in life aren't going well and God is the one who gets blamed.  This might seem like common sense, or you may even wonder why it is worth saying at all.  Well, in that case, please read the gospel lesson from Mark for this coming Sunday.  In this lesson you might find that Jesus isn't acting the way we would suppose Jesus should act.  He isn't nice and compassionate, and he certainly doesn't evoke those peaceful, serene images we see hanging on church walls and hospital nightstands.
     This gospel lesson invokes in me the desire to defend, protect, and make excuses for Jesus.  For his behavior is less-than-savior-like: he calls a woman a dog.  Now, there have been  many attempts to explain this away, and I've heard all of them in sermons at one time or another.
     But I don't buy it.
I believe there is no explaining away this uncomfortable situation - I don't believe Jesus was testing her, and really knew how she would react.  I don't believe you can explain away the situation by blaming language and translation barriers.  I do believe that Jesus was a human and a product of his own culture, beliefs, and limited human capacity for understanding.
     Notice that in Mark's gospel Jesus is adamant that people don't tell that he healed them, "for he didn't want any to know".  Time and again after Jesus heals, teaches, or does some other miraculous work, he insists that no one tell anyone.  We often forget that Jesus was God, but that God was bound to flesh - and everything that goes along with it.  Perhaps Jesus was just looking at things from a flesh perspective.
     Now, this doesn't explain anything away.  It simply puts it in a different light.  Think about it: Jesus was sent to fulfill the prophecies of God sending a savior for the Israelites.  Jesus read about himself in scripture, and in the Hebrew Bible, the Messiah comes to save them.  Only them.  It doesn't say anything about savior of the world.  And look at the work he had.
    Imagine that the savior finally comes and then, upon living among the people he is supposed to save realizes what a big job it is. 

"God, you want me to save these people?"   

So he sets about the difficult task of saving them only to realize it would take much more resources, time, and planning than he had originally thought.  And then there comes this other person.  Saving the Gentiles wasn't in his job description.  He was supposed to be resting at this point in scripture.  But here was another person wanting his attention.  His talents.  His time.  His resources.
     Like any of us who have limited resources, Jesus reacted with frustration, perhaps, and a perfectly human tone of voice.  Jesus' mission wasn't to the Gentiles.  It was to the Israelites.  Which is where the divinity of God comes in.  While human time, talents, and resources are limited, the grace of God is not. 
     This woman, in her pushing and asking, perhaps changed Jesus' own human perspective of his mission.  While he was tired, God was not.  While he was taxed beyond belief, God was his strength.  While his view was limited and bound, God helped to broaden his understanding and see the limitless nature of grace.
     So we haven't explained away Jesus' actions and words.  We haven't made excuses, or defended him.  What we have here, however, is a mirror for our own lives.  But, if Jesus was subject to viewing the world from a limited point of view, where does that leave us?  Where is God calling me to broaden my perspective and accept God's limitless grace?  Where does my flesh get in my way?