The titles the Church has given to St. Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, suggest not only who Mary is but speak a truth about who we are, and the honor given her by God is an honor we also share.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, the feast of St. Mary, Mother of Our Lord; text: Luke 1:46-55

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

 “O higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, lead their praises: ‘Alleluia!’
Thou bearer of the eternal Word, most gracious, magnify the Lord: ‘Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!’”

The English Hymnal of 1906, edited by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Percy Dearmer, is a seminal and important work in the life of the Church at large, not just the English church, and has given us rich hymnody in our own Lutheran worship books.  These words, which we sang at the start of our liturgy, were first sung from this hymnal, and were composed by J. Athelstan Riley, who was the chair of the hymnal’s editorial board.  Riley, in turn, based this particular stanza on ancient Eastern Orthodox prayers to St. Mary, the mother of our Lord, prayers which are still sung in Orthodox churches today.

There is something subversive about these words when they are included in Lutheran books of worship, as they have been since 1958 in this country, and when they’re sung by Lutherans who are dismissive of giving any special honor to Jesus’ mother, who might consider it too Roman Catholic, whatever that means.  Because this entire second stanza is about Mary, calling her “higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim,” and inviting her, now, to lead the heavenly host in praise of the Triune God.  The hymn assumes she holds an elevated status, reminds us that she bore the eternal Word, and works on the premise that she now leads the praises of God in heaven.

That we sing such praise of a human being leads us to consider what we mean by it.  The Church, especially in the East, names Mary “Theotokos,” God-bearer, for she carried the very Son of God in her womb.  Our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers, when they pray to her, call her “Mary, full of grace,” and around the Church, save in most Protestant circles, she is thought of as “Regina Coeli,” the “Queen of Heaven.”  All of these names are referred to in our hymn stanza which perhaps many of us have sung without knowing what we were singing.

In our tradition we have only recently been coming back to an understanding of why the Church in so many places has honored Mary above all others, a sense which the Lutheran Reformers always had, but which subsequent generations of Lutherans in many places let fall to the side of the road.

Those same reformers suggested that the saints are a gift to us in at least three ways: they cause us to give thanks to God for showing us such examples of divine mercy; our faith is strengthened when we see the grace of God acting in their lives; and lastly, we learn to imitate their faith and any other of their virtues. [1]

In these three things, our question deepens.  What do we mean when we sing such praise of Mary?  And what does it mean for our lives, our faith, our discipleship?  The answer seems to be circular in nature: when we praise Mary thus, we eventually come to see ourselves in her, and our lives as hers.

We begin with Theotokos, God-bearer, “thou bearer of the eternal Word.”

There is a profound reality about Mary that is almost impossible for us to comprehend and that is utterly unique: she is the only human being to have been physically joined to the Triune God, carrying in her very womb the child who is fully human and fully divine.

Whatever we might think of her, this truth, that she is Theotokos, has to be central.  There is in Mary a human being like no other.  Little wonder that the Church saw in her a link, a connection with God: one of us, yet one with better inroads.

While her son, Christ Jesus our Lord, is the Incarnate Word in our midst, and the One who brings humanity into relationship with the Triune God, Mary is the first of us to experience this relationship, the first of us to know this, and the only one of us to physically live this.  And for that we rightly honor her and think well of her.

In her “let it be with me according to your will,” she welcomed God’s grace into her humanity and brought the possibility of life in Christ to us all.  This generosity of sharing, this gift to the world is forever to be praised.

And yet, as we look at her and consider what her son has taught us and brought to us, we realize this truth: she is not the only God-bearer.

The witness of Christ himself, the witness of the Scriptures, and the witness of the Church for 2,000 years is that we are baptized into Christ so that we in turn bear Christ in the world.  Not physically, growing a child inside our bodies through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  But physically, living with the Holy Spirit transforming us literally from within into people who in our bodies, words, hands, lives, love, grace are Christ, are divine children, are, like Mary, invited to generously share Christ with the world.

In Mary we see ourselves: we are God-bearers to the world, we bring the news of God’s love which death cannot destroy, God’s grace which is sufficient to cover all our brokenness, God’s life which is for the whole world.

And Mary is also “full of grace,” “most gracious” in our hymn.

There is an obvious reference here: in carrying Christ Jesus in her womb, she was literally full of God’s grace, God’s Incarnate Grace.

But in her person, her willingness to do this, her hymn of praise which not only magnified the Lord but the Lord’s gracious overturning of the world, she models for us a life of grace.

She feels the pain of a family who isn’t wealthy enough to have enough wine for their party and brings it to her son, that he might do something.

She feels the grace of God in coming to this world through her and sees the possibility of God graciously raising up the lowly, feeding the hungry, and bringing justice through her work.

And she lovingly brings this child to adulthood that he might be the Life of the world in his death and resurrection, facing that horror and subsequent joy alongside us and waiting with his disciples for the coming of the Spirit 50 days later.

But of course as we see all this grace in her, we are reminded that it is ours as well, that God has so filled us with grace.  Just as we are bearers of Christ, we are vessels of grace in this world.

Blessed by the presence of God, we become that presence in the world.  Overwhelmed by the forgiveness of God, we offer that forgiveness to the world.  Transformed by the grace of God, we are part of God’s continuing gracious transforming of the world.

In Mary we see ourselves, full of grace, given to the world.

And because she is who she is and did what she did, she is “higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim,” we sing.

We are not privy to the mysteries of God’s heavenly domain, though we live in the kingdom as it lives here with us on earth.  But we cannot help but think of Mary as this hymn does.

Is there any other human being or angel who did what she did, lived what she lived, gave what she gave?  If in fact there are people who are lifted up in praise around the throne of God, which we cannot know for certain, we likewise cannot think of another who would be higher.

And yet when we sing the words of Psalm 8 we are reminded that David saw all of humanity, all of us as a little lower than the angels.

So in one sense when we sing this of Mary we sing it with a little confusion.  It is truly a noble place to be just lower than the angels: who are we, we say with the psalmist, that God would so honor us?  Yet higher?  Can we say that?

Yet what Mary teaches us most of all is that we do not claim such honor, nor does she.  It may be well for the Church to sing it of Mary: it would be unseemly and ungallant not to honor her.  But her gracious “yes” to God, her hymn of praise, her life lived in service to her son, our Lord, was not a life of being above others.

Everything about her that we know from Scriptures is that she lived as she sang in those words which formed our Gospel tonight: she saw herself in this call of God not an exalted queen but a humble servant through whom she was blessed to bear God’s healing for the world.

And in Mary we see ourselves, not as exalted, but as lowly, not as higher, but as servant.

And so the mystery of Mary is the mystery of us.

In living as humble servants of Christ, bearing God’s love and presence into the world, we, like Mary, are privileged to see the wonders of God come to pass through us.  We are astonished to see that as flawed and broken as we are we are not only healed and loved, but through us God is reaching the world.

For us, on this day we honor Mary what we sing of her calls us to our true selves.  There is deep mystery here, much we cannot grasp.  Even as Mary needed to ponder things in her heart, so too do we.

Yet our sister Mary shows us a way to unutterable joy, that in us God is coming to this world, and through us, mystery of mysteries, wonder of wonders, God will continue to heal and save this world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1]  Article XXII, The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531), and parallel article in The Augsburg Confession (1530)

The world is surrounded in darkness; sadness, evil, and brokenness.  So how do we know that we can trust God?  How do we know that God really loves us?  In the midst of darkness in this world, God comes to us in the nighttime of our lives, shows us the stars, and reminds us of God’s faithfulness and love for us.

Vicar Neal Cannon, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 19, year C; texts: Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

I’ve always been a little bit creeped out by the dark, it makes me edgy.  During my summers in college I worked at a camp called Voyageurs Lutheran Ministry.  I almost always felt safe there, except when it got dark.

You see, my counselor cabin was at the bottom of a very steep hill.  Much of the hill was lit up, except when you turned onto the path towards my cabin.  On that path, there was only one light and for some reason there was a motion sensor on it, except sometimes it worked in reverse so when you walked by it would actually turn off.  And when it did, it would be pitch black, and I’d be in the middle of the woods, by myself.

And even though I knew that camp like the back of my hand, when the lights went out I immediately became a little bit nervous about my surroundings and my imagination would start to run wild.  Twigs breaking in the woods suddenly became wild animals watching me from a place I couldn’t see.  Footsteps in the distance were no longer perceived as a possible friend, but a possible enemy.

In all, I trusted the camp a lot less when it was dark.

Darkness gives us a lot of doubt.  It makes us doubt the things that we think we know.  It makes us look at the world suspiciously.

Of course, this is not just about daylight vs. nighttime.  Darkness is also a metaphor for evil, brokenness, and sadness in the world, and there is a lot of darkness.  World-wide statistics point that out.  For example, did you know that 21,000 children die every day.  Similarly on a daily basis 21,000 people will die from hunger today.  And what’s more, each year 677,000 children are abused in America, growing up in homes where they aren’t safe

When we hear about this kind of darkness that covers our world, it’s easy to become skeptical or cynical about those things that we thought we knew.  Growing up in America, many people went to Sunday School learning songs like, Jesus loves me, this I know, and He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.

But if the whole world is in Jesus’ hands, why are so many people dying unnecessarily?

This kind of skepticism and cynicism is reflected in national studies that show an increasing trend in people who are claiming to be ‘agnostic’ or to have no affiliation with the church or ‘organized religion’.  Many of these people are disillusioned with religion, and are asking, if God really loves me then why is there so much darkness?

This is a valid question.  Wars, genocide, disease, corporate greed, individual greed, injustice of all kinds run rampant in our world.  You don’t need me to tell you this because this is not a problem that is far off.  It is a problem that is here, with us right now.  Many people here have endured life with depression, anxiety or illness.  Most of us, if not all of us, have dealt with an untimely or unexpected loss of a loved one.  Still others of us have painfully suffered from, or watched loved ones suffer from addiction or self-destructive behavior.

Now, everyone reacts to pain and suffering differently, especially when it comes to matters of faith.  While some people to reject the idea of a loving God, others, I’m sure many here, lean on God and their faith in order to weather turbulent times.  We come to church, we pray, and maybe even find a person of faith to give us comfort.  But at the same time even those who cling to faith in turbulent times can wonder how God could possibly be present, or even possibly be real in the face of extreme devastation.

That mix of devastation and doubt makes up the nighttime of our lives.

These are the times where we feel like darkness and evil surround us.  These are the times where our faith is tested in extreme measure.  These are times where we wonder if our prayers have gone unheard or if we can ever really proclaim again that, Jesus loves me, this I know.

We are not alone in feeling this way.  The Bible is full of people who, in their darkest hours, lament to God and wonder out loud where God is in the midst of great evil and suffering.

After losing his livelihood, his family, and his health, for example, Job demands that God take his life and complete his suffering.  “Oh that I might have my request, and that God would grant my desire; that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off!”  The Psalms ask over and over, “Why do you hide your face from me, O God?”  We even hear this lament in the voice of Jesus on the cross as he cries, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Yet, it’s in these moments of darkness, of utter bleakness and loss, that God comes to the world and says, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”

And that is exactly what happens in our Genesis text today to Abram and Sarah.   Here are two people, who have been told by God that they are to be parents of many nations, but now Abram and Sarah are both too old to conceive and they think they’ve lost their chance.

Can you imagine how devastated they must feel?  During Biblical times, it was incredibly important to have children.  Having a family meant having workers in your fields and homes.  It meant having someone to pass your legacy down to.  Many even believed that having a large family meant that God blessed you, while those who weren’t able to conceive believed God cursed them.

Abram and Sarah might be thinking that they’ve let God and maybe even the nations down in some way.  Maybe they feel saddened by the belief that they will never get to raise their own children.  However they felt, they’re surely going through a period in their lives where they are questioning God’s promise.  They’re going through the darkness and they can’t possibly see the road ahead, where God is asking them to go.

“Do not be afraid, Abram,” says the LORD. “I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”  But Abram expresses his doubt with this answer.  “O LORD God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?  You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”

It must be nighttime when this interaction occurs, because God takes Abram outside and he says something really interesting.  God says, “Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.  So shall your descendants be.”

Go outside where it is dark and count the stars.  This is how God responds to Abram’s lament.  I find this fascinating because God doesn’t say “hope comes in the morning” or “wait till first light,” like Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings”.  No, God comes to Abram in the darkness, and it’s in the darkness that God gives Abram an incredible sign of hope.  “Count the stars,” says God, “So shall your descendants be.”

In the face of Abram and Sarah’s struggle, to hear that God is still present, to know that God is still there and has a plan to bless them abundantly, must have been a comfort to them that night.  Though they didn’t know how or why, and though they had struggles and doubts, Abram and Sarah from then on knew that anytime stars were out, that it would be OK.

Hebrews tells us that faith is the “conviction of things not seen.”  The remarkable thing about this is that – if faith is the conviction of the unseen, then it takes place in the dark.  Faith happens in the midst of doubt and evil, not in the absence of those things.  And like Abram, it is in the dark that God comes to us with hope in a promise of God’s enduring faithfulness and love towards us.

Faith then is not something we can do ourselves.  Faith is given to us through a promise when God comes to us in the darkness and says, “Count the stars, if you are able.”  This kind of trust is not a belief in our faithfulness to God.  This trust is a belief in God’s faithfulness to us, especially when we are surrounded by darkness.

It is incredibly difficult to trust God in our darkest hour, when we cannot see the path ahead of us.  Like Abram and Sarah, often all that we have is a promise.  But how do we know that we can trust this promise?  Abram and Sarah were eventually given a miracle that proved God’s faithfulness, but how do we know that God will be faithful to us?

As Christians we see that God’s promise of faithfulness is fulfilled already, on the cross.   By giving his Son for the world God has already proven his faithfulness to us.  And what’s more, in the empty tomb we know that God has defeated darkness and will defeat darkness in our lives today.  Because if God can turn the cross into a symbol of great love and joy, then God can take this present evil and turn it into a blessing too.

Few will ever experience the kind of miracle that Abram and Sarah experienced, but through the cross we can proclaim together that, Jesus loves me, this I know.  And in the empty tomb we can proclaim that God does in fact have the whole world in his hands.

So remember, when it is dark out, God says do not be afraid.  When things get scary, and feel hopeless, God says “I am your shield.”  Then God takes us outside and asks us:
Do you know how faithful I am to you? Look up, count the stars.
Do you want to know how much I love you?  Look into the sky, count the stars.
Do you want to know the plans that I have for you?  Look towards heaven, count the stars.

All of a sudden the darkness isn’t so scary.

Ecclesiastes tells us that all earthly things are fleeting and meaningless, a chasing after the wind.  Simultaneously Ecclesiastes says that all of life is a gift from God.  Remembering this, we are called to seek and stand in awe of the eternal and Triune God above all earthly things.

Vicar Neal Cannon, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 18, year C; texts: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

Sisters and Brothers, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books of the Bible.  It’s beautiful poetry that is both haunting and prophetic to our culture and context today.  Now, I’ve done a fair amount of study and research on the book of Ecclesiastes, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the book of Ecclesiastes, is super depressing, because it’s is a book about the meaninglessness of life.  No seriously, that’s what it’s about.  Our text today speaks of the vanities of greed, money, and storing up vast amounts of wealth, and if the writer stopped there, there would probably be nothing especially unique about this text.

But Ecclesiastes continues by saying that hard work and toil are meaningless; wisdom is meaningless; knowledge is meaningless; pleasure is meaningless; advancement is meaningless; and according to the writer, even justice is meaningless, because it is human justice and not God’s justice.  All this is to say, if you ever sit down to read Ecclesiastes on your own, I suggest that ahead of time you schedule counseling sessions with Pastor Joseph.

Ecclesiastes tells us that life is a chasing after the wind.  I love this image of chasing after the wind, it reminds me of Sisyphus in Greek mythology.  As the story goes, Sisyphus was a king who was constantly deceiving the gods and humanity alike in order to achieve power, seduce women, and live forever.  And as Greek mythology tells us, Sisyphus was punished by the gods for his deceit, cursed into rolling a boulder up a hill to the crest of a hill for all time, only to watch it fall just before he reached the top for all eternity.

I think that the writer of Ecclesiastes must have been a little bit like Sisyphus.  We’re told that the writer was also a king and a person of vast wealth, wisdom, and power.  This is a person who had attained everything a human being could desire on Earth. But when the writer of Ecclesiastes looked back on his life, he determined that all his Earthly accomplishments were meaningless, like pushing a boulder to the crest of a hill, even though it is destined to fall to the bottom.

Sisyphus syndrome, as I like to call it, is a common problem in our culture.  Many of us, young and old alike, try to imitate the cultural image of celebrities, models, or athletes that we can never truly duplicate.  Still others of us chase after social status of various kinds only to be caught in a rat race of perception and self-doubt.  Sometimes we really pride ourselves on being intelligent and well read, but our intellect can be taken away by a brain injury or Alzheimer’s.  Occasionally we chase pleasure and experience in life, only to have it snatched away by the sad realities of a broken world.  Then again sometimes we work, and toil, and build an empire of our own wealth and achievement only to reach the end of life and realize we can’t take it with us.

Its all “vanity of vanities!” Ecclesiastes says.

But even though the book of Ecclesiastes can be a little bit of a downer to read, I think we will find a lot of truth in what it is saying, which is essentially that everything that we do or possess on Earth has an end because all things on Earth come to an end.  When we look back at the end of our lives, we can’t take our accomplishments, our reputations, or really anything with us.

So if life is as short and meaningless as this particular writer seems to think, then shouldn’t we just enjoy life while we can?  Shouldn’t we live life to the fullest?

In an interesting twist, the writer of Ecclesiastes actually doesn’t disagree with this.  The writer says that we can do nothing better than to enjoy our work, eat, drink, and be merry.  The writer even goes so far as to say that it is a gift from God to be able to do so, but ultimately concludes that this too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

It’s a depressing thought, and looking at our lives in this way would cause us to echo the exasperation in the writer’s voice, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

If this is true, it makes us ask ourselves, “does anything have any meaning in the world, or is my life just a chasing after the wind, too?”

The parable that Jesus tells today is strikingly similar in mood to Ecclesiastes.  In this story a man approaches Jesus and asks him to help divide his father’s inheritance and Jesus essentially says, “Why are you bothering me with this?  What am I, your judge?”  Interesting to note is that rabbis such as Jesus were often asked to act as judge or arbitrator over a dispute.  So it’s not out of line for this man to ask Jesus this question.  Yet, Jesus seems put off by the notion that he would judge such trivial matters.  “Life is more than possessions,” Jesus says.

Explaining himself further, Jesus goes on to tell a parable about a rich man who stores up his grain so that he can retire early, relax, and enjoy life, maybe spend some time fishing at the cabin up north.  And I think many of us would say that there is nothing wrong with this.  In fact this is the American dream; to be able to work hard, get ahead in life, and be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor.  We might even say that the rich man is doing the right and prudent thing by saving his money.  Any financial officer today would certainly agree that the rich man is being wise.

What’s more, there’s nothing explicitly evil that the rich man does.  We are not told that he harms anyone else, we’re not told that he acts unjustly.  He’s just putting money is his 401K.

Yet God clearly scolds the rich man.  And we’re left asking, what is the issue here?

As Christians, we’ve come up with all sorts of bad things the rich man could have done wrong.  One theory is that the rich man is selfish because he never talks about anyone but himself.  He never speaks of his workers, neighbors, friends or family.  Other theories point to the potential impact the rich man had on the economy and still others point out that nowhere in his plans is God included.

All of these are valid theories.  But what Jesus makes clear is that his concern is that the rich man is chasing after something that doesn’t last.

As humans, we often cling to things that don’t last.  For example I saw an article on a news site the other day that said, “Raquel Welch, still beautiful at age 70!”  And the picture of Raquel showed her in a tight fitting dress, and her skin was pulled back taut, and to be honest her face looked plastic with all the expression of a porcelain doll.

It was obvious from the picture and the caption that maintaining beauty meant looking young at any cost.  And it makes me wonder, is this beauty to us, always looking young and thin with a painted on smile?  The more I thought about it, the more this became a sad thought because it was clear that there is an American perception that youth is beauty.  Not just Raquel, but our culture, fights getting old, or at least looking old, and it feels like we are chasing after our youth and it is something we will never catch, like we’re chasing the wind.

What Jesus and Ecclesiastes powerfully remind us today is that there are things that we chase after in this world that eventually fade away.  Beauty, wealth, health, image, power, social status, youth, pleasure, etc., all are fleeting things, and to spend our lives chasing after them is chasing after the wind.  Like Ecclesiastes says, these things aren’t bad in and of themselves, but the point is that they don’t last.

Fortunately, neither the writer of Ecclesiastes nor Jesus gives us a ten point plan or the purpose driven life to grant us meaning to our lives.  Instead, Ecclesiastes responds to mortality and the ‘meaninglessness’ of life by saying one simple thing.  “Stand in awe of God.”

Stand in awe of God.  It’s one of the few things that Ecclesiastes doesn’t call meaningless.  At first, it might not seem very helpful, it doesn’t seem to give us meaning to our lives, but it actually makes a lot of sense.  Ecclesiastes’ response to mortality, to things that end, is to stand in the presence of the infinite, to abide with God, to worship and be in God’s presence.  Jesus puts it a different way but essentially says the same thing.  Jesus says, be “rich towards God”.

And in this, both Jesus and Ecclesiastes clue us into what really matters.  And they tell us that God matters because God is eternal.  Faith, hope, and love: These are things that no thief can steal and that no moth can destroy because they come from the eternal God.

That is why Paul also exhorts us to keep our eyes on Christ.  “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  Paul says that when we seek the eternal and Triune God of the universe, we find true meaning.  In seeking Christ, we learn God’s heavenly justice, and are given God’s eternal faith, hope, and love.  We learn to love our neighbor and pour ourselves out for the world, as Christ does even now through the Holy Spirit.

And what’s more, we also learn the true value of earthly things.  So in Christ we find the true meaning of beauty and pleasure.  In Christ we learn to use our wealth, power, and status to serve others.  In Christ we learn that worldly things and even our very lives are a gift from the eternal God.

In chasing after human things we become like Sisyphus, oppressed and rolling our boulder almost to the crest of that great hill, only to see it fall again and again.

Jesus and the writer of Ecclesiastes warn us that by chasing things in this world we are chasing something we can never catch, we are toiling after something we can never have, or trying to be something we can never be.  But in following Christ, we put down our boulders and are freed from these meaningless vanities so that we may stand and receive something eternal and incomparable to anything found on earth.

And so when we face meaninglessness and our own finiteness, may we seek the Triune God and receive meaning in God’s eternal richness of love.  And in doing so, may we all stand in awe of something that lasts forever.

Christ Jesus teaches us to pray: he invites us to know our own need and the needs of others and then persistently, persistently bring those needs to the Father, trusting that we will be heard and answered.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen;, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 17, year C; text: Luke 11:1-13

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Why do we have so much trouble with prayer?  Given the number of books written about it, the countless conferences offered concerning it, the thousands of sermons preached encouraging it, and the millions of hands wrung trying to understand what to do, you’d think that we’d be pretty good at prayer by now.

But in some ways we’ve become bound by centuries of instruction and advice and well-meaning lectures about prayer to the point where we sometimes have no idea what we’re supposed to do, let alone think.  When do we pray?  About what should we pray?  How do we know if we’re “doing it right” and how do we know if God’s really there, really answering?

Our Prayer of the Day this morning said that God is always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and gladly gives more than we either desire or deserve.  I believe that is true, and that the Scriptures we’ve been given say the same thing.  And if it is true, then two things seem to be suggested.  First, maybe prayer’s not as hard and complicated as we’ve made it out to be.  And second, maybe the problem isn’t on God’s side, it’s on ours.

Given these two points, maybe we should throw out everything we think we know about prayer, everything we’ve been told, and take this moment with Jesus Luke records as our starting and our ending.  Maybe we can simply stand with the disciples and say, “Lord, teach us to pray.”  And then listen.

There are three things we hear.

When we listen to Jesus today, the first thing we hear is a prayer wherein we’re invited to know our need and bring it to God.

If we look at the prayer Jesus teaches, without anything we previously thought about it, we notice something striking: it’s pretty human-centered.  So yes, we begin, Jesus says, by honoring God’s name and calling for God’s kingdom to be a reality.

But this opening places our prayer firmly into a remarkable claim: God, the Creator of all, is related to us, is our Father.  So even as we begin by honoring God and God’s rule, we are told that we have a relationship with God.  This is not a prayer speaking to a distant, cold divinity.  Jesus says we start prayer by realizing this relationship.

Then the rest of the prayer, oddly, is demands, with no polishing or buttering up, no pleading or begging.  Give us.  Forgive us.  Do not try us.  And if we add Jesus’ words from Matthew: Lead us.  Deliver us.  We’re not told to say please, or offer any bargains or deals.  It’s a prayer where human beings are told to speak their needs to a God to whom they are related as a child to a father.  It’s that simple.

What this means is that it’s going to be pretty important that we know what we need.  What prayer as Jesus taught us requires of us is that we are aware of what we are lacking, what we need from God.

How can we ask for anything from God if we don’t even know what we need?  How often have we struggled with God’s answer to our prayer simply because we asked for something we wanted, rather than for something we needed?  The classic example is a child asking God for a specific gift, a toy.  As adults we do the same, though we’re sophisticated enough to sugarcoat the same kind of request with a shiny veneer of respectability.

But at its core, this prayer Jesus taught us says be as honest as you can be with God.  If you have sinned, ask forgiveness.  If you are facing trials, ask for help.  If you are hungry, ask for bread.  If evil threatens, ask for God.  With this prayer Jesus teaches, we need to know ourselves well enough to know what we need, and we need to be willing to be vulnerable enough to ask God for help.

When we listen to Jesus today, the second thing we hear is a parable which says trust that God is hearing us and will respond.

This parable Jesus tells helps us understand his prayer.  Because the questions that arise after the Lord’s Prayer are obvious, and common: how do we know that God will hear us and answer us?  Sure, ask for what you need, we say.  But God too often seems silent.

So Jesus tells this parable.  What’s interesting about the Greek here is that this is one of those cases where there’s an implication that we don’t hear in translation.  Essentially, Jesus asks a question which in its grammar implies a negative answer when he says verses 5 through 7.  What he says is this: “None of you can imagine having a friend who, when you came to her at midnight and asked for food to feed unexpected guests, would refuse you that request, can you?”

He’s saying that no good friend would act that way.  And so, he says, why on earth would you expect God to act this way?  This is the second human connection to God related to prayer, the second relationship image we are given.  God is our Father, from whom we can ask for what we need.  And God is like our closest friend, who would never ignore us if we were asking for help.

This is a tremendous promise for us, if only we believe it.  Our problem is that we often experience God as silent, as the person staying in bed ignoring our knock.  We aren’t sure we can trust Jesus here because our experience tells us otherwise.

But remember this: we never would have come up with the idea that God cares for us and hears our prayer in love from our experience.  Only because Jesus told us this did we even consider it possible.  So maybe we can also trust Jesus to know what he’s talking about, even apart from our experience.

He is, after all, the Son of God.

When we listen to Jesus today, the third thing we hear is a promise: God’s answer to us is not only certain, it is for our good.

The transition between the first two things Jesus teaches us about prayer (that is, how to pray, and that we can trust God will respond) is what leads us to the third, most important thing.  The transition is: Ask, Jesus says, and you will receive.  Search, and you will find.  Knock, and the door will be opened to you.

Following on the heels of the parable, these are powerful promises, covering the entire landscape of prayer.  Ask, and you will receive.  If you know your need, and ask God for it, you will receive what you need.  Search, and you will find.  If you are looking for direction, seeking God’s guidance, wanting God’s help to show you the way, then good news, Jesus says.  You will find what you seek.

And knock, and the door will be opened to you.  Perhaps the most important of all three, and picking up on the image of the parable, Jesus says this: no matter when you knock, God will always open the door.  We can trust this as the best of news.  We will find God at home to us.  Always.

But then, to answer the other lingering questions: will God’s answer be good for us?  To that Jesus once more offers a human comparison to God, back to parenting.  All of you parents, he says, aren’t perfect.  He even uses the word “evil.”  Yet, he says, you know enough to give your children good things when they ask, not hurtful things.

Well, then, he says, if God is your Father, as I told you to pray, how much more will a good God give you what you need?  He actually says, how much more will God give you the Holy Spirit when you ask.  This, then, is our great promise: God’s answer to our prayer is to come to be with us, to fill us, to make us children of God.

The relationship we have with God as Father, taught us by God the Son, is now embedded into our very hearts and lives by God the Spirit who lives in us.  How, then, Jesus might say, can we ever doubt that God hears us in prayer, when God’s very Spirit is within us always?

God is always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and gladly gives more than we either desire or deserve.

That’s what we learn from Jesus today.

We can pray to God, knowing we are loved, and heard, and answered, knowing that God is with us always.  God wills all good for us and for the world, and because of our relationship with God given by Christ Jesus, we can speak freely, honestly, openly in prayer.  And when we don’t know what or how to pray, the Spirit will even help us with that.

God is ready to hear; now let us pray.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Christ has shown us that God is with us now and always, and when God is here we rejoice, we serve, we focus on God whom we love, and so are reconciled to each other in Christ.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 16, year C; texts: Luke 10:38-42; Genesis 18:1-10a; Colossians 1:15-28

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Let’s hear that once more:

“Now as Jesus and his disciples went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.  She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.  But Mary was distracted by her sister’s serving; so she looked at Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister is working to prepare a meal and will not sit beside you and listen, as I do?  Tell her then to come sit down.’  But the Lord answered her, ‘Mary, Mary, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Martha has chosen the better part, which will not be taken from her.’”

Does that make a difference in how you hear this story?  It does for me.  I’m tired of how easily this story has been read and interpreted to abuse Martha and her focus on serving, and to make it a story pitting two sisters against each other.  Such a quick and easy take falsely positions the contemplative life against the active life, the thinker against the server, and simply doesn’t do justice to the facts of the story.  Imagining Mary as the complainer opens up the reality that the problem Jesus is addressing has nothing to do with the different activities of the sisters.  But that still leaves us with the question of what problem Jesus is addressing, then, doesn’t it?

We don’t easily understand the point of this story.  Beyond the common interpretation critical of Martha we usually hear lies the complicated problem that it is not a particularly complete or well-told story.  There is much detail we, the listeners and readers, want to know that the narrator does not tell: Who else was at dinner?  What was the history between these sisters?  What did Martha say, or better, feel, after Jesus’ remarks?  And most of all, what in the world did Jesus mean?

This story has all the markings of a remembered event that was passed down but not fully understood.  Some listener present, or listeners, saw this moment, which would have been awkward for any of us to witness, wouldn’t it?  You’d remember the time Jesus and Martha had words and everyone felt like slipping into another room.  What was remembered was the precipitating comments by Martha, and the enigmatic comment by Jesus.  People knew what he said was important, but if this Gospel is a fair indicator, they didn’t seem to be sure why it was so.  Luke doesn’t embellish anything, or add any commentary or further description.  He simply relates the brief episode and allows successive new listeners to try their best at what the first disciples likely weren’t sure they understood themselves.

One thing we can say for certain: the ultimate question in this story, the thing we most need to consider, is what Jesus means by “the better part,” the “only one thing”.  That’s the big question.  If we know the answer to that, we can begin to seek it and live.

What is clear from Scripture, and even from the immediate context of this event in Luke, is that both the sisters are doing “needful” things.

The mandate to be hospitable was not only cultural, it was biblical, and Martha is doing exactly what needed to be done.  She has a guest; it is her home, Luke says, so she’s likely the eldest.  It’s her job as host to serve her guests.  Not because she’s a woman; because she’s the householder, the host.  Remember when Jesus, a few chapters ago in Luke, was guest at the home of Simon the Pharisee, and the so-called “sinful” woman came and washed his feet with her tears?  Not only did Jesus bless her activity, he chided Simon for not doing the requisite hospitality when Jesus arrived for the meal.  It was Simon’s responsibility, as householder, and he failed it.  And earlier in this same tenth chapter of Luke from which we read today, Jesus sent out the 70, telling them to accept hospitality and food when offered, and bless those who give it.  Martha’s doing what she must do, as host, to say nothing of her love of Jesus.

Look at Abraham and Sarah in Genesis today.  They rush around getting a meal ready because they have visitors.  It’s not clear at first that they know it is the LORD God.  They just see three men, and Abraham and Sarah jump into action.  Meat is prepared, bread is made, feet are washed, and a place in the shade to rest is offered.  This is what you do.

But Mary also is doing the needful thing: she is listening to her Lord.  How many times have we heard Jesus invite people to listen, to hear?  How often does he teach, hoping some will listen, and then do, act on his words?  Mary knows what to do when the Lord is present: she sits at his feet and hears all she can hear, as eagerly as she can.  She is where she must be.

And so we see with Abraham and Sarah.  They also listen, as well as serve.  God speaks, and Abraham knows now who his guests are.  And some of the most powerful conversation between humanity and God that we know of happens because Abraham listens.  He is told that he will have a son in nine months’ time.  Sarah also hears this.  A promise made decades ago is now given immediacy and will be fulfilled, a marvel.

And then Abraham and the LORD go walking and have that awe-inspiring conversation about Sodom and Gomorrah, where Abraham models that in prayer we can argue with God and call the Triune God to account for what we know to be God’s grace and love.

So there is this truth today: when the LORD God is in our midst, there is our focus, our hope, our joy.

When we are in God’s presence, we are called to serve God, and to listen to God.  We feed and care for others in many and various ways because our Christ has said he is in the other, the brother, the sister in need.  We offer our best in worship because the Triune God has become one of us and now we know in whose presence we gather and are fed with grace.  We are called to be Martha and Abraham and Sarah, offering our lives – not just dishwashing – in service to the God who has made us and loves us and who has redeemed the world.

But we also are to listen to God, to the words of the Living Word of God, Christ Jesus, who reveals the heart and will and mind of the Trinity to us.  We are struggling with this story this morning because we know we must listen to our Lord and try to understand him.  To sit at Christ’s feet and listen is our true calling as well, to be Mary.

What this suggests is that the one thing, the needful thing, is to be in the presence of the Triune God and fully be there with our gifts and our lives.  Abraham, Sarah, Martha, Mary, all have the amazing joy of being in God’s presence.  All have gifts to offer, all need to listen as well.  As do we, which is the great joy to which both these stories point for us: God is also in our midst.

So for us, it becomes not a question of which activity is more pleasing to God, not a question of dismissing those who are most comfortable serving with a dishcloth or a mop and lifting up those who serve by thinking and pondering God’s Word.  Rather it becomes a question of using those gifts each of us has and focusing them, and our lives, wholly on our Lord Christ and the relationship with the Triune God he brings in his death and resurrection.

What remains for us to consider is the distractions, the occasion for Jesus’ gentle yet firmly pointed critique.

When we hear the story flipped around, with Mary complaining instead of her sister, it becomes clear to see that the action of the complaining sister – whether listening or preparing – isn’t the problem.  It’s the attitude toward the action, and the lack of graciousness and love for the other.

Martha’s distraction with her tasks is the problem, not the tasks themselves.  She is not serving the Son of God fully with the gifts she has, she’s serving and wishing that Mary would join her in that serving.  Worse, she drags Jesus into her distractions and asks him to side with them.

And do you see what he does?  He’s not making some grand, declarative statement that people who work in the kitchen to serve others have to do it without help and others get to sit on their rears and listen to Jesus.  And then be praised for it.  No, he many times has affirmed and honored the kind of things Martha is doing.

What he’s saying is, whatever you’re doing for me, for God-in-your-midst, do it fully and joyfully, and focus on me, on Christ.  When Christ is present, bringing the grace of the Triune God into our very lives, that’s our focus, not any quarrels we might have with each other, or resentments of each other, or wishes for different gifts than the ones we’ve been given, or differing ways of service than the ones we do best.

This leads us to consider what Paul is trying to tell the Colossians.  It’s Paul’s statement of what the one thing, the needful thing is.  Christ is, Paul says, the image of the invisible God, the creator of all things, ruler of all things, head of all things.  If we dare believe that Christ is present with us through the Holy Spirit, as we do claim and believe, Paul says then know this: the eternal, Triune God is present with you as well.

And if that’s so, then all we’ve said about what to do when that happens, all we learned from Abraham, Sarah, Martha and Mary, all that applies.  We serve, we listen.  Because God is with us.

But then Paul speaks of a deep wonder: in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, who is all those things, the image of the invisible God, ruler of all, all that, in Christ’s death and resurrection God is reconciling all things to himself.

That’s the wonder.  When Christ Jesus, crucified and risen, is with us, and when he is our focus, our one thing, our needful thing, we are reconciled with each other, and to the world, and the world itself is reconciled to God.  Our forgiveness received from God of necessity opens up forgiveness and restoration between us.

Being distracted by our envy of others, our jealousy of others’ gifts, our concern about whether we’re getting a fair shake, all this is a sign of our not being reconciled.

I think Paul would say that Jesus is saying this to Martha: “When I am with you, you and Mary and I are one, and there is no room for this fighting, this bickering, this distraction.  Mary knows this, Martha, and I want you to know it as well.”

There is only one needful thing, and the joy of the Gospel is that we have this: the Triune God is present with us in love and grace and in the world, bringing healing to all.

What Christ would have us do is do what each of us does best.  Find our ways of serving that we can offer joyfully and without complaint; find the gifts we’ve been given that we can share; and always, always listen to the Word of God.  Serve God, and the people of God in Christ’s name, and listen.

Because when Christ is with us, we are reconciled to each other and the world is healed.  When that’s not happening, we know we are distracted, and now we know what to do.  Stop, take a breath, and look once more to Christ Jesus and know once again that we are with God and nothing else matters.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen