Rev. John Simmons.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
August 6, 2006
Matthew 26:36-46
Today is Communion Sunday, a special time in the life of the church. It is for me one of the high points of my spiritual journey.
I chose this morning’s scripture for two reasons. The first is personal. Years ago I visited the Mt. of Olives, which is where Jesus went out to pray after the Last Supper. I had for many years seen a picture of Jesus kneeling on a rock in prayer. It was a powerful visual image. The real Mt. of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, did not disappoint me. I could well image Jesus kneeling on one of the rocks. Jesus, in the picture was alone. Jesus in the scripture is alone as his faithful disciples are asleep near by. Jesus in the picture was deep into prayer as is told in the scriptures.
The story around this scene is equally compelling. We imagine Jesus was praying about what was about to happen to him. I say imagine since there were no witnesses. The writer puts the words that seem to fit so well into his mouth. Jesus is asking if it be God’s will, can there be another way besides his capture, trial and eventual outcome? In good biblical tradition, he asks three times. Prayers over, Jesus summons his disciples and goes forward into that which he knew was the eventual outcome of his trip into Jerusalem and his confrontation with the Jewish religious leaders.
He had no doubt that he would be found guilty. I imagine he thought he’d be stoned, as was the Jewish tradition. However, the spiritual leaders of his people were more political than spiritual and they wished the responsibility for Jesus’ death to fall upon the hated Romans.
If Jesus knew where his acts were leading, why did he pray? Although the first three gospels all agree on the content of the prayers, could they have been wrong? Could Jesus simply have been praying that he move through the ordeal ahead wrapped in the spirit of God?
We do know that the scripture reported that after he finished with his prayers, he went forward to meet his accusers and move on with his life. It wasn’t a happy or easy experience, but it ended up changing the worlds of everyone connected with Jesus and through the work of the spirit changed the course of history.
I have been praying for as long as I can remember. There have been times when my prayers have been very specific as to the outcome I envisioned. Sometime, something happened, to change how I viewed prayer. I ceased to be as concerned with the outcome and became more focused on the experience. I also began to realize there was something wrong with thinking that my prayer was intended to influence God into a specific action. Sometime, years ago, I had a friend who was going through some kind of crisis. She listed all of the people, groups and churches who were praying for her. It had the feeling that she felt there was a critical mass to be met before God would grant her petition. It didn’t feel right to me. I couldn’t believe in a God who was influenced by large numbers of petitioners. Prayer I realize has become a justice issue for me. If God had to be petitioned for someone to live or die, I couldn’t take in that kind of God.
I realized for me God’s presence, or the presence of spirit was the crucial issue for me.
Early in my ministry a friend of mine who had just lost a baby came to me filled with anger. His wife was in a religious hospital and after the four days of the baby’s life, the baby died. People tried to comfort the young couple by saying it was God’s Will. God had taken her to Heaven. My friend was very angry at a God who could choose his child to die for whatever reason.
I understood and tried my best to assure him that God was present to his daughter, and God was still present to her parents. I tried to reassure her that the fact was her body couldn’t function in a way to keep her alive. It was not an intention, it was a reality.
I have never found life’s journey particularly easy. On a dreary day not too long okay I tried to express it in a poem, it is called Climbing Mountains:
Climbing Mountains
Flat, smooth,
with clear directions
Enough turns and bumps to keep it interesting,
That’s how I thought my life would be.
Well I thought wrong.
I grew up on a hill.
I climbed it most every day.
I didn’t realize it was the training for my life.
With seven decades of hill climbing
You’d think I’d be in great shape.
It is
as if each hill is brand new.
The experiences of the past are comforting.
I do have clues from my journey,
Perhaps with age, the energy is less sufficient.
Sometimes I still look ahead for:
The flat, smooth, with clear directions
With enough turns and bumps to keep it interesting.
Does it have to be Mt. Everest every time?
I am glad when people can laugh with me as I share this point of view. Life did not turn out as I expected but it has been a rich experience and mountain climbing in a figurative way has helped to make interesting.
Somewhere along the way I learned that God never got me over the mountains, but when I was open to God’s spirit the journey was much more bearable.
So when I use the phrase “Unanswered Prayer” what do I mean? Many people make their prayers in form of petitions. These are called intercessory prayers, as the hope is that God will intercede on behalf of the person, event, or condition we refer to in our prayer. It is an ancient form of prayer and still is widely used within the church and in private devotions. My concern about intercessory prayers is that they are a redundancy. For me God is already present in every aspect of creation. Now, there is nothing wrong with redundancy unless we have expectations and if those expectations are not met, it leaves us feeling God has not responded.
In every moment of our lives God is present and our recognition of this presence can make it more meaningful in our lives. Thus for me, there is no such thing as unanswered prayer. God is always present in the moment.
It never occurs to me, these days, to feel that God is not always with me. If a friend I’ve been praying for dies, it is not a lack in connection with God. It is that that person’s body could no longer sustain life as I’ve known it. A change has happened. I grieve about change when I loose a friend in death. I miss the connections we’ve had. The memories will always be with me, but there is a kind of vitality that is missing.
I have even discovered that after death a relationship can continue in mysterious ways. I have even written a poem about it.
Remembrance
There’s a whisper of sound
A light ray catches our eye
Shapes and colors connect in our hearts.
The memory of a voice, a glance, a phrasing of words:
And we know
Someone is near.
Our hearts are connected
For a moment resurrection occurs.
We are alone, or so it seems and yet
Suddenly
Without a falling drop,
Love engulfs us,
Surrounds us,
and we are overwhelmed with joy.
We see a picture, a familiar shaped chair,
We smell a fragrance we’ve known before
A memory flashes from out of the air.
Someone has come and is briefly there.
Life eternally seems a ponderous phrase
covering such small, intimate knowing.
It all is a mystery, of which we are a part,
We are joined in the spirit, I call it my heart.
Keep me aware of the moments that come.
Let me treasure them always as they pass my way.
Bringing clearly the pictures of those deep in my heart,
Let wisdom remind me they will never depart.
If peace doesn’t come when I pray for peace, I realize that in my prayer I have released energy for peace in myself and in the atmosphere around me. I believe the spirit in prayer connects with the spirit that surrounds us all. Praying is a way to focus our energy and send it forth in our lives and into the lives of others.
Granted it doesn’t seem like terrorists, armies, leaders in our own country and leaders throughout the world connect with my spirit of peace, but I have no doubt that it is there. I vehemently believe that the more people are focused on peace the more apt we are to embrace it.
I hadn’t put this in my sermon, but after hearing the Men in Black sing the spiritual, I was reminded of the blacks who had been slaves in this country for two hundred years and not much better off after they were freed. They kept their spirit alive and eventually it formed them into a great force that brought great changes in our lands. They prayers as expressed in their spirituals took a long time to have effect, but eventually they brought about a great change in our society.
It is a slow process but it can work. People like Gandhi and Martin Luther King had been advocates for the non-violent approach to change. It is too bad that all of the people who celebrate Gandhi and Martin Luther King do not also embrace their concept of non-violence. The lack of response did not stop either of these two men. They kept moving forward in the way of non-violence.
So if I pray for peace and it doesn’t happen, I do not look towards the heavens and say “God, why have you not answered my prayer?” I know that my prayer has made me more peaceful. I know that all of the time, throughout the world, people are joining the march to peace. So my prayer is being answered even as I make it, whether out loud or silently.
Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane has been answered as the presence of God was with him and has continued to be with him and us through out time. So unanswered prayer can only happen when we close our heart to God. Even then, without our awareness, God is still present with us. We have simply failed to welcome God in the moments of our lives.
Communion is a time to remember the life of Jesus. In that remembrance let us open our hearts to the spirit of God and fell the presence amongst us.