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“Keep
Your Heart”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Luke 18:1-8
“The Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to
loose heart.”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS, if I was to be asked this question “And
yet, when the Son of Man comes today, will he find faith on the earth?”
on this day, the confirmation of Jennifer Lauren Jenkins, what do you
think my answer is? YES!!! You will find faith!!! And,
faith has just found us, too!
Our scriptures today are teachings, to Jesus’ first disciples, and to
us, about our need for prayer, and Christ’s encouragement not to loose
heart, when it comes to prayer. There
certainly are many aspects of prayer.
We pray the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday.
We have lectionary prayers that are prayed in thousands of
churches all over the world. We
have our Prayers of the People, where we intercede on behalf of each
other. In our private
lives, we have contemplative prayer, where we pray in silence and
meditation. We have
extemporaneous prayers where we spontaneously throw out a prayer to God.
And we have questions that come with prayer.
Is God hearing me? Does
this prayer really leave the room? Am
I praying right? If God
already knows, why pray?
The most important aspect of our Christian lives, here and now is
prayer. That does not mean
that we have to be righteous in our prayer ways, and that our prayers
are to pass a test. In the
New Testament, where we are taught that the ultimate aspect of a
Christian life is love; the ultimate way that we receive the love of God
and give our love to God is to not loose our heart in prayer. Even if we
are emotionally upset, and cast out a prayer that shows God our painful
emotions, we are being real with who we are to God, and that reveals to
God our love for God.
The story that Jesus told his disciples was about an absolutely horrible
judge. The judge hated people and he hated God.
He’s the kind of court judge who makes a mockery of the title
“Your Honor.”
Unfortunately, appearing in his courtroom was a poor widow who had no
money, she had no husband, she had not standing, she had no resources;
but she did have something; she had the heart to keep on, even until she
wore out the old judge.
I read a delightful story this week about Mother Teresa, who went to
visit Edward Bennett Williams, a lawyer in Washington D.C. At one time
he owned the Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Orioles.
He was a lawyer for Richard Nixon.
Mother Teresa was raising money for an AIDS hospice.
Williams was in charge of a charitable foundation, but he did not
like working with helping AIDS. When
she arrived, Mother Teresa was a small lady sitting on the other side of
a big lawyer’s desk. She
made her appeal for the hospice, and Williams said, “We’re touched
by your appeal, but no.” Mother
Teresa simply said, “Let us pray.”
After they bowed their heads and finished their time of prayer,
Mother Teresa asked him again with the same kind of words.
And he answered politely with the word “no”.
Mother Teresa said, “Let us pray.”
Williams exasperated, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “All
right, all right, let me get my checkbook.”
Maybe that’s part of what Jesus wants: pray like that, pray like
Mother Teresa, cry out, and bang on the doors of heaven with insistence,
until something happens. But,
that’s not all of what today’s lesson on the nature of prayer is all
about.
During Jesus’ life, at that time, his greatest passion was to do the
will of God the Father that was also his will as God the Son, which was
to include us, involve us, and make us participants in the relationship
they have in God the Holy Spirit.
In The Letter to the Hebrews, it reads, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”
(HB 5:8) This does not mean
that he learned was it was to be the Son of God through suffering; it
means that through suffering in our humanity, Jesus Christ learned how
to know God the Father fully, with a human heart and mind.
As we read through the New Testament, we are impressed with the nature
of Jesus and prayer; praying, at times, all night long (I had a
professor in seminary who told us that he has tried to pray all night
long, but was never able to.), fasting and praying for forty days and
forty nights. He spoke and
listened to God the Father and God the Father spoke and listened to
him—possible literal words. We,
like the disciples, would love to come much closer to being like that,
too.
Well, there is even something else we can learn from the human aspect of
the prayerful relationship Jesus Christ has with God the Father.
The very night before Jesus was taken captive, he went with
Peter, James, and John to a place called Gethsemane.
He told them, “I am
deeply grieved, even to death.”
And then he went out by himself and prayed, “Abba,
Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet,
not what I want, but what you want.”
Jesus was in grief to the very point of giving up his own heart.
He felt what it is to a suffering miserable human.
And he shared his heart; his feelings with God the Father.
Yes, he ended his prayer with “thy
will be done.”
And, of course, there are some of the final words of Jesus on the cross:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
He was quoting Psalm 22, where David also wrote, “Why
are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?”
While Jesus’ blood is being shed for the remission of our sins, to
build the foundation of a new relationship between us and God, Jesus was
free to share his real human feelings with God the Father.
I don’t believe Jesus was making a theological statement about
his beliefs at that moment, some kind of lack of faith, though the
words, “why have you forsaken me?” may mean that to us,
if we are judging ourselves or someone else at a time like this.
We are not to loose our hearts, in that we do not feel free to pray to
God exactly as we feel. God
shares in our feelings. God
is with us. God suffers with us. Why
we suffer at times, I do not always know.
One of the most beautiful aspects of not loosing our hearts, and
keeping our passion with God in prayer, is to realize that God actually
wants us to be who we are, to be real in our prayers.
We will always have questions about proper prayer.
Paul wrote to the Romans. “Likewise
the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as
we ought, but the very Spirit intercedes with signs too deep for words.”
When we are going through a tough time and are asking ourselves
questions about the right way to pray, the Holy Spirit is understanding
every aspect of what we need from God, and praying to our heavenly
Father, through the human being and Son of God in Jesus Christ;
interceding for us.
God is for us. God is with
us. God is praying for us. God
is hearing our prayers. So,
we do not ever need to loose heart.
Something beyond what we can imagine is going to come to us from
God. And God loves us, and
like us, just as we are, so much, that he wants us to be real with him;
and not ashamed of who we are.
Let us pray…
Amen
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