Please Let Him Ask Someone Else

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

January 22, 2012

Please Let Him Ask Someone Else

Selected Texts

It is easy for a pastor to turn any group

into a praying community,

a fervent feverish flock

furiously lifting up words,

every phrase tagged “urgent”,

every good soul pleading,

“God hear me, God answer me”.

All a pastor needs is 8 simple words,

8 short words spoken to any group,

small or large:

“Who would like to lead us in prayer?”

No sooner does a pastor let these words sail forth

than everyone in the group gets to work,

heads down, prayers lifted up,

“Please Lord don’t let him call on me.

Please Lord let him ask someone else.”

In the very act of asking the question

the pastor has created a perfect teaching moment

on the power of prayer,

how it connects us with God,

focuses us intently,

binds everyone together in the Spirit.

With the question the pastor also has shown

how easy it is to pray,

how simple.

No worries about language,

no need to add a  “thou”, a “thee”, a “thine”,

no need to begin by calling on the Almighty,

the Eternal,

the Everlasting,

the Merciful God.

No, we just get to it:

short, straight, simple, succinct:

“Please Lord, don’t let him call on me.”

The universe God created in perfect balance,

remains in balance:

Eight words sent out,

“who would like to lead us in prayer.”

And Eight words back in response,

Please Lord, don’t let him call on me.”

Why is it that we struggle so with prayer?

In both the Wednesday and Thursday Bible Study groups

we spent six weeks in the Fall looking at prayer:

what it is,

how should we pray,

why do we find it so difficult,

and what should we expect when we do pray.

The dictionary defines the word prayer as a request.

The word comes from the Latin meaning to entreat,

to petition, to make a formal request.

And certainly we think of prayer as making a request,

asking God for something,

even if it is as simple as a blessing.

But of course there is more to prayer.

In the Oxford Book of Prayer,

one of the many prayer books I have in my library,

we can find this attempt to define prayer:

“It is a man standing before God in wonder,

awe and humility;

man, made in the image of God,

responding to his maker.”

(George Appleton)

More than 1600 years ago

the great preacher and leader of the church John Chrysostom

said of prayer,

that it is the “the longing for God”.

The longing for God,

the hunger we have within us that moves us

to want to be in conversation with God,

to want to talk to God,

and just as important,

to listen to what God has to say to us,

to hear God’s response as God leads and guides us.

To pray is to seek God,

to open ourselves to his presence;

It is to talk with God,

to talk with the Almighty,

the all-knowing God,

the all-powerful God

as though you were talking with a friend,

sitting across a table at Starbucks.

To offer a prayer is not to lift up an eloquent

mini-masterpiece of the spoken word,

a minor literary marvel.

What matters in prayer is not eloquence,

not erudition,

but sincerity.

If prayer is heart-centered,

heart-grounded,

it can be spoken in halting, stumbling words,

punctuated with “uh” and “um”

spoken in the simplest words and phrases.

If it is from the heart,

then it is a prayer that will delight God.

When I was a student at Princeton Theological Seminary

the course catalog went on for hundreds of pages,

but nowhere would you have found:

Prayer 101 – The Basics;

or Prayer 303, Advance Theory and Praxis;             

or Prayer 425, Seminar on the Great Prayers

of the Reformation.

We all learn prayer the same way:

We learn prayer by doing it.

I once asked a friend how she became such a good tennis player;

“Practice” was her instant response.

Practice: spending hours and hours on the tennis court,

hitting ball after ball.

Yes, coaching helped;

so did having the right equipment;

and being part of a strong team.

But ultimately it came down to 
swinging the racquet again and again,

hitting the ball time after time,

practicing,

doing it.

The apostles said to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray”

and then once Jesus taught them,

my guess is he didn’t say,

“Who’d like to lead us in prayer?”,

he just said, “John, you pray for us;

Peter, why don’t you take some time

and go off by yourself to pray;

James, fear not, just do it.”

Learning to pray begins with making time,

making time and space for God.

It is learning to be quiet, truly quiet,

shutting out every distraction

so you can concentrate on God.

Multitasking does not work with prayer.

Cellphone off, not even on vibrate;

Mind cleared,

radio silent, earbuds set aside.  

Silence, quiet.

It isn’t easy, in a world filled with noise,

a world filled with distractions.

It will happen only if you make it happen,

make time, learn how to be silent.

Try it here and now:

Try being silent for one minute,

try stilling yourself to open the way for God.

(…..Go one full minute of silence)

That wasn’t that easy, was it?

You may have had a few seconds,

but a full minute of stillness,

of silence, quiet, that’s a stretch.

For me, what always comes crashing through

is the “to do” list,

that boisterous, jarring, trumpeting voice that says,

“Don’t just sit there, you have things to do!”

A prayer from the Rev. Ted Loder captures our challenge so well:

“Hear me quickly, Lord,

for my mind soon wanders to other things…

O Timeless God for whom I make so little time,

catch me with the sudden stab of beauty or pain or regret

that will catch me up short for a moment

and so be caught by you….”

And even when we do find that silent moment

and the words come pouring out,

out from the heart past the lips,

rising heavenward, on to God,

“Please God, hear my prayer,

please God answer my prayer”,

the response that comes back

sounds too much like silence,

a dreadful stillness,

as though your words never made the trip,

but just fell on the floor around you.

Page through the Bible

and we’ll find lots of company with that experience:

the prophet who lamented,

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,

and you will not listen?

(Habakkuk 1:1)

The psalmist who wailed,

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I bear pain in my soul

and have sorrow in my heart all day long?

…Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!

(Psalm 13)

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;

and by night, but find no rest.

(Psalm 22)

The psalms in particular are filled with the plaints

of the forlorn who wonder whether God is listening,

whether God cares,

whether God has stopped up his ears and turned away.

What should we expect when we pray?

Should we expect an immediate response?

Should we expect God to answer our prayer

in just the way we’ve put our request?

After all, don’t we hear our Lord teach us in the gospel of Mark

“So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer,

believe that you have received it,

and it will be yours.”

(Mark 11:24)

Doesn’t our Lord seem to reinforce this

in the gospel of John when he says,

If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

…ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

(John 14:13; 15:7)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was that clear and easy.

But the fact is that our prayers

need to reflect our understanding,

that, just as we pray in the Lord’s prayer,

it is God’s will that is to be done,

even when God’s will seems to be the opposite of what

we would will, what we would want.

                 

There is no more powerful example of this

than the prayer our Lord himself lifted up

in the Garden of Gesthemene:

“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible;

remove this cup from me;

yet, not what I want,

but what you want.”

(Mark 14:36)

Jesus’ mother Mary showed that she understood this lesson

even before Jesus was born,

when she responded to the angel Gabriel with her prayer,

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord;

let it be with me according to your word”.

(Luke 1:38)

In his wonderful book The Meaning of Prayer,

Harry Emerson Fosdick writes,

“Prayer should become not the endeavor to get God to do our will,

but the endeavor to open our lives to God

so that God can do in us what he wants to do.”

Through prayer we open ourselves to God’s will,

open ourselves to receive God’s response to our prayers,

our entreaties and petitions,

whatever that response might be,

even when the response is not what we want.

Soren Kierkegaard put it this way,

“A person thinks and imagines that when he prays,

the important thing is

that God should hear what he is praying for.

Yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse:

the true relation in prayer

is not when God hears what is prayed for,

but when the person praying continues to pray

until he is the one who hears,

who hears what God wills.”

This is the very essence of prayer.

It is understanding that praying isn’t about moving God,

it is about aligning ourselves, our lives,

 our spirits, our wills, with God.

It is understanding that

prayer should always be transformational .

As the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton wrote,

“Prayer is not only the lifting up of the mind and heart to God,

but it is also the response to God within us,

the discovery of God within us;

it leads ultimately to the discovery and fulfillment

of our own true being in God.”

So pray.

“Pray without ceasing”,

as Paul told the Thessalonians,

“Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication”

as we read in Ephesians.

The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote

“More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of.

Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain …night and day.”

Let your voice rise like a fountain

night and day

as you pray.

AMEN