Sermon:Jesus’ Prayer Book: Words and Wisdom
June 7th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Psalm 1, Psalm 51 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
During the time I workedas chaplain and nurse at Rainbow Acres, I had the privilege of leading the ranchers as they responded to God’s calling them to a ministry of prayer. Rainbow Acres serves adults with developmental disabilities; the residents are called ranchers as a term of dignity and strength. At one point the development office began receiving prayer request after prayer request from supporters of Rainbow Acres, knowing that we began each day with a gathering called Prayer Circle. Many of the prayers spoken by the ranchers would not have been consider articulate or beautiful, but some of those prayers have stuck with me. I might even say that some are among the most powerful prayers I’ve known. I especially remember Steve’s prayers. One day we were asked to pray for a friend named John* facing a new cancer diagnosis. Steve offered to lift up that prayer request. He prayed, “God! John! Amen.”
We are all called to the work of prayer– whether we have the perfect words for the moment or whether we feel tongue-tied. Whether we feel confident or confused about what to pray or how to pray, God invites us to come and speak to Him, to share our feelings, share our longings, share our mistakes and our wishes, share our remembering and our dreaming, share our need and pain, share our thanks and our praise.
One of the ways that Steve’s disability showed up in conversation was that he would often communicate by echoing the words of the person he was talking to – echolalia, it’s called. Young children do it all the time; it’s one of the ways kids learn how to talk, learn language. Sometimes that’s how Steve and I would pray together: I would speak a phrase of prayer and he would echo it back. Steve isn’t the only one who needs a guide for prayer, needs to be taught oreven given the words at times.
Jesus’ disciples watched as Jesus made prayer a central part of his life and they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.Last year we spent a series of weeks studying the prayer Jesus taught them – the prayer we call The Lord’s Prayer. But that is just one prayer guide believers have been given. We actually have the prayer book, the prayer guide that Jesus himself used! That book of prayer is the book of Psalms. Over the next several weeks, we will learn about prayer from the Psalms and pray some of those prayers.
Echoes of the Psalms are found everywhere. They are quoted all through the New Testament. The final prayer on Jesus’ lips before he died was the echo of Psalm 22 which starts, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The words of Psalms are found in the songs we sing in church, in the calls to worship at the start and in the benedictions at the end. In the Zoom prayer times, we have looked to the Psalms again and again to give voice to our prayer. And in Bible study this week, we saw that when Peter was explaining what was happening on the day of Pentecost, theHoly Spirit wind and fire and bursts of languages, he used the Psalms. These prayers give us words and give us wisdom.
The first prayer in the book of Psalms is a psalm of wisdom. It starts:
1 Oh, the joys of those who do notfollow the advice of the wicked,
or stand around with sinners,or join in with mockers.
2 But they delight in the law of the Lord,meditating on it day and night.
3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank,bearing fruit each season.
Their leaves never wither,and they prosper in all they do.
The image of the person in right relationship with God, is the image of a tree whose roots sink deep into the earth beside a constant source of water. Because of this the tree can flourish, even when the going gets tough. The constant source of life-giving water, the psalmist says, is God’s Word. Like the tree, when we drink in God’s wisdom daily, when we learn to pray the prayers in scripture, we too can be resilient and bear fruit in every season.
Right now we are in the midst of a difficult season! On top of each of our personal challenges, our health, the needs in our families, stresses at work, strains with friends – on top of those things, a pandemicbroke out – with all the suffering and death, the well justified concerns and fear, the isolation and restriction, the job loss, market impacts, theshortages that came along with it. Then with fraying nerves and growing needsthat put everyone on edge, every fault and weakness of our nation seems to have been exposed. Not just problems caused by the pandemic, but long-standing, deep-seated problems – particularly the problems of inequality and discrimination on racial lines. And then,… one more black person was killed by a white police officer unable to see his humanity or hear his cries. And everything broke loose – both righteous revolt and sickening opportunism.
Inmy struggle to know how to pray this week, in my struggle to discern where God was in this and where I should be in this, the prayers in Psalms gave words and wisdom that I could repeat, could echo. I could echo Psalm 63, as it begins, “O God, you are my God, I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.” Then prayer leads into God’s presence, it helps find the way, it delivers life-giving water.
Again and again in the past week – no, the past months actually! – we have prayed the words, “Lord, have mercy!” And like the simple words of Steve’s prayer for John, I know God takes those three words and fills them out with the longings of our hearts and the longings of God’s heart. I know that because in Romans 8:26 we are told that one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit in us is to help us in our weakness. It says, “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays to God for us.”
The Holy Spirit, using the words of scripture, will then lead us from the initial cry, to go deeper into prayer; to go to a place of deeper honesty before God, to a greater thoroughness in prayer, to a place where change and healing can begin. It leads to the prayer of Psalm 51. That prayer also, begins with the cry for mercy, but leads on to where we need to go next.The pray-er of this prayer does not start with pointing fingers at others, but starts with himself/herself. Like that song, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” There is a deep longing to be free from the sin and brokenness of life in this world, so the psalmist starts by looking within and saying “Start with me, O God.” Wash me, purify me, scrub away my guilt, remove my sin, blot out my stains, forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves.
It is important to note that the pray-er is aware of personal failings (the title of the psalm notes David’s choice to abuse Bathsheba and to arrange for her husband’s death as a situation fitting for this prayer), but the pray-er is also confessing sins that are much bigger than just himself. Verse 5, “For I was born a sinner, yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.” It’s not that an infant can do something wrong, or that the conception was sinful. It is that we are all born into a broken world. We were born into a nation that had built itself on the pride and greed of white people who took the best land from native peoples and enslaved blacks to enrich themselves. The sin of racism is so deep in the soul of our nation that while we have made great strides, that sin persists. People of color suffer, even today, as we quietly enjoy the benefits and often don’t even recognize how much their suffering continues. We have sinned against our brothers and sisters of color, but even more than that, we have sinned against God. God’s heart is grieved because they are God’s children, too. They were made to reflect God’s image in the world no less than we were.
With brokenness and pain so widespread, so insidious, buried invisibly in people’s hearts and within the structures of power like a virus, there almost seems to be no way forward. But God provides a way and we can follow the psalmist’s lead. The way is one that God opens for us, the way of confession and repentance and forgiveness. We must throw ourselves onto God’s mercy. Not because we deserve forgiveness, not because we’ve done our part to be good and kind, but because of who God is. The pray-er asks for mercy in verse 1, because of God’s unfailing love, because of God’s great compassion, because our God is a God whose goal is to save and who sent Jesus to accomplish that and to show the way.
Create in me, create in us all, a clean heart, O God. Renew a faithful spirit within. Restore our relationship with You so that our relationships with our brothers and sisters of color can be restored as well. Accept our sacrifice, our offering, of a broken spirit and a repentant heart, O God. Rebuild the walls of our cities, help our nation. Then we will joyfully sing of Your forgiveness, we will willingly obey you, and guide others in Your way.
That is the prayer we are given to pray in Psalm 51. Richard Foster wrote, “To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.” The Psalms have been the prayers of God’s people for generations and generations – they give us words and they give us wisdom in every season.
Song: “Sweet Hour of Prayer”
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