Sermon: Teach Us To Pray

A Sermon preached in 

Christ Church, Grosse Pointe, Michigan
by The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse, Associate

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 12 Year C
July 24, 2016 (Saturday, 7/23 5:30pm service)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts
be always acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

How many of you have ever been asked,

“can you teach me to pray?” What was that like?

Or for how many of you have you asked someone else,

“how do you pray?”

Prayer in any form is a common language.

Prayer is, simply, conversation with God. 

“In the beginning was the logos, the Word,

and the Word was God, and the Word was with God."

Roughly translated, the logos can mean “intimate conversation.”

“…in the beginning was the intimate conversation.” 

And that is prayer.

Sometimes when I am asked how to pray

(it comes up in Baptism preparation,

or in pre-marital preparation,

or when counseling someone about a recent loss or struggle),

I recall the little book by Author Anne Lamott.

Help, Thanks, Wow.[1] 

In about 100 pages she unpacks

with laughter and tears

the three essential prayers for today.

Help, Thanks, Wow. That works, in a pinch.

In today’s gospel text, the disciples ask Jesus

to teach them to pray. 

Jesus responds by instructing his disciples

how to have an intimate conversation with God,

how to have a conversation that centers on the Kingdom of God.[2] 

This Kingdom of God, for Jesus,

was shorthand for his message and his passion,

both spiritually and politically. 

In this Kingdom, God empowered Jesus and his work. 

In this Kingdom, God presented

the mystical reality of all things, seen and unseen. 

In this Kingdom, God blessed the people

with a beloved community. 

This Kingdom of God perspective grounded Jesus

and guided him throughout his ministry.

See, the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed

stood in stark contrast to

the Kingdom of Herod or the Kingdom of Caesar

that surrounded the peasant people, his followers, at that time. 

The Kingdom of God, to which Jesus alluded,

promised a life where God was king

and the rulers of the world were not.

To the first followers of Jesus,

his vision of this kind of Kingdom

offered hope for life on earth.

As scholar Dom Crossan would say,

“Heaven’s in great shape; earth is where the problems are!”

That’s why Jesus taught,

“thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

And, for the earthly life,

Jesus prayed for the basic needs: food. 

“Give us our daily bread” was a real need in the 1^st century. 

Bread, enough food, was always an issue for that time.

Many people were hungry, especially in the peasant class.

In God’s Kingdom, there would be enough bread for everyone. 

For this earthly life,

Jesus prayed for the basic needs: forgiveness.

Debt, along with bread, was a primary survival issue

in peasant life. 

Indebtedness could mean losing the land

and could lead to the precarious life

of a tenant farmer or day laborer. 

When landless, people with debt

could then be sold into indentured labor. 

So, this well known prayer names

two central basic concerns of peasant life:

bread and debt forgiveness. 

This prayer invites us to wonder today:

how we can do God’s work in the world

to bring about the dreamed-of Kingdom of God?

What about daily bread:

what do we, personally and communally,

need to sustain us for the journey?

And - to whom might we be invited by God

to provide that daily sustenance? 

What about forgiveness:

to what are we, personally and communally,

in bondage?

For whom can we release from any debt

that we may hold from others,

inviting them to live a liberated life?

Today’s good news is that we are living in God’s kingdom.

God gives us (through others)

the “bread” we need for our hearts and for our souls. 

God forgives us and releases us

from the bondage of what holds us back,

which is why and how we can forgive others.

All this good news is manifest in both

the prayer we say together and

the Holy Communion – the bread and wine – we share.

A few years ago, I came across this little book,

Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus.[3]

It is a study and interpretation of the Lord’s prayer

as translated from the Aramaic,

the language that Jesus actually spoke.

In this small and powerful book

we find an alternative and expansive understanding

of this prayer that Jesus taught. 

Here is one possible translation from the Aramaic:

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,

Focus your light within us – make it useful:

Create your reign of unity now –

Your one desire then acts with ours,

as in all light, so in all forms.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,

as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.

Don’t let surface things delude us.

But free us from what holds us back.

From you is born all ruling will,

the power and the life to do,

the song that beautifies all,

from age to age it renews.

Truly – power to these statements –

may they be the ground from which

all my actions grow: Amen.

God’s invitation is to open our hearts today.

God is praying us into a new Kingdom.

God is opening the door on which we are knocking. 

God offers us extravagant Love. 

In this kingdom, bread for the journey is abundant.

In this kingdom, forgiveness liberates our hearts and souls.

Inspired by God’s gift, may we also share in that heavenly kingdom.

Amen

---

[1] Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, (New York, Riverhead Books, 2012)

[2] Sections inspired by Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, p. 131-134

[3] Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus (San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1990)

Sermon: Jesus Fills

Sermon for August 23, 2015

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost 

(Proper 16)

The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse

St. Philip’s In The Hills, Tucson, AZ

Listen to this sermon here.

Lord, open our lips, that our mouth shall proclaim your praise.  Amen

Pause 

I didn’t know I was hungry.

Years before I joined any church,

my friend invited me to the mid-week service

at Grace Cathedral in SF.  Church was his thing-

he was scheduled to serve as Deacon. 

I didn’t really want to go with him,

but he promised lunch in the city afterward. 

I didn’t know I was hungry.

Awkwardly, I walked into the big Cathedral. 

Looked like a big museum to me. 

We went into a side chapel.  Just three of us:

the priest, my friend the Deacon, and me.

They shared the readings,

talked a bit about the Gospel

and 20 minutes later, we shared communion.

I didn’t know I was hungry.

But, as the bread was placed in my hands,

my heart swelled up.

Rivers of tears flowed down my face,

through the lines in my mouth,

making Jesus taste salty. 

The wine touched my lips and in that little sip,

in that moment, I realized how hungry was. 

In that moment, Jesus filled me up.

I don’t remember our lunch in the city.

Pause

The GJohn does not recount the Last Supper,

but it bursts at the seams

with Eucharistic images.

Jesus continually speaks of himself as

“the bread of life”

And he invites his followers

to “partake of this bread.” 

Then he gets pretty gruesome, urging them to

“eat his flesh and drink his blood.” 

You don’t have to be a good Jew

to want to avert your eyes from such an image and

to cover your ears at such language. 

It offended many of his disciples;

they didn’t know they were hungry.

Author BBT said while Jesus had at his disposal

“… the conceptual truths of the universe,”

he did not give them something “to think about”

when he was gone,

he gave them concrete things to do –

specific ways of being together in their bodies. 

He said, “do this in remembrance of me”

not “think about this.”[1] 

Jesus taught an in-your-face confrontation

with the incarnation.[2]

He spoke not of a disembodied spirit

but the opportunity

to encounter his flesh and blood.

In Hebrew, the expression “flesh and blood”

meant something like our,

“body, mind and spirit.” 

So, for the many disciples,

to receive Jesus meant

receiving his whole “flesh and blood”.

And this got their attention.

Many of them turned back.

Many of them complained.

Many of them were offended.

They didn’t know they were hungry.

And so it is with us. This teaching is difficult. 

The startling imagery of

eating flesh and drinking blood

cuts through our liturgical refinements. 

One of my colleagues tells a story of

saying the familiar words during communion,

“This is my body, broken for you.

This is my blood, shed for you,”

when a small girl suddenly said in a loud voice,

“Ew, yuk!”

To which the congregation

stared in a horrified way,

as if someone had splattered blood

all over the altar,

which was, in effect

something like what the little girl had done

with her exclamation.[3]

pause

Sometimes,

I think we ought to wrap the altar

with “caution” tape before Holy Communion.

Because

“when we receive Jesus, when we partake,

his life clings to our bones and

courses through our veins. 

He can no more be taken from our life

than last Tuesday’s breakfast

can be plucked from our body. 

And this is the ultimate communion –

the coming together,

the union of the Savior and the saved.”[4] 

And that changes everything, does it not? 

But sometimes

we don’t know how hungry we are. 

Aside from the gruesomeness of

eating flesh and blood,

the implications are difficult. 

For as we receive Jesus,

we cannot separate his life in us

from our life in him.  

We receive this precious sacrament

and take him into ourselves. 

It means we love one another as Jesus loves us.

It means we are called to deny ourselves

and take up the cross. 

It means we give up our possessions

and our obsessions.

When we receive Jesus, we become a disciple –

and that changes everything. 

It means we reach out and help each other.

It means we trust one another.

It means we seek reconciliation.

It means we feed the hungry, clothe the naked,

heal the sick, give water to the thirsty,

visit the prisoners. 

The implications are difficult.

We are offended.

Sometimes we don’t know how hungry we are.

Pause

Over and over in the Gospel of John,

Jesus offered images of himself

as the bread of life,

meant to strengthen and

encourage the community.

Seeing how many disciples turned back,

Jesus asked the twelve apostles,

“do you, too, wish to go away?”

And Peter takes the cue,

transformed in that moment by the offer so dear.

“Lord, to whom can we go?

You have the words of eternal life.”

In other words, Peter said,

You are the only one

who can satisfy our deep hunger.

You are the living God.

You are the one who holds us together.

You are the source of Love and Life.

Peter confessed how hungry they were

and Jesus filled them up.

And not only those disciples,

but generations of Christians.

For,

“The first thing the world knew about Christians

was that they ate together.”

At the beginning of every week,

Christians everywhere

celebrated the day the whole world changed and

toasted the resurrection.

They shared a meal and offered

prayers of thanksgiving,

or eucharisteo, for the bread and wine.”[5] 

St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians,

“when you gather to eat,

you should all eat together.”[6]

As they gathered,

they remembered Jesus’ presence among them.

Some early communities began

to send a piece of the bread from their communion service

to other gatherings of Christians

to be added to their meal. 

They knew how hungry they were and

offered that bread

to fill and strengthen the bond of unity

between all Christians,

like our Lay Eucharistic Ministers

do on 2^nd and 4^th Sundays.[7]

These early Christians

knew how hungry they were,

They knew that Jesus filled them up.

Does this offend you? 

Do you, too, wish to go away?

Are you hungry?

The good news is that even today,

Jesus strengthens and encourages our community. 

Jesus is the only one who can

satisfy our deep hunger. 

Jesus offers us his body and his blood

every week, every day, every moment.

When we receive Jesus

into our mind body and soul,

into our pain, struggle, and loss,

into our joy, enthusiasm, and hope,

when we receive Jesus,

we are The Saved in union with The Savior.

When we receive Jesus,

we know him in our body and our blood.

Jesus fills us with unmerited grace. 

And so we come to receive him. 

We come:

vulnerable, kneeling,

hands cupped and surrendering,

in a public confession of hunger. 

“The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven”

and Jesus descends into our hands. 

“The Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation”

and Jesus slips into our lips.[8]

In response, we proclaim

that great mystery of faith –

Christ has died, Christ has risen,

Christ will come again.

Come, bring your deepest hunger,

and Jesus will fill you up to overflowing.

Amen

---

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar In The World: A Geography of Faith, (New York, HarperCollins, 2009), 44

[2] Inspired by Martin Copenhaver’s sermon “Eating Jesus” cited at http://day1.org/4043-eating_jesus

[3] Ibid. Copenhaver

[4] Ibid. Copenhaver

[5] Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, (Santa Rosa, Thomas Nelson Books, 2015), 125

[6] 1 Corinthians 11:33

[7] Ibid., Evans, 127

[8] Ibid., Evans 142-143