This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Second Sunday after Pentecost (the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ), June 6, 2010.

+ + +

Readings

1 Kings 17:17–24
Psalm 30 (antiphon v. 2)
Galatians 1:11–24
Luke 7:11–17

+ + +

Prayer

Hear us, Father, when we lift our hearts and voices to you in prayer, so that your Spirit may move in our lives, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

+ + +

Message

Do you have memories
of times in your childhood
when you gathered with family
and shared a prayer together?

Maybe you prayed before meals at holidays,
seated around a big table full of food.
You heard the voice of your grandfather
rumbling from one end of the table
as you bowed your head and folded your hands,
perhaps sneaking a glance across platters of fod
to check to see if your brothers had their heads bowed
or if they, too, were checking on you.

I don’t recall exactly what my grandfather said,
but he always ended his table prayers the same way:
“Bless the hearts and hands that have prepared the same.
These blessings and favors we ask in Jesus’ name.”
And then, half-breathing, half-speaking, he concluded, “Amen.”

My parents also taught me to pray before bed.
I learned the traditional prayer:
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

But then we veered from tradition,
reminding God of a list of relatives
who needed his care,
“Bless Mommy and Daddy,
David and Jonathan and Christopher,
Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma Frye.”

At some point when I was growing up—
I don’t remember when—
my parents stopped praying those words with me,
releasing me to pray on my own, following my own patterns.

As we get older,
there may be times when we decide to make prayer a habit,
to set aside a specific moment and place each day
to pray to God.

Maybe we keep lists of people we know
along with reminders of the heartaches and triumphs of their lives.
Maybe we reserve our prayers
for the table, for the family meal,
or to a time when we just have awakened
or are nearly ready to fade into sleep.

You know your habits, your tendencies, your patterns.
You know if your life of prayer is vibrant and alive,
or atrophied and faded.

In many ways, the ups and downs of our praying
mimic the ebb and flow of our relations with loved ones.
There are times, for example, when we feel connected to a spouse.
and our conversations together blossom with ease.
We are attuned to one another,
aware of the history we bring to the conversation,
the passions that animate our deep commitments,
the aches of the depths and the joys of the heights of lives together.

And then we find the dialogue between us to be electric, resonant,
to be like a song that we sing in harmony.

But there are also the times when we cannot find the right words,
when we do not listen well to one another,
when we rant about our own issues
and do not attend to the needs our spouses try to express.

Prayer is just like that,
because we are the same people when we talk to God,
and because prayer is really just our conversation with God.

Of all the creatures in this world,
we are the ones he has made to talk with him.
When it comes to the animals,
God made them, saying, “Let there be….”
But when he made humans,
he spoke to us, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply….”

We’re the only creatures God makes for conversation.
In fact, that’s what it means to be made in his image.
It means to be made for conversation with God,
to be made to share in his life—
the divine and triune conversation
that Father and Son and Spirit
share with one another from all eternity.

Sometimes we find it easy to talk with God,
but other times it’s not easy at all;
it’s hard, stilted, disjointed.

Maybe praying seems awkward
because we are afraid we won’t say the right thing,
that we won’t use the proper form, the correct words,
that our prayer will not be eloquent or expressive.

That’s not what God desires for us.
That’s not the reaction he intends for us to have.
And that’s why he has inspired our ancestors
to pray with honesty and humility
and why he has guided his people to preserve those prayers
so that they can inspire us, so that we can learn how to pray.

Today’s Psalm is a great example of a faithful prayer.
Just listen to what the psalmist says
about how he acts in his relationship with God.
“I will exalt you, O LORD….” (Psalm 30:1a, LBW)
This tells us that praising God can be part of our prayers.

“O LORD my God, I cried out to you….” (Psalm 30:2a, LBW)
This reminds us that we can call upon God when we are hurting.

“Sing to the LORD, you servant of his;
give thanks for the remembrance of his holiness.” (Psalm 30:4, LBW)
This shows us that we can share our joy and gratitude with God.

“I cried to you, O LORD;
I pleaded with the Lord….” (Psalm 30:9, LBW)
Here we see that its alright to beg for mercy, asking God to save us.

“O LORD my God,
I will give you thanks forever.” (Psalm 30:13, LBW)
And finally, we have an example of how to show our gratitude to God.

And there’s nothing really very unusual about Psalm 30.
It’s just one of many psalms filled with faithful expressions
of praising and thanking,
of pleading and bargaining,
of reminding and recounting
before our God who has promised
to listen to us when we talk with him.

The blessing for us is that he does not get distracted,
that he does not background us
the way we sometimes do with one another.
Instead, we can trust that when we call to him,
saying “God” or “Lord” or “Father,”
“Jesus” or “Spirit,”
he inclines his head,
turns his ear to us,
and listens with love and patience
to all that we have to say,
whether aloud with words or silently with sighs too deep for words.

I hope this helps you if you have wondered how to pray,
that this reminds you of the great freedom we have,
as God’s children, to come to him
and to speak in honesty and humility,
and trust that he will hear and embrace us in love. Amen.