Was Jesus Just a Lousy Prayer?

 “Was Jesus Just a Lousy Prayer?”

John 17:20-26
17:20 "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,

17:21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

17:22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,

17:23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

17:24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

17:25 "Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.

17:26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

 

This is my favorite of the four lectionary passages this week, not necessarily for what it says, but for what it doesn’t say! It is a part of what is often known as the “High Priestly Prayer” of Jesus, a prayer for the disciples AND all of the disciples (i.e. the church) that will come after. While there are occasional biblical references to Jesus “going off by himself to pray,” we have accounts of at least three of Jesus’ prayers: the “Lord’s Prayer,” which he offers to his disciples when they say, “Lord, teach us to pray”; his prayer in Gethsemane—“Lord, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me”; and this John 17 prayer for us all. If we look over what is being “asked for” in each prayer, we may come to the conclusion that Jesus was a LOUSY prayer! Not much of what he asks God for did come to pass, or at least YET. Has God’s “Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”? Did the “cup” of his punishment and death on the cross pass from him? Or, has the church manifested the kind of UNITY Jesus had within the Godhead, such that the world is convinced that it IS the “Body of Christ,” alive in the world? The answer to all three is NOPE, if your definition of “prayer success” is that your prayers must answered in the affirmative. Of course, one needs only to watch the movie “Bruce Almighty” to see what chaos would result if this were to become true! 

 

For those who haven’t seen “Bruce Almighty,” the main character is given the responsibility God normally carries, and the power to go with it, for a brief time. “Bruce” receives all of the world’s prayers via email on his computer. After reading through a few of these prayer/emails—some sublime and detailing serious issues for God’s consideration, and others not so much—he decides to just answer everyone’s prayers with a simple “YES.” Total chaos results, as an affirmative answer for some folk puts them in direct conflict with a “yes” for someone else’s prayer. In some cases, the conflict is laughable, but in others, tragic. “Temporary God” Bruce must reluctantly reverse his flippant “answer all prayers with a YES” strategy, posthaste. Think about it—if you were God trying to answer prayers benevolently, how might you prioritize them? Answer the life-threatening ones first? The prayers of frightened children first? The poor? The disabled? And even then, there could be devastating interactions with the needs or circumstances of other people who are also “children of God.” Honestly, there are times when a little pondering on the hypothetical “If I were God” question might be helpful. We could at least find some empathy for God and how hard it must be to have to arbitrate prayers in such a way that some get what they ask for while others are denied, but all for the best, in the big picture. It might be like a parent having to choose to meet the needs of one child, while neglecting the other, at least for a season, knowing that ultimately, both could benefit. Seeing the denied child suffer would be murder.

 

Of course, as I write this sermon, “breaking news” indeed broke the silence—at least 14 children gunned down, and a teacher or two (updated to 19 students and two teachers, and with several still in critical condition in area hospitals) in Uvalde, Texas by yet another 18-year-old who used the “privilege” of his attaining legal age to buy guns and mass murder. Now, if I were Bruce Almighty, I would answer the prayers of many that guns would just disappear from the planet, or the prayers of still more that we would find a way to stop this “senseless” violence and death. I put “senseless” in quotes, for when is violence ever “sensible”? A few of you might say “in wartime,” but is it really, even then? Maybe Bruce Almighty could answer THIS prayer by making it possible for us to arbitrate our differences through negotiation, or to get professional help to assuage the angst caused by “being bullied” as a child, which is the earliest “explanation” for why the teenage murder/domestic terrorist killed in Texas? Why do we always have to “win” to have a positive outcome? “Winning” here means to have the last word. In the case of Salvador Ramos, he had the last word, as he himself was gunned down by the authorities, from what we have heard. 

 

“Thoughts and Prayers” has become the watchword for the aftermath of these frequent mass shootings. It’s a polite way to say, “We’re not going to do a damn thing about this, but here, salve up your pain with my kind thoughts and empty prayers.” Personally, I think we should call upon Congress to revoke the NRA’s tax-exempt status unless they rename themselves, “Thoughts and Prayers.” It’s an honest appraisal of what they have become in America’s “shoot ‘em up” culture, and it would keep them from rolling out that tired, trite phrase with every week’s eight or nine mass shootings around the country (Yes, there have been almost 200 shootings where at least four people were shot or killed since January 1, 2022).

 

I wasn’t going to go the gun violence route in this sermon on “Was Jesus a Lousy Prayer,” but since the Kingdom has not come on earth as it is in heaven (unless heaven is like a shooting gallery), this latest tragedy amplifies my assertion that maybe Jesus has the same problem getting HIS prayers answered as we seem to. So, now we’re back to my point—should you feel bad that YOUR prayers aren’t being answered the way you would want them to be, either in scope or timeframe, if even the Son of God is still waiting for HIS to be answered? Of course, one of his was answered, but the answer was “NO, this cup will NOT pass from you!” Do you think Jesus ever stopped praying just because the answers to his prayers were still pending? I doubt it, and neither should we. However, there is another important point here, and that has to do with what IS prayer?

 

Obviously, the prayers of committed faithful people may be prayers of praise and gratitude for answers, blessings, or guidance already received from God. Prayers may also be US answering GOD regarding something God has called us to do. I remember when I first prayed to God after discerning a call to ministry, my prayer began like I was gifting God something, but the more I prayed, the more I realized that I was doing something more like reporting to my local draft board (you have to be at least as old as I am to understand this one). I wasn’t “giving” God anything, but was responding to God’s “calling me up” for service. Had I said “No,” I’m guessing the call would have persisted until I finally reported for duty. Unfortunately, I have heard the stories of those who resisted “the call” until it went away, and most of them reported having to live with a certain misery over that, but thankfully, God issued a substitute call that they did answer, in many cases. Answering a call to ministry turned out to be a blessed thing, but one that demanded much more of myself than I may have offered to a different career. (I can’t imagine staying to long with an employer who rang me up all hours of the night, or required me to jump out of bed, get hastily dressed, and head over to the office to deal with a crisis at 3:00AM, but ministry required this on numerous occasions.) 

 

However, somewhere along the way, most prayers finally get to “intercession” for the needs of others, or direct address for our OWN needs, something I like to call the “laundry list.” It’s important to note that even “The Lord’s Prayer,” the one Jesus taught us, includes most of these elements, but does get to “Give us this day our daily bread.” I read years ago that the word used for “bread” in Greek is somewhat unique. Scholars had a hard time finding a literal translation for it until something was unearthed during an archeological “dig” in the Mid-East a handful of decades ago. It was a woman’s shopping list, and this word was at the top of it. So, when we pray this line from The Lord’s Prayer, we are asking God to give us all the stuff on our “shopping list” for the day. In all honesty, even as Bruce Almighty found out, the majority of our prayers are asking for something of God. But if the woman made a shopping list, did she not also go shopping? Perhaps our prayers aren’t as effective because we “make the list” but do little to help stock the pantry? So, what if there is much more to prayer than we acknowledge? What if prayer is quite more “complicated” an exercise than we have made it out to be, and our participation in the resolve we are asking for requires more than just voicing it to God?

 

Here are four things I came up with that prayer actually does:

 

1. Our prayers set GOALS. Prayers are where we specify stuff that is important to us, or with which we want to deal.

 

2.  Praying helps us focus on “the other”—other people and their needs, and God, as part of a solution beyond ourselves.

  

3.  Prayer helps us identify and prioritize needs. This “sorting” function is valuable. People who tend toward “depressed” thinking often feel everything is against them, and that the world is falling apart. When they begin to list what their actual concerns are for a prayer list, it may be revelatory that not ALL is so bad, and much of what they list is “fixable.” Those of us who live more on the “manic” side of life are served by prayer when it reminds us that there are many legitimate needs out there, and that not everyone is as “well off” as we are. Our prayers become an agenda for action, and not just a “wish list.”

 

4.  Prayers cast a VISION. What we pray for may not be “answered” in the way we want it to, or in the timeframe we want, or even answered at all. However, as we “refine” our goals through prayer and set them before God, we move from intercession to creating a “prophetic” view of what we would like things to look like. 

 

Years ago, I heard an old British evangelist disagree with the adage, “Prayer changes things.” He suggested instead that “Prayer changes PEOPLE, and PEOPLE change things.” While I personally don’t discount HOW God will answer a prayer, I have seen the latter version more than the former. Another author used the phrase “putting feet to our prayers” as a way to engage our partnership with God in bringing “fruit” to them. Maybe some folk see their prayers as “ineffective” because they are basically “rubbing the lamp” when they pray, hoping the “genie” will pop out and grant them their wishes? The Bible describes God as a lot of things, but “genie” is nowhere among the narratives. 

 

As a child of the 60s and 70s, I loved the old, campy science fiction TV shows created by Irwin Allen: Lost in Space; Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea; and Time Tunnel, to name several of my favorites. They rarely addressed serious issues, but Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea did hit on some environmental issues and Time Tunnel tried to get a few of us more enthused about history. There was one episode of Lost in Space that stayed with me, though. The character, “Dr. Zachary Smith,” a terroristic stowaway and malignant narcissist, found an alien device in a cave on one of the random planets the “Space Family Robinson” wound up on. When he put the device on his head and wished for something, it “granted his wish,” causing that which he wished for to materialize before his eyes. Of course, the narcissistic Dr. Smith wished for all kinds of stuff, including riches galore. But when glitter and gold wasn’t enough to satiate his ego, he put the thing on and wished for a “servant”—basically a slave to wait on him hand and foot. He had gone beyond the pale for the device’s creators, and the aliens showed up and incarcerated the good Doctor. John Robinson, the patriarch of the “Space Family Robinson” ended the show with a moral lesson about ego, largess, the craving for “more,” and most especially, the oppression of people to serve one’s desires and needs. It was a simple speech, but it obviously stayed with me. I remember it every time my prayer list gets too long, and most especially when I check over the list and find that a majority of the items on it benefit Yours Truly. And while I don’t fear aliens, I DO “fear” God in the way the Bible uses the word!

 

If we review today’s passage from the “High Priestly Prayer” of Jesus, we will see that it is more a prayer of “casting vision” than it is a prayer of supernatural fulfillment of his “wishes” for his disciples and the church. For his prayer to be answered, we most CERTAINLY must play a part, and it is an ongoing one! I’m guessing Jesus is not too happy with how his prayer is going, though, and is probably pretty unhappy with how we are steering the vision of the church “being one” so that the world may see the love of God in action. Why, our very own United Methodist Church is about to split in two (or three or four, depending on who you listen to).

 

I don’t really think Jesus is a “lousy prayer,” nor do I think that we are, either. But we may be guilty of too often not being willing to “put feet to our prayers,” and falling prey to oversimplifying just what prayer is. Part of my testimony is that I grew up praying every night before I went to bed, and that WAY to long into early adult life I was still praying the equivalent of “Now I lay me down to sleep…” until I had my own personal “Aldersgate” experience that awakened my “real” faith. But honestly, while the words have changed, I’m probably still guilty of praying infantile, overly-simplistic prayers, and hoping the “genie” shows up. 

 

Finally, there is one type of prayer that Jesus taught us—confession—that is always appropriate. “Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespass against me”—remember that? Interestingly, God sets confession up as a proposition that also requires our participation. I am forgiven to the extent that I FORGIVE others who have wronged me! That one will get you, friends. If you ever feel like your prayers are just hitting the ceiling, first check yourself for depression, which may require you seeking help. But if that is not the issue, search your heart and see if you are still harboring ill-will against someone or are “carrying a grudge.” If so, go fix it. Put feet to your prayers and ask the person to forgive YOU for holding whatever they did (or that you PERCEIVE they did) against them. You may be surprised that: a. they never MEANT to offend you; and b. they may not even be AWARE that you were offended by something they said or did. Either way, your “prayer” will be answered by your reaching out, and rest assured, God will uphold God’s end of the confessional “bargain.”

 

Friends, this week’s message is a pretty heavy rap, but it is an important one, especially in such troubled times for our world and the church. May our prayer lives grow, mature, and become much more participatory on our part. And may our prayers begin to cast some vision that our feet can bring to pass, with the guidance, assistance, and love of Almighty God! Amen.