St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, July 25, 2010

Pink Slip Prayers – Rev. David Mundy

Psalm 85 Luke 11: 1-13

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Have you ever got a Pink Slip? It’s strange isn’t it that every language and culture has its colloquialisms and getting your Pink Slip is never a good thing in the English language. It usually means that you have been down-sized, or rationalized, or –what did we used to call it? – oh yes, fired! I tried to find out where this term comes from, and no one seems to know. Even though it has been around for a century, there is no example of a company that ever used Pink Slips to fire people, and there isn’t a single example of a pink slip notice of termination in existence.

We have pink slips here at St. Paul’s. They are very real and they are used nearly every week. Fortunately they have a much more positive connotation in our life as a Christian community We have a prayer box here at St. Paul’s which comes forward each week during the “prayers of the people” in our worship service. Individuals fill out these slips and tuck them in to the box with prayer requests.

A small group of people from our congregation reads these requests and, more importantly, prays these requests, each week, bringing them before God.

What do folk ask for? Well, often they request prayers for those who are about to undergo surgery, or are making their way through demanding medical therapies. Sometimes they are prayers for grace and absence of pain as loved ones enter into the last days of their lives. Of course there are also prayer petitions for those dealing with loss and grief of different kinds.

It’s not often that people make requests for themselves, other than the strength and courage to deal with the burdens they are bearing, but sometimes those loads seem too much to carry on their own.

As one of the people who is privy to these prayer requests I am often moved by what I read, sometimes to the point of getting a little misty-eyed. It’s not possible to get to know everyone in a congregation well, is it? But isn’t it good to know that there is this level of prayerful concern for one another?

This morning we listened to a gospel story about prayer which begins with a request about prayer, although not a specific prayer request. We’re told that Jesus was praying, as the gospel writers tell us he often did, and one of his followers, his disciples, asks if Jesus would teach them to pray the way that John the Baptist had taught his disciples. What follows is certainly the best known of Jesus’ prayers, and perhaps the most repeated prayer in the world. We call it the Lord’s Prayer and our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters call it the Pater Noster, or Our Father.

You probably noticed that Luke’s version of this prayer of Jesus is not the same as the one we are accustomed to repeating in unison. The other version, in Matthew is more familiar, although even it is not exactly the same. When I was at a conference at the end of June, which included Congregationalists, and Presbyterians and Roman Catholics, we said the Lord’s Prayer during worship and we sounded like we were at the Tower of Babel! Jesus was really offering his amalgamation of a number of phrases from Jewish prayers at the time. Here are the two gospel passages, side by side.

Jesus doesn’t just teach the disciples a specific prayer. He also gives them a perspective on prayers of petition, prayers on behalf of others. He offers a little story of someone who comes pounding at the door of a neighbour in the middle of the night. He wants food for visitors and even though we can imagine that the rudely awakened homeowner is grumpy and groggy he doesn’t yell “there’s nobody home!” through the door. He opens the door and gives his neighbour what he needs.

Be persistent Jesus says, and he implies that if a good neighbour won’t turn us away, a loving God won’t either. These are words of encouragement: keep on knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door, to use the gospel according to Bob Dylan.

There are a number of different forms of prayer but it is these asking prayers, prayers of petition, which can be most challenging for us. We aren’t always so sure about what and how to approach God, even though we say that God is love. Still, Jesus seems to be saying, boldly that we are meant to be in conversation with God, even though many of us find prayer to be daunting.

For some reason we take to prayer readily when we are young, but as time goes on we seem to become more world-weary, and more tentative in our prayers. It can be as a result of disappointment, of feeling that the door has been locked tight, that perhaps we have earnestly pounded away when there was no one on the other side. There is no point in denying that we feel this way at times, and perhaps on behalf of others. In the last while several of our members have lost loved ones to terrible illnesses and at relatively early ages. Don’t we all wonder about the unfairness of these illnesses and deaths? Sometimes we feel outright anger or even disbelief. I have suggested before that a lot of us just grow wary – if we don’t knock on the door then we can’t be disappointed when it isn’t opened.

We should probably also admit that persistent, garden-variety prayer isn’t very glamorous and it requires a certain amount of persistence and work on our part. I have to admit that when I arrive at my study in the morning I often have the resolve to pray for all those who have come to my attention in recent days. How hard could it be to take those few minutes on behalf of others. But I am often aware that an email awaits me, or that I have promised to make a phone call or someone shows up at the door. Hours later I wonder what happened to that time of prayer.

In one of her marvellous short stories, Canadian writer Alice Munro’s, a woman gets a call from her elderly father that her mother has died. She begins to reminisce and observes

My mother prayed on her knees at midday, at night, and first thing in the morning. Every day opened up to her to have God’s will done in it. Every night she totted up what she’d done and said and thought, to see how it squared with Him. That kind of life is dreary, people think, but they’re missing the point. For one thing, such a life can never be boring....Going upstairs to pray after the noon meal, my mother would be full of energy and expectation, seriously smiling.

This is a lovely image of an otherwise ordinary person who has developed the humble practice of regular, meaningful prayer which carried her through both the calm days and the storms of life.

Of course we can learn to pray at any stage of life’s journey. There are many things that Rev. Cathy has done well during her three years here at St. Paul’s, but I feel that one of the most meaningful is teaching the young people of our Sunday morning teen group to pray. Now, our young people are smart, charming, and, of course, good looking! They are also deeply compassionate and spiritual people, and they have learned to pray out loud for each other, for those they love, for the world, as they meet each week. They have been disciples in prayer, and the leaders of that group, Cathy and Laura and Derek, have found that this weekly prayer time with our young people to be very meaningful. The rest of us could learn from them in their willingness to take the risk of prayer, because praying openly does make us vulnerable.

So what is it that we need to hear about prayer today? It’s tempting to suggest a particular approach or technique to prayer, but the suggestion to “pray as you can, not as you can’t” is probably the best advice in this regard.

Surely the important message is to be persistent in our prayers, even though we simply don’t know what the answers will be. Actually, Jesus response to the disciples’ “teach me to pray” is not so much about answers at all. It is the promise that God’s love will not fail, that we can seek and find solace and strength in every circumstance of life. Two thousand years later we can still ask Jesus to teach us to pray, and when we grow distracted or wander away God will welcome us back into that intimate and powerful relationship.

Cathy, today we are going to give you your Pink Slip, although not in the usual sense. And technically, you gave us our Pink Slip – but we’re not bitter! Everyone received a prayer request in their bulletins today, which might go on the fridge, or a bedside table. It is a request to pray for you, and John, and Ruby as you embark on the new, unknown, exciting adventure of ministry in Belleville. As you well know, our St. Paul’s prayer request slip asks what length of time we should continue in prayer. We have included the category “forever” on the request for the three of you.

We’re glad that this new door is opening for you and we trust that you will be richly and abundantly blessed along the way. Our prayers will be with you.