101: Prayer

OT Lesson: Jeremiah 29:4-7 (NIV)

    This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

NTLesson: James 5:13-18 (NRSV)

    Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.

Sermon

Introduction

    Good morning. I hope you all had a peaceful week. But the global news say otherwise. Korea and some countries suffered from typhoons and hurricanes. Other parts of the world suffer from the severe drought. The war in Ukraine is still going on. Many people have died from war, floods, droughts, high winds, etc. Today is the 21st anniversary of9/11. Recently Mikhail Gorbachev died, the last leader of Soviet Union who ended the cold war. He was once one of the two most powerful persons in the world. But the power cannot slip the death away. I just remember him having a map on his shiny bald head.

    And a few days ago Queen Elizabeth II also died at the age of ninety-six after sitting on the throne for seventy years—the longest ruling monarch in English history. Her old eldest son successfully succeeded the throne finally. I don’t know how long he can sit there but definitely not as long as his mother did. I used to see the photo of the Queen whenever I visited the federal government offices or buildings in Canada. I guess the photos will be gone soon and replaced. Canadian money has Queen in their design. Now they have to print out new money with new face. And not for long, they may have to change their money design again. But the biggest news is that Samuel was kicked out of the church preschool because he’d been hitting other kids. Thus Samuel will be at my office until he finds another place. Hannah made an appointment with a behavioural professional to see what is wrong and/or how to improve his behaviour. So definitely Samuel needs prayers. I am somewhat shy person. And Hannah is beyond a shy person. I would say she is very timid. I just don’t know where Samuel is from. It is said that men are from Mars, and women from Venus. It seems to me that Samuel is from Pluto, or Neptune.

Prayer Is Not a Customer Service

    Anyway, Samuel needs prayers. I need prayers. You need prayers. We all need prayers. So today is the second to last 101 series: Prayer. Several months ago, I read a news that thousands of people have no one to talk to at home but to Alexa, or Siri. So they talk to Alexa, not to get some information but just out of loneliness. Well, I don’t have either Alexa or Siri, but I have a cellphone—Google Pixel which comes from the voice recognition like Alexa or Siri. The voice recognition technology is great and many people love it. From my experience, when I say, “OK Google, show me the movie schedules in town for coming Friday evening.” Then something spins for a while, I guess processing my voice and says back to me, “What about Friday?” So I repeat the same thing, and a pin-wheel icon spins again and then says, “Please say that again.” Usually I just give up but the thing is when Hannah says the same, the cellphone does not even show the spinning thing and immediately shows the list of movies after saying, “Here are the movies in town Friday evening.”

    A few days ago, I got the internet service at home from Xfinity. And they sent me a TV set top box with a remote. And the thing is that the remote is not conventional one. It has only a few buttons—Power, Volume, Back, and another button with microphone icon on it. I tried yesterday and said, ‘Moving Walk,’ but it showed a golden escalator footage. I don’t know why but I know that I may not be able to watch what I want on my TV from now on. My verbal prayers to my cell phone and to Xfinity remote were not answered because of my accent. But the good thing is that God understands any accent and any language.

    Leave the voice recognition technology behind because I am not a big fan of that. Have you ever called a customer service? The machine answers and puts us on hold automatically until the human customer service representative answers. Many times I waited on the line over half an hour listening to the same music over and over again. A few times, I waited over an hour. That is mostly government offices like IRS or USCIS. So the very nature of the customer service is that you call and there is no answer. And many people told me that they prayed to God but there was no answer, and that they felt like talking to a wall. Do you know why? Because they all called the customer service number. We need to know that God is not a service provider and we are not customers. If we consider the prayer as the customer service, God will treat us likewise, that is, we call and there is no answer, and that is, talking to a wall.

Prayer Is a Conversation

    Let us say, that your father or your son works at IRS office. If you call 1-800 number, as usual there will be no answer. It is guaranteed from my experience. But if you call to his cell phone number, it will definitely be answered almost immediately. As you all know, God is our Father and we are His children. That is, we don’t have to call the 1-800 number. We have to give up our customer service attitude. The customer service attitude is this: “I have a problem. You fix it right now because I pay for the service.” We cannot do that to God but as far as I know almost all Christians do that. “God, I have a problem. You fix it.” When we pray, we have to make sure that it is not a customer service call but a family call.

    One of the New York Times articles from last February says that roughly 2.5 million weddings are expected to happen this year. So we are getting 2.5 million more couples. Some of them will not last long but end up in divorce in just a few years. Others will last long or lifetime. But among those people, some are not going to be happy, but hating each other. They just don’t divorce. But others are lovey-dovey for lifetime. So what makes the difference? I am sure that there are many different factors, but one of the biggest factors is the amount of conversation. Even if the couples love each other so much in the beginning, they eventually drift apart without having quality and quantity conversation. Loving couples don’t talk only for the important or needed matters. They just talk about whatever, like any small things that happened today or some random silly thoughts. Our prayers to God must be like that. There is a Jewish prayer which all good Jews pray everyday in the morning and evening. That is called Shema Yisrael which is from Deuteronomy 6:4. In Hebrew it begins like this: 

שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה׀ אֶחָֽד

It is quite famous and you may know: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” It is a very important prayer and I think it can have thousand meanings and purposes. But one of them is, I believe, that this prayer tells us the purpose of all prayers is loving God. For the love, God does not ask us a diamond ring, but daily prayers. A diamond ring may initiate the love or the wedding process, but what sustains the relationship is conversation, which is prayer when it comes between God and us, or Jesus and us because Jesus is the Groom and we are His brides.

Sometimes a Favour

    Let’s imagine this situation. You have a son. He went to college and that’s it. He has never called you for several years. No Christmas card, or no nothing. But just once a year or so he calls and asks for money. He does the same today. “Hi Mom/Dad. I need money. Send me five grand by tomorrow because me and my girlfriend go to Bahamas for vacation.” Then he hung up. No greetings, no asking how you are doing or no nothing. How are you well pleased and how likely are you to send him five grand by tomorrow? If that happens to me, I don’t think I will send five grand by tomorrow. Sometimes, I feel like most Christians are that kind of children to God. “Hey God, you are my Father. So you have to do whatever favour I ask of you.” And again, prayer does not work like that. The purpose of prayer is building and maintaining the lovey-dovey relationship with God. When we successfully establish that kind of relationship, we may ask sometimes a favour. Like, let’s imagine the opposite son who calls you everyday asking how you are doing today, having a little chitchat for nothing, and tells you at the end of the phone call ‘I love you Mom/Dad.’ If that kind of son asks you a favour, how can you say no. Right?

    That is the case of Elijah in today’s NT lesson. He asked a favour sometimes, not all the time. Most people remember Elijah killing four hundred of Baal’s prophets on the Mount Carmel. His lessknown side is that he prayed a lot. And when he prayed, he knelt down and habitually put his head between his knees. Can you do that? I used to be able to do that. But since I came to America, my belly size is getting more like average Americans—not yet but definitely getting there—and now it is not easy for me to do that. But anyway, he habitually prayed. But his prayers were not always the formal and solemn. Sometimes he was yelling and screaming at God. Sometimes he was whispering out of exhaustion. No matter how he prayed, anyway Elijah had conversation continually with God. And a favour once in a while was of course answered. Why not.

Prayer Is for Others

    The book of Job is not really about prayers but rather debating. But at the end, God says to Job’s friends, ‘You guys did wrong. You have to sacrifice offerings for your sins. If Job prays, then I will accept his prayer and forgive you guys.’ So they did what God told them to do, Job prayed and God accepted the prayer, that is, they were forgiven. And the next paragraph says that Job’s fortunes were restored twofold. The interesting thing here is that Job’s friends were not forgiven when they prayed for themselves. When Job prayed for them, then they were forgiven. That is the true to these days. When our prayer is all about me, me, me, me, then the prayers are less likely to be answered. But when we pray for others, that is more likely to be answered. This is why James in today’s NT lesson is inviting the elders to pray for other sick people. As you know, the elder in Greek is Presbyterian, so James is inviting us, the Presbyterians, to pray for the other people and sick people.

    Jesus tells us a parable in Luke 11: ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.’ In this parable, we need to notice two things. One, the persistence. In other word, daily prayer and continuos conversation. Two, that guy was not asking bread for himself but for his guest, that is, other people. Another interesting thing is that the guy had only one guest but he received three loaves. That means, he himself can keep two loaves. So when we pray for other people, because of that, we will be benefited twice more than those people for whom we pray.

Prayer for the City

    Of course we cannot pray for others expecting the double for ourselves. If we intentionally do that, our prayers may not work. We may not get an answer like the 1-800 customer service call. So our intention has to be pure—pray for the sick people for their own sake; pray for the hungry for their own sake; pray for the persecuted for their own sake. God commands us today to pray for our city and community. Our prayer is for all the citizens but it is also for ourselves. God commanded Jeremiah and I quote: “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Israelites lost the war and many of them were carried into exile as hostages to be slaves in the enemy’s country. In the new place, they were angry. They were not happy, and they hated the new place. But God commanded them to pray for the peace and the prosperity of the city where you live no matter how much they hate it. So we have to pray for our city and the community. But we don’t hate our town. We love it. If we have to pray for it when we hate it, how much more should we pray for it when we love it? So let us pray for our town, community, and neighbourhood.

Conclusion

    Friends, prayer is such a core part of our spirituality in our faith. Apostle Paul also urges us to pray continually. But first, let us remind ourselves that the prayer is not a 1-800 customer service call. It is one of the most powerful and effective tools to grow our love with our everlasting Groom Jesus Christ. So in the love of God, let us pray for each other, for our family, for ourselves, for other people, and also for our community and neighbourhood in which we live. Then as God accepted Job’s prayer and Elijah’s prayer, God will also accept and answer all of our prayers. Amen.