First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 7/25/2010

Dickering with God!
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 7/25/2010
Based on Genesis 18:20-32 & Luke 11:1-13

(Start off the sermon by asking a couple of people what their day consisted of yesterday)
When you stop to think about what we do each day, meaning, doing all the things that are essential to getting through that day, such as: finding food to eat, picking out what clothes to wear, body maintenance (bathing, shaving, brushing ones teeth), working to earn money so you can supply all those needs; interacting with friends and family throughout the day, finding entertainment at the end of the day, and taking time for the spiritual needs, I find it amazing that we give the least amount of thought or time (generally) to the things that are of most importance to our overall well being.
When one thinks in terms of “holistic” lifestyle, it includes everything that is needed to be complete. Food, shelter, safety, leisure time, career and the spiritual are all a part of the umbrella we term as living holistically. In our culture we tend to give the least amount of energy and time to the most important part of ourselves, that of our spiritual “well being.” And for those of us who call ourselves Christian, we generally fall short of living a “holistic lifestyle” by not giving enough time and attention to our “spirituality.”
With in our culture the typical areas that we identify when we think of nurturing our spiritual self, and I am going to center just on those who call themselves “Christian” are: worship, study of the scriptures, prayer, and meditation. Those are the four primary food groups, if you will, of the Christians spiritual life. The most important of these four in my mind is Prayer. I say prayer, because it is through prayer that we communicate with God. Yet it is no surprise to me when asking people what they have been doing, to not hear them speak about the level of activity of their prayer life.
This is not to say that each of us is not actively engaging in conversation with God, it is simply saying that “we” culturally don’t seem to express “those experiences we are having with God” to one another very often. As an example, back in Seattle I was a member of a monthly play reading group. This group was started through the church that I was a member of as a way of helping build closer bonds through small groups of people with similar interests. There were about ten of us.
The general format of the group was to meet for the purpose of reading a play. We would gather, chat in general conversations until the director for that month’s play called us into session. Generally the plays were in two acts and after we had finished the first act, we would have dessert and continue in general conversations, checking in with one another and seeing what was going on in each other’s lives over the past month. Then we would reconvene and finish reading the second act. After that we generally would finish up the evening with good-byes and finishing up those unfinished conversations. As we were getting ready to go home one evening, for the first time in months, there was a prayer request given by one of the members of the group. Remember that this is a group of Christians that include three members who are ordained ministers, and one preacher’s child, whose brother is a missionary. You would think with this particular collection of people that we would be asking for prayer requests every time we would gather. Yet we don’t seem to do that. And if you were to ask any of us from that group as to why we didn’t ask for prayer requests each time we met, I doubt that any one of us would be able to give an answer other than, “We just don’t’ think about asking for prayer requests.”
In today’s Gospel reading, we learn that the Disciples were asking Jesus to teach them how to pray. It is out of this request that they come away with what is the most recited prayer in all Christianity. That of what we call the “Lord’s Prayer.” This might not sound strange at all, until you start to realize that it was back in chapter 5 of Luke that the first disciples were called. It isn’t until this chapter, chapter 11, that the disciples are asking Jesus for a way to pray. There have been a number of major events happening between chapter five and now, such things like: the sermon of the Beatitudes, the lessons on “love your enemies”, of not “judging” others, there was the story of the faith of the Roman Centurion – where he goes to Jesus and asks for the healing of his servant, of Jesus’ healing of the widow’s son. This request comes after Jesus has calmed the angry storm while he and the disciples are out at sea, after Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ and after the experience of Peter, John and James seeing Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah in what we now call the story of the Transfiguration.
What I am trying to show is that there were a lot of experiences that happened before the disciples get around to asking for instruction on “prayer.” So maybe it isn’t so strange that we, in our daily lives don’t seem to make known with our friends, as we talk, the amount of time or frequency of our prayer time, of our spiritual well being.
Actually, the request that the disciples are making of Jesus is as revolutionary as the way Jesus interacted with women or his placing greater value on the little children in that day. Coming from a Protestant history, we are encouraged to develop daily prayer lives; to come to God personally in prayer, this is a part of what we call this, “the priesthood of all believers.” Yet, at the time Jesus was tutoring his disciples, it was only the Priest’s and teacher’s who did the praying. So it is within this request that we are seeing another social barrier being broken down through the ministry of Jesus!
If we were to go into the study of the “Lord’s Prayer”, we would learn about the overall way that we should approach prayer. We are to come to God as recognizing God as Supreme; ask for forgiveness for the things that we have fallen short of; ask for guidance; ask for our daily needs; and ask for forgiveness of the things that need to be forgiven.
Earlier I indicated that “prayer” is the most important aspect of our daily walk with Christ. I say most important, because it is through prayer that we communicate with God, that building of “relationship.” As individuals we communicate with one another only when a relationship exists. Praying is a major way in which we can experience our relationship with God. This is why we give so much time during worship to “congregational prayer” time as opposed to having a “Pastoral prayer.” That is what the Disciples were looking for when they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. They were asking Jesus to help them have that one-on-one relationship with God in the same way they saw Jesus and his relationship with God.
In the Hebrew text of Genesis, we see another expression of relationship through the exchange of Abraham and the men who were on their way to Sodom. This story is hands down one of my most favorite accounts of what goes on between Abraham and God.
We read within these verses where three men visit Abraham. As the story unfolds, we learn that one of these men is the “Lord.” As we read, we see where relationship is being built between Abraham and these three men. There was lodging, breaking of bread, conversation, and rest provided, all a part of relationship building; then came time for these men to leave.
Let me point out there has been a continual progression of relationship building going on between Abraham and God, though out the entire story of Abraham, starting with God asking Abraham through a dream to leave his family, his friends and his country to settle in a land where God had picked out for him. When Abraham did this, he was committing himself to following one God. This is the beginning of our understanding of Monotheism, that of believing in one God as opposed too many gods. Abraham is promised to be the father of many nations and later he has a vision of God making a covenant with him about having a son and in last week’s lection reading again re-enforcing the promise of being the father of many nations. Abraham’s relationship started off with dreams, then in visions and now he is having a physical encounter with the Lord.
In verse seventeen, we read where as the men were leaving and heading toward Sodom, the Lord says to Abraham, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?” This response from God can only happen because of the relationship Abraham has with God. So God shares with Abraham about the great outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah, because their sin is very great and because their sin is very grave. Later in the story we learn what that sin is, but that is a topic for another lesson.
Then Abraham stood before the Lord and said, “Would you also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous there in the city, would you also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from you! Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”
Now, I don’t know how many of you are versed in the fine art of “dickering”, but I can honestly tell you that I am not very good at it, at all. I’m the type of guy, that when I’m told what the price is of something that I am interested in, if it seems reasonable, I’ll buy it; or if it doesn’t sound reasonable, I will just leave. One time in China town in San Francisco, I was in a shop, showed interested in a couple of items by handling them, placing them back down and was starting out the door, when the sales person, quoted a price. I politely thank him, but said I needed to think about it and started out the door, again, the sales person, quoted a lower price, and again I thanked him but wasn’t interested (which was the truth, I really wasn’t interested in the items), as I once again headed toward the door, the sales person quoted me an even lower price, a price that I thought was ridiculously low. At that point I found myself buying three items that originally wasn’t of that much interest to me. The same experience happened to me in Mexico over this shirt that I am wearing this morning. In both instances, it was the sales person who instigated the “dickering” as a way of not losing a potential sale.
In our story with Abraham, he has dickered with God to save Sodom if God could find fifty righteous people. But then Abraham asks God, if he would actually destroy the city if there were only forty-five righteous found. Again God concedes that if he found forty-five righteous, he would spare the city. “Well what if you only found thirty?” “Again forgive me, but what if there are only 20 righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, what would you do?” “Forgive me this one last time, would you actually destroy the city if you found only ten righteous?” God tells Abraham that if he finds even just ten people in Sodom and Gomorrah, that he would spare the cities from being destroyed. Now I ask you, “If God were here today and telling you that he was going to destroy the city of Green river because of its great sin, would you stand up and start dickering with God the way Abraham did?” And if the answer is “no”, then why wouldn’t you?
What is the lesson here? What we are seeing in the story is someone who is becoming an advocate for others. Abraham was dickering with God, not to be difficult, but to intercede on the behave of those who were righteous and living in those two cities. The only reason that Abraham was able to be such an advocate and have this ability to dicker with God was out of his relationship that he had developed with God.
When I think about whose voices in more recent times who have spoken out on behave of those who cannot speak for themselves or are not able to be heard, I think of people like Mother Teresa or of Martin Luther King, Jr. Michael Moore also comes to mind with his film, Fahrenheit 9/11. It was a very emotional film to watch. Some people haled the film as a great blow to the Bush Administration. Some think that it was full of twisted half-truths to make the past administration look less than shining. This is what I took away from that film. I think it is an indictment against our country, calling all of us into accountability for a multitude of actions and policies that we as a nation have executed for a number of decades. I think Mr. Moore was calling us into accountability as a nation, for a lack of responding for truth and justice.
Jesus used the example of a man going to a friend’s house late at night and asking for bread for the guests that had unexpectedly arrived. The friend lent him the bread not upon the initial request but because of the repeated and persistence of the neighbor asking for it. Abraham didn’t just ask the Lord to save Sodom and Gomorrah if he found fifty people, but was able to get God to commit to holding off judgment of the cities if He could find just ten people.
As a nation, we now have the opportunity to enter into honest conversation about what a fair immigration policy ought to be. Will we be an Abraham and take up the conversation for those who are not able or will we be silent, not wishing to be bothered?
Prayer is the lifeline of our relationship with God. We need to do it often and we need to pray in a well-rounded fashion, not just a shopping list type of, “I want.” I would like to give you a challenge this week, to increase your time in prayer by fifteen minutes. If you try this and you find that you are running out of things to pray about, then take some time out and examine what it is that you are praying for. I have found that when I center my prayers on just my own needs and concerns, I don’t need the fifteen minutes. When I go beyond myself and start thinking of the needs of the world outside of mine, I don’t seem to have enough time to be able to finish the prayer in that fifteen minutes. Prayer is in truth relationship with God. “So I say to you: ask and it shall be given, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” Amen.