Saints Peter and Paul and us

Acts 12:1-11

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18

John 21:15-19

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I am your friend.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I am your friend.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, are you my friend?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Are you my friend?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I am your friend.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

***

What wonderful stories we have this morning. Peter is released from prison by the power of his praying congregation, Paul writes about his approaching death after a very good run of ministry, and then we have this Gospel reading. This breakfast Jesus shares with his friends comes just after the disciples have decided to return to business as usual. They’ve been out fishing, just like old times. Well, like times before old times, back when they had never heard of this Jesus fellow before. And now that the excitement is over, and Peter certainly feels a bit depressed or guilty or something about that unfortunate series of events where he denied ever knowing Jesus just when Jesus was being beaten and bullied, now that all of that is behind them, what else is there left to do but retire from the disciple business and get back to the daily grind they know so well?

Well, except then Jesus shows up, finds them right where he first found them, feeds them a nice full breakfast, and has this moment with Peter. They talk around a campfire which might well remind Peter of the last campfire he stood at, in the dark, not too long ago. Many say this conversation reinstates Peter into the fold after his three denials before the rooster called out. Before night fell for everyone who knew Jesus, in that way that their hopes and dreams died with him. Back when Peter was warming himself by another fire.. which feels like so long ago now, though I’d imagine it was an event that replayed itself in Peter’s mind over and over and over again in the days that followed.

Back when the conversation was a little different. The servant girl, of little to no power, saw him at the door to the courtyard, let him in at the request of the beloved disciples, and asked such a simple question: “Are you also one of this man’s disciples?” Peter said “I am not,” and he went to the fire to warm himself with the other servants. But in that light of that fire, the servants asked him again, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?” and he again said “I am not.” Then one who had been in the garden for the arrest of Jesus recognized Peter and called him out: “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” Peter took this third and final opportunity to deny a final time that he had any connection with Jesus.

Then we’ve got Paul’s story here today, too. Today we get the end of his story, the letter which seems to imply that he is on his way to death, having run the race, and finished the fight. Paul, whose name hasn’t always been Paul, but started out as Saul, one of those righteous Pharisees who kept strict adherence to the Law, who observed every bit of the Torah, who was there to hold the coats of those who stoned Stephen to death, a story we get in the beginning of the book of Acts, though not today.

They say sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me? Saul persecuted the Jesus-followers, Simon Peter denied Jesus as he was being beaten and tried. By their words they did a LOT of damage. By their silence they caused a lot of hurt.

The other thing they say (though when we use that line I’m never quite sure who ‘they’ are supposed to be) is that church is full of hypocrites. Of people with two faces, who say one good thing one day a week and live the rest of the week as though nothing they said on Sunday was true.

Looking at the two men we credit with most of the western church’s beginnings, it’s not difficult to see where that idea comes from. Looking at the various kings of Israel in the Old Testament, it’s not difficult to see where that idea comes from. Looking at the ways Christians throw rocks at each other nowadays, it’s not difficult to see where that idea comes from. We’ve got a history of hypocrites. I mean, the Pope who sanctioned the Crusades called himself “Innocent,” for crying out loud.

So, if God can make Saints out of such rotten lowlifes, if God’s church can survive and grow even with confusing, complicated, diverse scoundrels who stand by and watch violence against their own, who let the bullies and threats have more sway over them than their love of Christ, if God can grow a church out of such a stew of mess, then we’re in pretty good company, and pretty good hands, aren’t we?

Because we have to be honest about the saints - they made mistakes. They thought ‘unChristian’ thoughts. They acted out. They fought with each other. They put their feet in their mouth and refused to name any elephant in the room. And we don’t like to talk ill of the dead - when people found out MLK wasn’t the best feminist, or that Mother Teresa had doubts, or that John Paul II did not support liberation theologians, or that King David did this thing with his neighbor’s wife that he really should not have done... There’s a spot in Galatians where Paul says he opposed Peter to his face because he did this thing where at first he said all were welcome, but then he changed his mind when peer pressure got him to say, ‘whoops, nevermind, you’ve got to become Jewish first.’ We dislike talking about the conflict because the church of all places should be a place of peace, right?

But that’s the whole point of saints days, to point us to the whole complicated human, the inner, personal struggles of people who try their darndest to follow a very demanding, very loving God. To show us how others have dealt with their communities in times of disagreement. To remind us that these people who have become heroes in the faith were just as human as we are.

And if God can do with them what God has done with them, imagine what is possible for us. Only God knows what might happen here in our midst, even as we try to clarify what it is God has for us to do here. Only God knows what sorts of saints we truly are, here and now. Some traditions hold up particular saints for miracles after their death or great acts of faith while they lived, and we certainly need that great cloud of witnesses. But we also hold that everyone, by virtue of their baptism, is a saint, consecrated and made holy, set apart for the work and the love of God. We don’t have saints just so that we can point at them and say ‘look at that. see how holy they were. glad they took care of holiness so I don’t have to.’ No, we have saints so that we can say, ‘wow, look at what God has done in that life. I wonder what people see of God in my life?’

So, yeah, the church is full of hypocrites. Of people who say one thing and do another. Paul himself says in Romans, “ I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate.” [Romans 7:15] It isn’t required of us to be perfect, to have our lives entirely tied up and figured out, in order to be saints. Like Peter and Paul, we do the best we can with what we have been given, and God does marvelous things beyond what we could imagine. Because what we mostly have saints for is to point us to the marvelous grace and mercy and love of a God who could with a word re-create the world, but instead chooses to walk beside us and work through us and around us and in us. Peter and Paul had sketchy backgrounds, but God grabbed them and turned their lives inside-out upside-down to get the word out about resurrection and forgiveness and new life. To show the world the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. To bring all people, imperfect hypocrites just trying to survive, into the freedom poured out for all the world in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.

It’s a kind of freedom that is so big we might not believe it at first, might need some time together to get used to the reality that our chains are gone and the prison doors are open. So we gather together and pray, just like Rhoda and her house church did that night when Peter was escorted out of jail by an angel. We pray, and we marvel, and we stumble, and we forgive. And over and around it all God continues to make saints of us all.  And King provided leadership and encouragement for the Civil Rights movement when we needed it. And Mother Teresa brought hope and love to so many. And John Paul II helped bring down communism. And King David repented and still ruled well. And Peter was a preacher through the book of Acts who brought many to faith in Christ. And Paul's letters have made up a good portion of our New Testament and out theology. And you? Where have you noticed God working in, with, through you?

It isn't easy, but it's so worth it

Jeremiah 20:7-13

Psalm 69

Romans 6:1-11

Matthew 10:24-39

It sounds to me like the followers of Jesus were being bullied.

By the time these Gospels were written down, much of what was remembered for the record was what was needed for the moment. Matthew’s Gospel is very concerned with fulfilling the prophets, with keeping the law - that’s why there is the great family tree at the beginning of it, and why Jesus rides on two animals, a donkey and a foal, when he enters Jerusalem. Matthew’s Gospel is written for an audience that knows what family division is like, that understands the conflict God can stir up in us when we get too comfortable with the status quo. And we know what that is like, too. Sure, we’re a family church, but we’ve also survived quite a lot of conflict in our history.

Consider that this last week was June 19th, or “Juneteenth,” as it is sometimes called. Did you know that Juneteenth is an actual holiday? Have you read the books, seen the movies, imagined yourself in that pre-emancipation proclamation sort of world, where Bible-thumping churches preached up and down all through the south that slavery was God’s way? If you haven’t seen “12 Years a Slave,” that might give you an idea, or at least the start of an idea. And when the President freed all slaves, back in the day before Facebook and Twitter, word was pretty slow at getting to the slaves that they didn’t belong to their masters any more. Those masters weren’t about to let their slaves know they were free if they could get away with it, so it took a long while before the word of freedom reached every slave. And when it did, it was June 19th. 1865. Two and a half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Two and a half years, slaves were free and didn’t know it. Can you imagine the arguments over that? The back and forth about making a profit versus following the new law versus recognizing the common humanity between people of any skin color? I’d imagine some households, some fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, in-laws, probably split over how to decide the question of what to do.

Then there was the split only just over forty years ago among the Lutherans of the Missouri Synod. One of their seminaries, in St Louis, MO, split. Faculty, staff, and students walked out when teaching practices were called into question. Some now say it was the issue of ordaining women, some say the renewal of worship materials was the catalyst, some say the historical critical method of reading scripture was. In any case, young new professors, just beginning to build their careers and families, seminarians who depended on their denomination for room and board and tuition and books, all stepped out of their support system because it was counter to the Gospel as they understood it. They put their livelihoods and their futures on the line, some of them in direct opposition to the families that raised them, because their faith told them it was worth it. 

I’ve only been to a couple of other parishes that use this particular line for church growth, but I have heard from some churches that being a Christian is easier than it looks. “Just give up one latte a week, or one manicure every so often,” they say, “and use that money for mission instead. It’s easy!”

But if it were that easy, why did Jesus die for this faith? If it were that easy, why were the disciples persecuted, thrown in prison, and killed by their own families? If it were that easy, what about the martyrs and saints? What about the Christians who risked life and limb to bring the news about Jesus to faraway places, or to bring Bibles where Scripture was outlawed?

Jesus knows it’s not going to be easy for his disciples, of any age and time, to follow him. Even if he were no more than a very wise Rabbi, to really live according to his teaching would undo the world as we know it. Indeed, in his time, it already was. Families were turning on each other to maintain their security, to protect themselves, to keep their jobs and homes and futures. Saving themselves by their neighbors’ standards... and losing themselves in the process.

See, we have these systems that tell us how to live. Slavery was one such system. The Roman occupation was another. Keep your head down and don’t cause trouble. That was how you survived in these systems. We’ve still got these systems. Because we’re living in them they’re a bit harder to name, though in my second job I see enough racism and classism one day a week to want to close my eyes and pretend there isn’t a quiet war going on.

I came not to bring peace, Jesus said, but a sword.

One of my very wise friends from college and seminary has said that the sword Jesus brings is one that cuts through our status quo. That the peace people wanted was to keep everything as they had gotten used to it, and to stay as far from conflict as possible. That’s known as ‘peace-keeping,’ but not ‘peace-making.’

Peace-making is the kind of surgery that requires a sword. It’s the kind of reconciliation work that comes through the pain of admitting when we are wrong, or uncertain, or hurting, or floundering. It’s a long and slow process of being remade into the people of God, time and again, failure after failure after getting back up again. 

And we fight it. God knows we fight it. We’ve made ourselves a system that works for us, or at least promises it might some day if we work hard enough and shop at the right places and live in the right houses and buy the right cars and go to the right schools... We’ve built this system, and it’s taken a lot of work, and we’re tired from the work, and we want to rest, catch our breath, relax a bit

We’re in the season of the church now. The season of Pentecost, where the Spirit keeps stirring up trouble. First we’re hearing the Word of God in our own language, then the Spirit is moving us out into the world, and now... now God is holding us up. Holding us up and promising care so strong, so in the trenches with us, that God is close enough to count every hair on our heads. Probably even to keep track of the ones we’ve lost over time. God knows about what we hold on to in this world, the care we give to our families and our possessions, and God cares for us even more.

I’ve heard my classmates who are having kids say that they didn’t know it was humanly possible to love as deeply and strongly as they do now that they have seen their children born. New parents who take one look at that minutes-old infant and know they would move heaven and earth to keep that little one safe. And in this world we have made, where we would go so far as to kill a man for telling us to love one another, don’t you think the God and Father of us all knows that sort of overwhelming love for us in the middle of this whole mess?

That’s what I see happening here. In Matthew, in Jeremiah, even in Romans. There is a love and a justice more powerful than all of our failed attempts at making ourselves king of the mountain. There is a God who is so invested in our lives, in our integrity, in our wholeness and humanity, that he would step into it bodily and put his own life and limb at risk from what he very well knows will kill him. There is a God we have come to know in and through the person of Jesus, who is so in love with this world and every living piece of it, that each hair on your head is numbered. A God of so much love that prophets can not keep from speaking of the fire in their bones, that God’s voice of love and justice - which is love in action - will not be put down no matter how we try and stop the onslaught of God’s Spirit bringing justice and love and mercy and grace and hope and life which is bigger than the life we would scrape and scavenge to save for ourselves.

We care so much for our safety, our numbers, our survival. We can’t even see the whole picture, the connections, the possibilities given to us in our freedom. But God can. And God has sent us the Spirit to hold us and guide us through the conflicts and hard decisions and honest peace-making that is gonna hurt a bit first before it gets better. Like taking care of a Heroin addict trying to get clean, we’re in a spot of some work that needs to be done. And if you can’t think of any of that work in your own life, then you can teach and encourage those who have that work in theirs, prepare our kids and youth to stand up to bullies and protect the weak.

This is the season of the church. Of God’s church. We are in good, faithful, and capable hands. Thanks be to God. 

Created for Interdependence (Trinity Sunday and Confirmation Day)

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28: 16-20

Garrett, Samantha, Charlotte, gathered friends, family, and visitors: we are gathered here today in the sight of God and of one another to bear witness to the promises made between the Holy Trinity and these three young disciples who are now stepping into making this faith their own. We are gathered for this rite, this affirmation of Baptism, on a very strange day: The festival of the Holy Trinity. A great mystery. Our best attempt at putting words and language on this God who is far too great to fit into our language, but who really wants to be known. This God who stumbles along with us as we live in relationship together with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What a great day to celebrate that we don’t have all the answers, and never will, but that God keeps showing up and enticing us anyway. God is sometimes a terrible tease, a horrendous flirt, dazzling us with this marvelous creation, playing hide-and-seek, catch-and-keep, where only God ever ends up the winner, but loves us so much that when God wins, we do, too.

And so, Charlotte, Samantha, and Garrett, today you three are affirming the Baptismal promises your parents and godparents made on your behalf when you were still in diapers. Today we celebrate with you that you have been brought up in the faith, and for the past two years you have studied more intensively the basic Christian foundations of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism and Communion. We celebrate that after all of that you have come to decide that this whole thing is worth spending the rest of your life learning about and living with. Because it will take your entire life to struggle with and learn to love this God who is revealed to us in Scripture and worship, made known by the Spirit in the person of Jesus, and your entire life will be enriched by this struggle and this love. 

This is not, in other words, graduation. It’s more like your wedding day, more like, as cheesy as it sounds, the first day of the rest of your life. And we are glad you are here to share your celebration with us, because we need your witness among us. You can bet that no matter what happens in your life and faith from here on out God isn’t done with you yet, and you are part of us, and we are in this struggle of faith and life together.

Which brings us to the readings for today. Because it’s all connected, you know. What today’s celebration in particular has to do with these stories is that you are not suddenly setting off into the world on your own, like a lone soldier or cowboy or stand-alone superhero fighting against the world. It feels good to stand against the world and survive and win and it’s kind of the American dream to be that lone cowboy, that resplendent diva who makes it big on her own. We like to be strong. And rites of passage into adulthood tend to make us think we’re now expected to be self-sufficient and responsible and don’t need any one else any more. But as Christians we know that’s not true. Our Scriptures are full of real relationships, our identifying stories are all about people and God working together for the greater resurrection story. 

The resurrection story is necessary, vital, a life-and-death deal because of this big lie we’ve believed. There is no bigger lie than the lie that we are alone, that nobody is listening, that in the whole universe no one understands, that there isn’t a soul alive or dead who would love us or need us or take care about us. For some reason we’ve come to rely on our own power to make ourselves ‘worthy’ of belonging, but by virtue of our creation we already belong, and don’t have to fight for a place at the table. Seven whole days of creating a world of ecosystems so diverse and interconnected and somehow we’ve come to believe God would make us completely separate from and independent from it all? That’s not how this works! We are part of this world, like it or not, warts and all.

See, just because you take this step today of growing up in the eyes of the church, of becoming an adult, voting member of this community, with voice and authority in the decisions we make and the ministries we share, does not mean you suddenly have all the answers and can stand alone and apart, or even ought to. We don’t have all the answers. What today’s rite of passage does mean is that God, who created, calls, and sends you into your everyday life, is faithful. And the promises you make today remind us all of that truth. We talk of this God as triune because we understand God in relationship, and that loving relationship is so big and so central to who God is that God’s own self is defined by a relationship we call the Holy Trinity.

This is the best language we have, as confusing as it is. A great mystery, this is the God to whom you will be giving your heart once again in just a few minutes, when I ask you about who you believe in. This is the God who has already given his heart to you, who will never stop loving you, who will always be as close as the air you breathe and as complicated as nuclear physics and calculus and ancient languages and romantic love all wrapped up together in an enigma full of symbols and metaphor. But together - as we have been given to each other, washed in the same Baptismal waters, fed by the same Eucharist, gathered and sent by the same love - together we learn and reflect more of this God whose love is big enough to create the entire universe and close enough to walk in it with us. Together we realize that God is in our midst, as Jesus has promised: "I am with you always, to the end of the age." Amen.

God will stop at nothing

Acts 2:1-21

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

John 20:19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the
doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of
the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with
you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then
the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them
again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive
the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven
them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”


God, it seems, will stop at nothing to get at us. Ever since the garden, when we ran off with the juice of knowledge still sticky on our chins and shame still hot in our cheeks, God has been pursuing us.

When we refused to hear, decided we’d rather listen to the voices around us telling us who we ought to be because who we are wasn’t good enough, God still shouted and cajoled and cried out through judges and prophets, mothers and fathers, kings and queens and harlots and foreigners, shepherds and adulterers, young girls and old women past their childbearing years. Scripture is the history of God reaching out to us as we turn away. Again, and again, and again.

And when I say ‘us,’ I do mean the whole of humanity. It started with the Jewish people, with the tribes wandering in the desert, with the people of the promise, the ancestors of our three major faiths:
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Abraham and Moses, Isaac and Jacob, the chosen people who were just as diverse then as we are now. Just as conflicted, just as complicated. Just as stubborn. Just as divided.
Just as human, but specially chosen to be a light to the nations, God’s own people.

They told their stories, they worshiped God and held God accountable, they endured exile and rebuilding of the temple, they survived war and were colonized by Rome, and after all of this, the Messiah they were waiting for wasn’t the Messiah they were expecting. If we had known what a Messiah was supposed to be, well, we had our own gods to worship and our own traditions and rites back then. We were outside of that promise, outside of that hope until Christ. And in case we missed the memo then, the Holy Spirit broke everything open on the day of Pentecost.

We forget that we were not originally the insiders here. We were not supposed to be where we are. The majority of God-followers in that day did not organize with our inclusion in mind, did not begin with us at the center of the culture. The faith that we claim is a gift, not a position we are entitled to.

And if we get down to the nitty-gritty of it, we’re a bunch of outsiders who have been adopted into God’s family purely as an act of grace and generosity. This is the faith of the Jewish people that we have been brought into, the God of the Jews who we worship, just as complicated and diverse as ever. And as outsiders brought into the community, we know our place here through the life, death, and resurrection of God in the person of Jesus Christ. This God is bigger than any one religion, but we did not know our salvation until God stepped into our skin, and we would not even have had the curiosity to ask about or seek to follow this God if not for the work of the Holy Spirit.  As Luther says when he explains the third article of the Creed: "I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has calls me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith. Daily in this Christian church the Holy Spirit abundantly forgives all sins - mine and those of all believers. On the last day the Holy Spirit will raise me and all the dead and will give to me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true."

And this is what we celebrate today. That the Spirit has been poured out and people can know God in their own skin, through their own language. Prophets and sages, Jesus Christ in flesh and blood, and a people usually divided are brought together by hearing that the good news of Jesus Christ is for them, no matter where they come from.

We struggle with this, and God knows it. Nobody likes to be on the outside, but once we've 'made it' we humans have a nasty habit of forgetting what it was like to be poor, or outcast, or looked down upon, and we sure don't want to return to outsider status, so we've gotten pretty good at avoiding those who seem less well-off. Avoiding the sick and the homeless lest we get infected or develop a reputation. God knows we struggle with living into the community of wholeness and shalom. Which is why that first word Jesus gives his disciples, when they are given the Spirit, is a word about forgiveness, about restoration, and the freedom to let go of our self-made divisions and all of the hurts we carry.

When I worked at Target, we had a bilingual staff. By which I mean most of us only spoke English and some of us spoke both English and Spanish. Which made some English-only speakers uncomfortable. There were some who were sure that when coworkers spoke in Spanish they must be talking trash about the rest of us. Never mind that those who spoke Spanish as a first language were struggling to learn better English, just needed to take a break once in awhile to rest in their mother tongue, same as you or I would need to do if we went abroad to another country who's main language was something other than English. We were all doing the same work, but had a hard time understanding each other.

Scripture was not handed down to us King James Version. Martin Luther risked his life by translating Scripture into the German language that his people spoke, out of the Greek and Hebrew it was originally in. He was moved by the Spirit to bring the Good News to the people in a time when it was deemed too dangerous for anyone other than the priests to be able to read it.

That's the miracle of this day. That we are all about the same work and by the Spirit all are able to hear in their own language about the love of God. They didn't have to learn Hebrew first. They didn't have to be circumcised first. They didn't have to sign a loyalty contract or give up their culture, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia and Judea and Egypt and eventually Germany and India and Norway and Spain and Sweden and France and Russia and Brazil and Portugal and...

God came to us first, in our own language, not because our culture is superior but because God will allow nothing to get in between us, nothing to stand in the way when it comes to loving us and welcoming us and making of the whole world one community full of many languages and cultures and peoples.
And we will mess up when it comes to understanding this gift, we will mess up when it comes to understanding each other, but that is why we are given that great gift of forgiveness, the strength to do the work of peacemaking and community building.
And the gift continues to be poured out, on us and throughout the world, as the Spirit whispers in our ears that great eternal truth: "God loves you." And as the Spirit shouts it from the rooftops, "God loves you!" And as the Spirit is heard by old and young, East and West, rich and poor, in classrooms and churches, and in homes and wilderness wanderings, praying in the language of your own heart, "God loves you."

Because God will stop at nothing to love us. All of us. Amen.

Teach us how to pray...

Acts 1:6-14

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

John 17: 1-11 

Do you remember how you learned to pray? When you learned how to pray? Who taught you how to pray? How you first learned what prayer is? 

All of our worship service is prayer. Structured, mostly, as a tool to shape the way we think about prayer through the rest of the week. 

There’s the prayer of the day, connected to the readings and sometimes called the ‘collect’ because it is spoken by the pastor after a moment of silent prayer by the people gathered, and it is meant to collect together all of those petitions and thanksgivings silently offered by everyone gathered. 

There are the hymns, offering with united breath the stories and promises which hold us together before God. 

Every Psalm is an ancient prayer, tying us to a distant people and a faraway time. 

We agree with one another’s prayers when the assisting minister says “Lord in your mercy” and we respond together “hear our prayer.” 

We pray with our bodies and our livelihoods through offerings of gifts earned and given for the sake of the world. 

Lengthier thanksgivings tend to be spoken by the pastor or assisting minister, but are still the prayers of the whole congregation, and we pray the prayer Jesus taught us just in case we missed anything. 

The benediction at the end of the service is prayer, too.

We are a people well-practiced at prayer. But so often we stumble and give up because we don’t think we do it ‘right.’ Whatever we think it means to pray ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ gets in the way of praying at all. Publicly or privately, prayer is a gift and a blessing we are given, not to understand in one way only, but simply to communicate, to share, to love, to express to our God, and sometimes just to hear for ourselves, what it is we want and need and stake our joy on.

If ever you feel like you just can’t pray ‘right,’ or that somebody else can do it ‘better,’ you’ve got this Gospel reading today to fall back on. Jesus himself doesn’t always make sense when he prays. His words sometimes sound jumbled, complicated, confusing. If you ever feel like you can’t pray a proper-sounding prayer, here’s Jesus on the night when he hands himself over to death, and he’s blubbering and overcome with emotion. At least that’s how I read it. All of this talk of glory and yours and mine and yours again or yours really from the first, and on and on Jesus prays to the Father, 

and whatever else the disciples make of it, there is so much love in these words they themselves might well be overcome in hearing it. 

Because, well, because this is where we get the heart of who it is we pray to when we pray. Here is the heart of Jesus, laid bare before it is is pierced with a lance, laid bare before those who will forsake it, laid bare in love for these who have been given to him for the journey of the last three years, who he now gives back to God as he is leaving them.

And even as he is leaving them, Jesus is caring for them. He’s washed their feet, he’s given them an example and spoken his last lecture. Now the only thing left is to what we tend to call a ‘last resort’ - he prays for them. Even as he goes forth to be tortured, his primary concern is not to save himself but to ask God to watch over his disciples. To make them one in the closest, most intimate way he understands, as he and the Father are one.

And this is the desire of the one to whom we pray when we pray. This is the love with which we are received, by which our prayers are heard, in which we trust our hurts and joys are held.

Whether or not your prayers are made of coherent sentences. Whether or not you pray through dance or song or silence. Whether or not you actually believe you can pray, 

keep in mind that the one to whom we pray has first prayed for us. 

Keep in mind that the one who has suffered by our hands, by the sin of this messed-up world, once said to God “All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.” He did not say this to be sarcastic or passive-aggressive, but honestly, prayerfully, heart-felt in love for us. 

We belong to Christ, who belongs to God, and who has given us himself for us - to us!, who has sent us the Spirit to teach us how to pray, who longs to be in relationship with us - to be known as he already knows and rejoices in us. 

the Lord be with you. and also with you. Let us pray...

Hymn of the day: “Beautiful Savior”