Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
18 My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
my heart is sick.
19 Hark, the cry of my poor people
from far and wide in the land:
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?”
(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
with their foreign idols?”)
20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.”
21 For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?
O that my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
for the slain of my poor people!
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For
there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, himself human,
6 who gave himself a ransom for all
—this was attested at the right time. 7 For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
Her son, an eagle scout, survived the Las Vegas shooting but then was murdered at the Thousand Oaks Massacre. Susan Orfanos, a distraught and hurting mother angrily said,
“My son was in Las Vegas with a lot of his friends and he came home. He didn’t come home last night. I don’t want prayers, I don’t want thoughts, I want gun control and I hope to God nobody else sends me any more prayers. I want gun control.”
We can hear her grief, much like what Jeremiah described, “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.” We feel for her and the thousands of people who have been grief stricken by the mass shootings plaguing our country. “The summer has ended, and we are not saved” and we cry “tears… for the slain of my poor people.” We lament, we cry, we activate, and we pray that something can change in our country so that we can be safe, so that our children can go to school and feel safe. A threat came at our local high school and children were too afraid to go to school even when the threat was handled.
Now this could be a sermon on gun violence, or how we feel when uncontrollable things happen. I am thinking about that a lot right now, climate change, gun violence, political uncertainty. So, I am hoping to do an adult education series in January on dealing with this perpetual anxiety when the world feels out of control. Please let me know if you are interested.
But embedded in this tragic story of a mother losing her son to senseless violence is the question; does prayer really work? I get that action and not prayers, change and not platitudes, is what her grief demands. And rightly so! But it still begs the question of the efficacy of prayers.
Paul in the letter to Timothy jumps right in and says yes! Well that gets lost in the translation. “First of all, then,” is how he begins, but there is never a second or third mentioned. So, this could also be translated, “above all” or “the most important thing” I urge you to pray! And pray for everyone! Of course, four nuanced types of prayer are mentioned.
Pray for a particular need through supplication,
general prayers which can include most anything,
bold and urgent requests through intercession
and prayers of gratitude through thanksgivings. Mentioning these reminds us that we do not always have to pray the same way. Ann Lamott wrote a book on prayer entitled, Help, Thanks, Wow, with fabulous stories and insights into prayer. When she feels overwhelmed and needs God’s help, she reminds us to pray for God’s will rather than specific prayers. Then she writes,
“In prayer, I see the suffering bathed in light. In God, there is no darkness.
I see God’s light permeate them, soak into them, guide their feet.
I want to tell God what to do: ‘Look, Pal, this is a catastrophe. You have got to shape up.’ But it wouldn’t work. So I pray for people who are hurting, that they be filled with air and light. Air and light heal; they somehow get into those dark, musty places, like spiritual antibiotics” (p. 16).
Prayer is a spiritual antibiotic. Can you tell me how an antibiotic works? Most of us can’t, but we take the medicine and feel better because something is working that we cannot see or feel but effects the virus that is attacking our system. Prayer works much the same way. We cannot see God working or the Spirit moving, but through prayer we find relief. Now relief might be that our attitude has changed rather than the overall situation, but that is still prayer at work. Other times our prayers change the course of things. A member recently told me about several things we have been praying for in worship have resolved, have been answered prayers. She wanted me to know that the prayers worked. Another member told me she could feel when people were praying for her. She described it as “Things feeling lighter and she knew someone was lifting her up in prayer.” She could feel the Spirit moving because of another person’s prayer. Prayer works. Prayer is the balm, the medicine for our souls and our bodies. Even when we do not see or know the outcome of our prayers, God knows, hears and moves in mysterious ways.
Paul also asks us to prayer for kings and leaders, something I think many of us do right now. But a little history sheds some light. For the first 500 years of the Roman Empire, it was run as a republic. But starting with Julius Caesar the republic was replaced with an Imperial system. After his assassination, Julius Caesar was proclaimed divine and accepted as a god of the state. Soon all the leaders were considered divine and people started praying to them! Praying to Caesar! So when Paul writes to pray ‘for kings’ instead of ‘to the kings’ it takes on different meaning (Working Preacher, Christian A. Eberhart). Paul is reminding them, and us, that rulers depend on the guidance and mercy of God and are human, not divine. Embedded within that is that prayer establishes who God is when we are praying appropriately. We don’t pray to humans; we pray to the Creator. We don’t pray for our will; we pray for God’s will to be done. Jesus taught us well; “Thy Will be done” when he taught us to pray the Lord’s Prayer.
I think prayer gets a bad wrap when we want prayer to be a “To Do List” for God.
We pray and God does. But that is why Jesus is so clear about God’s will being done.
We make supplications and intercession, prayer request if you will. But we are never guaranteed God will respond as we like. Ann Lamott reminds us to say thank you even when we don’t get what we want. She writes, “We and life are spectacularly flawed and complex. Often we do not get our way, which I hate, hate, hate. But in my saner moments I remember that if we did, usually we would shortchange ourselves.
Sometimes circumstances conspire to remind us or even let us glimpse how thin the membrane is between here and there, between birth and the grave, between the human and the divine.
I wonder at the occasional direct experience of this, we say, Thank you” (pg.45)
Say thank you to God when we see the divine hand at work and even when we do not get what we prayed for. Because we can see the blessing of grace even when we did not get the miracle, even when God said no to our request. That is why Paul reminds us of Jesus being the mediator between the one true God, our holy and personal God, and us. Jesus bridges the gap between the thin places here and there. Jesus knows our hurts, knows our pain, knows our struggles and does two things. First Jesus bears those for us so that we can take our worries and pain to him. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am gentle and humble in heart: and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:29-30). We give our pain to Jesus and take his light yoke instead. His yoke of hope, of peace, of comfort even when we are struggling with life.
Secondly, “Jesus gave himself a ransom for all.” Jesus died so that we are saved. Prayer is our way of participating in our salvation. I don’t mean we earn it; I mean we connect to our God through our relationship with Jesus by our prayers. Because Jesus is human, he died for our sins, and he is our mediator to God, our prayers are more than thoughts in our heads. They are our bond, communication with our loving Father and personal Savior. Our very act of prayer makes space for the Holy Spirit to move. So if you have something that is troubling you, then I would suggest you take it to God in prayer. See if prayer really works for you. But it is more than one and done. We do not get to say a three minute prayer and think God has got it. It takes dedication on our part, to pray for the person we have an issue with, pray for them to have all the things we want for ourselves. Pray daily for several weeks and see what happens. Look for the power of prayer, consider how things move. Ann Lamott while talking about the Serenity Prayer reminds us that “there are only three things we cannot change, the past, the truth, and you” (p. 31). But all the rest is movable. Pray to God, trusting that God is working and moving in and through your situation. Prayer really works. Test it and find out!
