Ash Wednesday

Sermon on Joel 2:12-19, by Andrew Smith |

Grace and peace to you…

It’s another Lenten and another opportunity for pause to focus on what God has done for us in Christ.  In years past, I’ve done a number of different things for the season including those pre-packaged theme sets that are available.  Typically, they’re pretty good and meet a need in the life of the congregation.  But this year I thought I’d take a different tack.  I thought I’d do a little something like baseball players do every spring, and return to the basics of not just what it is we believe as Christians, which is vitally important, but what we do as Christians living out the faith we have been given.  But I want to make this point clearly, Christians never do anything in order to gain salvation.  In fact, as Peter Leithart said, “To observe Lent rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor.”  That actually bears repeating.  “To observe Lent rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor.”  We’re not observing Lent to work our way into God’s good graces.  And so the typically Christian activities that Christians do, prayer, attending worship, sacrificial giving, serving others, etc., those are being done because faith already exists and is being worked out in the life of the Christian.  I’ll return to that message over and over again this season, but it bears stating from the outset that Lent is not a self-improvement project that ends up getting us saved.  That has already been accomplished in Jesus’ suffering and death in your place.

Over the next six weeks, both on Sundays and Wednesdays, we’ll be looking at those basic behaviors of Christians.  If we can use the language of the Bible clearly, we could say the disciplines of disciples, after all, those words share the same root.  If you’ve ever been frustrated with your prayer life or you have never really understood much of the Bible or you’re unclear about what the Bible says about connecting with other Christians or whether you should feel bad about not feeling capable of sharing anything meaningful about your faith, well, friend this is the Lenten series you’ll benefit from.

The OT reading for Ash Wednesday captures this really well.  “Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”  Remember that line from Leithart, “To observe Lent rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor.”  Returning to the Lord only works if He is someone we want to return to, if He is someone who will welcome us back when we return to them.  Observing Lent rightly is not a self-improvement project.  So whether we’re talking about prayer, or giving, or receiving the sacrament, it’s never about putting ourselves in a condition to benefit more from the love and mercy and restoration that God is giving out.

But tonight the topic is prayer.  So with that introduction, let’s focus on prayer.

I’ve personally been through quite a few of the mutations of a Christian’s prayer life.  Let’s see if any of these ring true for you.  You pray but the focus of your prayer is on your own needs not God’s will.  You pray, but you’re often left wondering if God hears your prayer because it goes unanswered.  Your prayers all sound the same, requests.  Rarely if ever do you pray prayers of praise or thanks or confession.  You don’t really feel like your prayer life has grown in any way in a long time.  You talk to God quite a bit but you have a harder time listening to Him.  You don’t really pray because you believe God helps them who help themselves.  You don’t really have a regular prayer time or any disciplined way to grow in your prayers.  Prayer sounds like a nice time and even something I’m supposed to do but I’ve tried and I just don’t feel anything when I pray.

If any of those sound familiar from your past or your current situation, I hope we can highlight not only the grace of God when it comes to prayer, but also help grow out of a rut in your prayers.

John Donne, the 17^th century English mystic poet famously said, “No man is an island.”  And sure that means none of us can really do it all by ourselves.  But Donne is tapping into something basic to the human condition.  We were meant to be in relationship with our Maker.  In the garden, God would walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Their rebellion severed this relationship and ever since God has been longing to restore it.  He ultimately restored it in becoming human in Christ Jesus.  When Jesus took on human flesh and walked among us there was nothing that separated God from His creation.  We should point out that of all religions, Christianity is the one where God gives up being God to become like His creation rather religions where one or a few people becoming more like God to bridge the gap.  To paraphrase Leithart, then, to pray rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor.”  God doesn’t just suffer through our prayers, He delights in hearing them.

I don’t know if you ever saw the Jim Carey film, “Bruce Almighty,” but it’s a fascinating perspective on how people see God.  It’s about a guy who complains about God too often and then meets God and receives God’s power to teach him a lesson that the world is far more complicated than he ever imagined.  There’s a scene when Carey’s character starts to hear the prayers of people like a huge crowd that’s chattering away at a distance.  Sometimes the noise increases almost to a roar and starts to overwhelm him. God appears and informs Bruce that he’s hearing the sound of people praying. Bruce tries various ways to deal with all the prayers, finally using a computer program that downloads everybody’s prayers like email. He tries to go through all the prayers one at a time but finds it an impossible task. Giving up, he hits a key and yells, “Yes to all!” Unfortunately, this means that everybody who was praying to win the lottery wins all at once, so each winner only gets $17 and chaos ensues.[1]

God delights in hearing our prayers.  He’s not frustrated by them.  And He answers them in the way that is truly best for each of us.  This Lent, take the time to pray.  Remembering that God doesn’t just command it but He is delighted to hear from you.  I can’t begin to address each of the individual ways we struggle in prayer but none of these are new to the experience of Christians the world over.  Remembering who we’re praying to, is the key, though.  He is like a loving parent listening to their children and trying to meet their needs.  He is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love.  So pray.  You already stand in God’s favor on account of Christ.  Amen.

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[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315327/plotsummary