Praying or Braying?

WATCHWORD:

²³ At that time you won’t need to ask me for anything. You ask I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use my name. ²⁴ You haven’t done this before. Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy. ²⁵ “I have spoken of these matters in figures of speech, but soon I will stop speaking figuratively and will tell you plainly all about the Father. ²⁶ Then you will ask in my name. I’m not saying I will ask the Father on your behalf, ²⁷ for the Father himself loves you dearly because you love me and believe that I came from God. ²⁸ Yes, I came from the Father into the world, and now I will leave the world and return to the Father.” ²⁹ Then his disciples said, “At last you are speaking plainly and not figuratively. ³⁰ Now we understand that you know everything, and there’s no need to question you. From this we believe that you came from God.” John 16:23-30

Meditation:

Praying or Braying?

I’m not sure if anyone knows how many sermons Martin Luther preached. We know that there were days when he would preach five different sermons in a given day, and there were times when his congregation thought his sermons would never end!  Most of his sermons came from Scripture, but, especially after his denunciation of Catholicism at the start of the Protestant Reformation, some of his preaching became prickly, and caused consternation even among his fellow pastors.

Although the Reformation is usually considered to have started in 1517 with the publication of the 95-Theses by Martin Luther, the Papal war really broke out in 1521 with the Edict of Worms which condemned Luther and officially banned citizens from defending, or even reading his ideas. That’s when his sermons got very interesting, and pointed.

On or about 1524, on the fifth Sunday after Easter, Luther preached a sermon on John 16:23-30, in which he stated: “We are accustomed to read today’s gospel for this Sunday because it treats prayer. Often have I admonished that we should persevere in prayer, for there is a great need for it.” He goes on to refer to old practices (The Roman Church) where prayer is “outward prating and muttering”, where there was, in fact, never a real prayer. I suspect that Pope Julius II and his cohorts were not happy.

However, this sermon was of great value for a very positive reason. Luther lays out clearly five things necessary to constitute true, heart-felt prayer:

1. The first is to trust God’s promise to us, “I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use (ask in) my name.There is power in that promise, it is the foundation of prayer. It is this promise that encourages us to pray.
2. The second requirement for true prayer is Faith.  Trust that we believe the promise and do not doubt that God, in his good time, will grant our request. Our faith must be firm and undoubting confidence in God.
3. The third requisite of true prayer is, in Luther’s words, “that one must name definitely something that he brings to God or for which he prays; as for strong faith, for love, for peace, and for the comfort of his neighbor. One must actually set forth the petitions; just as the Lord’s Prayer presents seven petitions.  This is what Christ means by the words: If ye shall ask anything of the Father. “Anything,” that is, whatever you are in need of. Besides, he himself interprets this “anything” and says: That your joy may be made full. That is, pray for all things you need, until you have acquired even all and your joy is made full; and his prayer will first be fully answered on the day of judgment.”
4. The fourth element of true prayer is that we must desire in our heart that the petition be granted. This may appear to be nothing more than asking but the request must be the true desire of your heart. This is the soul ascending to God with sighs to too deep to comprehend.
5. The fifth element of true prayer is that we ask in the name of Christ. This is nothing more than that we come before God in the faith of Christ and comfort ourselves with the sure confidence that he is our Mediator through whom all things are given to us, “without whom we merit nothing but wrath and disgrace“.

At the very heart of our prayers to God, is the sure knowledge that God, the Father, loves you far beyond our poor ability to understand. Praying with the heart doesn’t come close to the “prating” and “braying” of rote words that never come close to the “soul ascending to God with signs too deep to comprehend.” Pray from the heart. Yes?  Yes. Amen.

Bulletin Board:

Thomas Merton tells us — ‘By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet. ”

Wow! “Fire and music under my feet”, how very poetic. Merton captures the renewal of nature and leaves a beautiful picture in the mind’s eye.  Stan

Luther’s Morning Prayer:

Thank you, Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ Your dear son, that You have kept us this night from all harm and danger; and I pray that You would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my doings and life may please You. Into Your hands I commend myself my body and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen.