Intercession
Commentary
Object:
When our oldest daughter began driver's training she needed to spend fifty hours behind the wheel of our car with either Brenda or myself riding next to her. She was supposed to be practicing the fine art of motoring, while we were mandated by the state of Michigan to teach her the best of our skills.
I'm not used to sitting in the front passenger seat. I like to drive, and when we are in the car together as family my foot naturally searches for the accelerator. From my new perch on the other side of the car, however, I could spend more time observing the driving habits of others.
Intersections with four-way stops proved especially interesting. Some drivers plow right through, hardly caressing the brake pedal. They know that they have right-of-way whether the law gives it or not. One car I saw recently even sported this bumper sticker: "As a Matter of Fact, I Do Own the Road!" That driver knew that stop signs were posted in order to keep other people out of his way!
Other drivers are much more hesitant at those all-way stop intersections. They halt their vehicles far short of the stop signs, and then gradually play off the others who might have cars pointed in different directions. Stop! Start! Stop! Start! Stop! Roll forward! Stop! After a while no one is quite sure who should pass through next.
A few drivers are very legalistic. When they arrive at intersections at the same time with other vehicles they assess, in inches, which car got there first. They will wave on that driver, even if others are beginning to make false starts. Not only that, but where two or more cars pulled up at the same time, these drivers live by the rule that the driver on the right goes first. They will not move until it is their turn.
Some (fortunately not very many) seem to find driving a nuisance or an opportunity to do the things they really prefer: talking, finding the right music on the radio, dressing, shaving, or changing cigarettes. A week ago I followed a woman who had mastered the art of styling her hair while driving. For two city blocks she managed to apply hairspray while driving with her knees!
Sometimes in my musing about drivers I consider matching their personalities with their motoring habits. Is the timid driver a low "D" on the DiSCscale, or an "I"ntrovert with Myers-Briggs? Does the legalist need to accomplish her DiSC "C"ompliance skills in order to have her day begin and end perfectly? Are those who nose ahead into intersections merely acting on their high "D"ominance characteristics, or are they simply extreme "E"xtroverts, as Kiersey and Bates would have it?
Of course, with my pastoring and theological bent, I often wonder whether people pray like they drive. I can see one driver I know racing for heaven, scattering angels on the way to the throne. Another peeps sheepishly from around an ecclesiastical corner, wondering if this is really the place she ought to be. A third person I have traveled with marks his prayers, as his life, with logical precision and careful diction, giving God the time and date in the same manner he signals turns to others on earthly thoroughfares.
I think of my own driving, and my own approach to God. Sometimes I think I must make him just one more stop along the busy highway of life, hoping that the prayer ramps will be easy-off, easy-on while I rush through doing my thing with him.
It takes all kinds, I guess. What I am learning these days, however, is that it is always wonderful to hear the car come home, no matter how skilled, aggressive or hesitant the driver. That is why I always tried to greet my daughter when she pulled in. After playing with life on the roads, it was always good to see her.
I can imagine, as our lectionary passages for today declare, that God is always happy when we come home to him as well, no matter how or where we drive our souls.
Jeremiah 8:18--9:1
Jeremiah lived almost a century after Isaiah. By Jeremiah's time, Assyria had long ago destroyed Judah's northern brother neighbor Israel (722 BC). Judah was itself only a tiny community now, limping along with diminishing resources and constantly tossed around by the bigger nations of its world.
But things were changing rapidly on the international scene. Assyria was being beaten down in 612 BC by its eastern bully province, Babylon. After snapping the backbone of Assyrian forces at Carchemish and wrestling the capital city of Nineveh to the ground, Babylon immediately took over Palestine, the newer name for the old region of Canaan.
Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, many of whom were puppets of Babylon. Already the country was expected to pay yearly tribute or security bribes to Babylon, and since 606 BC it had been forced to turn over some of its promising young men for propaganda retraining exile in the capital of the superpower, in anticipation that they would return to rule Judah as regents of Babylon.
Into these times and circumstances Jeremiah was born. From his earliest thoughts he was aware of Yahweh's special call on his life (1:4-10). This knowledge only made his prophetic ministry more gloomy, for it gave him no out in a game where the deck was stacked against him (chs. 12, 16). So he brooded through his life, deeply introspective. He fulfilled his role as gadfly to most of the kings who reigned during his life, even though it took eminent courage to do so. Although he lived an exemplary life, political officials constantly took offense at his theologically charged political commentaries, and regularly arrested him and treated him badly. Jeremiah was passionately moral, never allowing compromise as a suitable temporary alternative in the shady waters of international relations or the roiling quicksand of fading religious devotion. He remained pastorally sensitive, especially to the poor and oppressed in Jerusalem, weeping in anguish as families boiled sandals and old leather to find a few nutrients during Babylonian sieges, and when he saw mothers willing to cannibalize their dying babies to keep other children alive. Above all, Jeremiah found the grace to be unshakably hopeful, truly believing to the very end that though destruction would raze Jerusalem and the temple, Yahweh would keep covenant promises and one day soon restore the fortunes of this wayward partner in the divine missional enterprise.
Jeremiah's prophecies are not collected in a chronological order. Today's brief lament comes from the moments of the final Babylonian takeover. The Babylonians were willing to take Jeremiah to join the other exiles in deportation, or to leave him with the small and impoverished remnant they left behind in the rubble of Jerusalem. Jeremiah chose the latter and witnessed the assassination of Governor Gedaliah who was left in charge, and the complete collapse of whatever social organization might have been left (chs. 40-41).
Unfortunately, remnant leader Johanan (586-585), a person loosely connected with the royal family, then took over and expressed fears of Babylonian reprisals because of Gedaliah's assassination. Johanan decided to take the rest of the people down to Egypt to find safety. Jeremiah refused to go along, reminding the people that Judah was their homeland, and that Yahweh had promised peace following the deportation of the rest to Babylon (chs. 41-42). Johanan and his thugs decided otherwise, however, and bound Jeremiah, taking him along with them to Egypt against his will.
The theme of the Sinai covenant is very prominent in Jeremiah's prophecies. Most striking is his recognition that it governs both Israel's success and its demise, and that one day soon Yahweh will have to find a way to renew that covenant in a manner that will keep the restored nation more faithful to its identity, and true to its mission. Today's passage reminds us how much this awful demise hurt the heart of God, as it should ours also.
1 Timothy 2:1-7
A friend of mine teaches ethics at a Christian college. Several years ago there was a scare on campus because a student had been raped. Since my friend wanted his students to deal with actual ethical situations, he began the next class session with a question: "If a friend came to your room in tears, telling how her date had just raped her, what is the first thing you would do to help her?"
After a moment's reflective silence, one student raised her hand and asked tentatively, "Pray?"
The whole class broke out in laughter, relieved to have a spot of comic relief to ease the tension. Even my friend found himself smiling and shaking his head slightly. "Of course," he said, "but then what would you do?" For the next hour he led the gathering in an ethical discussion of social care for someone who had been deeply hurt.
When my friend got home that evening, he reflected on the class session and began to grow restless. Why, at a Christian college, he thought, should the suggestion of helping someone by beginning with prayer be greeted with laughter? And why should even he, an ordained minister of the gospel and a Christian ethics professor, initially wave off the suggestion of prayer as simply a polite formality to be dispensed with before the real business of helping began? Why should prayer seem so insignificant and powerless?
These are important questions, for in spite of our pious talk we often treat prayer with apologetic skepticism. When I was a seminary student, one of the elders at the church where I was working decided to make a career move. He invited the pastor and me to a demonstration of a product promotion speech he was developing as he began a sales and distribution job with a nationally famous pyramid-like company. During our evening together he played a tape of a motivational speech he had heard at a recent company rally. The most gripping speaker was a former pastor who now was a top sales distributor for this famous firm.
"I used to be a pastor," the man said, "and all I had to give people was prayer. When I was a pastor I had a man come to me weeping for the tragedy of his life. 'I'm a poor fellow, Pastor,' the man cried, 'and it is ruining my marriage. I can't make enough to buy my wife the things she wants, and our children feel out of place at school with their shabby clothes. Sometimes I think I should divorce my wife, because then she would get more money from the government than she gets from me. What should I do Pastor?'
"I felt so bad," said the former pastor, now turned top salesman. "At that time all I could offer the man was prayer. If only I knew then what I know now. If he came to me today I could help him so much more!"
The crowd roared with approval, and applauded that former pastor as if he were God. I think of that man's motivational speech every time I sit at the bedside of a terminally ill cancer patient. I think of that speech when I wrestle in prayer with a couple nearing divorce. I think of his words when I pray with a friend of mine whose life has been mostly depression and drugs. Does prayer help? Is it more an exercise in placating my uneasy conscience than it is a true "first aid"? I wonder.
Yet when I look back over my years of praying and being prayed over I realize that there is also a larger picture to paint about prayer. For one thing, as Bishop William Temple said, "I don't know if prayer works, but I do know that when I stop praying, coincidences stop." So too I have found that truth in my life. Although I can't document every exact answer to prayer, I do know that unseen forces have often assisted me and those I've prayed with in ways beyond rational explanation. Even the medical community has recognized the healing power of prayer, as Dr. Lawrence Dossey has reported in several of his books.
Second, I think of the way that help comes best when we are children. I watched a young girl and boy collide while running through a hallway the other day, banging heads and falling backward onto the floor. Each was stunned momentarily, and then each looked around for a nearby parent. It wasn't until they spied caring mothers that each began a mighty and mournful wail. Not only that, but the crying from pain changed its tone when they each rested in the comfort of hugging arms -- wails that earlier seemed edged with torment became whimpers seeking sympathy. A big part of prayer, it seems from scripture, has to do with finding our way into the care of a Father, even when the hurts and pains of life still trouble us.
Third, I think that Paul is reminding us that we are not alone in the universe, and times of trouble are times of returning to our truest human condition of spiritual need. Paul does not promise that all our fortunes will change because a magical prayer has been offered. Rather, he indicates that precisely when we are so troubled the natural place for us to turn is outside of ourselves and to God. As M. Scott Peck put it in his powerful book A World Waiting to Be Born, either we know the truth of our spiritual need or we spend our lives playing games with ourselves and others that steal the best of who we are away from us.
Luke 16:1-13
What a story! This has to be the strangest story Jesus ever told. Jesus tells us to imitate a crook who cheated his employer, lied to his business associates, and bought his friends! Would you want him to work for you?
And yet, says Jesus, here is somebody who knows how to live; learn from him! How could he say that? What are we missing that the people in Jesus' world knew?
We need to see the scene through first-century Jewish eyes. Here's a tycoon who finds out that his administrator has mismanaged things horribly, says Jesus. The guy has squandered away properties, reduced the value of holding, and brought some funds to the edge of bankruptcy.
It is time for drastic action, so the rich man calls in his manager, and the man knows immediately that he is out the door with no severance. What can he do now? His hands are too soft for manual labor, and his back is too weak for the construction site, and he is too proud to beg. So he picks up Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. He checks the stack of accounts due, calls in the debtors, and slices their bills drastically.
Obviously they are all rather pleased. But get this -- so is the master of the estate! He praises the manager for being such a shrewd duck!
Why? Is the tycoon himself a crook? Not according to Jesus. In fact, just before this Jesus told his wonderful story of the prodigal son and the waiting father. There the rich master of the estate was an upright man, and there is no indication that here Jesus is suddenly changing the rules of the game.
What does Jesus want his disciples to know through this story? If there is one thing that pulls everything together, it is the generosity of the master. It was the generosity of the master that gave the manager time to put his affairs in order before being dismissed so that he would not be publicly disgraced. It was the generosity of the master that made the manager's debt reductions possible -- those who had their bills reduced believed wholeheartedly that the master of the estate was providing this blessing through his steward. And when the crowds gather at the master's house, as Jesus concludes his story, the cry of delight celebrates the master's great generosity.
So the main point of the parable is not to teach us how to be dishonest. Instead, it is to remind us that the most important dimension of God's, our Master's, personality is generosity. As the manager knew that about his master, so we should learn the same about our Father in heaven.
This rings true with Jesus' statements in verses 8 and 9: the "son of this world" (that is, the steward) was wise. He knew that using the generosity of his master was the only way he could survive the pressure of the times in which he lived. So too the "people of the light" ought to be wise enough to know that if they hope to survive the pressures of the times in which they live, their only hope is found in the generosity of God.
Do we know the great generosity of our God and are we making full use of it? Have we mined the resources of heaven to their fullest extent? Does the world around us celebrate the great goodness of our Master?
Application
Fred was a big man with a big heart. His life had been ringed with tragedy, but he had grown through it and chose to spend his last career years as a missionary in Africa. A few years later he was returned to our town near death. A brain tumor had suddenly appeared and quickly robbed him of speech and motor control. He was hospitalized for several weeks and then released to die at home.
We prayed much for Fred. We shared the personal and family needs through a wide web of Christian contacts. We held specific healing services and added Fred's condition to our weekly prayer bulletin.
In spite of our best desires, we gradually became aware that only death would bring divine healing. Fred's life this side of eternity was too far destroyed for recovery.
I made regular visits to the small house that Fred's wife purchased. Mostly Fred lay in bed, moaning and restless. While his muscles contorted horribly, his skin began to turn unhuman shades of gray. Several times the family members, scattered at some distance, were called together for what appeared to be "the end."
On one of these occasions I stood with them in a circle around Fred's bed. Fred was greatly agitated and moaned incomprehensibly. I read a Psalm and a promise from Paul, and then we prayed together, holding hands, asking God to take Fred home soon. It only seemed, however, that Fred's inner restlessness got worse. I stepped closer to the bed and placed my hand on his forehead. I spoke directly to him the blessing he himself had pronounced over God's people so many times: "The Lord bless you and keep you, Fred. The Lord make his face shine upon you. The Lord smile upon you and give you his peace" (Numbers 6:24-26).
Immediately Fred settled peacefully, his muscles relaxing and his labored breath easing. "You can go home now, Fred," I said. Each family member held Fred's hands briefly, speaking words of care and release. I walked out of the house. Before I could drive away Fred slipped into eternity.
LaVern struggles with open sores on her legs, among several different ailments. She is in great pain most of the time, and alternates between weeks of sitting in a lounge chair with her legs elevated and periods of aggressive treatment in the hospital. We pray together regularly over the telephone, and now and then I sit with her for an hour sharing the whimsy of life. Few people I know have endured as much pain and heartbreak as has LaVern. Yet fewer still have developed as joyful an outlook on the many small graces of existence.
One day LaVern called me with a new request. She wanted me to come over with an elder of the church to anoint her with oil. I called one of the elders and a trusted prayer partner, and we gathered around LaVern's chair. First we spent time confessing to one another, then we spent time in prayer. We shared the Bread and Cup of the sacrament, seeking intimacy with Jesus and one another in the Body. We touched the sores on LaVern's legs and begged for healing. Then I took the oil and rubbed it gently over LaVern's wounds, commanding them, in the name of Jesus, to be healed. We gave God thanks for the healing he was bringing and would accomplish, and I spoke the same blessing I had pronounced over Fred.
There was no "electric shock" moving through my fingers or LaVern's legs, nor any immediate end to the weeping from the skin openings. Yet in the next week a remarkable change took place, both in the peace that infused LaVern's heart and the clear closures of the wounds. Her doctors put off scheduled surgery, and several months later LaVern came to Sunday worship for the first time in a year, standing on her own legs.
LaVern's struggles with those sores continued over the years, and she called for intercession many times. Now and again we look back to the day we met together with the elders of the church and anointed her wounds as a watershed moment. LaVern believes she experienced a special healing in that moment. I think so too.
I also think Fred was healed in the moment of our touch at his bedside, though in a different way. There is power for life in the gospel of Jesus that sometimes works through the medical industries of our culture and sometimes works in spite of them. There is nothing in the Bible to call into question a Christian's use of doctors and prescription medications. But neither does the Bible tell us that doctors are the true Great Physician. Whenever healing happens, God has smiled. And that is why intercession matters.
An Alternative Application
1 Timothy 2:1-7. In Hendrik Ibsen's famous drama Peer Gynt, the hero of the story tries to find the meaning of his life by traveling and interviewing others. At one point he visits an asylum where "lunatics" are kept. Their craziness, thinks Peer Gynt, must arise from the condition that they are, as he puts it, "outside themselves."
Not so, says the director of the asylum.
Outside themselves? Oh no, you're wrong.
It's here that men are most themselves --
Themselves and nothing but themselves --
Sailing with outspread sails of self.
Each shuts himself in a cask of self,
The cask stopped with a bung of self
And seasoned in a well of self.
None has a tear for others' woes
Or cares what any other thinks.
We are ourselves in thought and voice!
That is the tendency within each of us -- to become swallowed up with ourselves. Perhaps it is for that very reason that Paul says the first sign of true mental and spiritual health is prayer.
I'm not used to sitting in the front passenger seat. I like to drive, and when we are in the car together as family my foot naturally searches for the accelerator. From my new perch on the other side of the car, however, I could spend more time observing the driving habits of others.
Intersections with four-way stops proved especially interesting. Some drivers plow right through, hardly caressing the brake pedal. They know that they have right-of-way whether the law gives it or not. One car I saw recently even sported this bumper sticker: "As a Matter of Fact, I Do Own the Road!" That driver knew that stop signs were posted in order to keep other people out of his way!
Other drivers are much more hesitant at those all-way stop intersections. They halt their vehicles far short of the stop signs, and then gradually play off the others who might have cars pointed in different directions. Stop! Start! Stop! Start! Stop! Roll forward! Stop! After a while no one is quite sure who should pass through next.
A few drivers are very legalistic. When they arrive at intersections at the same time with other vehicles they assess, in inches, which car got there first. They will wave on that driver, even if others are beginning to make false starts. Not only that, but where two or more cars pulled up at the same time, these drivers live by the rule that the driver on the right goes first. They will not move until it is their turn.
Some (fortunately not very many) seem to find driving a nuisance or an opportunity to do the things they really prefer: talking, finding the right music on the radio, dressing, shaving, or changing cigarettes. A week ago I followed a woman who had mastered the art of styling her hair while driving. For two city blocks she managed to apply hairspray while driving with her knees!
Sometimes in my musing about drivers I consider matching their personalities with their motoring habits. Is the timid driver a low "D" on the DiSCscale, or an "I"ntrovert with Myers-Briggs? Does the legalist need to accomplish her DiSC "C"ompliance skills in order to have her day begin and end perfectly? Are those who nose ahead into intersections merely acting on their high "D"ominance characteristics, or are they simply extreme "E"xtroverts, as Kiersey and Bates would have it?
Of course, with my pastoring and theological bent, I often wonder whether people pray like they drive. I can see one driver I know racing for heaven, scattering angels on the way to the throne. Another peeps sheepishly from around an ecclesiastical corner, wondering if this is really the place she ought to be. A third person I have traveled with marks his prayers, as his life, with logical precision and careful diction, giving God the time and date in the same manner he signals turns to others on earthly thoroughfares.
I think of my own driving, and my own approach to God. Sometimes I think I must make him just one more stop along the busy highway of life, hoping that the prayer ramps will be easy-off, easy-on while I rush through doing my thing with him.
It takes all kinds, I guess. What I am learning these days, however, is that it is always wonderful to hear the car come home, no matter how skilled, aggressive or hesitant the driver. That is why I always tried to greet my daughter when she pulled in. After playing with life on the roads, it was always good to see her.
I can imagine, as our lectionary passages for today declare, that God is always happy when we come home to him as well, no matter how or where we drive our souls.
Jeremiah 8:18--9:1
Jeremiah lived almost a century after Isaiah. By Jeremiah's time, Assyria had long ago destroyed Judah's northern brother neighbor Israel (722 BC). Judah was itself only a tiny community now, limping along with diminishing resources and constantly tossed around by the bigger nations of its world.
But things were changing rapidly on the international scene. Assyria was being beaten down in 612 BC by its eastern bully province, Babylon. After snapping the backbone of Assyrian forces at Carchemish and wrestling the capital city of Nineveh to the ground, Babylon immediately took over Palestine, the newer name for the old region of Canaan.
Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, many of whom were puppets of Babylon. Already the country was expected to pay yearly tribute or security bribes to Babylon, and since 606 BC it had been forced to turn over some of its promising young men for propaganda retraining exile in the capital of the superpower, in anticipation that they would return to rule Judah as regents of Babylon.
Into these times and circumstances Jeremiah was born. From his earliest thoughts he was aware of Yahweh's special call on his life (1:4-10). This knowledge only made his prophetic ministry more gloomy, for it gave him no out in a game where the deck was stacked against him (chs. 12, 16). So he brooded through his life, deeply introspective. He fulfilled his role as gadfly to most of the kings who reigned during his life, even though it took eminent courage to do so. Although he lived an exemplary life, political officials constantly took offense at his theologically charged political commentaries, and regularly arrested him and treated him badly. Jeremiah was passionately moral, never allowing compromise as a suitable temporary alternative in the shady waters of international relations or the roiling quicksand of fading religious devotion. He remained pastorally sensitive, especially to the poor and oppressed in Jerusalem, weeping in anguish as families boiled sandals and old leather to find a few nutrients during Babylonian sieges, and when he saw mothers willing to cannibalize their dying babies to keep other children alive. Above all, Jeremiah found the grace to be unshakably hopeful, truly believing to the very end that though destruction would raze Jerusalem and the temple, Yahweh would keep covenant promises and one day soon restore the fortunes of this wayward partner in the divine missional enterprise.
Jeremiah's prophecies are not collected in a chronological order. Today's brief lament comes from the moments of the final Babylonian takeover. The Babylonians were willing to take Jeremiah to join the other exiles in deportation, or to leave him with the small and impoverished remnant they left behind in the rubble of Jerusalem. Jeremiah chose the latter and witnessed the assassination of Governor Gedaliah who was left in charge, and the complete collapse of whatever social organization might have been left (chs. 40-41).
Unfortunately, remnant leader Johanan (586-585), a person loosely connected with the royal family, then took over and expressed fears of Babylonian reprisals because of Gedaliah's assassination. Johanan decided to take the rest of the people down to Egypt to find safety. Jeremiah refused to go along, reminding the people that Judah was their homeland, and that Yahweh had promised peace following the deportation of the rest to Babylon (chs. 41-42). Johanan and his thugs decided otherwise, however, and bound Jeremiah, taking him along with them to Egypt against his will.
The theme of the Sinai covenant is very prominent in Jeremiah's prophecies. Most striking is his recognition that it governs both Israel's success and its demise, and that one day soon Yahweh will have to find a way to renew that covenant in a manner that will keep the restored nation more faithful to its identity, and true to its mission. Today's passage reminds us how much this awful demise hurt the heart of God, as it should ours also.
1 Timothy 2:1-7
A friend of mine teaches ethics at a Christian college. Several years ago there was a scare on campus because a student had been raped. Since my friend wanted his students to deal with actual ethical situations, he began the next class session with a question: "If a friend came to your room in tears, telling how her date had just raped her, what is the first thing you would do to help her?"
After a moment's reflective silence, one student raised her hand and asked tentatively, "Pray?"
The whole class broke out in laughter, relieved to have a spot of comic relief to ease the tension. Even my friend found himself smiling and shaking his head slightly. "Of course," he said, "but then what would you do?" For the next hour he led the gathering in an ethical discussion of social care for someone who had been deeply hurt.
When my friend got home that evening, he reflected on the class session and began to grow restless. Why, at a Christian college, he thought, should the suggestion of helping someone by beginning with prayer be greeted with laughter? And why should even he, an ordained minister of the gospel and a Christian ethics professor, initially wave off the suggestion of prayer as simply a polite formality to be dispensed with before the real business of helping began? Why should prayer seem so insignificant and powerless?
These are important questions, for in spite of our pious talk we often treat prayer with apologetic skepticism. When I was a seminary student, one of the elders at the church where I was working decided to make a career move. He invited the pastor and me to a demonstration of a product promotion speech he was developing as he began a sales and distribution job with a nationally famous pyramid-like company. During our evening together he played a tape of a motivational speech he had heard at a recent company rally. The most gripping speaker was a former pastor who now was a top sales distributor for this famous firm.
"I used to be a pastor," the man said, "and all I had to give people was prayer. When I was a pastor I had a man come to me weeping for the tragedy of his life. 'I'm a poor fellow, Pastor,' the man cried, 'and it is ruining my marriage. I can't make enough to buy my wife the things she wants, and our children feel out of place at school with their shabby clothes. Sometimes I think I should divorce my wife, because then she would get more money from the government than she gets from me. What should I do Pastor?'
"I felt so bad," said the former pastor, now turned top salesman. "At that time all I could offer the man was prayer. If only I knew then what I know now. If he came to me today I could help him so much more!"
The crowd roared with approval, and applauded that former pastor as if he were God. I think of that man's motivational speech every time I sit at the bedside of a terminally ill cancer patient. I think of that speech when I wrestle in prayer with a couple nearing divorce. I think of his words when I pray with a friend of mine whose life has been mostly depression and drugs. Does prayer help? Is it more an exercise in placating my uneasy conscience than it is a true "first aid"? I wonder.
Yet when I look back over my years of praying and being prayed over I realize that there is also a larger picture to paint about prayer. For one thing, as Bishop William Temple said, "I don't know if prayer works, but I do know that when I stop praying, coincidences stop." So too I have found that truth in my life. Although I can't document every exact answer to prayer, I do know that unseen forces have often assisted me and those I've prayed with in ways beyond rational explanation. Even the medical community has recognized the healing power of prayer, as Dr. Lawrence Dossey has reported in several of his books.
Second, I think of the way that help comes best when we are children. I watched a young girl and boy collide while running through a hallway the other day, banging heads and falling backward onto the floor. Each was stunned momentarily, and then each looked around for a nearby parent. It wasn't until they spied caring mothers that each began a mighty and mournful wail. Not only that, but the crying from pain changed its tone when they each rested in the comfort of hugging arms -- wails that earlier seemed edged with torment became whimpers seeking sympathy. A big part of prayer, it seems from scripture, has to do with finding our way into the care of a Father, even when the hurts and pains of life still trouble us.
Third, I think that Paul is reminding us that we are not alone in the universe, and times of trouble are times of returning to our truest human condition of spiritual need. Paul does not promise that all our fortunes will change because a magical prayer has been offered. Rather, he indicates that precisely when we are so troubled the natural place for us to turn is outside of ourselves and to God. As M. Scott Peck put it in his powerful book A World Waiting to Be Born, either we know the truth of our spiritual need or we spend our lives playing games with ourselves and others that steal the best of who we are away from us.
Luke 16:1-13
What a story! This has to be the strangest story Jesus ever told. Jesus tells us to imitate a crook who cheated his employer, lied to his business associates, and bought his friends! Would you want him to work for you?
And yet, says Jesus, here is somebody who knows how to live; learn from him! How could he say that? What are we missing that the people in Jesus' world knew?
We need to see the scene through first-century Jewish eyes. Here's a tycoon who finds out that his administrator has mismanaged things horribly, says Jesus. The guy has squandered away properties, reduced the value of holding, and brought some funds to the edge of bankruptcy.
It is time for drastic action, so the rich man calls in his manager, and the man knows immediately that he is out the door with no severance. What can he do now? His hands are too soft for manual labor, and his back is too weak for the construction site, and he is too proud to beg. So he picks up Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. He checks the stack of accounts due, calls in the debtors, and slices their bills drastically.
Obviously they are all rather pleased. But get this -- so is the master of the estate! He praises the manager for being such a shrewd duck!
Why? Is the tycoon himself a crook? Not according to Jesus. In fact, just before this Jesus told his wonderful story of the prodigal son and the waiting father. There the rich master of the estate was an upright man, and there is no indication that here Jesus is suddenly changing the rules of the game.
What does Jesus want his disciples to know through this story? If there is one thing that pulls everything together, it is the generosity of the master. It was the generosity of the master that gave the manager time to put his affairs in order before being dismissed so that he would not be publicly disgraced. It was the generosity of the master that made the manager's debt reductions possible -- those who had their bills reduced believed wholeheartedly that the master of the estate was providing this blessing through his steward. And when the crowds gather at the master's house, as Jesus concludes his story, the cry of delight celebrates the master's great generosity.
So the main point of the parable is not to teach us how to be dishonest. Instead, it is to remind us that the most important dimension of God's, our Master's, personality is generosity. As the manager knew that about his master, so we should learn the same about our Father in heaven.
This rings true with Jesus' statements in verses 8 and 9: the "son of this world" (that is, the steward) was wise. He knew that using the generosity of his master was the only way he could survive the pressure of the times in which he lived. So too the "people of the light" ought to be wise enough to know that if they hope to survive the pressures of the times in which they live, their only hope is found in the generosity of God.
Do we know the great generosity of our God and are we making full use of it? Have we mined the resources of heaven to their fullest extent? Does the world around us celebrate the great goodness of our Master?
Application
Fred was a big man with a big heart. His life had been ringed with tragedy, but he had grown through it and chose to spend his last career years as a missionary in Africa. A few years later he was returned to our town near death. A brain tumor had suddenly appeared and quickly robbed him of speech and motor control. He was hospitalized for several weeks and then released to die at home.
We prayed much for Fred. We shared the personal and family needs through a wide web of Christian contacts. We held specific healing services and added Fred's condition to our weekly prayer bulletin.
In spite of our best desires, we gradually became aware that only death would bring divine healing. Fred's life this side of eternity was too far destroyed for recovery.
I made regular visits to the small house that Fred's wife purchased. Mostly Fred lay in bed, moaning and restless. While his muscles contorted horribly, his skin began to turn unhuman shades of gray. Several times the family members, scattered at some distance, were called together for what appeared to be "the end."
On one of these occasions I stood with them in a circle around Fred's bed. Fred was greatly agitated and moaned incomprehensibly. I read a Psalm and a promise from Paul, and then we prayed together, holding hands, asking God to take Fred home soon. It only seemed, however, that Fred's inner restlessness got worse. I stepped closer to the bed and placed my hand on his forehead. I spoke directly to him the blessing he himself had pronounced over God's people so many times: "The Lord bless you and keep you, Fred. The Lord make his face shine upon you. The Lord smile upon you and give you his peace" (Numbers 6:24-26).
Immediately Fred settled peacefully, his muscles relaxing and his labored breath easing. "You can go home now, Fred," I said. Each family member held Fred's hands briefly, speaking words of care and release. I walked out of the house. Before I could drive away Fred slipped into eternity.
LaVern struggles with open sores on her legs, among several different ailments. She is in great pain most of the time, and alternates between weeks of sitting in a lounge chair with her legs elevated and periods of aggressive treatment in the hospital. We pray together regularly over the telephone, and now and then I sit with her for an hour sharing the whimsy of life. Few people I know have endured as much pain and heartbreak as has LaVern. Yet fewer still have developed as joyful an outlook on the many small graces of existence.
One day LaVern called me with a new request. She wanted me to come over with an elder of the church to anoint her with oil. I called one of the elders and a trusted prayer partner, and we gathered around LaVern's chair. First we spent time confessing to one another, then we spent time in prayer. We shared the Bread and Cup of the sacrament, seeking intimacy with Jesus and one another in the Body. We touched the sores on LaVern's legs and begged for healing. Then I took the oil and rubbed it gently over LaVern's wounds, commanding them, in the name of Jesus, to be healed. We gave God thanks for the healing he was bringing and would accomplish, and I spoke the same blessing I had pronounced over Fred.
There was no "electric shock" moving through my fingers or LaVern's legs, nor any immediate end to the weeping from the skin openings. Yet in the next week a remarkable change took place, both in the peace that infused LaVern's heart and the clear closures of the wounds. Her doctors put off scheduled surgery, and several months later LaVern came to Sunday worship for the first time in a year, standing on her own legs.
LaVern's struggles with those sores continued over the years, and she called for intercession many times. Now and again we look back to the day we met together with the elders of the church and anointed her wounds as a watershed moment. LaVern believes she experienced a special healing in that moment. I think so too.
I also think Fred was healed in the moment of our touch at his bedside, though in a different way. There is power for life in the gospel of Jesus that sometimes works through the medical industries of our culture and sometimes works in spite of them. There is nothing in the Bible to call into question a Christian's use of doctors and prescription medications. But neither does the Bible tell us that doctors are the true Great Physician. Whenever healing happens, God has smiled. And that is why intercession matters.
An Alternative Application
1 Timothy 2:1-7. In Hendrik Ibsen's famous drama Peer Gynt, the hero of the story tries to find the meaning of his life by traveling and interviewing others. At one point he visits an asylum where "lunatics" are kept. Their craziness, thinks Peer Gynt, must arise from the condition that they are, as he puts it, "outside themselves."
Not so, says the director of the asylum.
Outside themselves? Oh no, you're wrong.
It's here that men are most themselves --
Themselves and nothing but themselves --
Sailing with outspread sails of self.
Each shuts himself in a cask of self,
The cask stopped with a bung of self
And seasoned in a well of self.
None has a tear for others' woes
Or cares what any other thinks.
We are ourselves in thought and voice!
That is the tendency within each of us -- to become swallowed up with ourselves. Perhaps it is for that very reason that Paul says the first sign of true mental and spiritual health is prayer.
