February 20 Sermon

Here is the sermon from February 20, Lent midweek worship.

Alone in A Crowd

As we journey through this Lent season toward the cross of Jesus and the empty tomb, we’re going to be focusing on prayer during these worship times during the middle of the week.  Each week, we’re going to hear a little bit about Jesus and His prayer life.  Most of these stories will probably be fairly familiar to us, but we’re going to specifically look at some of the things that the stories tell us about Jesus’ prayer life.  We’ll reflect on His practice of prayer time, and then see how it draws a few parallels in our lives.

However, I do feel like I need to be clear on a few things before we really get into our series.  In my experience, when we focus on prayer, it seems often to have an unanticipated consequence.  Rather than teach about prayer, or encourage God’s people to be active, sermons about prayer instead seem to cause God’s people to feel guilty about their prayer life.  Maybe you’ve experienced this at some point, too.  You hear a great sermon on prayer, but once it wraps up, you don’t so much hear about the particular emphasis of prayer.  Instead, you feel guilty that you haven’t been praying like that.  Maybe you feel guilty that your prayer life isn’t perfect, like the one that got illustrated for you.  And so, instead of the sermon encouraging you and exciting you for a more fervent prayer life, you walk away feeling more beaten down about your prayer life.

That is not at all my intention throughout these midweek sermons.  I won’t deny that it benefits us all to reflect on our prayer lives, but if you walk away from these sermons feeling even greater guilt, please let me know, because it means that I haven’t done my job like I’m supposed to.  I don’t want you walking away feeling guilty about your prayer life.  Instead, I want you to be encouraged to simply be active in your prayer life.  I may toss out a challenge or two, and those tend to fit in pretty well with the season of Lent.  As we reflect upon our need for a Savior from God, it’s good to sacrifice a little time and effort to take up a challenge that could very well end up being a big boost to our faith life.

Now, with all that said, there’s probably one more thing I should add.  What exactly do we mean as we talk about prayer for the next few weeks?  After all, there are a lot of different images and pictures of prayer out there.  Prayer as conversation with God.  Prayer as us talking and God listening.  Prayer as our attempt to convince God to change His mind.  Prayer as a means to tap into God’s power.  You’ve probably heard of some of these, and could probably add more to the list. 

From a very simple standpoint, when we focus on prayer, we’re going to approach as us human beings pleading with God.  We plead with God because He’s the one who is the giver of all things, and we stand in need of receiving everything from His hand.  That goes for the things that support our body and life, as well as the things that restore our relationship with God.  We need food for the body, and we need God to feed our souls, and so we plead with God for those things.  We recognize that we haven’t really deserved them, but that we receive them completely out of God’s gracious disposition toward us.

This definition actually brings us to where we are starting today.  We have a regular prayer as part of our worship life together that we pray pretty much every single time we come together for worship.  It’s come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer.  We teach it to our kids as they grow up, and we have it included in our little book of instruction we call the Small Catechism.  And as Jesus teaches us that prayer, He starts off with these words.  Our Father in heaven, or as we tend to say it, Our Father, who art in heaven.  

What do these words mean?  Well, if you’d like to see the Small Catechism definition of it, you can find it on page 323 in our hymnals.  In explaining this introduction, we learn these words.  “With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.”

Just imagine, for a moment, the kind of prayer life that these words describe.  Boldness.  Confidence.  Sadly, I think most of us here wouldn’t exactly use these words to describe our prayer life.  And I think I should point out that these words aren’t intended to describe our prayer life.  They point out our confidence and our boldness in talking to our God.  He’s our dear Father.  He’s the one who has not only made us as our Creator, but who has given us new birth through our baptismal waters.  He has given us new life, and therefore we can have boldness and confidence in approaching Him as our Father.

In that kind of sense, prayer is really little more than us approaching our God and asking Him, Dad, can we talk?  It’s not so much that we are looking for Him to fix our problems for us, but more along the lines that we just want someone to listen to us.  We want to know that we are valued enough that someone  really does want to listen to us, to hear what we are thinking, not so much that they are going to solve our problem, but that we are worth enough to them that they give their time to listen to what we have to say. 

“Dad, can we talk?”  It’s kind of like a plea, dad, do I mean enough to you that you will listen to me and what I have to say?  And that’s the kind of invitation that Jesus tells us that we have with our God when we address Him as our Father.  That’s the kind of relationship God wants to have with you.  He wants you to know that you are valued, and that He does want to listen to you as you approach Him.  

When you think about it in that kind of way, doesn’t it make a lot of sense that Jesus would spend a lot of time in prayer?  Today we heard the story about Jesus cleansing a leper.  More and more people kept hearing about the great things that Jesus was doing.  Great crowds were gathering around Him.  And yet, in the midst of the crowd, it almost seems like Jesus wanted to be alone.  Alone with His Father.  Alone with the one who would listen to Him as He talked.

It’s kind of interesting that we aren’t really told much about times like this, where Jesus went off alone to pray.  We don’t know what He prayed about.  We don’t know how He stood or sat, or whether He spoke out loud or in the silence of His heart.  But one thing does come out from our Bible reading today, and really throughout His whole three years of ministry.  Jesus would seek to be alone with His Father.  He often went off to desolate places all by Himself, and there He would pray.

Alone.  Quiet time.  Nothing and no one to disturb His thoughts or His concentration.  The sense of connecting with someone that you spend one on one time with.  Jesus went off all alone to be with the Father.  There weren’t crowds around Him, asking for one more healing, or one more loaf of bread.  He could focus on His Father, sharing His thoughts with Dad, pouring out His heart and soul if He so desired.  He could take as long on something as He liked.  He simply connected with His Father.

Think of the last conversation that you were in with more than one person.  Let’s just say it was you and two others.  What tends to happen in conversations like that?  You hear what one person says, and as your thoughts are forming in your head, the other person speaks up.  Now, everything you were thinking kind of moves aside to take in the things that the second person has in mind.  You were focusing on what the first person was saying, and now you have to refocus.  And then back again.  

Jesus would go off alone to spend time with the Father.  Maybe there’s something to that kind of one on one time with the Father.  And that brings me to something that I’ll bring before you once or twice this Lent season.  A challenge.  It’s an opportunity for you to try something that you might not have done in the past, or that you might have tried, but it just wasn’t the right time in your life to try it.  Over the course of this Lent season, you can probably expect one or two of these challenges.

We think of Lent as the season where we hear about Jesus’ sacrifice for us.  Part of the Lent tradition involves us sacrificing something for our God to grow us in our relationship with Him.  And that’s the point of the challenge that I’m putting before you today.  It’s to give you an opportunity to try something that you might not have done before, or that it just wasn’t the right time.  It’s the opportunity to be encouraged to try something and simply see how it goes.

What’s the challenge?  For the next week, until we come together for our next midweek worship time, adopt a quiet time each day for prayer.  Intentionally focus your thoughts for your time of prayer.  It doesn’t matter if it’s only 2 minutes or twenty minutes.  And you can do it however you want.  Write out the things you want to focus on, or just order them in your head.  Take a prayer book of some kind with you, or just make them up as you go.  

But here’s the challenge.  For the next week, adopt a quiet time for prayer.  Start off with something simple, like, “Dad, can we talk?”  The point of this isn’t to come up with some elaborate way of having quiet prayer time, but in doing something comfortable to you.  The key point to it is simply to set that quiet time aside.  Focus your thoughts in some form or fashion, and then do it.

Jesus withdrew to desolate places to pray.  As we think about that today, our key is to get away from the things that so easily distract us from focusing and ordering our thoughts, and put them before God.  It’s being alone, even as we find ourselves in the crowds all around us.  And then, it’s turning to a dear Father who really wants His children to sit down and ask Him, Dad, can we talk?  Thanks be to God that Jesus has shown us that we have that relationship with our God, who we have the joy and privilege of calling our Father.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.