{"id":1233,"date":"2010-10-21T16:04:20","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T16:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=680"},"modified":"2017-08-26T15:26:29","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T19:26:29","slug":"how-to-pray-importunely-jodie-boyer-hatlem-a-doug-johnson-hatlem-sept-25-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/?p=1233","title":{"rendered":"How to Pray? Importunely – Jodie Boyer Hatlem & Doug Johnson Hatlem – Sept. 25, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

View Archived Sermons <\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Luke 11:1-9<\/font><\/font><\/h5>\n


Jodie: Matthew chapter 6 – And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.<\/p>\n

Doug: Luke chapter 11 \u2013 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, \u201cLord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.\u201d He said to them, \u201cWhen you pray, say: OUR Father in heaven \u2026<\/p>\n

J: Truly I tell you, they have their reward.\u00a0 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door<\/p>\n

D: Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day OUR bread for tomorrow.<\/p>\n

J: [interrupting slightly] And pray to your Father who is in secret.<\/p>\n

D: Secret? And forgive us OUR sins.<\/p>\n

J: And YOUR Father who sees in secret will reward YOU.<\/p>\n

D: You? For WE OURSEVLES forgive everyone indebted to US. And do not bring US to the time of trial.<\/p>\n

J: As a church we have decided to encourage the spiritual disciplines more fully.\u00a0 During the last year,\u00a0 I have attempted to strengthen my own practices of prayer, meditation, bible reading, and as I have attempted to learn more about other forms of spiritual practice. I believe that as a congregation it would be good to continue our discussion of creative and fruitful ways to nurture personal spiritual transformation and formation.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

D: Well, Jodie, I think you and I agree that there is something lacking in TUMC\u2019s\u00a0 Spiritual Practices, and the church as a whole seems to agree since two years ago we committed ourselves to the following \u201cConsider our programs of spiritual formation and transformation as preparation for being engaged in God\u2019s mission in the world.\u201d\u00a0 <\/strong>However, most of the practices that you\u2019ve mentioned, and much of what passes for spiritual formation these days puts too much emphasis on the individual and her or his relationship with God.\u00a0 Mennonites have generally attended more carefully to the communal nature of our worship.\u00a0 Song and Sabbath, Breaking the Bread, Prayer Together, Bible Study Groups, Peaceable Living, Fraternal Admonition<\/p>\n

J: Whoa, Doug, Fraternal Admonition? You mean \u201cthe ban,\u201d I suppose.\u00a0 You see, that\u2019s part of the problem, for many of us, traditional forms of spiritual discipline in a Mennonite community inspire guilt rather than a closer walk with God. Our listening process included support for an item that affirmed \u201cAttention to desire for spiritual depth, listening for God\u2019s spirit ([and] not [just in] worship), both individually and as a congregation.\u201d\u00a0 Moreover, I do love song and sharing and sermonizing and coffee time and Sunday school as much as you do.\u00a0 Okay, maybe not quite AS much as you do.\u00a0 I am an introvert after all.\u00a0 But, I deeply enjoy these practices.\u00a0 Still, in the last year, I have hungered for more intimacy with God and I have been impressed with the conviction that more consideration to these individual practices would enrich my experience of worship.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

D: Whoa, yourself, Jodie, intimacy with God?\u00a0 Many of us are a bit skeptical of the whole notion of \u201chaving a personal relationship with Jesus\u201d of the entire Christian life being defined as just \u201cpraying and reading your Bible.\u201d So many of these individual practices are actually quite self-centered.\u00a0 I am not sure that they are as suited for preparing you for corporate worship as they are for preparing you to slog through another week of hard work for the present economic order.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 That is not fair!\u00a0 What if I desire to be more present, more patient, more loving during the week.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

D:\u00a0 Well, generally, in my view, these sort of disciplines lead to a form of faith that is actually quite unconcerned with the world outside the narrow confines of the self and its experiences.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J: In the documents on initiatives you see the deep desire in our congregation to practice spiritual disciplines so that we can better live lives of peace and justice in our community. That is what I am trying to say: our disciplines whether individual or collective give us strength\u2014not just to make it through another week at the grindstone\u2014but the strength to love our enemies, to seek justice, to offer welcome, and to nurture our children in a vivid faith.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Moreover, I don\u2019t think that your analysis of the personal dimension of faith takes into account something like Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s Kitchen Table Experience!<\/p>\n

D:\u00a0 How so?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Early on during the bus boycott in Montgomery, the young Rev. King was awakened at midnight by a telephone call.\u00a0 It was a warning.\u00a0 Get out of Montgomery or else you and your family will be killed.\u00a0 He sat down at his kitchen table utterly broken.\u00a0 At that moment, as he recounts the story in the Stride Toward Freedom, he started to think of how he might remove himself from leadership in the movement without looking like a total coward.<\/p>\n

I hung up but I could not sleep . . . I got out of bed and began to walk the floor.\u00a0 I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing to be a coward.\u00a0 In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had almost gone, I determined to take my problem to God.\u00a0 My head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud:\u00a0 \u2018I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right.\u00a0 But now I am afraid.\u00a0 The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter.\u00a0 I am at the end of my powers.\u00a0 I have nothing left. . .I can\u2019t face it alone.\u2019\u00a0
\u201cAt that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced God.\u00a0 It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: \u2018Stand up for righteousness; stand up for truth.\u00a0 God will be at your side forever.\u2019\u00a0 Almost at once my fears began to pass from me.\u00a0 My uncertainty disappeared.\u00a0 I was ready to face anything.\u00a0 The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me inner calm. <\/p>\n

Three days later King\u2019s house was bombed.\u00a0 He later said that because of his experience at the Kitchen table he was able to face the unruly crowd that night, a crowd teeming with anger over violence, ready to commit violence themselves …\u00a0 King was able to face them with confidence, hope and faith \u2026 and was able to turn their anger into a deeper commitment to nonviolence.<\/p>\n

D: Yes, but, people are always forgetting that King did not emerge out of a cabbage patch.\u00a0 He was nurtured in the faith by an active and vibrant Black church community that taught him about justice, how to sing and eat together, how to read the Bible in community.\u00a0 There he learned that we are all tied together in a tangled garment of destiny.\u00a0
\u00a0
J:\u00a0 But, didn\u2019t this church also teach him how to pray and how to discern the voice of God\u2026 didn\u2019t it teach him that God was a personal God\u2026. A God who might perchance be concerned about your sorrow\u2014at midnight\u2014over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table.\u00a0 A God who was personal and for that reason nobody was nobody and everybody was a somebody! <\/p>\n

D:\u00a0 It is significant that when Jesus disciples asked him the question about John\u2019s\u00a0 disciples and prayer that the words of the prayer he gave them were of necessity a communal prayer.<\/p>\n

Our father
Our bread
Our sins
Forgive us
Lead us
Deliver us <\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 But, isn\u2019t it interesting that the paradigm of persistence in prayer is often the individual man who knocks on the door at midnight.\u00a0 The widow that pesters the judge for justice.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

D:\u00a0 King
\n himself preached one of his most famous sermons on this passage.\u00a0 He hardly seemed overly concerned with the nurturing of individual spirituality. MLK makes this passage all about the church in a variety of ways.\u00a0 At one point in a Knock at Midnight, the church is the man from whom a neighbour seeks bread.\u00a0 Do we have the bread our world is looking for, King asks? Or are we a church that seizes up cold or burns up with fiery passion – zeal without knowledge?\u00a0 At other points, the church is the one who is knocking on the door, the black church which produced King is a cipher for the wider world which faces a three fold midnight in the social, psychological, and moral order.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J: It\u2019s still true that King drew strength from quite moments alone with God.<\/p>\n

D: A conversation such as this and on this topic between Jodie and I is not at all unusual.\u00a0 We may have exaggerated for effect here and cleaned it up for the pulpit a bit there, and it may have gone on a little longer.\u00a0 The basic positions are as suggested so far.\u00a0 And as we prepared for this sermon, we also wanted to find common ground.\u00a0 Eventually we asked ourselves to individually spell out what we think the problem is that we are working with. I suggested the following: <\/p>\n

The spiritual world that produced us is not a world that we are willing to reproduce. Many of us feel that the spiritual world that produced us includes an overabundance of guilt, an under appreciation for the wider world politically and religiously, and insufficient intellectual rigor.<\/p>\n

Jodie\u2019s answer was very similar.<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Fears of guilt!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That we have a church filled with some people that are weary, weary, weary of the \u201cread your bible\u2026 pray everyday\u201d culture they grew up in; and others that are new to Christianity or Protestantism and don\u2019t even know how to begin engaging in spiritual practices during the week. <\/p>\n

D: We both seem to recognize as well that there was something positive in the world that raised many of us<\/p>\n

J: We might think that the spiritual experiences that we had when we were younger were over-zealous and yet we can\u2019t deny that there was something significant and meaningful about them.<\/p>\n

D: Yes, and there are other things.\u00a0 Jo and I might not have ever become pacifist if it weren\u2019t for the fundamentalist churches that taught us to take the bible as literal. <\/p>\n

J: Or for that matter, we might not have been convinced that concerns about poverty were central to the teaching of Jesus if we weren\u2019t taught to take our ethics from the Bible. <\/p>\n

\u00a0D: Perhaps most important in our Mennonite and wider Protestant heritage is the songs that do as much as anything to shape our worship and theology.\u00a0 The songs we sing are as vital to our spirituality as they were for King\u2019s African-American congregation, and King\u2019s \u201cKnock at Midnight Sermon\u201d wonderfully weaves together his clarion call for justice and the words of black sorrow songs.<\/p>\n

J: It is important to remind ourselves of these positives.\u00a0 For one thing, there are many among us who don\u2019t get our baggage with certain spiritual practices.\u00a0 Some grew up in other Christian traditions or came to faith later in life. <\/p>\n

D: While I grew up weighed upon and nourished by continuous injunctions to read your Bible, pray everyday, or else you are failing in your Christian duty, there are those of us who, from King\u2019s point of view are knocking at the door, searching for some of the very things that have taken on a wearisome character for others of us.<\/p>\n

Jodie and I also agreed on a question for moving forward that Jodie recently posed at one of our community sessions on the marks of the New Monasticism:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J: What are the spiritual disciplines that are needed to make women and men who have the courage to follow Jesus\u2019 difficult path on peace and justice issues.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

D: It is one thing to agree intellectually and even with our dollars that Christian peace, grace, love, and nonviolent resistance to evil are good things, but what are the habits that will sustain us when peace, grace, love, and nonviolent resistance begin to make enemies that we then, in turn, have to work extra hard to love?<\/p>\n

J: It is not so much a question of acceptance or rejection of the past but of creative reappropriation.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J: The whole agenda for our passage this morning from Luke 11 turns on the word persistence, or as the old King James puts it, importunity. <\/p>\n

D: Importunity?<\/p>\n

J: Importunity means to press or beset with solicitations; demand with urgency or persistence. to beg for (something) urgently or persistently.<\/p>\n

D: Persistence, faithfulness, importunity.\u00a0 These are the critical words that anchor our text this morning from Luke chapter 11 along with a sister passage in Luke chapter eighteen.\u00a0 In verse eight of Luke chapter eleven, Jesus praises the man who knocks late, late into the evening.\u00a0 His persistence or importunity is what rouses a friend at midnight, when that friend would rather stay in bed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J: As a Michigander, progeny of lapsed Lutherans on one side and lapsed Presbyterians on the other, this parable that so closely links importunity and prayer is disconcerting. First of all a few points on the ethics I grew up with:\u00a0 first point one should never make a public spectacle of oneself like the man knocking at the door at midnight does.\u00a0 And even worse, one should never make a public spectacle of others.\u00a0 Particularly, the neighbor in this passage who is minding his own business at home in bed and now the whole neighborhood is listening as he yell down his \u201cnos\u201d and reluctatant \u201cyes\u201d to the persistent man in the street.\u00a0 And one certainly never makes a burden of oneself.\u00a0 Depending on someone else\u2019s loaves of bread.\u00a0 Outing him self\u2014for the whole neighborhood– as \u201cbreadless.\u201d <\/p>\n

D: But there\u2019s more! In Luke chapter eighteen we hear about a certain judge who neither feared God nor did he treat the people over whom he presided with dignity.\u00a0 But a woman, a woman who had lost her husband, a widow with no where else to turn, approaches the judge and asks for justice against her opponent.\u00a0 Initially turned down, the widow persists, she keeps coming to him, and eventually the judge says that he has no choice but to grant her justice.\u00a0 He cannot get any rest, he cannot move on in life until she stops bothering him by continually coming to him. \u201cListen to what even the unjust judge says,\u201d says Jesus.\u00a0 \u201cWill not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?\u201d When Jesus comes again, the passage continues, when the hour for the Son of Man\u2019s return has reached midnight, this continual knocking, this bothering, persistent, importune coming is the very picture of faith.\u00a0 This is what Jesus hopes to find in those who are preparing his coming kingdom.<\/p>\n

J: To my Michigander consciousness and perhaps also to the first century Judeaen context \u2026<\/p>\n

This woman and this man act in a way that is utterly shameless.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

It is hard to know what to make of this strong linking of shamelessness with devotion.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And its not like this is the only time that it occurs in the Gospels.<\/p>\n

Mary with her extravagant gift.\u00a0
Zachaeus up in the tree
The Syro-phoenecian women that challenged Jesus to re-think his entire messianic ministry by comparing herself to a DOG. <\/p>\n

D: But the Scripture also witnesses to the importance of patience\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J: But, there is always importunity to this patience. A restlessness and hopefulness that infuses patience with a particular quality.\u00a0\u00a0 A reminder that now is as much of tomorrow as we are going to get today.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

D: We are still many weeks away from advent, but we cannot help but notice that some of these same traits are praised earlier in the Gospel of Luke in a woman and a man who help to announce Jesus birth as of divine import.\u00a0 Our children are named in p
\nart after this prophet and prophetess.\u00a0 Anna or Hannah is an eighty-four year old widow who, since her husband died a mere seven years after their marriage, has not ceased to fast and pray in the temple.\u00a0 \u201cShe never left the temple,\u201d Luke chapter two says, \u201cbut worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day.\u201d\u00a0 Simeon or Shimon likewise.\u00a0 He was righteous and devout.\u00a0 An old man patiently awaiting the consolation of Israel, the day when Messiah would lead his people out from under the iron hand of Rome.\u00a0 Simeon and Hannah\u2019s faithfulness aided by the power of the Holy Spirit allows them to see very, very early on what so many others would miss even when it stared them right in the face.\u00a0 This child, had come to rescue Israel, and not only Israel, but also come as a light to the Gentiles.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

J: What was it about Simeon and Hannah, about the man knocking at midnight and the widow determined to obtain justice from an unjust judge.\u00a0 What is the common thread?\u00a0 What prepared them to seek justice and announce God\u2019s peaceable salvation?\u00a0 To provide bread to the weary and hungry, to praise God and provide the earliest template for Christian faithfulness?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I have not been a Mennonite very long.\u00a0 Although, I suppose we are now entering our sixth year here at TUMC.\u00a0\u00a0 Mennonites are a patient people, they share with my own ancestors a strong commitment to self-reliance and a suspicion of too much emotion.\u00a0 A QUIET COMMUNITY. And yet, this has ALSO been an importune community, a community with a persistent commitment to pacifism that HAS been drawn from a commitment that the peacable kingdom must be practiced NOW. We can be a burdensome, `troublesome people.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

D: When we think about this patience and this restless persistence we do ask ourselves:\u00a0 How can we pass it on to our children?\u00a0 What are the practices that help us to discern what is right.\u00a0 And what are the practices that not only make us know what is right, but likewise give us the strength to do what is right! <\/p>\n

J: I believe that some of those disciplines are the very ones that worry us.\u00a0 A strong sense of the presence of God in our lives, practices of quiet and patience listening, a deep knowledge of scripture, importune prayers.\u00a0 And to gain these thing fully and deeply we are each going to have to spend some time as Matthew puts in \u201cpraying in secret.\u201d <\/p>\n

D:\u00a0 In many ways we are in a similar position as Jesus\u2019 Disciples.\u00a0 We would like someone to tell us how we should we pray. To give us a three point plan for spiritual formation and transformation.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019s answer includes the familiar words of the Lord\u2019s Prayer and immediately moves to an insistence that we pray with persistence, that if we knock loudly at midnight, the door will be opened.\u00a0 If we seek, we will find. If we ask, it will be given.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019s teachings in the first century and Martin Luther King\u2019s in the twentieth ask us together to doggedly, <\/p>\n

J: faithfully<\/p>\n

D: importunely pursue Christian transformation. <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

View Archived Sermons \u00a0 Luke 11:1-9 Jodie: Matthew chapter 6 – And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Doug: Luke chapter 11 \u2013 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, \u201cLord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.\u201d He said…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-a-worship-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3993,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions\/3993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}