The Prayer Meeting Interrupted by an Answer
April 15, 2007
Jay Bartow, Pastor
First Presbyterian Church of Monterey
Texts: Psalm 150; Acts 12:1-17
For seven or eight years now we have been celebrating the Sunday after Easter as Holy Humor Sunday. I got the idea from The Joyful Noiseletter, from which the cartoons in today’s order of service are culled. The editors pointed out that in the Orthodox Church in places like Greece and Russia that the Sunday after Easter is called Bright Sunday, and that priest and parishioners have a water fight after worship and enjoy good food and drink and joyfully celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. I like that idea and have noted that some of the happiest moments for our children and youth have been when they were dousing me with water and I them.
When people outside the church think of us could they imagine such goings on in church? If not, that is too bad. We need to let the world know that Christ’s victory over death frees us to laugh and that his forgiveness frees us to dream and dare great things for God, knowing that if we fall short, God picks us up, dusts us off and bids us try again. Paul said, “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake.” (1 Cor. 4:9-10a) Loving the unlovely, washing others feet, welcoming the outcaste, feeding the hungry, preaching good news to all creation are activities that seem foolish from a practical self-interested point of view. But from Christ’s perspective these are holy acts. The real fool is the one who in his heart says there is no God (Psalm 14:1; 53:1), or who tears down his barns and builds bigger ones to store his wealth while ignoring the health of his soul, thinking that his life consists in the abundance of things he has as opposed to the compassion he shows others (Luke 12:13-21).
What kind of fool are you? What kind of fool am I? I would like to be a fool for Christ’s sake, willing to trust him for daily bread, forgiveness of my sins, protection from temptation and deliverance from evil. This story from Acts is an answer to prayers of deliverance for Peter who had been imprisoned by Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great who ruled at the time of Christ’s birth. We read the sad account of the execution of James, the brother of John by Herod Agrippa, and now Peter, another Disciple of Jesus, is in jail and perhaps about to meet a similar fate. So the followers of Jesus offered earnest prayer to God for the release of Peter. What a frightening time it must have been. A key leader is thrown in jail for no reason other than that he was teaching, preaching and healing in the name of Jesus. Who was harmed by that? I guess that the religious and secular authorities felt that they were threatened by the authority and spiritual power of this small movement of believers, that the order they had established was about to be undermined. They must have justified their actions for such reasons.
During the Cultural Revolution in China under the Gang of Four, hundreds of thousands of persons were dragged to reeducation camps to purge the nation of such things as intellectuals and Christians who were a drag on the great move forward for a classless society based on materialistic logic free of the superstition of belief. The same thing happened during the reign of terror of Joseph Stalin and later of Pol Pot in Cambodia. When you face such trials you pray as you have never prayed before: Deliver us from evil! In this case, God miraculously answered the prayers of those early Christians to the surprise first of Peter, who is bound between two guards and is awakened by a mysterious light and a jab to his side by an angel who tells him, “Get up quickly.” Peter stands up and the chains fall of his hands, and the angel tells him to get dressed and put on his sandals and wrap his mantle around himself and to follow the angel. Peter thinks he is in a dream, but he does what he is told and the doors of the prison open while his guards sleep. When he reaches the street the angel leaves him and Peter begins to realize that he isn’t dreaming, and so he sets off to the house of John Mark, where it is likely that he ate the last supper with Jesus and the others. There are several disciples gathered there praying intently for Peter’s release. He knocks on the door to the courtyard of the house and a woman named Rhoda goes to the door and hears his voice and she is so surprised that she leaves him standing outside and interrupts the prayer meeting with the news that Peter is outside. Their faithful response to her is, “You’re crazy! Don’t bother us, we’re praying for the release of Peter.” She insists that it is so, and they come back with “It is his angel!” If it is, the angel is a good knocker because someone is banging on the door. They open the door and there stands Peter to the amazement of them all.
How many times has an answer to our prayers been staring us in the face, but we couldn’t see it? Perhaps it was too easy or too obvious or too daring for us to grasp, but there it was for the taking. Jimmy Carter traveled to Africa and saw a terrible disease that killed or sapped life from hundreds of thousands of people called guinea worm: a waterborne parasite that developed into a three foot long worm that would work its way out of one’s body slowly with terrible pain. He determined how the disease could be prevented, worked with drug companies like Merck and others to secure medicine to combat the disease and mesh to strain water or chemicals to treat it and the disease has been largely eliminated from extensive areas it had previously devastated. The answer to the prayer was waiting to be implemented. What was lacking was the resolve to put the pieces together and get it done. River blindness is another dread disease where a similar approach is being implemented with heartening results. It isn’t enough to pray for comfort for the dying or those losing their sight when you can prevent the disease doing the damage by employing current knowledge by getting people to work together to help themselves and their neighbors.
The answer to the AIDS epidemic is not rocket science. We know how AIDS is transmitted and it is a totally preventable disease for adults, though children who are infected in childbirth have no choice in the matter. Our church supports care and education for some of those children in Malawi. Scores of other churches do also, and child by child we can make a difference for good. On the prevention side what is needed is an approach to sexuality that makes good public health sense and good biblical sense in terms of fidelity and monogamy. If people choose a different course they need to use prophylactics, knowing that they are not a sure defense, but they do offer important protection. C. Everett Koop, when he was Surgeon General for the U.S., spelled this out in plain English and shocked some of his evangelical Christian supporters because they thought he was encouraging promiscuity. He was seeking to provide lifesaving advice to everyone in the nation, knowing that not all would adopt his preferred approach which looked to the Bible for guidance which just so happened to also make outstanding public health sense. For those with the HIV virus we have made encouraging progress in slowing it down and stalling it and we hope that will continue, but as with most health challenges, the best approach is the way of prevention, and that is why our church has given more in recent years to the Networkers Program providing insecticide-treated nets and education in how to make and use them, than any other church in our denomination.
Our upcoming adult class on The Meaning of the 21st Century is meant to alert us to the challenges and opportunities facing us and the world in the near future. The more we know about our planet and the life on it and how to care for it, the better equipped we will be to carry out that divine assignment of caring for God’s world as God intends. If we use up or pollute resources out of greed and leave subsequent generations with scarcity and damaged goods what kind of faith is that? We should be leading the way in good stewardship. I’m reminded of the pastor who came to a new parish in a small farming town and was going round getting acquainted with his flock. He drove out to the Nelson farm and as he approached he noted the lush pastures, the neatly trimmed orchard, luxuriant vegetable garden. He greeted Mr. Nelson and said, “God has certainly blessed you with rich pastures, fruitful orchards and gardens.” Farmer Nelson replied, “Well, you should have seen it when God had it on his own.”
We can make the world more fruitful and a healthier place minus such things as Guinea Worm, Small Pox, River Blindness, Malaria and other diseases. But it takes prayer and hard work to find out how and to strike the right balance, so that not all the wild places or species are gone. The greatest challenge has to do with marshalling the will to act in ways that take other persons, generations and species into account, rather than thinking that the world revolves around us. This is the turf of faith: cultivating the human heart to be more loving, more aware of others, for God’s sake. Wed to good science that makes careful and objective observation and reports accurately what is happening and what is likely to happen if nothing changes, we have a powerful mandate to making a lasting contribution that enhances the life of this world and all on it.
When the first astronauts looked down on the earth from space they were profoundly moved by the beauty of this planet with its sapphire seas, snow capped mountains, lush forests and tawny deserts and swirling clouds. They saw no national boundaries, and they realized that what happens in one place inevitably has repercussions in other places near and far. They saw the world more as God sees it, and that cannot help but translate itself into new ways of living.
As we pray for daily bread, deliverance from the time of trial and evil, we find some clear answers staring us in the face in terms of what we need to do. The answer to the prayer in many cases is in our hands and hearts. We can’t pass the buck to God or someone else when we are the ones whose decisions will determine the shape of the future. I wish I could say that Christians had taken a more consistently right path in this regard, but some have thought that the end of the world is near anyway so why bother about preserving forests or species or persons at risk. Well, they should read again those passages describing the end of history in which the desert blossoms, the river of life runs through Jerusalem and the tree of life flourishes and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. They should remember that St. Francis loved gardens and animals and preached and sang to them, that a Benedictine monk named Gregor Mendel was the father of genetics, that a Christian layman named Norman Borlaug developed new strains of wheat and rice that saved millions of persons from starvation. And then they should roll up their sleeves and do likewise and see how God answers their prayers by giving them the intelligence and raw materials to do great things for God and the world God so loves.
One such person is J. Matthew Sleeth, who left his job as an ER Physician and head of the Medical staff of a large hospital in New England, to speak, motivate and educate others to serve God by saving the planet. In his book by that title he describes some of the changes he and his family have made to live more simply, responsibly and intentionally. In the process the quality of their life has been enhanced though they are consuming far few resources. Come and hear him when he speaks in our Fellowship Hall on Monday, April 23rd from 7 to 8:30 p.m.