Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
The Reverend Rod Sprange

Pray What?

1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Psalm 111; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

This is the fourth week we have read from Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel and heard the discussion, often tense, between Jesus and the crowd who was following him. We have heard him again and again talk about being the bread which comes from Heaven. And now we hear him very seriously telling them, and us, that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood! It sounded then and sounds now to be rather gross.

In fact the word John uses for eat, when he translates from Jesus’s original Aramaic - makes it even more off-putting. The word means something like ‘munching on’ or ‘chewing on’ his flesh - a noisy messy eating like a hungry dog chomping into his bowl of food. Doesn’t quite sound like our dignified and reverent receiving of the bread and wine, does it?

Saying ‘body and blood’, for 1st century Jews, was a way of referring to the whole person - something like we might sing ‘body and soul’.

It meant that Jesus was saying I am giving you everything that I am - body, mind, heart, spirit - the whole me - I am not holding back anything. His flesh would be torn and pierced with nails, his side would be pierced so that his blood would pour out for us. No, the cross was not a nice reverend, dignified event. Here was God incarnate - literally God in the flesh - or God with meat on - being slaughtered for us. Showing us just how much he loves us. Not to appease an angry God, but to defeat, once, for all the power of sin and death and to set us free to be the persons God made us to be.

Our freedom was won at the cost of the body and blood of Christ. The gifts of bread and wine you are offered today are the most costly gifts you will ever receive. Take them, in either kind, and be thankful.

And what are we to do with this freedom from sin and death? We were slaves, now we are free. How will we use our freedom? We prayed together in today’s Collect, “Give us Grace to dedicate our freedom to your service, that all people may know the glorious liberty of the children of God”.

What Jesus wants for us, as we reverently receive him, the whole of him, what he wants is all of us - the whole person - body, mind, spirit, heart, emotions, loves, joys, anxieties - all that we are.

We need to give ourselves completely - fully without reservation, to “dedicate our freedom to God’s service”. To willingly become slaves of the Gospel is paradoxically to become totally free.

But that’s a pretty tall order isn’t it? As much as we might desire it, on our own we are just not capable of giving ourselves fully. On our own we can’t offer ourselves fully to Christ. So here’s some Good News. We are not in it alone, we don’t have to do it on our own. Because of Christ’s glorification on the Cross and the victory revealed in the Resurrection, we have been given new life and made worthy to stand before God. And with the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to give ourselves completely to God.

In Eucharist Prayer three (the one we are using today) we pray:

“In him you have delivered us from evil, and made us worthy to stand before you. In him you have brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life”

And after the presider asks God to send the Holy Spirit on the gifts of bread and wine - so that they may be the sacrament of the Body of Christ and his blood of the new covenant - we pray to God:

“unite us to your Son in his sacrifice, that we, made acceptable in him, may be sanctified by the Holy Spirit”.

You are not alone in this - we are striving together. and as we receive to bread or wine we are united in Christ’s sacrifice and made whole and made holy by the Holy Spirit.

Prayer plays a vital part in receiving the body and blood of Christ, and in our transformation. We need to pay attention to these prayers. And prayer needs to be at the centre of our Christian life. So why is it so hard to pray - or to feel we are praying
well? What is it ok to pray about? Is it ok to ask for what we want or should all our prayers be about the needs of others. Thankfully we have some models to help us. I want to talk to you today about a few of these. The first is from the Old Testament.

We transitioned in the Old Testament readings today from the death of King David to the reign of King Solomon. Over many weeks we have read that David was the greatest king in the history of Israel. He was a gifted musician and poet. He was brave and lived his life in awe of God. He was a brilliant political and military tactician, and a great leader. And he was faithful to God. We will leave aside for the moment his great weaknesses, including the fact he stole another man’s wife and had her husband killed to hide his own shame. He was human - with power often comes arrogance and corruption.

But put yourself in young Solomon’s shoes. His great and revered father is dead after a magnificent reign where he has defeated all Israel’s enemies, made great alliances with other powers and wonder of all he has been able to unite the forever squabbling Northern and Southern tribes of Israel. Israel and Judah have finally been joined to form a single, God -fearing, nation under David. These were the glory days of Israel.

So, dad is dead and his son, Solomon, is to carry on his legacy. Do you think Solomon might have been a just a bit nervous - awed even by the responsibility? He felt too young to carry all this on his shoulders.

In our reading today God appeared to him in a dream. And in this dream God asked him what he wanted God to give him. Notice the pattern of Solomon’s prayer to God - that’s what it was prayer. A time of communicating with God.

First he remembers with thanksgiving God’s steadfast love of his father David - and God’s generosity to David and to God’s chosen people. And now the great honour God has given Solomon in being chosen as the new king. We should always begin
our prayers in acknowledging and praising God and in thanksgiving for all God’s many blessings.

The next part of the dialogue between God and Solomon is quite remarkable - Solomon could have asked God to make him a powerful ruler, to help him vanquish enemies, to gather great wealth and be prosperous and to live a long life. But
Solomon asks for none of these. Instead he asks God to grant him wisdom in governing God’s chosen people, and the wisdom to discern between good and evil.

Scripture tells us that God was pleased with Solomon’s request. God was pleased that he hadn’t asked for long life and riches - or for the lives of his enemies. God replied that he would grant him what he had asked for and also would give him riches and honour all his life. And God added that if Solomon would walk in God’s ways keeping his commandments he would also lengthen his life. This was a covenant with promises to be kept each party to the agreement. We will probably read about Solomon’s relatively short life as we progress through Kings.

In the New Testament epistle today Paul gives us some prayer advice. In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul speaks about wisdom and about sung prayer (psalms and hymns). He tells them to live as wise people, not wasting their lives; to be filled with the Holy Spirit as they sing and pray – giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Again we hear about desiring true wisdom and constantly thanking God for everything - and praying in the name of Jesus Christ, the one who made us worthy to stand before God and to call God Abba.

Today’s psalm spoke of giving thanks to God with our whole heart - with all that we are, holding nothing back. Sound familiar? Notice also the last verse - “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom... “ I prefer to translate it as “Awe of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom” - to be in awe of God is certainly the starting place for living lives wisely. The first casualty to awe of God is arrogance. Humankind’s greatest sin is arrogance - we know best - we don’t need God. If we are truly in awe of God our arrogance must be seen as foolish indeed.

The final model of prayer I want to leave you with is naturally the Lord’s Prayer. As Tom Wright has written, in this model for prayer Jesus sets out what should be our priorities in praying.

As we sing this prayer today and as you say it during the week, spend a little time thinking about the order in which Jesus taught his disciples to pray - here’s a clue, the highest priorities come first. It starts with recognising God as Abba, praying that God’s name be kept holy. Then praying that God’s Kingdom come to earth and God’s will be done on earth.

Then we ask for our daily bread - maybe we should be thinking in terms of the wisdom we need today before our physical needs. But you get the point, Jesus gave us an order for prayer. When we pray we should think carefully about this and gather
our prayers accordingly.

Tom Wright says that most of us actually often pray backwards - starting with all the things we are concerned about - and eventually getting to the rightful beginning of the prayer where we meet the one who bids us welcome - Abba.

Amen