Fifth Sunday after Easter/Rogation Sunday

Topical

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“Why Pray?”

I’m sure some of you are wondering why we said the Litany this morning. Well, as I said earlier, this is Rogation Sunday. “Rogation” comes from the Latin word rogare meaning “ask” or “pray.” So you might say this is “Ask” or “Prayer Sunday.” But you say, I thought every Sunday was a prayer Sunday. Well that’s true, but this Sunday, along with the next three days, were anciently called rogation days because Christians were called upon to fast and pray specifically for a good growing season and a plentiful harvest. That’s when Christians used to believe that it was necessary that they fast and pray to seek the Lord’s blessing upon the land. They didn’t take it for granted because of such things as tunnels cut through six miles of rock to divert rivers, or all the other technological wonders that we’ve come to depend on. They had to depend on God. We still do too; we just tend to forget that we do, for such things as a good growing season. That’s why the Litany is a helpful guide for the things we really need to prayer for, including God’s blessing and protection upon the produce of the land—as we prayed this morning, “That it may please thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, so that in due time we may enjoy them.”

You see, the problem is so often it’s only over the things we’re really anxious about that we turn to God in prayer. The rest we take as given. Or the rest we take as within our ability to control, and therefore feel we have no real need to petition the Lord.

But why is there a need to pray at all? I mean, since God knows everything and is sovereign over all, so that nothing comes about apart from His will, what could we possibly say to Him, or what could we possibly petition Him about, which He is not already totally aware of, and which He has not already decreed from all eternity should be? This is the age old question about prayer, and it boils down to this: if God is God, then why do we need to pray? If He truly is a good God as the Scriptures reveal Him to be, won’t He do what is good and right and in His perfect will, regardless of what we pray—or maybe even against what we pray?

Well, the real question is: what is prayer? Is prayer the activity by which we control God, or even change His mind? Do we inform God by our prayers? Or by prayer do we sort of twist God’s arm so He’ll do what we want Him to do? Some may think that’s what prayer is, and that may be how they try to go about their prayers. But at its most basic level, prayer is simply being with God. It is being present in faith with the One who is always present in love. Prayer is, fundamentally, living with God. As Fr. John Lozano puts it, “For a believer, living is always living in company” even when the presence of the Other may not be felt. And prayer is the living out of this life in company with God. That’s why St. Paul tells us to pray without ceasing.

All this is to say that prayer is the chief exercise of our faith—faith that says to God, “In You is all my good; in You I live and move and have my being; upon You I utterly depend, and in You I place my whole trust, confidence, hope, and love for all my life.” This is the faith that our prayers give voice to. In other words, prayer is simply the living out of this faith-communion we have with God—the relationship of trust and love that God initiated with us through the work of His Son and by giving us His Holy Spirit. Prayer, then, is as necessary to faith as heat is to fire. Where there is no prayer, there is no faith, because prayer is living in that faith-communion with God.

Philip Yancey has an interesting definition of faith. He says he’s come to see faith as a kind of “reverse paranoia.” That’s interesting, isn’t it? He says the truly paranoid person interprets everything that happens to him as a part of a great conspiracy against him. Try to comfort the paranoiac with words like, “I’m here to help you, not hurt you,” and you’ll actually increase his paranoia. “Of course you’d say that,” he says. “You’re part of the conspiracy.” But faith, Yancey says, works in reverse of this. Faith convinces us that no matter what happens to us, no matter how cast off we may feel, no matter how chaotic and disordered our lives may seem at any given moment, God does in fact reign, and God is in fact our loving heavenly Father. Faith interprets everything that happens to us as part of God’s great conspiracy of grace, that “all things will work together for good to those who love [Him} and are called according to His purpose.”

This is the life of faith. This is life in God. This is that communion of faith, hope, and love that necessarily expresses itself in prayer. Luther said, “Christians…pray, just as the shoemaker makes shoes, and the tailor makes clothes.” If we believe, we pray, because prayer is faith spoken.

So how’s your reverse paranoia? When you pray, is it to try to change God’s mind, to try to convince Him He needs to see things your way? Or do you voice your petitions as the expression of your faith-dependence on Him, and your trust that He will do all things well for you? I believe this is what St. James is getting at when he says that those who pray must ask in faith without doubting. For the person who doubts is a double-minded man. He petitions God, but in his heart he does not truly believe in the conspiracy of grace. He reserves judgment for God based on His performance, rather than trusting His character. He asks, but he’s afraid to find what God might give. St. James says, let not that man suppose he will receive anything from the Lord.

But let’s look at the prayer our Lord prayer in the garden before His arrest to discover the true prayer of faith. What did Jesus pray? He prayed, “O Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

There are two elements here which every petition of ours should reflect. First, we bring our desires or our needs before our heavenly Father. That is, we bring our life—our struggles, our hopes, or relationships, our anxieties, our joys—into that fellowship of faith with God. Notice Jesus didn’t just say, “Thy will be done.” He didn’t resign Himself to a kind of fatalism. He brought His petition to the Lord. And it was a real petition. So when we come to the Lord, we can bring our petitions as well—our heart-felt desires and wishes. If He’s truly “Our Father,” and not just “Our Fate,” that’s what He wants from us. But then, secondly, once we’ve offered our petitions to the Lord, we rest in His will as the will of our good heavenly Father. That’s the nature of our faith as His children.

So in the end the true prayer of faith finds all is particular petitions wrapped up in that great petition, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” But Jesus’ prayer teaches that we should still bring those particular petitions. You see, because the other really amazing thing about prayer is that, through our prayers, the Lord allows us to be a part—to enter in—to the exercise of His sovereign will over the world. We become the means by which He brings about His sovereign will, and in that way we become co-rulers with Him. That is also part of His will for us, and another reason why we pray.

So why is it so difficult to pray? Let’s be frank. We’ve all, at one time or another, found prayer to be one of the most difficult, one of the most demanding, even one of the most frustrating exercises of our spiritual lives. Ask me to fast, ask me to serve, ask me to tithe, and I can do all those things out of sheer will-power. But ask me to pray, and then I really have to expend some real energy. I really have to struggle with my thoughts and desires—that is, if I’m truly to pray, and not merely to parrot words and phrases. Why is prayer so hard?

Well, as I’ve said, prayer is the chief exercise of our faith. And I think we find it difficult to pray sometimes, because it’s difficult to have faith. It’s hard to trust. It’s hard to have that “reverse paranoia,” to believe that God is not only present, but that He is working out His conspiracy of grace in our lives. Prayer is hard work, because faith is hard work. And we’ve just got to take that as a given. I think that, all too often, people give up on prayer and on faith because they don’t see it as work. They may have had a wonderful experience of faith that could be better likened to a moment of rapturous love, but when they have to get down to the real business of learning to love and trust the Lord through all the difficulties and all the mundane things of life, then faith is not so easy and exciting, and they leave it.

So the first principle in developing a stronger prayer life is to recognize and accept that it is, in fact, work—a labor of faith. The second is to realize that prayer is living in relationship to a Person—a Person, who like all persons, must be known in order to be loved and trusted and recognized in all that He does. This is why you’ll find, as you read the great men and women of faith through the centuries, that they all say that the prayer of faith must begin and flow out of medition—meditation upon the character of God, meditation upon His majesty and His grace, meditation upon His might acts for our salvation. This is how we come to know the Lord, and this how we will be strengthened in our prayers. St. Cyprian said, “Be constantly committed to prayer or to reading [the Scriptures]: by prayer you speak to God; in reading God speaks to you.”

Then finally, when we pray, we must come to God in repentance as well as in faith. One of the things that makes prayer most difficult, and which often keeps us from praying in the first place, is our sin. We may try to pray, but if we continue in our attachment to sin, we have to refuse to offer to God something the Spirit of God is moving us to offer, namely, our repentance. If we do not come in repentance, we must refuse the very Spirit who gives us the gift of prayer and of supplication.

But repentance itself is very difficult to offer. How many of us have not felt that we’ve over-extended our credit on God’s grace?—that we’ve committed that sin just one too many times for God to be able to forgive us; that God’s grace, like ours, must have its limits. Again, the prayer of faith and of repentance must begin in meditation—meditation upon a cross, meditation upon a man who came to live a life of perfect righteousness in your place, meditation upon a death, which, if it could pay for the sins of the whole word, it could certainly pay for you sins, and even mine.

So on this “Prayer Sunday,” let us dedicate ourselves again to the spiritual disciple and labor of prayer. And let us pray the Lord of the harvest that He would indeed give us a good growing season and an abundant in-gathering, both of the produce of the ground and of the fruit of the Spirit. +