You are what you pray July 25, 2004 Genesis 18:20-33 | Psalm 138 | Colossians 2:6-15 | Luke 11:1-13 I will cut right to the quick of it. In case I get off track, someone can come up and kick me in the shins and make sure I get to the point I want to make. Here it is: You have heard the saying, "You are what you eat." Well, you are what you pray. And God have mercy on me when I am on the freeway, white-knuckled at 5pm in the evening. That is when I am very evil and become a walking curse. As Christians, we are what we pray. When we prayed as children how many of us prayed, Heavenly Father, now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…….. And at the end of that prayer God bless mommy, God bless daddy, God bless Grandma & Grandpa and the little boy down the street and please God make my dolls come alive. At least that was my prayer. (Some mornings I would get up and was sure they had danced because they were not quite in the same place as the night before.) That was what I prayed as a child. This summer many of you know I went camping with the Indians, the Lakota, among them a woman named Tammy. Years ago, when I met Tammy she had hair down past her waist. Two years ago when I saw her again, she had cut her hair into a nice short bob. I said, "Tammy, I love your hair." She said nothing at the time because we were in a big group. But later she pulled me aside and said, "Margaret, I need to tell you something. Native Americans, when in mourning, cut their hair off. Because our hair is, for us, a sign of our power, glory and our prayers." I was grateful she had not embarrassed me in front of the crowd. But in an afternoon of this year, I realized Tammy's hair had grown out. Time had passed. Her daughter came to her and asked if they could sing the song about the glacier. Tammy responded, "All but the second verse, dear, because we are still in mourning and cannot sing the second verse of that song until this November when it will be two years." Imagine that. Imagine that persistence in discipline and in prayer, recognizing where you are especially in grief. Our ancestors in faith, the Jewish people, also have a prayer of mourning that must be said every morning and every night and out loud in public on the Sabbath for a year. I thought to myself in reflecting on these kinds of prayers, "I wish we had Christian prayers that marked time like that for us." But as I reflected greater things in what Christian prayer is I realized there isn't anything like that in Christian prayer. And why not? We pray differently. We pray, "Oh Heavenly Father, in heaven so it be also on earth." We pray the topsy-turvy prayer of Christians where the whole world has been turned inside out. What do I mean by this? Well to begin with, in the ancient prayers such as the Indians and the Jewish prayer, there is a particular view of heaven. In the ancient Jewish tradition, Heaven is way up there and here is earth, and earth sits on pillars, its foundation, and that's what separates us from darkness and utter chaos. The only thing that bridges heaven and earth are things such as eagles, incense or the smoke of a carcass in the temple. Those things bridge heaven and earth. In Christian prayer we pray, "In the name of Jesus." Jesus sits at the right hand of the throne of God which means our prayers are active in heaven, which means wherever we are and whatever we are doing, there is heaven. There is no separation of heaven and earth because God has come and pitched his tent among us. God has come and The Word has been made flesh and blood, that very Word spoken at the beginning of creation. So our prayer already is asked, and the door's opening, right now, right here. Abraham prayed, "Oh heavenly Father, for the sake of 50 or all right, for 40, or all right for the sake of 10, will you not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. That same type of prayer, almost a bantering barter with our Lord can be found in several places in the Old Testament, most particularly in Deuteronomy where for the sake of one, "Oh heavenly Father please do not destroy Jerusalem." In our topsy-turvy world of Christianity it is the one righteous One who dies for the sake of the righteous. Reality is turned upside down and inside out. That is our job in the world. Our prayer, is answered as we pray each and every week around the globe, Our Father, give us this day our daily bread." Because at this altar, with this gathered community we will be fed that manna, that bread from heaven. And guess what? We become what we eat. We are already what we pray. We have become one in Christ and in Christ we are dead to all that other stuff and alive only in righteousness. This is not that self-righteousness, that wit of The Law of which Paul speaks in his letter. It is not to give us The Law, but to give us that freedom to stand at the edge of chaos and bring the Kingdom in flesh and blood to the people of the world, because it is already true. This is the topsy-turvy, this is the Gospel, this is our prayer. And as we pray, it is not something we must put off, but it has been that way from the very beginning of time when God spoke the Word. Open your hearts open your minds and receive the body and blood of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Be what you pray. And live what you eat. AMEN
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