Fourth Sunday in Easter
You know when something goes badly wrong in public life, there's a court of enquiry to find out the facts and decide who's to blame. What we've just heard is the opposite of that: the court of enquiry set up to find out how Peter and John, two men with no medical training at all, managed to heal a man who'd never been able to walk in his life. But the enquiry set up by the high priests gets turned on its head as Peter and John take over the proceedings with some very unwelcome news. You know this man Jesus you've just had put to death? The one who said he was God's leader? Well, guess what - we used his name, so it was really him who healed this man!
In those days, using someone's name was like using their authority. It's not so different today - when we're setting up for a service, I've heard people say, ‘Sarah wants it like this' - and lo and behold, the church ends up just how I've wanted it - my name can be a powerful thing! Moving chairs in someone's name is one thing, but healing in Jesus' name? It's one way of praying that only makes sense if we believe Jesus wants it as much as we do, and if we think Jesus can and will do something about it if we ask him.
In every service in this church, at some point, we pray for other people - that's the bit called intercessions. We ask for help, for hope, for healing, and we ask as if we think Jesus can and will give it. But what do you think I'm inviting you to do, when we pray our prayers of intercession? I'm assuming you think it's a good thing to do in a service. But do you think it makes any difference?
These last few days, Margaret Fall's daughter Martha and her baby Connor have been going through hard times. I've been praying for them and for John and Margaret: praying that the doctors may use the right drugs to stabilise Connor's heart; praying that God may give all the Falls courage and peace of mind. As I've been meeting people in the course of my work, I've been asking them to pray for Martha and Connor too. And I believe that will make a difference to the Falls' situation, though I don't know exactly how. But though in theory we've had a prayer chain in this church for a few years now, I've not had the courage to ring up people in St Andrew's and ask you to pray for the Falls. And I'm not quite sure why. I've been keeping in touch with Margaret through various people in recent days, so I know everyone cares about them.
What I don't know is just how to talk to you about praying for them. Somehow, when I think you may feel embarrassed about me talking about prayer, or even praying with you, that makes me feel embarrassed too, as if what I have in mind is something weird and off the wall. Yet that's daft, with me a minister and you faithful members of a Christian church. Since the time of Peter and John, Christians have asked for God's help to bring wholeness to lives, because we believe God wants people to be whole - though that can mean mental or spiritual as well as physical healing. Sometimes that happens through medics. But it can happen through any of us, if we have the courage, like Peter and John, to ask in Jesus' name. And we've known each other for nearly four years now, so I think it's about time for me to start to share praying with you!
CG 138 from the Iona Community was written with healing services in mind, and originally set to the English folk tune ‘O waly waly'. It acknowledges the mixed motivations of all motivated to pray for healing. It was subsequently paired with the well-known traditional Scottish folk tune ‘Ye banks and braes'.
R&S 64 is another modern hymn, based by its author Timothy Dudley-Smith on Psalm 121, written with a particular hill near Folkestone in mind - though the mountains surrounding Jerusalem are considerably more rugged. The tune Davos was written for this hymn by Michael Baughan, named after a Swiss resort encircled by quiet hills where he undertook summer chaplaincies.
R&S 613 by Frances Havergal was written about a year before she underwent a deep spiritual experience; it is impressive that she sought God's guidance and strength in order to be able to offer them to others, and that the rest of her life bore out that prayer. The tune Fulda was first published in 1815 set to ‘As a shepherd gently leads us'; Fulda is a city in Germany north-east of Frankfurt; its connection with the tune is unknown.
Psalm 23; John 10:11-18; Acts 4:5-12; 1 John 3:16-24
There it goes again, in our reading from the first letter of John, that dangerous promise that starts our warning bells ringing: ‘If our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.' Oh yeah, you may quietly be thinking. If Christians receive from God whatever they ask, how come we ever have any problems in life? I'd be surprised, if any of you were to tell me, ‘Every time I pray, God sorts out all my difficulties immediately.' It's much more likely to be: ‘I have this worry about my health. I have that worry about my family. I know it's going to go on for years and years, and maybe never be sorted at all. So what's the point of asking God about it? When nothing happens, that'll just make me feel even worse than I already do, as if it's my fault for bothering the Almighty in the first place.' For any time the question of prayer comes up, so does the question of apparently unanswered prayer, and who is to blame for it.
Some of the answers are obvious. If our prayer, however heartfelt, is to win the lottery in order to live the high life, it's fairly obvious we're on our own with that one; similarly, if our heart's desire is to see our enemies get their comeuppance - though that doesn't seem to stop the psalmists asking. But there are more problematic aspects of prayers for healing. Some churches which believe in healing prayer lay the whole responsibility of tangible success on either those praying, or those for whom we pray. If there seems to be no response, it must mean that either or both parties are seriously sinful, and should repent in sackcloth and ashes. But in practice that doesn't work either, as charismatic Christians discovered to their sorrow when the much-loved, much-prayed for Christian author David Watson died of cancer. In truth, we cannot tell what difference prayer will make. Sometimes the problem will be solved. Sometimes we will be given strength to go on, or peace of mind. But from my own experience I know that offering prayer for healing - and intercessory prayer generally - does make a difference; to us, to the situation or to both.
Of course, intercessory prayer is by no means all there is to praying. If our relationship with God, or any of our relationships, were to be based solely on the benefits we received, even if we were asking on behalf of others, it could not endure - for that would mean treating God as a sugar daddy who could only retain our affections by lavish and continual gifts. In our reading from John's Gospel, Jesus offers another view of the connection between God and us: that of shepherd and sheep. While the shepherd is prepared to give up his life in order to protect the sheep, they in their turn must recognise and listen to his voice, so that they know what he wants them to do.
This makes sense for real sheep and shepherds, but it makes sense too in the context of prayer: for our listening to God is as crucial as our trusting God with the difficulties of our lives. ‘Listening' will sometimes be just the right metaphor to use: the still, small voice of conscience, the idea that comes out of nowhere or the unexpected comment of a friend; but it may be seeing, too - the Bible verse that leaps off the page into our heart, or the rugged beauty of the Peaks - or even feeling the touch of a friend. However it comes to us, a vital part of prayer is our readiness to recognise God, not just in the big once-in-a-lifetime spiritual experiences, but also in the everydayness of our lives. For the more we practise listening for our Shepherd's voice, the better we will know both how to follow him and what to ask of him.
And this homeliness of prayer, like the familiar metaphor of shepherd and sheep that Jesus' hearers would see every day on the dusty roads of Galilee, means that our everyday lives can show us how to pray. ‘Hands together, eyes closed' was how I was taught at school, and that's no bad lesson when in prayer we focus on God alone and distance ourselves from the sights and sounds around us. But as our Celtic ancestors tell us, we can also pray through walking through the woods or the city with or without a dog or a camera, attentive to every sight, sound and smell; through the emotions evoked by a favourite piece of music; or even through the dailiness of washing up. For because God chose to become part of our world, everything in creation can remind us to listen out for God.
I wouldn't like you to think that I always find praying easy. I don't. There are times when the little ‘Help me!' arrow prayers - you know, the ones when you don't know what to do - are as close as I get to praying all day. Sometimes, when my spirit is dry or there's something in myself I don't want to face, turning to God feels the hardest and most boring thing in the world. Yet when I'm like that, I remind myself that God wants the truth of how we are, not the false mask of how we think we should be; and that even wanting to want to pray is still a prayer that God will hear.
Sadly, some books about prayer seem to leave out awkward bits of life like that: boredom, anxiety, even terror. But that's not a mistake our psalmist would make. It's no accident that Psalm 23, one of the most pastoral of psalms, with its imagery of green pastures and still waters, is also one of the most requested readings at funerals, either in the King James version or as the metrical psalm sung to Crimond. For this psalm does not pull its punches. It is in the valley of the shadow of death that the psalmist looks for - and finds - God's guiding hand. It is in the presence of enemies that he finds God's nourishment.
And that is true also for prayer. It can be easy to pray when our hearts are full of gratitude and there's a spring in our step. It can be much harder even to want to remember God when our hearts are full of sorrow or our bodies creak and groan, for it is easy to fear, deep down, either that we have brought disaster on ourselves and are being punished by God, or that God cannot care about us - or why would this terrible thing, whatever it is, happen to us or those we love?
Yet in my experience it can be in those moments of fear and fatigue that God can get through to us: in those times when we know, however much we should like to do so, that we cannot manage on our own; when we have to admit to God our weakness and our need. And when we truly know our need of God, when we are no longer able to pretend to others or to ourselves that all is well in our world, that is when God is able to come to our aid: not necessarily with a conventional happy ending - think of Gethsemane! - but with the strength to take us through whatever the day may bring.
This I believe.
