“Overheard Prayer”
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church
A new church for a new day, forming from the merger of
Niles Congregational Church, UCC, and First Christian Church, DOC,
in Fremont, CA on Sunday, July 29, 2012, by the Rev. Steve Kindle.
Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21
Perhaps you read or saw a report the day after the Aurora, Colorado shootings quoting a local
pastor. One survivor, a young woman, was born with a brain abnormality that included a hollow
channel running the length of her brain that was normally solid in others. It was through this
channel that the bullet passed, leaving her brain intact. Rev. Brad Strait said, “It’s just like the
God I follow to plan the route of a bullet through a brain long before Batman ever rises. Twentytwo years before.”1
This statement was intended to display great faith in a god who works miracles today. But the
implications of this statement are horrifying, at least to me.
I would like to know, first of all, why this god, all powerful as the claim is, just didn’t stop the
bullet from entering in the first place. It seems to me that this is the more acceptable outcome if
this god controls outcomes.
And I’d like to know why this god allowed at least 12 others to be fatally wounded without
providing them with a saving miracle. Please don’t inform me that God’s ways are mysterious to
humans; this isn’t a mystery, it’s malfeasance of office.
You also heard the many who said they prayed to be spared and were. This begs the question,
does God answer some with yes and others with no? And why?
The worldview that this thinking springs from is the dominant Christian worldview.
This god is in control of everything, enters into history and physical life at will, and
bestows or withdraws his favor based on unfathomable means. (Read “mysterious
ways”)
For some, it also means that this god has planned out the entire run of history and the
many details that happen every day. (Fatalist who fell down the stairs: “Sure glad that’s
over with!”)
In this worldview, there is no need for prayer since all things are destined to be the way they are.
But we pray anyway, because Jesus prayed; just why, we don’t know.
In this worldview, God is responsible for evil. They even quote God from the Bible:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these
things. Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
I suspect most of us pray and do regularly. I also suspect that we have had our prayers answered
sometimes with yes and sometimes with no. At least it seems that way. This is the way most of
us have been taught to think of prayer, as a request/answer dialectic. God sits up there in heaven,
hears our prayers and decides the outcome.
Our prayers seldom grow beyond the one we were taught as children:
Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
God bless mommy, daddy, sister, brother, and Fido. Amen
Our prayers sound more sophisticated as we mature, but they still largely center around ME and
MINE.
As you probably realize, I don’t believe in this god (small g). I can’t believe in this god. In fact,
I refuse to believe in a god that is merely a projection of human qualities writ large: Wrathful,
loving, jealous, patient, impatient, petty, merciful, vengeful, entirely human, yet like Zeus, more
powerful and immortal. Or, the old man on a throne with a white beard surrounded by
sycophantic angels and heavenly choruses.
This is in some ways, the god of the Bible. At least it can be interpreted this way, but only if we
take the descriptions of God and heavenly things literally. I hope you don’t believe that heaven
has streets paved with gold, and that it is entered through pearly gates. Since the God Realm
cannot be described literally, as there are no human words or concepts available to us to
adequately indicate what it is like, the biblical writers fall back on images that suggest a
magnificence that we cannot otherwise describe.
So the Bible suggests rather than describes.
What does this have to do with prayer?
If God is not sitting up in heaven listening to our prayers one by one and deciding each on a case
by case basis, what is God doing?
Some things seem to take forever to finally work their way from our minds into our hearts. We
know God is not “up there,” somewhere beyond our universe looking down upon us. That is part
of the ancient “three-tiered universe” (hell/earth/heaven) worldview that science displaced
centuries ago. Yet we still speak of “the Man upstairs,” or of “going up to heaven,” or “down to
hell.”
So if God is not “up there,” where is God?
Here is where we need to take the biblical information and reshape it from the literal. A person
is a finite presence, needing to be “somewhere.” But if God is not a person in the literal sense,
God is everywhere, in everything and along with every moment. As the Psalmist declares,
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast. Psalm 139:7-10
Even with the three-tiered universe in mind, the point is well made: God is inescapable.
This Psalm also makes the point that God knows everything.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it. Psalm 139:1-6
So if God is everywhere, and knows everything, and is all powerful, why should we pray?
Perhaps a better way to put this is to ask, given this, how should we pray? For if God knows our
situation, loves us and presumably wants the best for us, why and how should we pray?
Here is where our text for today comes into play. Let’s hear it one more time:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on
earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may
be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in
your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may
have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and
depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all
the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish
abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ
Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen
Paul prays for his congregation. Imagine that he is present in our assembly today and is asked to
lead the pastoral prayer. Here is what he would pray for us: that we may be strengthened in our
inner being with power from the Holy Spirit; that Christ would dwell in our hearts, thereby being
rooted and grounded in love; and that we may know the depths of that love that surpasses
knowledge in order that we may be filled with the fullness of God.
Notice what Paul did not pray for: freedom from disease, the cure of ailments, material
prosperity, happiness, a carefree existence; in other words, most of the things that occupy our
prayers. He has a different set of concerns, all culminating in this: being one with God through
the knowledge of the love of Christ.
Notice: this is not a prayer God can answer without our cooperation. God does not wave a magic
wand that turns us from self-centered beings into spiritual giants. No. This requires first of all
our desire to be filled with God and then the opening of ourselves to the presence of God.
Alan Brehm says it well in our bulletin’s Thought for Quiet Reflection: "The bottom line in the
Christian life is that it's all something that God does in us; in fact it's something that only God
can do in us. That means we have to entrust ourselves to that mysterious and wonderful power of
love that surrounds us all; it means we have to trust God to do that wonderful, unimaginable
work of new life." This is another way of understanding being “born again.”
So Richard Trench says, "Prayer is not getting [our] will done in heaven, but getting God's will
done on earth. It is not overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of God's willingness."
Do you think John Wesley was exaggerating when he said, "God does nothing but by prayer, and
everything with it"?
Physics tells us that the only thing in the universe is energy. Matter seems like a solid, but when
one looks deep into it a vast array of atoms and subatomic particles whirl away. Even a rock is
bursting with energy.
Prayer, then, is a form of energy; it’s a way of adding to the good energy that God supplies to the
universe. So James could write, The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
We are to pray for one another. We are to ask for healing, for daily necessities (the bread of the
Lord’s Prayer), for safety, for relief from the evils that befall life. But these are secondary
concerns and can only be addressed if we commit ourselves first to being receptacles of the
fullness of God; by being born again.
Goethe wrote that “The people rate strength before everything.” But Jesus said, the meek shall
inherit the earth. The Greek word for meek is the same word used to describe a wild stallion that
has been brought under control. In this case it means the meek one is the one under the control
of God, who opens one’s being to the fullness of God.
The meek bear witness to the most effective strength there is: a life open to the fullness of God.
So the next time you hear, “Let us pray,” think, “I now open myself to God’s fullness.” Then,
“Let us pray,” becomes the doorway into the most abundant life possible.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than
all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations,
forever and ever. Amen
1
The (Stockton) Record, July 24, 2012, front page.