Category: Sermons

Prayer Dare: Praying Outdoors

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Psalm 104                          7.10.16

We have to just stop and recognize the horror which has flooded our country this week.  We seem to go from one total disregard for the value of human life to another in city after city across our nation.  Our city itself  is no stranger to this twisted way of looking at the creations of God we call human beings, human beings who also are brothers, sisters, fathers, sons, mothers or daughters– looking at humans as expendable.   People who think other people are expendable forget that every person has people who love him, every person has people who depend on her, every person has gifts to share and work to do to contribute to the society at large.  People are not expendable.  People cannot be replaced.  When a life is snuffed out without cause, when hatred holds a gun, we are all impacted.  It takes its toll.  Fear and mistrust ratchet up.  Gun sales go up.  In a week like this past one, we start to wonder, where is God?  Where are God’s people?  What happened to respect and love and peace?

Sometimes we feel like banging on God’s door demanding that something be done.  We cry out with the words of the psalmist:  let wickedness be no more. We want justice for all those who are victims of injustice or discrimination, those who are ignored, set aside, rejected–whether due to sexual preference, skin color, language, age, or physical ability.  We want answers.  We want changes so that all people will see others as valued creations of God, deserving of life and care and love and hope for a future.  Last week our prayer dare was to pray justice by living justice.  I saw a beautiful photo which emodies living justice.  It was of a black woman and her children with a white police officer.  She had stopped, they got out of their car, approached the officer sitting in his patrol car and asked if they could pray for him.  Living justice.  What a week when prayers for justice were needed.  What a week for prayer.

Today my prayer dare for you is praying outdoors.  My original inspiration was Psalm 104, a litany of praise to God for all the variety of creation which surrounds us.  The psalmist understands God not only as the creator of it all, but the one who continues to provide for the ongoing needs of all creatures… water and food, sunlight and darkness, shelter and rest.  It is a long psalm, and we have been spreading it out throughout our worship service today.  Praying outdoors, with creation staring us in the face, keeps us in a grateful mindset, and calls us to better care for the creation of which we are a part.   I will get back to that kind of private outdoor prayer in a moment.

First, let me suggest another way to pray outdoors.  That is, to pray visibly, openly, in some kind of public space.  In a restaurant, at a bus stop, in front of the grocery store, with a stranger.  Our prayer dare for this week can take this direction–  praying outdoors in public.  A  dare requires you to try something hard or new or uncomfortable.  So when I ask you next Sunday, “how did you pray outdoors this week?”, you might describe praying outdoors in public or praying outdoors in private, but don’t list the things you already do on a regular basis.  I want to hear about something new you tried.

Praying publicly is uncomfortable for some people.  I remember the prayer walk some of us took on Good Friday.  We joined walkers from multiple churches, carrying a cross, stopping to pray for and with people along the way.  It was not a typical Presbyterian prayer practice.  We do pray for the residents of our city–we tend to do it from the safety of our sanctuary or our own homes.  Praying for the residents of our city face to face took us a bit out of our comfort zone as we interacted with strangers, being a visible presence for Christ in Edmondson Village shopping center.   You might follow that model to take up the prayer dare this week.  Try it in your own neighborhood.  Walk around the block.  Stop to pray in front of each house.  Engage a neighbor for more than a wave and a “good morning!”.  Ask her if there is anything she needs prayer for.  Or, to be more daring, do it in another neighborhood.  Go with a friend.  Talk together with God about the needs you see or can imagine.

Or if you go out to eat this week, take time to pray before your meal with those who are with you, or even by yourself.  I don’t mean a silent “thank you for this food, Lord”  while you reach for the salt and pepper.  I mean taking a moment to really stop and give thanks.  Thanks for the food.  Many in this world survive on minimal food intake on a daily basis. Thanks for the luxury of eating out.  Not everyone has the ability to go out to eat when they want.  Thanks for a comfortable place to sit.  Not everyone has a place to be cool on these hot summer days.  If you need encouragement to try this kind of prayer, come meet me at Tabba Tabba on Friday and we will pray together in the coffee shop.

Praying outdoors can be visible and obvious, public.  Praying outdoors can also be very private.  You can find a quiet place outside in your backyard, in the playground at your apartment complex, on your front porch, some green space near your workplace.  One church member loves to step out on her 7th floor balcony overlooking the city of Baltimore for her  prayer time with God.  You can go to a city park or to the beach or to the mountains or to a farm.  We have a fantastic green space just at the bottom of the hill here in Leakin Park.  Go where you can be outside and connect in some way with the creation God has provided for us, the creation we truly cannot do without.

My dare for you today is to get outside to pray.  I know it is hot.  So find a time in the early morning or in the evening when the sun is not so hot.  Set aside a dedicated time and place.  Be intentional.  If you need to, put it on your calendar where you will see it.  Looking outside through your window does not count!  It is not the same.  Looking with your eyes only means you will miss a lot.  Get outside!

When you get outside, reread Psalm 104.  Or try Psalm 8.  Or Psalm 147.  Start with the scripture in your hand or start with the message of God you can see, hear, touch and smell around you.  Start with thanks.  Thanks to God for what you can hear, or the cool breeze you feel or the warm sun on your back.  Move to recognizing your own shortcomings in the way you treat any part of God’s beloved creation– people included.  How have you had disregard for God’s creation?  For people you have interacted with?   And then to petitions.  Where do you see hurt, pain, distrust, harm, abuse happening in this creation?  What do you want to say to God about those people, places and issues?

I’ll be curious to learn from you next week if you took my prayer dare.  Dares are not requirements.  You don’t have to take a dare.  But if you do, if you try prayer in a new setting– outdoors publicly or outdoors privately,  I’ll be curious to learn if you noticed anything different in praying outdoors.  Is it worth repeating again?  You just might find a new prayer practice that will be a part of your routine in the future.  You just might begin to see God’s hand at work in some new way.  I dare you!

PRAYER DARE: Praying for Justice

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Micah 6:1-8

We used to play “truth or dare” when I was at slumber parties as a kid.  In case you have never played it… you sit as a group in a circle.  One person is it, and chooses anyone else in the group to question.  The questioner can ask any question, usually the kind of question designed to embarrass, like:  “Do you like Stefan?” or, “Which basketball player on our team is your favorite?”  The person can respond with the truth or she can respond, “I’ll take the dare.”  If she doesn’t want to tell the truth, the questioner makes up a dare that the responder has to do in order to get out of telling the true answer to the question.  In our day, the dares were like:  “I dare you to go outside in your pajamas and shout:  Look at me!”  Now everyone goes outside in their pajamas and no one looks twice.  Or it could have been:  “Call the Pizza Hut, order a pizza, give your name, and hang up.”  Now everyone orders online so that is not such a daring thing to do.  Our dares were usually kind of silly and harmed no one.

This month I have a dare for you!  I dare you to try some different kinds of prayer.  For the month of July, we will be exploring different texts in Scripture which challenge us to follow a variety of prayer examples– maybe praying in a different location, in a different posture, using a different pattern.  Most of us are accustomed to prayer before meals, prayer to begin the day, prayer to end the day.  Most of us are accustomed to prayers of thanks to God, prayers for forgiveness of our sins, and prayers which are pleas to God for help for ourselves or for a loved one.  We use those kinds of prayers regularly in our worship together.  This month, let’s make a commitment to try different ways to pray.  When you agree to take a dare, you agree to try something that is new or difficult, either physically or emotionally.  To take my dare, you will need to sacrifice some of your time.  To take my dare, you will need to step out of your comfort zone.  When you take my dare, you run the risk of drawing closer to God in a way that you have not before.  I challenge you to take my prayer dare!  I am going to take it.  I will put some comments about my reflections on new ways to pray up on Facebook and on our website throughout the month.  Please offer your comments and share your insights.

Today your prayer dare is praying for justice.  The way to pray for justice is simple but difficult.  It requires a certain level of courage.  In the words of our friends at Nike, “just do it.”  The 8th century prophet (that is 8 centuries before Christ was born) Micah nails it when he describes what God is expecting from us.  Not stuff, not money, not being on our knees and talking non-stop.  In Micah’s day, he had to say to his people– God is not waiting for your multitude of animal sacrifices.  God is not waiting for your calves or your oil or even your first born child.  (That is hyperbole at the end of his escalating list of sacrifices, obviously God does not want you to sacrifice your first born!)  God is waiting for you to do justice, which is a way of showing steadfast love, or mercy, and in doing so, you will be walking with God.  It is a moving prayer, not a stationary one.  It is an active prayer, not a passive one.  It is a prayer with your life, not just with your mind or voice or heart.

Praying for justice is living justice.  The Hebrew word for justice is mishpat.  Simply put, living justice is living in such a way that we treat one another by following the ways of God.  It is yielding our lives to God and God’s way.  Doing justice is upholding what is right according to God’s practices, God’s expectations, God’s love.  It is caring for and about the powerless, the inequities in our justice system, the job market for immigrants, the guys who live in the tents at the end of the highway.  And doing justice is not only our one on one relationships with people we meet, but it is also our role in society at large.  One example:  I can’t believe it is God’s way to gun one another down.  Right here in this sanctuary, we are not so far removed from places in our city where gun violence is happening.  What is our role as residents of a city racked by gun violence?  Different people will feel called to take different actions, but I am sure that it is unjust to sit and do nothing.

Earlier in this book of Micah, the prophet condemned the leaders of Israel for their failure to live justice, for ignoring the needs of the people, for hating good and loving evil,  for taking bribes, for causing bloodshed, for failing to listen to God.  To address their injustice, Micah uses the imagery of a court case between God and the people of Israel.  The mountains and the hills will be the jury, listening to God’s complaint against God’s people.  Using rhetorical questions, he points out that it is obvious that God never did anything against them, that God did not weary them.  It is the people of God who are in the wrong.  The people who seemed to have forgotten that God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt, providing them with leaders like Moses, Aaron and Miriam.  The people who seemed to have forgotten the blessing they received from the prophet Balaam when King Balak of neighboring Moab tried to buy him off so that he would curse the people of Israel because he was afraid of them.  The people who thought they could buy off God, bailing themselves out with their offerings and sacrifices.  That is not the way to resolve the dispute between God and God’s people.  Micah calls them back to what God expects of them, to what they should have known, to what is good.  To do justice, embrace faithful love, walk humbly with God.

Praying for justice can not be just words.  It can not be just showing up when the news media is around.  We have a pastor in Baltimore who has been outspoken since last year’s riots.  At one point this spring he was asked by the neighbors in Sandtown/Winchester to leave the neighborhood because he only seemed to show up when he could look good and did not seem to be doing anything for the community.  Since that time, they have met and talked things out.  Tomorrow under the JFX they will be working together– Muslims, Christians, gang members and police– to hand out food to anyone who is hungry.  Living justice, not just talking about justice.

As we celebrate the 240th year of our nation’s birth, we can’t forget that we are here because people before us insisted on justice.  I think of the people in Boston who protested the unjust policies Britain had exacted on the colonists in the 1770’s.  They did not just write letters to the king.  They took action and threw the barrels of tea into the harbor, creating a big blow to England’s cash flow.  I think of the young people in Greensboro, NC and other cities who did not just picket outside the whites only lunch counters in the 1960’s.  They went in and sat down and refused to move.  Insisting on justice requires action.  I really appreciate the words of Cornel West, American scholar, social activist, currently a professor of religion at Princeton University:  “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

This week I dare you to put feet to your prayer.  Find a way you can take some form action to follow God’s commitment to justice for all, not just for some.  Make the time to write or call an elected official.  Let them know your concern  not just for your own neighborhood, but for someone else’s.  Why are the worst roads in the poorest neighborhoods?  What are we really doing about the high number of vacant homes in our city?  Find out where your elected official stands on issues that affect this city as a whole.  You can even compliment where a compliment is due.  We discovered brand new lighting on Edmondson Avenue that helps the entire street to be much better lit for safety.  I am going to contact the city and find out who to thank.  It is a way to encourage our government to keep the needs of the neighborhoods on the front burner.  Instead of always complaining and requesting, how about a “well done” every now and then?   Get involved in your own neighborhood association.  Find out who the president is, when the next meeting is.  Take the president to lunch and find out what he or she is concerned about.  Make time to find out where there is a job training program that you could offer your assistance to.  You have skills and wisdom that could benefit someone else.  I know one called “turn around Tuesdays” which meets on the East Side, but surely there are more.  Resume writing, tax preparation, interview practice, donating clothing to help people in the job search process.  Go down to the JFX tomorrow and bring some 4th of July food to share.  Be a part of an effort to bring Baltimore together.  This prayer dare requires action.  Praying for justice means living it.

Next Sunday I will invite you to share your experiences with my prayer dare by writing them down and offering them up to God via the offering plate.  Dares are not easy.  Dares require you to step out of your comfort zone, to make some sort of sacrifice, to try something new.  I dare you…..  to do justice, show faithful love, and walk humbly with God.  Amen.