Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church—traditional services—

10/1/00 

by Gregory S. Kaurin, Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Text: James 5:13-20

 

Go to: sermon menu – or – archive – or – home page

 

The Sermon--

Prayer of a Desert Rat

 

A dozen years ago, Olin Storvick, my Greek professor, gathered some of us and began to pass out pottery.  One of these was a small, completely intact, oil lamp. 

 

[pick up a rock]*

As I held the small lamp, Dr. Storvick casually mentioned that he'd tried it, that it still worked like a charm, and that it was at least 3,000 years old.  ...Suddenly, I was very careful with it!  But holding it for that brief moment, an image has stuck with me: an image of a family casually using this little lamp with a few drops of oil to knit by, or to pray by, or simply to see each other's face as they quietly spoke in the evening hours. 

There was something meaningful in that simple one piece clay pot: hands, long ago shaped it; hands held it like a brightly lit candle; hands worked beside it--hands that have long since disintegrated into Israeli dust.  And for a brief moment, it was handed on and passed among our hands. 

[set rock down]

There is an old lamp that has been handed on to each of you.  It’s about 2,000 years old.  I’m afraid that you wouldn’t impress anyone at the Antique Road Show with it, even though this lamp was passed down from Jesus of Nazareth.  Let me show you the lamp he gave you.  In your pew Bibles turn to page 68 of the New Testament… Reading from Luke 11 beginning at the first verse: Jesus was praying in a certain place.  After he finished, one of the disciples asked, "Lord teach us to pray."  So he did; Jesus taught his prayer to them.  That is the lamp you have.

For two thousand years, how many have said these words, saying them together and sometimes alone.  How many have used that prayer this morning around the world.  How many languages?  In a few moments we will join the prayer, and in doing so, we will add ours to the chorus of voices--some of which have long since died out like dust.

 

[pick up rock]

There was a time when I could easily dismiss much of the ritual in worship: the droning of the Prayer of the Day, the Prayers of the People, the same old words of liturgy and hymns spoken and sung week after week, even the mindless recantation of the Lord's Prayer.  How often have I casually run through the words, nearly unaware that I was saying them, oblivious to whom I was speaking.

Or those memorized blessings at the dinner table: "God is great; God is good; let us thank him for our food; pass the potatoes; Amen."  "Good bread, good meat, good God, let's eat!"  Who were talking to?

Or how often do we use prayer like some superstitious magic spell?  "Dear God, I know I haven't studied all semester, but the test is tomorrow morning.  Help me learn everything I need ...tonight." –or– “Okay, God, where’d you hide my car keys this time?” 

 

I know that it's just a tragic love song, but I listened again to Jewel sing "Foolish Games" and I wondered if that song describes what it is like for God, who goes to all lengths to tell us that he wants a real relationship: open, full of words and, more important, full of meaning and heart.  "Talk to me," he says, "Ask, seek, knock."  But, so often, it seems we've nothing to say, besides muttering some mindless words, absent of meaning or soul, like "some comment on the weather."  In Jewel’s song, I can almost imagine God saying to us:

"In case you haven't noticed;

In case you failed to see:

This is my heart [these are my hands], bleeding for you;

This is me down on my knees [up on a cross].

These foolish games are tearing me apart;

Your thoughtless words are breaking my heart."

 

What is prayer, absent thought, absent meaning?  Is it like moving rocks, [set rock down, pick another up] in some repetitive useless activity?  Is much of prayer and worship merely out-dated—tradition?  If so little heart is in it, why bother, why continue doing it?

 

[set rock down]

There is a desert rat that has a peculiar habit.  Each night, after scampering about, this small rat collects a few large pebbles and arranges them at the burrow entrance.  The pebbles are not enough to protect; they don't cover or camouflage the entrance from predators or the desert heat.  Many scientists had decided that this strange habit was just a quirk.  Perhaps it served a purpose ages ago; now? --just a useless, leftover instinct.

But then, a videographer left her camera at the burrow entrance, left it there all night, and later when she watched the tape, she learned something important about those pebbles.  She learned that the desert rat's life depends on them...

 

[pick up rock]

I've learned something, too, something that has helped me value traditions, to accept them as part of my own heritage.  As a pastor, I've visited quite a few older people in nursing homes.  One of them was Susan in Telford, Pennsylvania.  I'd speak to her: no response.  She rarely ever opened her eyes.  Susan may not have known I was ever there.  Finally, after what seemed a long one-sided conversation, I would take her hand and pray with her, ending with the Lord's Prayer.  Suddenly, her mouth began to move, often saying whole phrases with me!  Generations crossed.  Through haze of Alzheimer's--a connection made!  She and I were able to speak together, and it came out a prayer.   We connected, with God between us!

 

These voices, Susan's voice, the voice of generations long dead, should not be lost. 

 

[set rock down]

It happens to us, too: something happens, and then we will need those words.  They will be the words we need to hear, to speak:  the words the dead have spoken and passed to us.  Some of you already know this, there come times when that's all we have: priceless words from a faith bigger and older than us.

 

On the History Channel, an old World War II sailor was recalling the several days he and others spent floating on the sea holding onto rafts and wreckage after their ship went down.  In the cold water they began to die. 

"Is he gone?" someone would ask.  The old sailor said, "I'd touch their eyes, and if they didn't blink, we just let them go.  We'd take off their life preserver, say the Lord's Prayer, and let them go."  He finished by saying, "To this day, I can't say that prayer without crying."

 

We need these words, for the sake, for the remembrance of those who have said them, for those sailors and soldiers, for our grandparents, and most important, for those who will need them tomorrow.

 

There are times when prayers may feel like empty, useless movements of rocks.  But that's not true for everyone, all the time.  When we pray together, there is someone nearby who needs to hear it, maybe tonight sitting beside you.  We pray together for that person.  When we sing the liturgy, pray together, when we commune together, we accept and preserve a powerful message that has changed lives, saved souls, given peace. 

Prayers may seem to go unanswered, but only because we are impatient, and often wearing blinders.  Prayers and worship, our rituals, when we take time to think about what we are doing, and what it means, we begin to realize that these are intimate moments—God is present and listening—as intimate as Jesus placing you before him and saying, "When you pray, say this.  When you eat this, remember me.  When you drink this, know that you are forgiven."

 

[pick up a rock]

Finally, there is an answer after all, one too easily forgotten.  It is an answer to prayer that rises above all our questions.  One day, we will see it clearly, simply, powerfully.  God has been answering our prayers over and over.  He has said, "Look, you ignored my prophets, you beat and killed my son.  But I still lifted and raised him, all to show you that I still love you, and call each of you mine.  No tests or paperwork, not grief, not loneliness, not even death will have the last answer.  My answer is the last word, and my word has always been:  Life.  Eternal life." 

 

[set rock down, pick up last]

...When the videographer reviewed her tape, she discovered why the desert rat places pebbles outside its burrow.  It was so simple, in hindsight. 

In the early dawn hour, dew forms in the shadows, over the surface of the pebbles.  Quietly and safely, the little desert rat edges to the mouth of the burrow and begins to lick life-sustaining moisture off their surface. 

It wasn't a meaningless repetitive action after all.  It was life.

[set down last rock]

 

 

Let us pray: Merciful God, our Father, in the stillness of our souls we listen for your voice to know again that you are our God.  Quiet our restless hearts with the knowledge that you stand even within the shadows, keeping watch over your own.  Rekindle trust in us so that we can pray confidently, always believing that—in answer to all our prayers—you give us the Water of Life.  Amen.

 

Go to: sermon menu – or – archive – or – home page

 

To comment— mailto:[email protected], indicate sermon title “Desert Rat” in the subject line.