Paul's Prayers - For Others

Preached on January 14-2018 

Scripture readings: Psalm 133; 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13

I served a church which had an ushers’ bench, an usher’s pew, right up against the back wall; you know, so that they could march together down the aisle to pick up the offering plates. (Church used to be so dignified, until I grew up.)

Sunset, Desert Aire/Mattawa WA November 2017

Well they had this old story, from the 1940’s and 1950’s, and maybe earlier. It was always the same four guys, every Sunday, and they always sat in the same order in the ushers’ pew. They did this together year after year, decade after decade. In the end, one of them died. It was so sad that the four would never be the same.

It also presented that church with a difficulty, because it meant that they had to find a guy of the exact same height as the one who had passed, so that he could hide the grease spot that the deceased usher had left on the back wall above the pew.

You know that the kids today have no idea what that greasy kid’s stuff was? You just ask them! And I doubt that any of them use Vitalis.

The perfumed olive oil mentioned in Psalm 133 reminded me of this. It was the greasy kid’s stuff of its long day. There’s a Hebrew word used here that means olive oil and (even more interestingly) it means richness, but the primary meaning of this word describes something that’s greasy and gross.

 A Series of Photos on a Foggy Day: Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
January 2018

In the Psalm, Aaron refers to the first high priest, the brother of Moses. Moses set Aaron apart for this work of being the High Priest by pouring perfumed olive oil on his head. But there’s no story about Moses, or anyone else, pouring so much oil on any priest so that it ran down his face, and beard, and neck, and collar, and chest, and legs, and soaked his robes down to his hem and his feet.

That’s greasy and gross for sure. That’s like spreading tubes and tubes of Brylcreem all over someone’s body and clothes. But just think of all the richness and the sweetness that would come from doing that; or having it done to you. Wouldn’t that be great; having it done to you? Can’t you feel it? What a good way to think about this excessively wonderful thing.

Psalm 133 is only three verses long, but it manages to be completely excessive: the oil running down from head to toe; the dew from Mount Hermon falling on Mount Zion at Jerusalem that would be like the dew from the Olympic Mountains falling on the desert of Mattawa and Desert Aire. And this rainforest dew really refers to the whole climate that makes plants grow: the whole climate becoming like a rainforest.

When I lived on the South Coast of Oregon, the first year I was there, we got nearly one hundred inches of rain. The natives liked to tease me about coming from California, and so they began to ask me if I was sick of the rain.

I answered their question with a question of my own. When they asked if I was sick of the rain, I simply asked them, “Are you?”

What is all the excess in this tiny psalm about? It’s about love: Brothers living together in unity. (Brothers, here, refers to all the people of all the tribes of Israel.) They were always fighting and destroying each other. Compared with that, living side by side, with hearts beating as one, would be excessively different. It would be the exact opposite of real life, and opposites tend to be excessive.

The nation of Israel was called to be the opposite of the whole world: a whole nation totally dedicated to God’s purpose. God’s calling of the tribes of Abraham was for them was to be a blessing to every other nation on earth.

They were called to be a “kingdom of priests” mediating and reconciling the world to God. Which is what a priest is for.

Being priests meant praying for the world. In such a life of prayer, the power of prayer, in the hands of God, would make this stinking world smell sweet for the first time since the beginning.

Soap is only mentioned twice in the whole Bible. That’s because the people of Israel usually washed themselves with olive oil. Some people might call this greasy and gross, but they pictured olive oil as having a richness to it. Prayer for others would be like olive oil that made it possible to wipe away all the dirt and make the world squeaky clean and fresh as new.

  On hot and dry Mount Zion, the priest, washed with oil, would enter the dim and silent world of the Temple. They would enter God’s House, with the sweetness of prayer for others, or with the sprinkled blood of sacrifices that brought a sweet smell of forgiveness, and grace, and healing to God’s people, and to the earth.

We have been washed with the Oil of God. This oil is the love of the Creator Father, the love of the self-sacrificing Son, the love of the Holy Spirit full of God’s growth-giving richness, full of the sweetness of God’s power and love. We have had this oil poured out on us with all the excess of God.

Now, by faith and prayer, we go into Christ, the living temple of God and creation. Entering into Jesus leads us to bring the world, and our neighbors, and each other, with us into the sanctuary, into the holy and safe place of God.

We are to be like Jesus in this world. As he poured out himself for the creation, and for our brothers and sisters, in all times and places; in the same way, we (like him) pour out ourselves for our brothers and sisters, and for every good thing of God. In Christ, we do this with our lives and with our prayers.

Paul says it: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else.” That’s the excess of God, once again. Only, now, it’s at work in us and through us, for others.

Paul, in most of his letters, reminds his people (his friends, and brothers and sisters) that they have seen this excess at work in him, for their sake, and just as much for the sake of the whole world that needs God so much. I think Paul must have been excessive about everything.

I often fail to be excessive, except for the fact that I seem to be obsessive. Could those be the same thing: obsessive and excessive? But here we’re talking about being excessive in love.

That leads us to another part of this excess. Paul has been modeling, for his friends, the life of excessive prayer. Paul says this, here: “Night and day we pray excessively that we may see you again and supply what is needed in your faith.” (1 Thessalonians 3:10)

I retranslated two words here. The New International Version says: “We pray for you earnestly.” The King James Version says: “praying exceedingly.” Earnestness is an intensity in prayer. Exceedingly is literally a lot like excessively. These words translate a Greek word that includes all of this excess.

This excess of love and prayer build each other up, and intensify our lives. It tends to mean that we get absent-minded about ourselves because we do obsess, lovingly, about others.

This doesn’t mean exhausting yourself into a state of frazzlement. It doesn’t mean seeing yourself negatively, or as being unworthy. God has made you worthy, through the blood, and the grace, and the power that comes through him, as we meet him and know him in Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit.

This excess of love is nurtured by this excess of prayer. This excess overcomes the world. It makes us strong in our weakness. Paul will tell his friends in Thessalonica that they need this. They need Paul, and they need each other, because they are like Paul, and they are like the Christians in the Holy Land, in a terrible and difficult way. They are all being persecuted excessively; almost mercilessly.

It really was merciless. It was meant to put an end to them. When Paul was talking about his desire to supply what was lacking in their faith, their lack wasn’t immaturity. It wasn’t a lack of knowledge and understanding of the teachings of Jesus, or a lack of knowledge about the good news. Paul wasn’t talking about a lack of faith on their part, but about a strong need within their faith, because of their difficulties.

All of the negative and destructive energy directed against them, threatened to empty them, and make them feel lacking. It was a lack that was actually a need. This need came from the injuries of being hated, and reviled, and abused.

Perhaps some of them were being imprisoned, tortured, and killed for their trust and their love of Jesus. There are wounds and scars of faith that need to be healed, or that create a need for gentle, persistent therapy.

Paul had enough experience of his own in what they were going through, so that he had a good idea of what they needed or lacked. They may have been questioning the strength of their own faith, and blaming themselves for what was happening to them.

Paul, in his letters, doesn’t very much pray for himself. He, almost without exception, makes excessive prayers for others. He asks for their prayers, and he promises that he prays for them, because that is what the best prayer is about. Prayer, at its best, prays for others. Prayer in Christ created, in them, a new world. That new world, growing from their prayers for others, was building within them a world much like the new world that will come with Jesus when he returns.

Prayer opens up the lid of a jar full of the sweet tasting preserve of the beginning of the world, as God designed and created it to be. Prayer, when God speaks to us, tells us of a great goodness that belongs to us, but has been lost.

Prayer looks, even more, into the future. Prayer creates a foretaste of the new heaven and the new earth that will come with Jesus. You see, prayer creates readiness for that new world by creating that world, ahead of time, in those who hunger and wait for it.

As others were Paul’s greatest joy, prayer makes others our greatest joy. As the faithfulness of others was Paul’s greatest source of encouragement, prayer makes the faithfulness of others our own source of encouragement. When Paul’s love overflowed to others, then the love they gave to others (through Jesus) was Paul’s greatest reward.

I do love to see other people loving each other. That’s why weddings can be so much fun (as long as the kinfolk don’t tell me how to do my job). The couples are usually too much in love to care about what happens in the wedding.

The truth is that, as strong as Paul’s obsessive prayer was (for his friends’ love to overflow to each other and to everyone else), Paul found love flowing back to him, from his friends, and from Jesus. But the success came because, as Paul was excessively praying for his friends’ overflowing love, Paul’s prayer changed him.

Praying for others made him into a sort of cheerleader for their own prayers for loving others. Paul’s prayers for others loving others made him into the sort of person who embarrasses you by telling you over and over again that they love you, or what a good friend they see in you, and how great your humble qualities are.

Even saying thank-you, excessively, could have the power, in the long run, to change everyone you know, especially your brothers and sisters in Christ. Then, together, you become the family of people who show the world how to love.

The Lord’s Supper is a kind of prayer for others. At the Lord’s Table, we gather together to meet, in person, the prayer of Jesus for us, which we hear the prayer of the cross: “Forgive them.” Jesus, in his prayer, is so full of us that he becomes as self-forgetting as a pinch of bread and a sip of wine.

His sacrifice was not a way of despising himself, but a way of loving others. He makes us so loved that we can forget about ourselves in just that powerful, loving way that he loves us, and the whole world around us.

The cross and the resurrection are a kind of infinite prayer that makes us a new creation. Jesus’ prayer makes us ready for the new heaven and the new earth that are coming.

The power within us comes from his praying for others; his praying for us. This way of prayer, as Paul teaches us, changes us excessively, so that our own prayers become the heart of a life devoted to a passionate and excessive love for others, and for God’s world.