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.

Gideon - Becoming People of Valor

Preached a number of times in 1976-77-78 when I was in Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, and last Sunday, January 7, 2018 slightly rewritten (about 10% modified).

The back part of my seminary where the dorm was.
 There are four floors. My window is farthest right.
The third floor. You can just barely see it.

This was my "default" sermon when I preached in little churches where the pastor was away or in churches that didn't have pastors: if it wasn't Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter or something special, I wrote it when I was 25..

Scripture readings: Judges 6:1-32; John 14:27

“The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!”

The words shot through the hot harvest air and startled a man who was anything but mighty.

Now, since the Hebrew word for “mighty one” can also be translated as “hero”, let’s look with all the eyes of hero worship so we can understand that brave hero, Gideon.

We catch him, first, standing hunched over beneath the spreading oak tree, at Ophra. He bends over the stones of the winepress, not sharpening a warrior’s sword, but thrashing out the wheat: the food that he wanted to hide from the marauding, desert tribesmen who were strangling his people.

Getting ready with some fellow students to sing  Messiah.
It was with the Community Choir performing at the "U".

Dust and chaff stick to his clothes, and hair, and sweat. He’s jumpy; worried about being spotted and robbed of the food and the seed his family need to survive.

Was there a hero’s fire in his eyes?

They were only bloodshot. He was exhausted and there was that sweat running into his eyes. It could be the sparkle of fear. If Gideon had ever had childhood dreams of being some kind of superhero, he had grown up out of those dreams long ago. He was using all his powers to cope with each new day of danger. Every day was dangerous.

Then something happened. Gideon was startled by a loud voice from behind. He jumped and turned. He was afraid to see who had found his hiding place: afraid of anyone who would be so cold as to sneak up on him from behind and yell “boo”, and mock him.

He knew he was no hero. The heroes had all been killed.

Me dress for a Halloween party.

The figure sitting behind him on the big rock was a stranger; and a very strange stranger at that. Gideon tried to choke down the shivering sense that this was no ordinary person. In meeting this stranger with the powerful voice, he felt he was meeting something from beyond this world. The face was more than royal, as if he were in the presence of God.

I wonder if Gideon shuddered at the thought that this one calling him “hero” and “brave” was actually calling him to become just that: to do more than he had ever dared.

The word of God, in the Scripture, is the voice of God speaking to you with the Spirit, or the breath, of God in it. So, the voice of God says: “Good morning you brave heroes.” Yes, you!

Have you ever heard a preacher say that God gives a gift to some people so that they can preach, or teach, or sing in the choir, or knit sweaters for mission children, or, at least, give a warm smile to your neighbor? I’ve always wondered a little about the warm, smiley part. Does a smile really matter very much? But, I’m much too serious for my own good.

The truth is that it matters very much. It can be harder to do than most people think: not just the smiley part, but everything that goes with a real and serious smile.

We are taught, as children, not to talk to strangers. We learn to fear the sorrows and the sufferings of others. It’s hard to give ourselves, to overcome these old obstacles; but, if we do, we may become heroes.

Spent summer serving in Carter Lake, 1977.
The only part of Iowa west of the Missouri River.

If you’ve ever felt lost, or alone, or confused, or frustrated; and someone, anyone, stopped to notice, care, help, and encourage you, then you know how important this mission is. If we can do this for others (give them a sign that love and hope are real) we will be doing a hero’s work.

The truth is that God calls us to be heroes. God calls us to give ourselves for others as he has given himself for us, but how often do we find ourselves stopped in our tracks, reluctant to be what God has made us to be? Like Lazarus, the dead friend of Jesus, called from the tomb, we are alive, but we are bound in layer after layer of shrouds, like an Egyptian mummy.

In the transformation that comes from Jesus, we are like patients recovering from a long, bed-fast illness, and we’re afraid of taking our first step. We aren’t prepared for how good a physician our Doctor Jesus really is.

Seminary party. Two teams competing to blow a ping pong ball.

Maybe the change is like being in a body cast for a long time, and Doctor Jesus has to break away the cast, or unwrap it layer by layer. The bands of cloth are our old confinement: obstacles to the giving life to which God calls us.

We may find ourselves wrapped in the same layers of resistance as Gideon was. As Gideon needed God to do for him, we need the Lord to remove our obstacles to the giving life (the hero’s life), one by one.

The first obstacle, or mummy wrap, that kept Gideon from the heroism to which God called him was that he was overwhelmed by an experience of hopelessness and abandonment.

There’s a story of a hiker making his way, all alone, through a wilderness area. At the end of the day, he made camp and slept. Something awakened him in the middle of the night, as moonless, silent darkness surrounded him.

Did "Itinerant preaching once or twice a month.
I think that's Rewey WI ahead.
It's not much of a town.

Have you ever felt an aloneness and quietness so strong that it seemed like a physical presence? The hiker felt this.  In the blank, dark silence, the whole universe was there, watching, listening, and he wanted to cry out: “Friend or foe?”

In the face of sufferings, failures, illness, and grief, some people, in the old days, would call our world a “vale of tears”; a deep shadowy valley, beyond which they looked forward to finding the sun shining on the high country: heaven and its king. Doubts, frustrations, and worry cloud our ability to see that there is hope, that we are not alone. It’s hard to see beyond a veil of tears; changing the shadowy valley to a cloak that wraps us in darkness.

For Gideon, this veil became a shroud, wrapping and confining him. If he were alone in the blank silence of the night, he would relate to the presence hidden there as an enemy, not a friend.

The economy of Israel was in shambles. There was no leadership in the country, no security of life. They were a broken, invaded people. God had abandoned them.

The church at Rewey.

Somehow, the strange presence that Gideon met, that day, was slicing through his veil of tears. “The Lord is with us! We have hope!”

Maybe you’ve felt this for yourselves. In the face of an unmeetable deadline, or a seemingly unsolvable problem, you felt that you could meet it. You could solve it, or survive it, in order to begin again. God was giving you the gift of hope as he gave it to Gideon. God opened the veil and you marched forward through it.

One barrier was removed, a second barrier was uncovered.

“Lord, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest one, and I’m the least in my family?” Now, Gideon was just too small and weak to do what God called him to do, and to be what God called him to be.

How often do we tell ourselves that we would like to do this or that, something worthwhile, that would help others, and then we turn away, saying: “No, I’m not good enough,” or, “It’s too late now,” or “maybe later, I’m not ready yet.” Some opportunity arises (and God is the designer of all opportunities, visible and invisible), but we know it must not be the right one. God must be mistaken.

Gideon objected to the Lord’s opportunity, but he got an objection back from God. God said: “But I will be with you.” Gideon had focused on his own weakness rather than on God’s strength.

We did a prank. Some women students knitted the hat & scarves.
I just did some essential reconnaissance.

All the ads and commercials tell us, with authority, that only the newest, strongest, and best will do; and that we have to leave “Brand-X” behind. When we buy that idea wholesale, we risk re-applying it from products to people.

But, when you look at them, you find that people with “grade-A” goodness, wisdom, talent, and beauty are rare. You may find that most of your friends, relatives, associates, and that you, yourself, are what the advertisers call Brand-X.

God’s standard is completely different. One of the great things about the Bible is that there are no glossy heroes there; only human being like ourselves.

God chooses and calls the least likely people. People who know they are human are more likely to respond. They know they need help. They know they need God.

Internship the fall of '77 thru summer of 78.
Incline Village NV Presbyterian Church.

Scripture tells us that “Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6) The Lord came for the sake of our smallness and weakness. The Lord came so that smallness, and weakness, and unworthiness would no longer be a barrier to following him on our new road.

There was, and is, one more barrier, or mummy layer to remove. This still kept Gideon from responding freely to the new life God opened to him.

All through this interview, Gideon was asking himself: “Is this really happening?”

It wasn’t joyful unbelief. It was another form of fear that questioned whether this was God, himself, or something else. “If I have found favor with you, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me.”

My glamorous lodging at Incline Village.
Middle of second floor.

An explosion of fire evaporated Gideon’s offering on the rock, and it seemed to completely erase the visitor: the visitor with the voice and face of God. Gideon thought he was going to die, because he had somehow blown his interview with God. Gideon asked for a sign, but not for anything like this.

Gideon’s secret fear was God himself. Gideon was afraid of God. Perhaps, more than we would like to admit, something about God frightens us, even when we think we believe in him.

The Hebrews wondered about what it meant for a human to meet face to face with the Lord of Hosts; the Lord of the Angel Armies. God was so different: so holy and powerful. God was too good, and too smart, and simply much too much for us. It must be more than a normal human being could stand. Something had to give. Something would break. Gideon expected to die.

A bit of my middle school group hiking up Mt Rose.
The peak was about 10,000 feet.

Can we identify with Gideon’s fear?

A feeling comes, at times, that there is an unbridgeable gap between us and God, and that we can never come close to him and expect a moment’s peace. People expect saints to have either sad or sour faces.

Is this true? Gideon was, at the moment, very near to God, and he was, also, very unhappy.

We may fear God as a judge. In our imagination, God may appear in robes like a judge. His throne is his judge’s bench, and heaven takes on the appearance of a courtroom.

This is not a comfortable picture. If there is any good in it, it’s only because it helps us remember that God cares about us in some great sense. God cares about what we do and the values we have. We, in turn, care about God’s caring. We want to be in harmony with the purpose and the values of a God who knows us to the core and who is very holy and loves us never the less.

Thanksgiving Vacation 1976.
With some seminary friends visiting a graduate.friend.
Youth pastor at Winterhaven. Fl/

Gideon did ask to know if he had found favor in God’s sight, if God’s deepest motives were mercy, and kindness, and generosity. God’s fiery explosion was a booming and blinding yes.

It was not a normal yes. God was so hot with favor for Gideon. And that made Gideon more afraid than ever. God’s love was too much for him.

Have you ever known someone to be afraid of love? It happens.

God met Gideon’s fear without hesitation: “Peace!” “Peace! Don’t be afraid. I want to help, not hurt you.” “Peace!”

Gideon, wrapped up tight in a mummy layer of fear, needed peace as a resource to respond to God. Now peace, or (in Hebrew) “Shalom” is a feeling, and yet something much, much more. We might feel peaceful, quiet, undisturbed. We might also say that we feel rested. But, if we say this on a beautiful morning, after a good night’s sleep, we don’t mean we’re ready for a nap. We mean that we’re fresh and fit for the new day. That’s what peace is like. And, again, it’s much, much more than that.

Easter vacation staying at a friend's parents' house.
Austin TX, 1977. Wonderful house and pool.

Peace is trusting that everything is going to fit together. Nothing that matters can fall apart or collapse. It’s all going to work. Now you’re ready to help make it all work.

That’s peace. Peace is a sense of wholeness and being put together and ready for anything: being ready for whatever God brings your way; being ready to grow. Being ready to give.

Jesus, knowing how, in a few hours, he would be swept into a storm of betrayal, cruelty, injustice, and death on the cross, said this to his friends: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you, let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) Jesus freely offers us his peace, his own peace, worked out for us with all the love of his life, all the dedication of his death, all the grace of his sacrifice, and all the indestructibility of his resurrection.

Me playing pastor in a frontier museum town.
Near Phoenix AZ, end of summer '77.

It began to dawn upon the fearful heart of Gideon that the Lord’s first thought for him was full of mercy, peace, love, and hope. This was offered to him, as totally unheroic as he was. The Lord’s peace was stronger than any fear of abandonment or despair at his own smallness and unworthiness. Let come what may, that ultimate gift of peace came down from God.

The barriers were down. Gideon was ready to answer the call of the Lord.

He was called to be a hero; just as we are. Gideon was called to open himself up to his people’s problems, to do something that would set them free from despair, weakness, and fear. He would do it, and become a hero.

But, he would never be perfect in this world. Sometimes he would be just plain silly. Sometimes he would be terrible and much worse than he was before his calling changed him. Gideon remained human. And so do we, when God calls us.

Graduation '1978, shaking hands with Dean.

To be ready for tomorrow, we need the rest that comes from faith: the confidence that comes from going forth, yet being in the hands of God’s peace at the same time. Have you ever tried to get a small child to do anything which that child absolutely refused to do: like going to bed so that they can rise and shine tomorrow?

That’s the kind of job God has with us. He knows what he’s doing, and he loves his children, so we know he won’t give up and turn his back on us in dismay.

As Gideon stood before the Lord, he experienced that persistent love. That enduring love removed one layer, one barrier, after another. Think how you stand face to face with the same persistent, loving God, as we know him in Jesus, as we know him on the cross. That God calls to you: “The Lord is with you, you mighty people of valor!” Do you hear that call?