"People With a Purpose" Part V: The Prayers

Sermon: Seventh Sunday of Easter year A

The Rev. Matt Kennedy

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Have you ever sat in church and wondered to yourself about the type of worship that goes on here? Look at your bulletins. The entire service, from the readings to the songs to the prayers, is taken from a book! We read the whole thing. And what’s more, we basically read the same thing every week. How boring can you get? Why do we worship like this? And why would God want us to worship this way? Think about it, if someone who claims to love you were to read you the same love letter over and over again week by week, wouldn’t you begin to wonder, “Does this person really mean those words or is it just force of habit with no real heart?” Every week we come and we say the same prayers and do the same things over and over again. Week after week, month after month, year after year.

And sometimes, not all the time, but some mornings when I look out at the congregation I see this--a kind of zombie/comatose look, vacant, no emotion or anything, just an expressionless, utterly bored stare. Leading me to wonder, is there really any meaning behind what we do? Over the course of my short ministry as an Anglican many people have asked me, right up front, what’s the use of saying all these boring repetitive prayers and listening to all of these incredibly long readings, why don’t we just sing some easy to sing songs, listen to a sermon, and go home?

Well, this morning we’re continuing our series on the tasks of the church and we’re covering the last two tasks listed in Acts 2:42, I’ll read the verse, don’t turn to it, “They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” Having covered what it means to be devoted to the Apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, today we’ll be talking about the breaking of the bread and the prayers. The word “prayers” here does not refer to private individual prayers. The verse is talking about what the new believers did together; it specifically addresses the public prayers of the first believers.

You may be surprised to learn that the idea of reading prayers to God out of a book didn’t start with the Episcopal Church. In fact it started a long, long time ago. Take your bibles and open them to the book of Psalms. With one hand keep your place in Psalm 1 and with your other hand turn to psalm 150. The book of psalms, everything between your two hands, between psalm 1 and psalm 150 was the first prayer book. God inspired poets and prophets to write each psalm and then the people of Israel used the psalms to worship God every Sabbath, either putting them to music and singing them or saying them out loud as community prayers. Every Jewish boy and girl from about 700BC till the days of the apostles was raised saying the same prayers and singing the same hymns over and over again, week after week, month after month, year after year.

Not only set prayers though, every Sabbath day when the Jews gathered in their synagogues, we know that they would have readings and a sermon along with their set prayers, just like we do. How do we know this? Well turn in your bibles to the gospel of Luke chapter 4:16-20, “He [Jesus] went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up and on the Sabbath day, he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.”

Stop there for a moment. If you’ve ever been tempted by those who say that church is a waste of time and there‘s no reason to go, notice that Jesus himself, God the Son, worshipped in the synagogue every Sabbath, he made it his custom. If it’s good enough for Jesus something tells me it’s good enough for us too.

Okay back to the text, “as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.” okay skip down to verse 20, “Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.” What we just read gives us a very good idea of the way Jesus worshipped and the first believers worshipped. Every Sabbath there were readings from the bible, and every Sabbath, there was a teaching, or a sermon after the readings. Back then preachers sat down to preach and if you came to the confirmations this year you may have noticed that Bishop Bena sat down too. That’s a tradition that comes down all the way from the synagogue.

So Jesus worshipped every Sabbath day in synagogues that had both set prayers, like the psalms, and readings from the scriptures and a sermon and because the first believers were Jews and met together on the Sabbath we’re pretty sure that they did much the same thing only they, unlike the other Jews around them, worshipped Jesus as Lord and preached about his life, death, and resurrection.

So what we do here on Sunday mornings, at least in form, goes all the way back to before the days of Jesus. WE didn’t make it up. And Jesus himself participated in, worshipped in, this very way.

Now our prayers are not all psalms, a quick glance at your bulletin will tell you that. But, did you know that the prayer book is almost entirely made up of passages quoted or paraphrased from the bible? Almost every prayer we say together on Sunday morning comes either directly or indirectly from the Word of God. Just like the Israelites, just like Jesus, just like the early believers we come together and pray God’s Word back to him. It is the pattern God established through his inspiration of the book of Psalms and it is the pattern that Jesus confirmed in his participation in the worship of the synagogue, and it is the pattern followed by the model church of the first century led by the apostles themselves. And it’s a powerful pattern because the Word of God is in itself powerful.

Okay great, we worship way we do it because God gave his people a form and a pattern of worship that involves set prayers and readings and a sermon. But why did God set it up that way, did he want his people to be bored?

Have you ever heard the phrase there are no boring books only boring people? Well, I’d never call any of you boring, but the point of that phrase is that if you invest in a book and devote yourself to reading and understanding it, sooner or later it won’t be so boring. Well, I think the same thing applies to church.

There’s a great big misunderstanding of church in our society today. Church is not a show that we put on for an audience. If you come here every Sunday morning and sit in the pew and listen to the prayers and then listen to the readings and the sermon and then listen to the music and then go get your bread and wine and then go home, you’ve missed the whole point. You don’t come to listen to me pray or Anne pray, you come to pray, and you don’t come to listen to the choir sing praises to God, you come to sing praises to God. You don‘t come to just let the readings kind of wash over you, you come to hear the Word of God to you on this very day and then hear, during the sermon, how you can take God’s Word and apply it to your life. You’re not an audience, sitting back on the couch with your TV clicker, you’re a participant and God has given you this time and these prayers to participate. So if you’re bored, well, how can I put this nicely, it’s your own fault. There’s plenty to do!

You pray the prayers, you sing the songs, you give yourself to God every Sunday at the altar rail. You’re not an audience. I’m not a performer, We’re all a congregation of believers coming together before the very throne of God.

Do you know how the bible describes worship? As a “sacrifice” of praise and thanksgiving.” You and I come together and offer ourselves to God as a sacrifice. That means that we don’t just sit here like bumps on the pew, we use our lips and our tongues and our feet, knees and hands for the purpose that God intended, to worship him. You may notice that I sing really loudly and sometimes really badly. Well I don’t care, I’m not here to entertain or be entertained, I’m here to pour out my heart soul and voice to God and so I sing at the top of my lungs even songs I don’t know or like all that much and pray every prayer in my heart and with my mouth and look up every reading that I can in the scriptures because I come every Sunday expecting to give myself to God and for God in Jesus Christ to give himself to me. And he does.

How many people had a bike growing up? How many had training wheels on the bike? Now let’s say a kid gets a new bike for his 5th birthday, it’s his first bike, not a tricycle but a real bike, two wheels. So it has training wheels on it. Anyway the kid is really excited and he sits on his bike with the training wheels and he grabs the handle bars and he waits. Nothing happens. He sits there for about 20 minutes and the bike just sits there. He looks around and notices that he’s in the same place he was when he first sat down on the seat. He starts to get bored. Now if you were the kid’s dad or mom, what would you say to the poor guy. “The reason you’re bored is because you’re just sitting there.” Pedal for goodness sake and pretty soon you’ll get somewhere and enjoy yourself doing it? Worship is a lot like that bike. It can take you places with God that you’d never get to on your own and keep you from falling, but if you never pedal, you won’t get anywhere.

When we’re told in Acts 2 that the first believers devoted themselves to the prayers. That’s what it means. They didn’t just sit on the bike, they pedaled, they participated in the prayer and worship of the church. And when they gave themselves to God, they found that God gave himself to them. Whoever follows this example will find the same thing.

Amen.