“HDTV In-Coding”
Sermon Transcript for January 28, 2007
By Pastor Bob Coleman
Today we are continuing on a series of HDTV. Not High Density TV, not the one to watch the Colts on which, by the way, since it’s about prayer let me say it is okay to pray for the Colts in this way—don’t pray for them to win or to lose, but pray to do their best and see what happens. As my Dad was fond of saying, “Really will it matter 100 years from now who does win the Superbowl next week?” It really won’t matter 100 years from now except for the perseverance of doing the best that you can with the gifts that God has given you.
We are going to talk about HDTV today—How to Design the View of your Life. Last week Pastor Nancy talked about Bible study, reading the Scriptures, how to take some time in place of maybe something else you do to become aware of what God is saying in Scripture. Today--making further time in prayer. I want us to remember a very old image which many of you are familiar with. The image that is based upon Revelations where Jesus said, “I stand at the door and knock.” Have you ever wondered what that door is meant to be? Some have interpreted it to be our hearts, that’s good; Jesus knocking on the door of our hearts. Is it that Jesus wishes to come in? There is that aspect. But possibly even more so, maybe Jesus is asking for you to open the door and come out, come out into the presence of the world as God wants us to see it in and through prayer.
This is attributed to Albert Einstein that a doctoral student came to him one day and said, “You know I’ve studied all the doctoral thesis that I’ve had writings done on, and I’ve kind of run out of thoughts and possibilities. What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?” Albert Einstein responded, “Find out about prayer. Somebody, please, must find out about prayer.” Can you imagine what it would be for a scientist to delve in that deeply into prayer? Because prayer isn’t necessarily something that you can measure as science does. That’s a gift that God has given us in science. But rather we need to see prayer as a spiritual discipline to help open our hearts and our minds to what God wishes to say to us and to shape us and to mold us.
J. Heinrich Arnold wrote as a Christian writer, “Christian discipleship is not a question of our own doing, but the matter of making room for God so that God can live in us.” If you are like I am, it is not easy finding time for prayer. I know you think pastors have it all made and we’re so spiritual up here. It’s a real challenge to pray regularly and faithfully. Many other things press in upon us. It’s a challenge that I have even to be quiet before the Lord, to be silent. But I’m not alone; I suspect that many of you have that. I know that a lady called Penelope Pitstop has that problem. Have you ever met Penelope? Well you will in a moment.
A couple of weeks ago when looking at this theme and talking about it with the worship team, I said, “What if we could visually portray what are the many barriers out there against prayer in our lives.” I was driving behind a guy the other day, not a woman but a guy, who was eating a sandwich with one hand, talking on the cell phone with the other, and I have no idea what his legs were doing but it was staying straight as he was driving doing 70 miles an hour along I65. We try to do too much and prayer becomes lost in that doing too much. Well, I’ve mentioned about Penelope. Let’s see and listen to Penelope. Now a little set up before she comes—think of this as an old time silent movie. Watch for the screen up here, watch for Penelope down here, and think of, as you here the music, an old silent movie setting where Penelope will tell us and show us about the pressures in her life.
THE TELLTALE COMMUNIQUE
OR
UN-SUCCESSFUL MULTI-TASKING IN THE MODERN AGE
Written By Roger W. Smith
Acted out by Mary Dougherty
Graphics by Laura Bowman
Executive Producer: Bob Coleman
(Music begins). As our story opens, Penelope Pitstop—wife, mother, and devoted church member—has just returned from the market. (Penelope enters with bags of groceries, purse, keys, and lays items down. Removes coat, hat, etc. and sighs) Alas! The demands of shopping overwhelm me... (Penelope begins to unload the bags when the telephone rings.) Ring! Ring! (Penelope picks up phone and speaks) Hello? Hello? Ring! Ring! (Hand to ear, Penelope suddenly realizes) Surely, it is the cell phone. (Searches for cell phone; finds it on belt and answers.) …A call from Reginald, my darling husband. (As she listens, a look of surprise and then horror…) A guest for dinner in one hour…egad! I must return to the market! Alas! The demands of marriage overwhelm me… (As she begins to leave a sound is heard.) Chirp! Chirp! (Hand to ear, opens cell phone, speaks, hears nothing.) Chirp! Chirp! (Looks at phone, sees text message, pushes button.) A text message from Prudence, my precious daughter—Mom, can you like drive me to school for cheerleading practice and to the mall ‘cause I like need new jeans and there’s this amazing sale at the shoe store and I just like have to have this one pair and like can I have ten dollars for pizza later and my homework is all done and like do we have anything to eat? (Penelope text messages her daughter back) Where are you? You should have been home by now.) (Daughter responds) I’m like in my room. (Penelope hangs up phone) Alas! The demands of motherhood overwhelm me. (Penelope starts to leave when the phone rings.) Ring! Ring! (Penelope answers phone and speaks at length, then hangs up.) Alas! The demands of the UMW overwhelm me. (Penelope sits, head in folded arms and begins to sob.) Woe is me! Sob…cry…sniffle…wail (Penelope looks up and blows her nose). Pffffffft! Beef! Beep! Whrrrr! Tweet! Boing! You’ve got mail! (Penelope reads e-mail):
To: Penelope(Penelope@rushhour.com)
FROM: GOD(God@streetsofgold.net)
God: Penelope, this is God.
Penelope: Yeah, right.
God: No really, it’s God. You know—Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Penelope: OK, I’ll play along, but God doesn’t speak through e-mail.
God: I don’t?
Penelope: No, God speaks out of nowhere, like through the air.
God: Oh, I see. Through the air…like e-mail.
Penelope: Yes! Like e-mail…now wait a minute, that’s not fair.
God: Why?
Penelope: You tricked me!
God: I prefer to call it discernment.
Penelope: Discernment?
God: Yes, it means you’re looking for me and you see me or hear me.
Penelope: But I wasn’t looking for you.
God: What were you looking for then?
Penelope: I was looking for some peace and quiet, and to be appreciated, and for someone to remember I can’t get everything done in one day, and for somebody to listen to me.
God: Ok.
Penelope: Ok?
God: Ok, I am.
Penelope: You are?
God: Yes.
Penelope: Yes, who?
God: No, he’s on first…I am.
Penelope: I get it, you’re messing with me.
God: Well, I made you didn’t I?
Penelope: I suppose.
God: So if I made you, can’t I change you?
Penelope: I don’t know.
God: He’s on third…I am. Can’t I change you since I made you?
Penelope: What are you…exactly?
God: What’s on second…I am.
Penelope: So you’re all those things I’m looking for?
God: Yes…I am. And you need to listen to me.
Penelope: How do I know I need to listen to you? There are lots of people who want me to listen.
God: Well, let’s see. When’s the last time the phone rang? Or the cell phone?
Penelope: Why, right before you sent a message…Oh boy! Am I in trouble?
God: No, of course not. I just want you to stay in touch so we can talk, just you and me.
Penelope: You sent a message just for me?
God: Just for you!
Penelope: Oh yes, I understand now. I get it. Just you and me! Thanks God for everything!
God: My pleasure! And Penelope, keep in touch.
Penelope: Amen.
(Penelope nods, thinks a moment, then begins to type)
Dear Reginald: Dinner in freezer, 450 degrees for 22.5 minutes. Don’t forget to pre-heat.
Dear Prudence: You have enough things. More than the mall or anyplace else can provide. And the school is three blocks away so like, walk!
Dear UMW: I simply cannot bake 16 pies by tomorrow. Something more important has come up. Something I hope each of you can understand.
THE END
That’s the pressure of life. Penelope is really no different than the rest of us. There are so many things that claim our time or make us feel inadequate to spending time with God. Phil Yancy in his book, Prayer, What About It?, says, “Whenever I fixate on techniques, or sink into guilt over my inadequate prayers, or turn away in disappointment when a prayer goes unanswered, I remind myself prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.” The great “I am”. Nancy Mairs says, “Who one believes God to be is most accurately revealed not in their creeds, but in the way one speaks to God when no one else is listening.” So one, recognizing that God is with us; two, recognizing that God loves us and that we are in a personal relationship to speak with God. You see, prayer is a two-way street. It means communicating love from God to us and love from us to God. Loving God in this way through prayer with only half of your mind just will not cut it. Half mindedness is no better than half heartedness. Remember in prayer, though, is like good conversation. Seventy percent of good conversation is listening to the other person. And the same is true in prayer. Many times we avoid listening to God by filling our prayers with so many things that we find out later are really not that important.
We cannot make god visible to us, but we can make ourselves visible to God. Jesus was helping His disciples to learn this in Chapter 11 of the Gospel of Luke. The question came in this way with a very familiar answer. As it said in Verse 1 of Chapter 11, “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to p-ray, just as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” And on down in Verse 9, Jesus continues to say, “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
What a beautiful offering. Does it mean though by repeating that Lord’s Prayer all the time by memory that that is good enough? Actually, God was saying through Jesus, “This is a model for your prayers. Think of the Lord’s Prayer as a form for you to use.” By the way, you have a sheet in your bulletin that says “Notes”. Feel free to write this down. Not a test at the end, but a model for you to follow. If you have trouble starting off with a prayer, “What do I say?” It’s like the people who come to Pastor Nancy and myself and we go to a funeral. “What do I say?” Well, sometimes we do not know what to say except there may be a form of what you can do.
So let’s go through the Lord’s Prayer and see what God is giving us as a model for prayer.
Praise: First of all would be praise. Start off a prayer with praise. “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” It’s always good to let God know you appreciate who God is at the beginning.
God’s Plan: And then maybe you may talk about God’s plan or purpose for your life. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Thanksgiving: Then moving on to be thankful for something. It can be a long list of things or very simple and straightforward as the Lord’s Prayer says, “Give us this day, our daily bread.”
Confession: It’s good to have a part of your prayer to be on confession letting God know that you know what He knows that you are not all that you can be. No surprise to God by the way. Confession is as important for us to say as it is for God to hear. But that’s when we say, “Forgive us our trespasses or our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Petition: And, yes, petition—bringing things and ideas and hopes and possibilities and concerns and frustrations when we say, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Praise: And it’s always good to end your prayer with another phrase of praise. “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever”.
It’s good to memorize and use the Lord’s Prayer. It can be done in the spur of the moment. But it is also important to use it as a model of how we can pray other kinds of prayers. But enough of the academic approach to talk to you about prayer. You are going to practice prayer today whether you want to or not. Of course, I can’t force you to do that any more than God can. But I do want to give you some opportunities; and I want to do it in a way to recognize that as a group like you, you are so varied, there is no really one pure, simple way to pray except to be in conversation with God. And there may not be one simple, pure way or place in which to pray or atmosphere around you except I really advise you to kind of get out of the heavy bombardment of news and media and TV and all the things of this world as much as you can. One of the ways to do that is simply silence. Pastor Nancy used that in the pastoral prayer today. And silence is what we are going to do. And then we are going to follow with some music. Appropriate music you have to choose, what might help put you into a prayerful mood. Now for some people music is distracting and you can’t use it. And then I want to show you some images that I’ve chosen that are inspirational to me about God’s creation and then about some loved ones and some concerns. Visual stimulation can be helpful in that way. If you want to pray for your family, have a picture of your family in front of you and pray for each one individually as you go through your prayer. Or maybe that’s a distraction. You have to practice prayer to know how you can best listen and speak to God. But make sure you have adequate and ample amount of silence in there so that you can truly listen to what God may be wishing to say to you.
So we are going to pray right now. It’s going to be guided through with those various segments. Give cues when they happen; I’m kind of a director at this point. But you can be the director of your own prayer and use this kind of model and try out different places and settings and backgrounds. What will work best for you; but you must try it. So first, let us be in an attitude of prayer where silence will be the gift for you to listen to God. (Moment of silence) (Moment of music) Visuals can help, particularly images of God’s beautiful creation. So look at the picture that we have chosen. Maybe this is an inspiration and something else, such as a flower, but let us think upon this beauty of God’s creation and let it be the focus of our prayer. Another form of God’s creation are people and being in charge of the images, I have chosen a picture of my grandson. If that doesn’t bring a prayerful thought of that young life, any young life… And for me, also, I’ve chosen a second picture. This is of my mother and my grandson, her great grandson. It helps me to focus on family, yes; but it also helps me to notice the beginning and the ending of life. Mom is still with us, but 86, how many more years can she count? But it still tells us that God is in charge of creation—our birth, our life—and we are held in His hand through all of it. And physical death is not the end but it is the transition that God promises. But there is much in the world that we can be sorrowful for. We may petition to God about suffering. I’ve chosen a picture of a child crying, for what reason and what setting and what culture we do not know. But focusing on these images in our minds at least, if not physically in our hands, can help us in our prayer.
So now, again in silence, bring to your mind an image of a loved one, a beautiful scene of creation, some image of suffering or hurt, and see what God is saying to you. (Moment of silence) Amen.
Now, you’ve practiced this, but it takes more. I can mentally, verbally tell you what to do. And there is a construct of mental thinking that’s important in prayer. But it also must be balanced by feeling. Recognize that you can have a structure of prayer and it holds you through the times when you can’t think anything more. So the Lord’s Prayer may be the foundation that you return to. But seek also the opportunity to simply be in the presence of God. As with Penelope, God says, “I am with you. I made you and I can change you if you but let me.” Let prayer be a shaping force in your life to change the codes of your life, to change the view of life through prayer.
Now Phillip Yancy would say in his book and I would agree with him, there are seasons of prayer when it does make an emotional connection for you and other times it can be very dry and seemingly distant. Why that is only God can help us to know; but keep at it. And if you think you are the first to have struggles with it, go back and read the ancients of the church. On a quote from St. Theresa of Avalon in 1500 A.D. she writes this poem that gives some thought and some hope and some understanding of how we can get to see God and listen to God in the small things. She says:
May today their be peace with Him
May you trust God so that you will no exactly you are where God wants you to be
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born with faith.
May you use those gifts that God has given you;
May you pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing that you are a child of God.
Let God’s presence settle into your bones,
And allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise, and love like the river of God
This was after a long time in her life when she felt very dry. Finally God broke though again to her; but it takes patience and even persistence. But not trying at all is the greatest tragedy of all. For God says, “I am here for you. I am to be your God; will you be my child?”
So in an attitude of prayer, I want to read a poem by Charlotte Anselmo. Maybe this speaks to you in the challenge of your life at this moment and to give you hope that God is present. Let us hear these words.
JESUS AT THE DOOR
I hurried through my daily chores
And didn't stop to pray,
But a knocking sounded in my head
Did you make time for me today?
I had so much that I must do
I pushed the thought away,
And hurried on to get things done
I've no time to pray today.
When at last my work was finished
Happy...I should have been,
But within me I felt empty
There's that knocking in my head again.
Down on my knees I dropped
with Jesus I would soar,
To answer that sweet knocking
It's Jesus at the door.Lord, help us each wherever we are in our spiritual journey to bring prayer more to the center of our lives. Let us practice the gift that you have given us—conversation with you and from you. Thank you, God, for your persistence and your faithfulness. Forgive us when we have fallen away. We wish to start again, to be renewed, to pray. Amen.
Amen.
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