Loading...Sermon July 30, 2017
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, LSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen, Newport, PA
Eighth Sunday After Pentecost, Track 1 Year A, Proper 12
//lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp12_RCL.html
The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
Please be seated.
Recently a friend, who has been receiving treatment for cancer, wrote me a note. She thanked me for all of the support I had given her during her treatment. Her treatment is over and she is currently cancer free. She thanked me for coming to visit her in the hospital in the early stages of her diagnosis and praying with her. She said she knew that that time of prayer and the subsequent prayers she received from so many people and churches, including our prayer list, as she went through treatment, had made all of the difference.
One of the wonderful things about The Anglican Church is that prayer is readily available. I mean it is called, The Book of Common Prayer. And praying together and how we pray together is a central part of our faith. Our Book of Common Prayer or BCP has prayers for every occasion.
From pages 158-261, there are prayers for every Sunday of the year plus special Saints days and other observances. Then Pages 810-841 contain additional prayers and thanksgivings. They are grouped into prayers for the world, prayers for the church, prayers for national life, prayers for the social order, prayers for the natural order, prayers for family and personal life, and Other Prayers, including grace, prayers for the evening or before worship or after receiving communion. There are general thanksgivings, thanksgivings for the church, for national life, for the social order, for the natural order and for family and personal life.
Pages 856 and 857 in the catechism speak about prayer and worship. Prayer is “responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.” The principal kinds of prayer are “adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition.” Each kind of prayer is then explained.
And our church tradition is that we pray four times each day. These are known as the daily office, since they are the daily official prayers of the church. Pages 37-135 contain Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline. There is a list of readings for each day of the year on pages 934-1001. There is year one and year two, so that over the course of two years, you will have read the entire Bible. The Psalms are read over the course of a month.
Pages 136-140 contain devotions for individuals and families. They are also separated into times of the day – morning, noon, evening, and bedtime.
There are prayer forms for Prayers of the People on pages 383-395 and the rubrics require intercessions for:
The Universal Church, its members, and its mission
The Nation and all in authority
The welfare of the world
The concerns of the local community
Those who suffer and those in any trouble
The departed, with commemoration of a saint when appropriate
We are certainly fortunate to have our Book of Common Prayer, aren’t we?
In Paul’s Letter to the Romans that we read today, Paul acknowledges that we do not know how to pray. Even then, probably about the year 55, nearly 2000 years ago, Paul knew that the early Christians struggled with how to pray. It is indeed a challenge. Yet, Paul comforts us by saying that even when we don’t know how to pray or what to pray, the Holy Spirit prays for us. We can take comfort in that.
One thing to note is that most often, prayer is about others or situations outside of ourselves. We pray for our nation, for our community, for the welfare of the world. When we pray for ourselves, we are reminded to always preface it with “your Will be done.”
So, even though throughout the ages knowing how to pray has been a challenge at times for most Christians, we have a book full of prayers, and we know the Holy Spirit helps us and intercedes for us when we don’t know how to pray.
And prayer is powerful. A couple of days ago, I watched the movie Hacksaw Ridge. Some of you may have seen it. It is about Desmond Doss. Mr. Doss enlisted in the army during World War II. He was Seventh Day Adventist, so refused to carry a gun. He trained to be a medic. At one point in his training, he faced court martial and dishonorable discharge from the Army for refusing a Colonel’s order to pick up a rifle. In the movie, he says:
“It isn't right that other men should fight and die, that I would just be sitting at home safe. I need to serve. I got the energy and the passion to serve as a medic, right in the middle with the other guys. No less danger, just... while everybody else is taking life, I'm going to be saving it. With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me to wanna put a little bit of it back together.”
Doss ends up in battle at Hacksaw Ridge on the island of Okinawa. The battle is awful, as any battle in war is. The US soldiers must climb up a sheer cliff face of coral, 100 feet high to be met at the top by Japanese soldiers, many of them in bunkers. On one day of fighting, there were at least 75 wounded soldiers. While the rest of the army retreated down the cliff face, the movie shows Desmond Doss praying to God. Doss isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do next.
In the movie, he hears a soldier crying for help. Then Doss starts to pray, “Help me get one more.” He alone is left on top of that ridge, but he carries each soldier he finds to the edge of the escarpment and fashions a way to lower them down by rope. Luckily, there are other soldiers at the bottom able to take the wounded to the medical tents. In all, Doss rescued 75 soldiers, including some who were Japanese. “Help me get one more,” was his continual prayer.
In subsequent fighting, he was wounded in the legs when a grenade exploded nearby. He tended to his own wounds for 5 hours before being rescued. While being taken to the medical tent, he saw another man more seriously wounded and crawled off his stretcher and told the soldiers to take the other man first. As he was waiting to be transported to the medical tent, he was hit by sniper fire in his arm, an injury that weakened his arm for the rest of his life. Yet, he crawled the remaining 300 feet to the medical tent.
As I watched this movie with clips of Mr. Doss speaking at the end and photos of him, I was overwhelmed by the power of prayer and the power of God. I thought how we do such horrible things to each other. The battle scenes and the killing were so awful and I’m sure real combat is 1000 times worse. For one thing, in the movie, I could not smell the awful stench that must have been created by so many people who had died and lay on the battlefield.
Yet, in the midst of so much hatred and death, God was there with Desmond Doss, working for love and for life. Doss didn’t carry any weapon and he aided any soldier who needed his help, regardless of which side they were fighting for. Doss prayed to God, “Help me get one more,” and God showed him a way to do that…a way towards the Christian hope and assurance of the Kingdom of God.
Paul Achtemeier in his commentary on Romans, sums up this passage of Paul’s letter by saying,
“Indeed, the verses in Romans urge us to have confidence in a future under God’s control and to shape our present acts in light of such confidence. (p.147)”
Desmond Doss did just that. In the midst of terrible destruction, he shaped his present acts in light of his confidence that the future was under God’s control. May we do likewise.
Amen
Desmond Doss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss
Romans, A Bible commentary by Paul Achtemeier https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22465450345&searchurl=isbn%3D9780804231374%26sortby%3D17
This is your Life episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_V6h6EJh9c
