Dan Joseph
Over the years that I have stood in this pulpit I have
told some very bad jokes – today will be no exception!
What’s E.T
short for? Because he’s only got little legs!
Two ships were
sailing in the ocean. The first ship was red, and the second ship was purple.
All the sudden both ships collided and everyone was
marooned.
Hopefully one of these made you groan!
There are
certain sounds that we make which transcend language, which go beyond any
barrier or divide that humanity creates, and those sounds make us one with the
rest of the world: We all laugh, gasp, moan and groan to name but a
few.
There are many things in the world that we look at and sometimes we
are just left speechless, sometimes we hear something on the news and we are
just left open mouthed unable to respond.
Sometimes we hear about
something and it makes us angry, it gets us upset and we want to rage against
it. All of these feelings are perfectly normal, we all share
them.
Living as we do, in a democracy we like to comfort ourselves with
the fact that once every few years we get to do something about our local
council or national government. We like to feel that we have the power to
change things, and in our own lives there are many things we can change – but
it’s not long before we find a situation that just seems too big, too impossible
for us to do anything about it, even though we look at the situation and know
that it is wrong and that it needs to get better.
Maybe you’re passionate
about the environment and hope that world leaders will do more than just talk
about climate change, maybe it’s justice issues where we see people being
persecuted or their freedoms curtailed, maybe it’s society’s attitude that needs
to become healthier, more affirming and less greedy.
Each of these types
of issue are the sort of thing where we can still make a personal difference,
but usually in a small way; only when lots of people act together, can our
personal impact be multiplied. Our reading today reminds us of an
important fact about God the Holy Spirit, reminds us that it is present in this
world and understands us.
The Holy Spirit understands us when we look at a
situation that makes us groan with disappointment, when we are victims of
injustice and it makes us just want to shout and understands us when we feel
small and powerless.
There are times when words alone just seem unable to
express how we feel. If you’ve ever felt stricken by grief or suffered with
depression, somehow it seems however you try to put into words how you are
feeling, you just don’t seem able to convey it across to someone
completely.
Our reading reminds us that the Holy Spirit truly understands
our frustrations with the world, with situations that are so much bigger than we
are that sometimes we can’t find words to convey how we feel inside. The
Holy Spirit we are told ‘groans with us’ when we are unhappy or frustrated, the
spirit understands our angers and disappointments and intercedes with God the
Father for us.
So completely does the Holy Spirit understand us that even
when we are lost for words to try and describe our hopes or our feelings, the
spirit will find the words that need to be used. Through prayers that look
not to our own needs but the needs of others, that pray for God to become
involved in a situation we offer intercessional prayers for the world. The first
thing to remember about prayer is that it is a skill we should all make sure we
get plenty of practise in.
Like any other skill in life we may need, it
has to be done ‘hands on’, you don’t learn to drive a car by watching ‘Top
Gear’, you don’t learn to play the piano by listening to a CD and you don’t
learn to swim by reading a book about it. Well it’s the same with
prayer.
Our prayer muscles need regular exercise, sometimes that is
through spending a few hours switching off from the rest of the world, sometimes
it’s just closing your eyes for a couple of seconds and casting your mind
heavenward – the spiritual equivalent of a text message. But however we choose
to pray the important thing is that we do it.
If we return back to today’s
reading we have an emphasis on the Spirit as "helper,” Paul's understanding of
the work of the Spirit arose out of his own personal experience, not some
theoretical analysis, and this is what we need to aspire to.
One of the
lasting gifts Jesus left us is his instruction on how to pray, he calls for us
to honour and be respectful to god, to pray that bad things will not happen in
our lives and that we should pray for his Kingdom to be done here on
earth.
To pray for the world to be a happier place, a more just place, a
more peaceful place – is all there in the Lord’s Prayer.
Praying for the
world becomes more complicated the more we think of it, since we often allow our
own prejudices and agendas to influence them. Depending on which views we hold
will influence what we tend to ask for. Sometimes we have to stand back and
offer the situation up to the Lord and say – please intercede and resolve it,
our reading today reminds us that ‘he intercedes according to God’s will’.
Jesus promises us that our prayers will be answered, sometimes when we
consider issues that affect whole societies or the world at large we may wonder
how that can be when so little may seem to change.
The bigger the prayer
the more we need the gift of patience, waiting for God to answer our prayers is
not laziness, is not abandonment – waiting for God is not a call to do nothing.
In a world where we are taught to expect instant results, those without patience
may sometimes end up treating God like an inattentive waiter who’s failed to
catch your eye.
If we set ourselves up thinking that god will suddenly
stop global warming in a flash of lightening tomorrow because we pray for it
today, then even though he has the power to do it, we are probably setting
ourselves up to be disappointed. His holy spirit not only intercedes for us but
also empowers us, and sometimes that is the way that we find our prayers being
answered, in giving us the confidence to make a difference in this
world.
The Holy Spirit is both our companion, who understands our
problems and our hopes, but also the one who grants us gifts and abilities – and
in order to make the fullest use of them – we need prayer to become part of our
nature, part of our DNA. All relationships thrive on communication, the more we
make the effort to talk, the deeper our understanding becomes.
Believing
that God will answer prayers in his way and in his time is a test of our faith,
and the closer our relationship with God becomes, the more we begin to trust
that God knows what he is doing, that he will make changes in our lives and in
the world. Today’s reading reminds us that our hope in God is not misplaced,
that hope in God to achieve the impossible is not being naive – it is a test of
our maturity and our character. The next time something makes you groan or
growl, just remember there’s someone right next to you who knows exactly what
you mean.
(Dan Joseph)
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.