William H. Willimon - "How to Do Prayer Right" (August 12, 2001)

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-	Please join in the prayer for illumination	0:07
	that is printed in your bulletin.	0:10
	Open our hearts, O mind, O God, by the power	0:13
	of your holy spirit so that as the Word is read	0:17
	and proclaimed, we may hear your message	0:20
	with joy this day, amen.	0:23
	The first lesson is from Isaiah:1.	0:27
	The vision of Isaiah, son of Amoz,	0:31
	which he saw concerning Judah, and Jerusalem,	0:33
	in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah,	0:36
	the King of Judah, hear the Word of the Lord your rulers	0:40
	of Sodom, listen to the teaching of your God,	0:44
	you people of Gomorrah.	0:47
	"What to me is a multitude of your sacrifices,"	0:49
	said the Lord, "I've had enough of burnt offerings	0:52
	"of rams and the fat of fed beasts,	0:55
	"I do not delight in the blood of bowls,	0:58
	"or of lambs, or of goats.	1:01
	"When you come to appear before me,	1:03
	"who asked you from your hand?	1:05
	"Trample my courts no more, bringing offerings is futile,	1:08
	"incense is an abomination to me, new moon and Sabbath,	1:12
	"and calling of convocation,	1:16
	"I cannot endure solemn assemblies with inequity.	1:18
	"Your new moons and your appointed festivals,	1:21
	"my soul hates.	1:24
	"They have become a burden to me,	1:26
	"I am weary of bearing them.	1:27
	"When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes	1:30
	"from you, even though you make many prayers.	1:33
	"I will not listen, your hands are full of blood.	1:36
	"Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean,	1:40
	"remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes,	1:42
	"ceased to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice,	1:46
	"rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan,	1:50
	"plead for the widow."	1:53
	This is the Word of the Lord, thanks be to God.	1:55
-	I should have mentioned that this is the beginning	2:08
	here at Duke, of employee appreciation week.	2:11
	Therefore, the majority of our choir	2:14
	and about everyone helping to lead this service today	2:18
	is an employee of Duke University.	2:21
	Well, they have been having a ruckus at Clemson University.	2:27
	If there is, and the controversy, interestingly enough is,	2:34
	not over the favorite Clemson subject of football,	2:41
	but it is over prayer.	2:47
	Over prayer before the football games.	2:48
	If there is one tradition that is beloved	2:52
	at Clemson University, it is having a prayer	2:55
	to begin the football games.	2:58
	The ACLU that believes that prayer anywhere other	3:01
	than safely tucked away at church,	3:05
	is an attack upon the government.	3:06
	The ACLU is opposed to the Clemson football prayer.	3:08
	But, the president of Clemson says this tradition	3:12
	is going to continue.	3:16
	And he's looking for clergy now who can pray appropriate,	3:18
	tasteful, generic prayers before the Clemson football games.	3:23
	I remember I was at a Clemson football game a number	3:27
	of years ago, and I was caught standing in the isles	3:29
	before the game, holding a soft drink in each hand,	3:34
	and there, my head bowed,	3:37
	50,000 people with their heads bowed,	3:40
	standing there before the game,	3:42
	it seemed odd to me, an odd place for prayer.	3:45
	And I remember the prayer was something	3:50
	about good sportsmanship and something about	3:51
	no injuries and everything.	3:55
	I also noticed that the Clemson football team appeared not	3:57
	to notice the prayers, they beat the brains	4:00
	out of Duke, during the game.	4:02
	(laughing)	4:05
	But, does prayer belong at a football ball game?	4:10
	These football prayers,	4:18
	they seem to me a kind of trivialization	4:19
	of that tough business of Christian prayer.	4:23
	Because Christian prayer is that difficult task	4:27
	of trying to do business with God,	4:31
	and letting God do business with us.	4:36
	It's enough to make you ask,	4:39
	what is real prayer, true prayer.	4:42
	You'll note that in this service, as most services	4:48
	of worship, is mostly prayer.	4:53
	The hymns, prayers, most of what we do is prayer.	4:56
	You can look at the bulletin and see that	4:59
	it's as if the scripture reading and this sermon and all,	5:01
	is to get you ready to pray.	5:04
	Most of what we do as worship, is prayer.	5:11
	I once taught courses at the divinity school	5:14
	on the leadership of Christian worship.	5:18
	And because Christian worship is mostly about prayer,	5:22
	I would announce to my seminarians,	5:26
	the beginning of the semester, course and worship,	5:29
	I'd say, "now by the way, during the semester,	5:31
	"you're going to write me half a dozen prayers	5:33
	"and hand them in."	5:36
	And then one of them would say, "what are you gonna do	5:38
	"with these prayers?"	5:40
	And I said, "I'm a professor, I'll grade them, of course."	5:41
	And someone would be shocked and say,	5:45
	"you can't grade somebody's prayer!"	5:47
	And I said, "watch me!"	5:51
	(laughing)	5:52
	You see, they were thinking that, oh prayer is just	5:54
	when we have a little free wheeling chat with the Lord,	5:57
	and who can put a grade on that?	6:00
	Who is to say that your prayer is like above average	6:05
	as a prayer or below average.	6:08
	Well, the prophet, Isaiah, for one.	6:12
	Isaiah, Jesus favorite prophet begins his prophecy,	6:17
	you've heard read, Isaiah:1.	6:22
	He begins his prophecy with an address	6:24
	to people in Sodom and Gomorrah.	6:29
	Which are bible code words for New York, New Orleans,	6:32
	but for today's service we will take this as Durham.	6:36
	"O people of Durham, your countless sacrifices,	6:41
	"what are they to me?" says the Lord.	6:45
	Here we've got a prophetic critique of worship, of prayer.	6:49
	Isaiah lists all the things that we do	6:56
	for God when we worship.	6:58
	Sacrifice, offering, praise, everything that we do	7:00
	as Isaiah says, "when you enter the presence of the Lord."	7:04
	Isaiah is educating about right prayer.	7:09
	What is right prayer?	7:16
	Fellow Methodist pastor, Kirbyjon Caldwell was asked	7:18
	to go to the inauguration of President Bush,	7:22
	and offer a prayer.	7:25
	Friend of mine, Peter Gomes, has prayed at the inaugurations	7:27
	of President Reagan and President Bush Sr.	7:30
	Maybe it's because I don't do it quite right,	7:36
	I've only been asked to pray outside of here,	7:38
	at the faculty dinner dance, and at the opening	7:42
	of the Washington Duke Hotel.	7:46
	(laughing)	7:48
	However, I've been privileged to offer sacrifice, prayer,	7:51
	to come into the presence of the Lord	7:56
	at some great services of worship.	7:58
	I remember High Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.	8:00
	I remember an even song	8:05
	at King's College Chapel in Cambridge.	8:07
	There was that sense that here is prayer, right.	8:10
	And maybe you'd be surprised,	8:19
	a lot of people come out of here	8:21
	on Sunday morning and they tell me, "I've driven	8:22
	"a long distance to come here to worship	8:25
	"because, well, here is worship done right."	8:27
	If you haven't been here in the chapel on a Thursday,	8:32
	on a February evening and Thursday for one	8:35
	of our choral vesper services.	8:38
	If you haven't been here on a Christmas Eve,	8:40
	or, on a bright Easter with the trumpets and the glory,	8:42
	you may not have seen Christian worship done	8:47
	in its fullness, in its glory,	8:50
	maybe we oughta put that on a billboard out front.	8:53
	Duke Chapel, prayer done right.	8:57
	Surely God Almighty just smiles on such prayer.	9:04
	"Not necessarily", says the prophet Isaiah.	9:11
	It takes two to have a conversation,	9:16
	it takes someone to speak, our Father who art in heaven,	9:20
	hallowed be thy name, and it takes someone else to listen.	9:24
	And our conversation partner protest,	9:30
	"your countless services, what are they to me?	9:34
	"I am sick at my stomach of your praise.	9:37
	"I've got no desire for your liturgical extravaganzas,	9:40
	"who told you I wanted a mass?	9:43
	"Your gifts are useless to me, stop tramping into my house,	9:45
	"the smell of your burnt offering make me sick,	9:49
	"your prayers have become a burden to me,	9:53
	"your countless prayers."	9:56
	And then God says something	10:01
	that I think is one of the most severe,	10:03
	tough things said by God	10:09
	in all of scripture, "I will not listen."	10:12
	Oh, when I was a professor of worship at the seminary,	10:21
	I may have graded down my seminarians on their prayers	10:25
	for poor grammar or excessive use of clerical cliche.	10:29
	But I never wrote down on those papers	10:34
	anything as negative as this,	10:36
	the Lord says to all those church going, hymn singing,	10:40
	tithing, praising folk at Sodom and Gomorrah,	10:43
	"go ahead, say your prayers, I'm not listening!"	10:47
	Years ago the president of the Southern Baptist Convention,	10:55
	said, "God doesn't hear the prayers of Jews,	10:58
	"wrong religion, just don't know how to use the right words,	11:04
	"can't say Jesus like we say that."	11:07
	But according to Isaiah he was wrong.	11:13
	Sometimes God gets worn out.	11:18
	Sometimes God just refuses	11:22
	to bother with our pregame chatter,	11:24
	but not for our reasons, God's got God's own reasons.	11:27
	What reasons?	11:34
	What is the acid test of good prayer?	11:36
	The sort of conversation that Almighty God	11:41
	will condescend to engage in.	11:43
	Isaiah hears God say,	11:48
	"put away your evil deeds,	11:52
	"pursue justice, champion the oppressed,	11:55
	"give the orphans his rights, plead for the widow."	11:58
	The divine test of prayer is not the right words,	12:05
	the right grammar, the right intonation, it's ethics.	12:09
	Bad deeds silence the most eloquent religious words.	12:15
	The test for what we do here on a Sunday from 11 until noon,	12:19
	is what we do out there, from Monday through Saturday.	12:25
	God goes so far as to say, "pray yourselves until	12:31
	"you drop dead, I won't listen to those of you	12:36
	"who pervert justice, who champion the cause of the rich	12:39
	"and the powerful, who take advantage of the vulnerable	12:43
	"and the powerless, go ahead, have yourselves a service,	12:47
	"but don't save me a seat, I won't be there."	12:51
	We come together and we pray.	12:57
	And I expect as on most occasions, today during our prayers,	13:00
	we will intercede for the less fortunate,	13:04
	and yet we are those, who just this last month,	13:08
	most of us have received our tax rebate check	13:11
	from the government, we who live in a country	13:16
	where something like two million children	13:20
	are without adequate healthcare, there are problems	13:24
	of food and housing, for those who don't vote,	13:27
	God says, "sorry, I don't listen to prayers	13:33
	"of people who pile up goodies for themselves	13:37
	"and let the orphans and the widows go to hell."	13:40
	When I was grading those prayers in my seminary classroom,	13:47
	I graded for grammar, theology, syntax,	13:51
	but Isaiah says, there's only one test for prayer	13:55
	that makes any difference to God, "justice!"	13:59
	Doesn't say that we're to believe in justice,	14:04
	the idea of it for the poor, rather we're to do justice.	14:06
	Make the calls of the widow and the orphan our own.	14:11
	And if we don't we're just sailing our pretty words	14:17
	out into the silence.	14:20
	Christian prayer is a hard thing to do,	14:25
	it doesn't come naturally.	14:28
	Years ago I remember a book entitled, "Religious Roulette:	14:31
	How to Pray Like a Christian."	14:37
	Religious Roulette, the pastor who wrote this book	14:39
	said that in church you get basically two kinds	14:42
	of prayer, you get Christian prayer	14:45
	and then you get Pagan prayer.	14:47
	Pagan prayer is when prayer becomes another technique	14:49
	for getting what we want, it's like a roulette wheel	14:53
	in a casino, you spin the wheel, the number comes up,	14:56
	if your luck is right, you get what you want.	15:00
	But Christian prayer,	15:04
	is when we lay ourselves open	15:08
	to what God wants, and we engage in that risky practice	15:09
	of coming into the presence of a God,	15:17
	who as Isaiah said elsewhere, who's ways are not our ways,	15:19
	thoughts not our thoughts.	15:23
	We often think of prayer is when we all get silent	15:27
	and then somebody tries to speak,	15:30
	where we reach out to God.	15:33
	But prayer is God's risky reaching into us.	15:37
	Sometimes in prayer is where we discover	15:46
	that God does not want some of the things we want.	15:49
	In the light of today's scripture, what does God want?	15:54
	Justice, compassion, activity for love and mercy.	15:57
	Now, I was hiking with a man this summer,	16:06
	who told me that his father was a rather amazing person.	16:10
	His father grew up poor in Anson County, North Carolina.	16:14
	His father didn't get much formal education	16:18
	but he said, "as a boy I remember going to bed at night,	16:20
	"and late into the night, my father would be there	16:23
	"at the kitchen table with law books open,	16:25
	"he taught himself the ways of the law."	16:28
	And he said, "my father had a deep burden on his heart	16:32
	"for the plight of tenant farmers in Anson County,	16:35
	"particularly, African American tenant farmers.	16:39
	"My father used to say: 'the situation	16:43
	"'for these tenant farmers, is no better than	16:46
	"'when they were slaves!	16:47
	"'they barley make it through the winter by borrowing enough	16:51
	"'to get food for their families, they have to borrow	16:54
	"it from the land owners at 6% interest,	16:58
	"'then they're supposed to pay it back when their crops	17:01
	"'come in in the summer, but the crops are never enough,	17:03
	"'and so they go deeper and deeper into debt,	17:05
	"'into a kind of slavery.'"	17:09
	Well then the depression hit,	17:13
	and a lot of those big land owners lost those farms	17:15
	and the bank hired my friend's father	17:18
	to manage that property.	17:21
	And he set up a program where he got these tenant farmers,	17:24
	he gave them instruction and advanced farming techniques,	17:30
	he taught them how to keep record books.	17:34
	He charged them fair interest for their loans.	17:36
	He got them the best results	17:40
	for their labors and their crops.	17:44
	And he said that, "when my father died,	17:47
	"there were 200 sharecropping families in Anson County,	17:49
	"most of them black, who for the first time	17:54
	"in their lives, owned their own land,	17:57
	"were living off the fruit of their own labors.	18:01
	And then he said, "at my fathers funeral we had to have	18:05
	"it at the home, we were members	18:08
	"of First Presbyterian Church, but we knew that there would	18:11
	"be more black people than white people at that funeral,	18:15
	"and we knew that they wouldn't feel welcomed at the church,	18:19
	"so we had the funeral at the house,	18:23
	"and everybody spilled out into the yard,	18:24
	"all out into the street."	18:26
	He said, "my father was a good man,	18:29
	"but he couldn't stand to go to church,	18:32
	"because he said he just couldn't stomach sitting there	18:35
	"as the offering plates were passed,	18:38
	"and to watch these people who were so dressed up	18:41
	"and looked so good on Sunday morning	18:43
	"and he knew what scoundrels they were	18:45
	"in their business practices."	18:48
	Prayer, Christian prayer,	18:53
	is not something that one hears all that often.	18:57
	Chances of hearing it in a football stadium	19:02
	on a Saturday afternoon are slim.	19:04
	When you come to think about it though,	19:10
	it's not that easy to hear truly Christian prayer	19:11
	even on a church, and on a Sunday.	19:15
	The Lord says, "when I can hear really good prayer,	19:20
	"right prayer, I love to listen,	19:25
	"I love to join in the conversation,	19:31
	"otherwise I just don't bother."	19:35
	Amen.	19:41

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "How to Do Prayer Right" (August 12, 2001)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 2:07. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 19:43.
What is true prayer? It’s not using the right religious words at a high-end church service ending with Jesus’ name. Isaiah 1 gives a prophetic critique of wrong prayer and offers an acid test of a good prayer: ethics such as justice and compassion. A pagan prayer is to ask God for something we want; whereas a Christian prayer is seeking for what God wants in us. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r44f1mz7j

Date:

August 12, 2001

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

Isaiah

Chapter and Verse:

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-1080
ref10317_gb7
uachapelsermaud
duke:321088
dcrau001724
ark:/87924/r44f1mz7j
43758fe9-355b-48fb-b045-dafd2e68d698

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "How to Do Prayer Right" (August 12, 2001)

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