James T. Cleland - "Some Reflections on Prayer" (February 16, 1964)
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| - | Christ, even as we come here to join our hearts today | 0:07 |
| with others around the world who witness for Christ | 0:13 | |
| in a fellowship which refuses to recognize any barriers | 0:18 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 0:23 | |
| (gentle music) | 0:28 | |
| - | Let us pray. | 0:52 |
| Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 0:55 | |
| be acceptable in thy sight. | 0:59 | |
| Oh Lord, our strength and our Redeemer, amen. | 1:03 | |
| Ever since the end of the 19th century, | 1:19 | |
| the World Student Christian Federation | 1:24 | |
| has every year invited all Christians | 1:28 | |
| to unite in a special day of intercession for students. | 1:33 | |
| As a rule, the third Sunday of February | 1:41 | |
| is set aside for that day of prayer. | 1:46 | |
| To dramatize the fact that it is for all students, | 1:52 | |
| one or two of the foreign students on our campus | 1:59 | |
| are invited to share in this university service of worship | 2:01 | |
| on this particular particular day | 2:08 | |
| as ministers of the word prayer. | 2:11 | |
| Now we have together confessed our sins, | 2:17 | |
| and we have made intercession for all students at Duke | 2:21 | |
| and in all colleges and universities throughout the world. | 2:27 | |
| Now let us look together at this matter of prayer. | 2:34 | |
| What is prayer? | 2:43 | |
| In essence, it is not asking God for things. | 2:48 | |
| It is simply talking with God on the assumption | 2:56 | |
| that He is, that He hears us, | 3:03 | |
| and that He answers in His way. | 3:11 | |
| Let's look together at three petitions | 3:17 | |
| which suggest what prayer is. | 3:20 | |
| By examining them and by understanding them, | 3:24 | |
| we may pray more reasonably, more seriously, | 3:28 | |
| more satisfactorily. | 3:34 | |
| The very heart of a good prayer | 3:38 | |
| is revealed in the words make me | 3:42 | |
| rather than in give me or do for me. | 3:48 | |
| Dean Cushman of the Divinity School | 3:54 | |
| has recently published a perceptive | 3:56 | |
| and well-written article on worship | 4:00 | |
| entitled "Worship as Acknowledgement." | 4:04 | |
| Now, what does worship acknowledge? | 4:11 | |
| Worship acknowledges that we are not autonomous creatures; | 4:18 | |
| that is, creatures whose center of reference is ourselves. | 4:26 | |
| We are theonomous creatures; | 4:35 | |
| that is, creatures whose center of reference is God. | 4:38 | |
| He is the creator of all and the Redeemer of any. | 4:49 | |
| Therefore, worship is first of all obedience. | 4:58 | |
| And fulfilled worship is perfect obedience. | 5:04 | |
| And the first petition in prayer | 5:10 | |
| where each of us acknowledges God is make me. | 5:13 | |
| Make me what thou wouldst have me to be. | 5:20 | |
| Make me like thyself | 5:25 | |
| so that my perspective may be, as far as humanly possible, | 5:29 | |
| thy perspective. | 5:34 | |
| Now, this is not easy, either for us or for God. | 5:37 | |
| We're naturally wrapped up in ourselves. | 5:48 | |
| There is a reasonable self-interest | 5:54 | |
| else we die, we peter out. | 5:57 | |
| Jesus recognized that in His summing up of the law. | 6:02 | |
| He did not tell His disciples to love themselves. | 6:10 | |
| Do you know why? | 6:17 | |
| He assumed that they did. | 6:19 | |
| And He accepted the fact. | 6:24 | |
| Because what He asked was that His followers would love God | 6:27 | |
| and love their neighbor as much as they loved themselves. | 6:32 | |
| And so self-love is widened to embrace others, many others, | 6:40 | |
| all others. | 6:50 | |
| If our imagination is sensitive enough and enlarged enough, | 6:53 | |
| there are two prayers which are invalid for the Christian. | 6:58 | |
| The first is bless me and my wife, son John and his wife, | 7:06 | |
| us four, no more. | 7:13 | |
| Oh, it's prayed, sure it is. | 7:19 | |
| Or we are going to heaven, the rest of you be damned. | 7:24 | |
| You're not going to heaven. | 7:31 | |
| We don't want heaven crammed. | 7:32 | |
| I've heard that. | 7:37 | |
| Now, of course, there's the prayer | 7:41 | |
| which goes to the opposite extreme. | 7:43 | |
| Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish philosopher and historian, | 7:45 | |
| has said to have remarked | 7:49 | |
| that there was only one prayer which a Christian could pray. | 7:51 | |
| Thy will, not mine, be done. | 7:57 | |
| Now, it's hard to cavil with that prayer, | 8:03 | |
| for our Lord used it in the Garden of Gethsemane | 8:09 | |
| when He did not wish to drink the cup. | 8:13 | |
| Let this cup pass. | 8:18 | |
| Who wants to drink the cup of death at 33? | 8:22 | |
| And then He said, "Not my will, but thine be done." | 8:27 | |
| And yet a critic of Thomas Carlyle's wisely suggested | 8:31 | |
| that he might have added one more petition. | 8:35 | |
| God, be merciful to me, a sinner. | 8:40 | |
| And I imagine if one were reduced | 8:48 | |
| to two petitions in prayer, | 8:51 | |
| these would be two of the best. | 8:54 | |
| God be merciful to me, a sinner, | 8:58 | |
| and thy will, not mine, be done. | 9:03 | |
| Because the two together would signify the realization | 9:09 | |
| that man is a creature, and God the creator; | 9:15 | |
| that man is a sinner, and God the Redeemer; | 9:21 | |
| that man is one who is given worth by God | 9:28 | |
| and who may think God's thoughts after him. | 9:34 | |
| Now, such a man anywhere in the world | 9:39 | |
| is one who knows his status. | 9:42 | |
| God has made him an adopted son, | 9:46 | |
| or God has made her an adopted daughter. | 9:50 | |
| He wants, she wants what God wants. | 9:56 | |
| And his prayers reveal that relationship. | 10:02 | |
| He consciously and continually prays, "Make me." | 10:07 | |
| But this make me cannot be completed in one dramatic moment. | 10:15 | |
| It takes time and more time. | 10:19 | |
| Therefore, the man who prays make me adds another petition: | 10:22 | |
| Show me. | 10:29 | |
| Show me . | 10:32 | |
| The disciples knew Jesus as a man of prayer, | 10:34 | |
| one who slipped away from them every now and again | 10:38 | |
| to talk things over with His father. | 10:42 | |
| They asked Him to teach them how to pray. | 10:46 | |
| Show us is their request. | 10:52 | |
| And He outlined for them what we now call the Lord's Prayer. | 10:55 | |
| And since His ministry, | 11:02 | |
| one of the ways for us to test the validity of a prayer | 11:03 | |
| is to ask, | 11:09 | |
| "Is it the kind of prayer that Jesus would've prayed?" | 11:11 | |
| Isn't that one meaning of the formal ending of our prayers | 11:18 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord? | 11:23 | |
| If we use that as the norm | 11:30 | |
| for judging the propriety of our prayers, | 11:32 | |
| how many would we abandon? | 11:36 | |
| How many would we alter? | 11:39 | |
| How many would we continue to pray? | 11:42 | |
| God has shown us the norm for prayer. | 11:45 | |
| I suppose that's one reason why we call Jesus | 11:48 | |
| the son of God. | 11:52 | |
| When we ask God to show us what to pray, He says, | 11:56 | |
| "Look at Jesus." | 12:01 | |
| And we hope that in His light | 12:04 | |
| we may see light clearly and pray accordingly. | 12:06 | |
| This was brought dramatically to my attention | 12:10 | |
| during World War II. | 12:13 | |
| So dramatically that I've never forgotten the incident. | 12:15 | |
| And I'll share it with you now. | 12:18 | |
| A girl who was a birthright Quaker and a convinced pacifist | 12:22 | |
| had just seen her husband join the navy. | 12:32 | |
| She was not merely resigned to the shattering fact. | 12:38 | |
| She was quietly serene about it. | 12:43 | |
| She explained to me how this decision was a joint one | 12:48 | |
| made after much thought and discussion. | 12:53 | |
| Two facts, two opposing facts, | 13:01 | |
| had dominated their conclusion. | 13:05 | |
| On the one hand, there was the Nazi menace | 13:11 | |
| intentionally endeavoring to wipe out Christianity | 13:16 | |
| as a way of life. | 13:21 | |
| On the other hand, there was their joint conviction | 13:26 | |
| that war was contrary to the will of God | 13:33 | |
| as revealed in Jesus Christ. | 13:39 | |
| And their working compromise was this: | 13:44 | |
| that the husband would go to war for Christ's sake, | 13:49 | |
| but not in Christ's name. | 13:58 | |
| For Christ's sake, but not in Christ's name. | 14:04 | |
| And yet the two prayers which that young officer | 14:11 | |
| caught in a social and personal dilemma could pray were | 14:15 | |
| God be merciful to me, a sinner, | 14:21 | |
| and not my will but thine be done. | 14:26 | |
| Now the resolution of that existential predicament | 14:32 | |
| may not meet with the approval of all of us, of any of us, | 14:36 | |
| But there was a basic honesty | 14:42 | |
| in the attempt to make a choice between two goods | 14:45 | |
| when only one good could be chosen. | 14:50 | |
| There was integrity in the choice. | 14:54 | |
| There was a measure of peace in the solution. | 14:56 | |
| Because their prayer for months before, | 15:02 | |
| it had been show me, show me, | 15:04 | |
| show me what one does in a world of sin. | 15:08 | |
| When two goods clash. | 15:17 | |
| Didn't Hegel define tragedy | 15:23 | |
| as when one was given not the choice | 15:25 | |
| between right and wrong, | 15:27 | |
| but when one was given the choice between right and right, | 15:28 | |
| and could only choose one right? | 15:32 | |
| This Sunday's a day of prayer for all students. | 15:41 | |
| What about those students who do not recognize God? | 15:43 | |
| He is still their creator. | 15:48 | |
| He recognizes them. | 15:53 | |
| What about foreign students? | 15:56 | |
| He is made of one blood. | 15:58 | |
| All nations to dwell on the face of the earth. | 16:01 | |
| What about Christian foreign students? | 16:05 | |
| There's really no such thing. | 16:08 | |
| All are one in Christ Jesus. | 16:12 | |
| That is, in the church. | 16:16 | |
| In Christ, there is no east or west. | 16:18 | |
| There is in the world east and west, | 16:21 | |
| but there is not in Christ. | 16:24 | |
| And that should be in the church. | 16:27 | |
| There is no east or west in him, no north or south. | 16:29 | |
| If any of us does not believe this, | 16:36 | |
| he must continue to pray show me so that you may make me. | 16:38 | |
| But there's a third petition: Use me. | 16:46 | |
| Use me. | 16:53 | |
| Prayer does not end with words; it is fulfilled in action. | 16:54 | |
| When Isaiah was staggered into a knowledge of God | 17:02 | |
| by the theophany in the temple, | 17:08 | |
| and when he knew that his sin was forgiven, | 17:13 | |
| not because of anything he had done, | 17:16 | |
| but because of the grace of God, | 17:18 | |
| there was one more decision for him to make. | 17:21 | |
| He heard a summons: | 17:26 | |
| Whom shall I send, who will go for us? | 17:29 | |
| Now, there are two answers to that double question, | 17:35 | |
| One is, "Here am I, thank God, send him. | 17:38 | |
| The other is, "Here am I, send me." | 17:48 | |
| Isaiah said the latter, "Send me, use me." | 17:55 | |
| And he became Judah's unofficial secretary of state | 18:00 | |
| for 40 years. | 18:05 | |
| When Jesus asked Peter three times, "Do you love me?" | 18:10 | |
| Peter answered almost in embarrassed indignation, | 18:16 | |
| "Lord, you know I love you." | 18:20 | |
| Do you remember Jesus' rejoinder? | 18:25 | |
| "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep." | 18:28 | |
| Deeds are supposed to follow words, | 18:36 | |
| especially the words of prayer. | 18:40 | |
| Prayer is supposed to result in the obedience | 18:44 | |
| of the whole life | 18:48 | |
| to the God to whom prayer has been addressed. | 18:50 | |
| We love God, but that isn't enough. | 18:54 | |
| We have to love our neighbor. | 18:59 | |
| On these two commandments hang, depend, | 19:03 | |
| all the law and the prophets. | 19:08 | |
| I wonder how much the power and the influence of the Jesuits | 19:12 | |
| is inspired by and summed up in one prayer | 19:19 | |
| of Ignatius Loyola, | 19:25 | |
| the founder of the Society of Jesus. | 19:27 | |
| Listen to him speaking to God: | 19:33 | |
| Fill us, we pray thee, with thy light and life | 19:37 | |
| that we may show forth thy wondrous glory. | 19:42 | |
| Grant that thy love may so fill our lives | 19:47 | |
| that we may count nothing too small to do for thee, | 19:51 | |
| nothing too much to give, and nothing too hard to bear. | 19:57 | |
| So teach us, Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest, | 20:06 | |
| to give and not to count the cost, | 20:14 | |
| to fight and not to heed the wounds, | 20:18 | |
| to toil and not to seek for rest, | 20:22 | |
| to labor and not to ask for any reward, | 20:26 | |
| save that of knowing that we do thy will. | 20:30 | |
| Amen. | 20:34 | |
| And you know the power of the Society of Jesus | 20:37 | |
| in the Roman Catholic Church. | 20:44 | |
| That's where it stems from. | 20:48 | |
| Use me. | 20:52 | |
| Use me. | 20:55 | |
| If this service of prayer for students has been a valid one, | 20:57 | |
| that is one which is strong, effective, sound, | 21:00 | |
| then the International Club on the campus, | 21:05 | |
| Operation Crossroads Africa, the Nicaragua Project, | 21:09 | |
| the Peace Corps, | 21:15 | |
| ought to have inquiries from volunteers, | 21:19 | |
| both of person and of money. | 21:22 | |
| For make me and show me should result in use me | 21:28 | |
| as the necessary sequence in prayer. | 21:35 | |
| This year the universal day of prayer for students | 21:40 | |
| falls on the first Sunday in Lent. | 21:44 | |
| Lent is the period of spiritual discipline | 21:51 | |
| which prepares us for the human tragedy of Good Friday | 21:54 | |
| and the divine triumph of Easter. | 22:01 | |
| And as we pray during the six weeks, | 22:06 | |
| it may be well for us to keep in mind some words | 22:10 | |
| which Jesus spoke | 22:13 | |
| as they're found almost at the end | 22:15 | |
| of the Sermon on the Mount: | 22:17 | |
| Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' | 22:22 | |
| shall enter the kingdom of heaven, | 22:32 | |
| but he who does the will of my father, which is in heaven. | 22:38 | |
| Make me, show me, use me. | 22:50 | |
| Amen. Let us pray. | 22:59 | |
| Almighty and eternal God, | 23:07 | |
| who hearest and answerest prayer, | 23:09 | |
| teach us how to pray | 23:15 | |
| that we may be thy useful children | 23:19 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 23:23 | |
| And may the blessing of the Lord come upon you abundantly. | 23:26 | |
| May it keep you strong and tranquil | 23:32 | |
| in the truth of His promises through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 23:35 |