The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, 25 July 2010
The Reverend Allen LaMontagne
On the occasion of a service of Holy Baptism, a sermon based on RCL Proper 12, Year C: Hosea 1.2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2.6-15, [16-19]; Luke 11.1-13.
We know that during Holy Week, the word passion comes into our worship conversation. The Gospel on Palm Sunday is introduced as the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew, Mark, or Luke, depending on the year in the lectionary schedule. The entire story of Christ during Holy Week, all that leads up to his crucifixion and resurrection, is typically called the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a provocative word, passion is. It is used in relation to romantic liaison; it implies sensuality. It connotes desire.
When we come to the part of this service this morning in which we renounce evil and affirm our Lord’s sovereignty, our willingness to follow Christ as he leads us in his ways, we are asked if we renounce all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God, God’s passion for us. And we do renounce all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God…but all desire is not sinful is the point here. The Passion that moves Christ along the path of his earthly life from Nazareth to Jerusalem, to a hill called Golgotha where he is crucified, a path he takes willingly, passionately, that Spirit is born in us on the occasion of baptism, and again and again in the course of our lives lived in faith. Passion is the vehicle in which faith is borne in the world.
I can’t recall to whom it is attributed, but it is said that true religion–all good ideas—stem from a lump in the throat. That phenomenon we experience when emotion and caring converge and create an ache in us. An ache for something that may not yet be, but that is trying to be, as a chick pecks at its shell to break free, and grass grows through the cracks in asphalt. That is the Spirit in us, put there by a loving God whose ache for us sets in motion that which we know as the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is passion we see as it develops in the disciples in the Gospel this morning. After Jesus prays intimately with his Father in heaven, the disciples find themselves wanting. They want a relationship as deep and passionate as that which finds expression between the persons of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the original community of love. They wish to trust someone as much as Christ does his Father. They put their desire into words, humbly asking Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Help us connect with one another, with you—with God, your father and our father. They have that lump in their throat, we can imagine.
Peter W. Marty, a Lutheran pastor, understands that the disciples are not asking for some improved prayer technique. They don’t want a lesson in whether it is better to kneel or stand to pray. Marty says, their problem is a perceived lack of confident faith. He says, and I quote, “If you want to get better at prayer, it’s a good idea to work on the central relationships in your life…. We are only as good at praying as we are at the other relationships in our lives. If every good relationship revolves around a strong desire to be with someone else, these disciples were hungry for a desire to know God in a deep way. Until they could realize some semblance of the deep bond that Jesus enjoyed with the Father, their best prayer practices were irrelevant.” (The Christian Century, 13 July 2010, p. 21)
At the heart of good prayer, then, is holy desire. A Dominican priest named Howard McCabe makes the case that what distracts us when we pray is that we pray for things we don’t really want. They may be good and noble things, but we often aren’t really into them at the moment we make some effort to pray … There is something deeper within us that needs to find its way from the dark corners of our inner selves to the light of day in the power of the Spirit who St. Paul tells us prays within us, on our behalf. McCabe says, “Distractions are nearly always your real wants…. If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted. People on sinking ships do not complain of distractions during their prayer.” (Ibid., 21)
What do you want? Do you know? God knows, and that’s why the Spirit in us, God’s Spirit, does the heavy lifting when it comes to prayers that edify and sanctify us. It is for us bravely to be in touch with what we want. We do seem to hear more about sinful desires, than holy wanting, but God’s passion for us is what the Passion of Jesus Christ is about. God wants us so much as to die and be raised again in order to bring us back to loving, enduring relationship.
I know Liam’s parents, Liam’s godparents and his family, all want the best for Liam. In the Rite of Baptism, we go far beyond wanting him merely to go to the best schools, to marry well, all the things we logically and hopefully wish for Liam to have in life. What we pray for today are things about his spirit, his heart, the deepest Liam is prayed for today–the Liam God embraces in his heart.
It is the case that we baptize Liam today. And a good thing it is that we do. But it isn’t the only thing today that we are about. We are about rightly aligning our desires with God’s, for in the prayers we offer today on behalf of Liam, his family and friends, we pray for ourselves, the community in which Liam’s life will have an impact. Liam is already a minister of God, for we are gathered here today with him to do the work God gives us to do, to baptize Liam, and in doing so, to pray passionately, for Liam and ourselves, the Church and the world.
Pray for what you deeply want, ladies and gentleman. Your prayers will lead you somewhere God is eventually, for the Passion of God is so strong as to find us where we are. May we turn to God today passionately, with our whole selves; put yourself into the prayers, today and always, in the name of God…Amen.