Sunday, September 27, 2009, A Sermon by Rev. Lillie Mae Henley
If you believe and I believe and together we pray, the Holy Spirit will come down and free God’s people …
If you believe and I believe and together we pray, the Holy Spirit will come down and free God’s people …
Prayer is a powerful phenomenon.
Two weeks ago, out of the blue, I get a call from my primary care physician, an internist here in Washington, D.C. I found him through my insurance providers, and I am quite fortunate. He is everything you want in a primary care doctor. Here is part of our conversation, “Rev. Henley, this is Dr. _____.”
“Hi, how are you?” I responded.
“Wonderful, just wonderful, I had to call you and tell you that we are eleven weeks pregnant!”
“Oh, my goodness, how great. You have gone through so much.”
“Yes, not only are we pregnant, we’re pregnant with twins. And they’ll be here in the spring.”
“I am so very happy for you and your wife.”
“Thank you, but I had to call you and tell you, because I know you’ve been praying for us. And I want to thank you, and all our other friends, really, who have been praying.”
“Well now, I’ll pray for everything to be all right.”
“Oh, yes, will you, pray for a healthy pregnancy, for all three?”
“Of course.” …
In our reading this morning from the New Testament book of James, the writer, says, if someone is in trouble, if someone is hurting, pray for them. And if they are sick, call the elders of the church, pray for them, and this prayer offered in faith will make them well and Christ will raise them up.
I know that among us today there are those who are what we used to call in the Baptist Church, “prayer warriors.” You already know how powerful prayer is. You already know what it can do for you and others. For you, I’m preaching to the choir, so-to-speak, but others of us need to hear James this morning, especially me.
If you believe and I believe and together we pray, we can free our people.
Prayer is a powerful phenomenon.
My internist called me to let me know he was going to be a father after years of operations, procedures, emotional and physical disappointments, because he knew I was praying for him and his wife. He knew, because when we talked during an office visit, I would say, “You are right at the top of my list, right along with my son and his wife.” And it was true, and I did pray for them.
How powerful is prayer?
The doctor and his wife are pregnant.
Did prayer make them soon-to-be-parents?
My son and his wife are not.
Has prayer done anything for them?
Let’s come back to that in a minute.
In the book Prayer is Good Medicine, Dr. Larry Dossey, tells us that prayer can make a difference to patients undergoing medical procedures. In clinical tests, those patients for whom someone prayed had better outcomes than those who had no one praying for them. Even, those patients who did not know someone was praying for them.
Here is what Debra Williams wrote in a Plim Report in 1999.
Scientific Research of Prayer: Can the Power of Prayer Be Proven?
By Debra Williams, D.D.
1999 PLIM Retreat, (c) 1999 PLIM REPORT, Vol. 8 #4
One of the most quoted scientific studies of prayer was done between August of 1982 and May of 1983. 393 patients in the San Francisco General Hospital’s Coronary Care Unit participated in a double blind study to assess the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer. Patients were randomly selected by computer to either receive or not receive intercessory prayer. All participants in the study, including patients, doctors, and the conductor of the study himself remained blind throughout the study, To guard against biasing the study, the patients were not contacted again after it was decided which group would be prayed for, and which group would not.
It was assumed that although the patients in the control group would not be prayed for by the participants in the study, that others—family members, friends etc., would likely pray for the health of at least some of the members of the control group. There was no control over this factor. Meanwhile all of the members of the group that received prayer would be prayed for by not only those associated with the study, but by others as well.
The results of the study are not surprising to those of us who believe in the power of prayer. The patients who had received prayer as a part of the study were healthier than those who had not. The prayed for group had less need of having CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) … and less need for the use of mechanical ventilators. They had a diminished necessity for diuretics and antibiotics, less occurrences of pulmonary edema, and fewer deaths. Taking all factors into consideration, these results can only be attributed to the power of prayer.
Prayer has something to do with physics—quantum physics—and the atoms that are all around us and through which we are all interrelated. I’ve read several articles on the physics of prayer—well, you’ll just have to read them for yourselves! It is just too complicated for a sermon!
Scientists are also studying the mind through magnetic resonance imaging, MRIs. When a person prays or meditates, whether they are Christian, Buddhist, Atheists, or spiritual mystics, no matter what their religion, the same areas of the brain show activity.
Prayer is a powerful phenomenon that is universal for all human beings.
Prayer not only changes the outcome of physical realities, prayer changes us.
Now this isn’t a sermon about the traditional types of prayer, intercessory—praying for others—or petitionary prayer—asking for something, or adoration or gratitude. This is a sermon about prayer.
If you will pray with me, it will become clear.
A Prayer for Prayer [From Dr. Dossey's book]
May we let prayer be.
May we allow it to follow
The infinite patters of the human heart.
May we learn to practice the most difficult art,
The art of noninterference.
May we be guided by prayer
Instead of attempting to guide prayer.
May we allow prayer to be what it needs to be,
To be what it is.
May we let prayer be.
Let prayer be.
Let prayer be our attitude. It can be “how” we live our lives. I have heard many people say, not only Unitarian Universalists, but people from all faiths say, “My life is a prayer.” As we move down the street, ride the escalator, walk through our offices, work, volunteer, answer the phone, let prayer be our attitude. I guarantee your life will be different, make a difference.
Let prayer be our attitude.
Let prayer lead us to deeper relationships.
Let prayer be a time when our heart is open to the Creator. Let prayer be a time when our hearts are open to each other. You know relational theory says that to have relationships we must be vulnerable to the other. Anyone who loves another, and I think we all do, knows how vulnerable we are when we open our hearts to love.
Well, have we opened our hearts to the Creator, the Source of Love, and our God who sustains us? Have we opened our hearts to our God of the story? The God who sent Jesus to teach us about being in relationship with the Divine Mystery?
I’ve seen, as a chaplain in the hospital, some people who say they are very religious and have prayed a lot in their lives. And I’ve seen these very same people, curse God or blame God when they get cancer, or a loved one dies in an accident. I’m not denigrating them, in fact, I'm lifting up their experience. They are still in relationship with God even when they are angry, hurt, and devastated. They are continuing, even in loss, their own journey with God.
I was where they are once when I thought God allowed too many bad things to happen in the world. I was mad, angry,and even denied God's existence. But during it all, God never denied me.
Let prayer lead us into deeper relationships.
I’ll finish the story about my son and his wife. Yes, I have been praying for them. Petitioning God for them to know the love of children, asking more for them to be parents than for me to be a grandmother. That’s true. In the asking, though, I asked for them to know God’s love and presence in their lives. To know God’s Will for their lives. And as I pray for them every night, as I do you, I begin to know a different, somehow, greater love for them. It is hard to explain, a depth of understanding of my relationship with them that I did not know before I started to pray for them every night. And when I saw them for the first time in a long time a few weeks ago, there was the same bond which we have had for years, but there was more—at least for me—I can only speak for me.
Prayer not only changes the outcome of physical realities, prayer changes us.
Prayer is what it needs to be. So many of us grew up thinking words and prayer were synonymous. Prayer was spoken. Yet, you ask a person who has grown up as a Quaker; she or he will share a difference experience of prayer.
Once, there was a team of emergency techs and nurses running into Emergency with a heart patient on a gurney. There was nurse straddled straddle over the patient pushing rhythmically on his chest. Just like you see on medical shows! And those running and pushing the gurney were chanting rhythmically, “Go Cindy, go Cindy, go Cindy go.”
That was a prayer, as much a prayer as any I’ve ever heard. And I am sure that prayer was making a difference in the lives of each person, including the patient, as it was chanted and heard throughout the emergency room.
Let prayer be what it needs to be. If we look to Jesus, as my Aunt Gene did, praying every day, then we know that Jesus was pretty clear about prayer. He taught us his prayer, "Our Father who art in heaven...", and he taught us more about prayer. There were times when he got up very early in the morning, while it was still dark, and went off to a solitary place to pray [Mark 1:35].
The story in Luke 5:16 tells us he withdrew to lonely places to pray. And in John 17, Jesus prays for himself. “He looked toward heaven and prayed.”
Prayer is what it needs to be.
First Thessalonians 5:16 -17 says, “Always be joyful, and never stop praying…” is that possible?
It is if we…
Let prayer be our attitude.
If we … Let prayer open our hearts up to deeper relationship
And if we … Let prayer be what it needs to be
There is a flyer on the bulletin board in the hall leading to the parlor, and it announces the 17th Annual Prayer Vigil for the Earth, Oct 10 - Oct 11, 2009, Washington, DC. at the National Mall in Washington, DC. Will it keep flooding, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes from happening. No. But it will unite all the people who pray—and don’t pray—as one spirit. What more could we ask for as human beings?
If you believe and I believe and together we pray, the Holy Spirit will come down and set God’s people free.
If you believe and I believe and together we pray, the Holy Spirit will come down and set God’s people free.
Prayer is a powerful phenomenon. Pray more often, pray longer, pray.
Amen
Posted by UNMC Office at September 28, 2009 05:58 PM