Sermon for Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 27, 2015, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas
Sermon Text: Mark 9:38-50
Sermon Theme: “A Funny Thing Happens When You Don’t Pray”
(Sources: Emphasis Online Commentary; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Anderson’s Cycle B Preaching Workbook; original ideas; “Too Much Prayer/Prayer Jokes Online; jokes.christiansunite.com; The Parables of Peanuts)
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
In a Peanuts cartoon strip, Linus is kneeling by his bed saying his prayers. When Lucy walks in on him, he says to her, “I think I’ve made a new theological discovery.”
“What is it?’ Lucy asks.
Linus replies, “If you hold your hands upside down, you get the opposite of what you pray for.”
Although meant to be funny, Linus’ “theological discovery” shows the confusion many folks have about prayer. Many of us have questions about prayer. Can I pray for things I need when there are others with greater needs than I have? Would it be an insult to God if I prayed for a parking spot? Etc.
It’s not surprising then that the Bible has a lot to say about prayer, with Jesus even giving us The Lord’s Prayer, a model prayer to pray. Obviously, with the Biblical emphasis placed on it, prayer is very important in the life of a Christian. In our sermon text, the Apostle James gives us some solid counsel about prayer.
He says to pray for the suffering and the sick. This makes me think of the cartoon of Snoopy hugging a heart and saying, “When my arms can’t reach people who are close to my heart . . . I always hug them with my prayers.”
James also says we should pray by singing praises. We should thank and adore God in all things. The Apostle Paul tells us we must always pray with thanksgiving. It seems that you and I are always begging God to give us things, to bless us, to heal us, and we should do that. But we forget about thanking Him and praising Him for all that He has done and will do for us.
In another Peanuts strip, Charlie Brown is sitting up in bed, as though this thought suddenly came to him, “How would we feel if someone never talked to us till they wanted something? God has feelings, too!”
James says in our text we are to be prayed for by others, especially by the Elders of the church, and to be anointed with oil. By oil, he possibly could be referring ot the Balm of Gilead.
James lived in a world where the success of medical care was severely limited. There were no antibiotics, no understanding of germs and viruses, and infected wounds often led to death. Continue reading