"Why Jesus Prayed"

“Why Jesus Prayed”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196   corinthtoday.org

 (© 2010 by Robert M. Thompson.  Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, Copyright 2010 by New York International Bible Society.)

Simple things are harder.

Without really planning it for the purpose of sermon preparation, I found myself alone here in the sanctuary one morning this week while it was still dark.  I deliberately turned on no lights, because my purpose was quiet prayer and reflection.

This space feels different when you’re alone in the darkness.  It was just before dawn, so it wasn’t pitch black.  There was just enough light outside to illuminate the parts of the chancel stained glass window that are most transparent.  The white garments and raised hand of Jesus were most vivid.  Before long the bluish hues all through the window shone brightly.  I never realized how much blue was in the window.

In this room in the dark there’s certainly a sense of your own smallness, which is the intended effect of Gothic church architecture.  There was an undistracted serenity without distraction as I prayed silently for my family, for the family of Meg Williams, whose funeral I was about to write, for this sermon, and for you, who would listen to it.  My mind also wandered freely at times, typical of my attention deficit malady. 

I wonder exactly where Jesus went when Mark says, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (1:35).

The adjective “solitary” is variously translated “isolated,” “desolate,” “lonely,” “secluded,” “solitary,” or “deserted.”  The reason is that the same word used as a noun is “wilderness.” Already Mark has told us of John the Baptist and Jesus being in a literal wilderness (vv. 3-4, 12-13).

But Mark didn’t say Jesus went into the wilderness that morning.  He went into a “wilderness place.”

In Mark’s fast-paced style of writing, here we are only 35 verses into his Gospel, and he has already told us in verse 28 of Jesus’ popularity rising faster than a post-monsoon flood, and in verse 33 that the whole town (unnamed, but somewhere in Galilee) wanted a piece of him, especially those who were sick or demon-possessed.  If you knew an authentic healer was in town, wouldn’t you join the surging crowd?

Who knows how late Jesus stayed up that night?  Did he finally cure everyone and they went on home?  Was there a point at which the doors were simply shut and the others were asked to come back the next day?  Was it nine o’clock or closer to midnight or even 2:00 A.M. before he finally laid his weary head on a pillow at the home of Simon and Andrew?

And what woke him up early the next morning?   The 50-something men in my Bible study were quite convinced he had to go to the bathroom, but that could be just projecting our life stage on him.  Speaking of projection, I’m wondering he was like me in that if I wake up early for any reason and have a lot on my mind, it’s hard to go back to sleep.

So he got up, sneaked out of the house (snuck, if you’re less particular about evolving grammar), and found a desert-like place: a sanctuary – quiet, undistracted, lonely.  There he prayed.

The Man talks to God

What did Jesus pray?  Mark doesn’t tell us – maybe because he likes brevity but probably because he didn’t know.  As I sat in the sanctuary praying the other day, I wondered if it would be too presumptuous to speculate what Jesus said to the Father that early morning.  After all, we’re dealing here with God-to-God communication, aren’t we?  The Son of God is talking to his Father.  How can we ever enter into that dialogue?

I understand the objection, but offer two rebuttals.  First, we do have hints elsewhere in the Gospels of what Jesus said when he talked to his Father.

Second, when Mark tells us that Jesus prayed, I don’t think Jesus prayed as God.  He prayed as a man.  I’m treading on thin ice theologically here, because I don’t want to divide the natures of Christ.  But if you can imagine the pre-incarnate Son of God communicating with the Father, I don’t think we call that “prayer.”  It was as a human being that Jesus talked to God.  That’s something we can enter into.  It’s something we are should try to enter into.  That is, I’m sure, one reason Mark tells us Jesus prayed.

With some trepidation and humility, permit me a little pastoral license as I imagine what Jesus might have prayed to the Father that morning in the dark solitude of a wilderness place.

Holy Father, I find myself drawn to you in refreshing stillness of isolation and quietness.  Only a few hours ago needy people clamored for my touch and my words to make them whole.  Now as a man I am needy as well – yearning for you as a deer pants for water.

Sitting under these stars that we exploded into existence, only you and I know how big they are and how many they are.  They reflect the glory we shared before the world began, a glory unfathomable to those who really believe they live at the center of the universe.  May my life on this tiny speck of dust these humans think of as a great big earth reflect your eternal glory.

Even after thirty years on this planet, I am still getting used to this one way conversation called prayer.  That my thoughts of you are confined to three pounds of pinkish-beige soft tissue inside my skull is far different from our eternal, effortless, shared omniscience.  That I have to limit myself to words spoken or thoughts in sequence only reminds me of my humanity.

It’s also still strange that you don’t talk back.  I know that you hear me, and for their sake you spoke at my baptism.  But when I pray in seclusion, I talk and then there’s silence.  I do what they do to hear you:  I meditate on your word,  I pause and allow the Spirit to fill my brain waves with your response.   

The night was too short last night for my body, but my spirit cries out for you.  I need you more than I need sleep.  When I worked in the carpenter’s shop at least there would be long stretches of solitude where the silence was broken only by the plane or the saw.  I talked to you all through the day.

Now there are crowds.  I love them, I want to be with them. Their broken bodies and bound souls move me.  I love healing them and freeing them.  Oh, that they might know you and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.  I pray that they might find the joy for which we created them, that they might love each other the way you love me and I love you.

How easy it is for them to misunderstand my mission!  I came to serve them, not to set up my kingdom.  They will be looking for me as the sun rises, because they are so easily infatuated by powers they do not understand.  Before they know what is happening, they will want to manipulate me into serving their own badly mistaken ends – to twist grace into clout.

Father, I have no desire to glorify myself.  My kingdom is not of this world.  I do not desire my will but yours.  You did not call me to stay in this one place and feed their mistaken notions.  Where will you have me go?

Whether Jesus prayed until the sun rose or until it scorched him from overhead, we don’t know.  But it was long enough for the townsfolk to wake up, eat breakfast, and make their way back to the last place they had seen the healer.  As for the disciples, they had roused from a deep slumber of their own and must have known what secluded place Jesus might choose.  I picture him behind a rock just outside of town, out of view until someone went to find him.

His silence in the wilderness sanctuary was interrupted by footsteps and voices.  He kept his spot and smiled as these novice disciples who knew his ways much less than they would come to know him over the next three years rounded the rock and spotted him. 

Simon breathlessly exclaimed, “You wouldn’t believe it!  You have to get back to my house.   There’s a whole crowd there already – more sick people, more lepers, more demon-possessed, as well as a lot of those from last night eager to see what fresh excitement today will bring.  They want to hear you preach again! This is the start of something big, Jesus!  Come on, I’ll help you up.  Let’s hurry.  It’s really exciting, isn’t it?”

Jesus just sits there – not condemning them, not responding to them, not taking the hand extended to him.  He smiles again, and when there’s been enough pause for them to realize he doesn’t share their sense of urgency, finally says, “Let’s move on from here.  There are other nearby towns who need God’s message too.  That’s why I came.”

Why Jesus prayed

For the next few weeks, we are going to spend some time, as Andrew Murray phrased it in a classic book, “With Christ in the School of Prayer.”  Let’s take a look at Jesus in prayer.

I was inspired for this series of sermons several ways.  First, as I shared in my sermon the Sunday after Christmas (when not many of you were here because of the holiday and the snow) a 12-year-old boy asked me not long ago, “Why doesn’t God talk back when we pray?”  Second, my wife Linda brought home a study book her Sunday School class is reading called “The Prayers of Jesus.”  Third, I’ve been reading a good bit lately about humility.  Thomas Jones says in A Prideful Soul’s Guide to Humility, “A man’s prayer life is the barometer of his humility.”

On one level, prayer is very simple.  You talk to God.  That’s it.  You, God, a conversation.  You want content?  That’s included in the very simple phrases of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven, let your name be holy.  Your will, not mine.  Forgive my sins as I forgive others.  Meet our daily needs.  You get the glory forever.”

Wednesday night at choir practice I was sitting next to Helgi Shuford.  Peter had  spent the entire hour rehearsing today’s anthem.  It’s a relatively straightforward piece of music – four parts, no fancy entrances, no Baroque runs, no strings or organ or brass to add instrumental color.  We were learning the notes, rhythm, and dynamics by singing “oo” instead of the words.  We had to do it about three times because Pastor Bob was oo-ing the wrong verse.  Really.  I said, “Only Bob could mess up the words when all you’re singing is “oo.”

As Peter gently pointed out my flaw and we kept working on the flow of the piece, Helgi commented softly, “Simple things are harder.”  I feel that way about prayer.  In theory, it’s simple.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t find it easy.

So let’s look at the One who did it best and see what we could learn.  As we eavesdrop on Jesus’ prayers, we need to note the similarity and dissimilarity with our own.

Why did Jesus pray?  Some of the reasons we pray are not reasons he needed to pray.  We pray for our deficiencies, but he didn’t have any.  We pray for forgiveness for our sins, for the ability to maintain faith or keep loving or stay focused.  I’m not sure Jesus as the perfect Man needed to pray for any of those reasons.

He didn’t pray because of deficiency, but he did pray out of need.  Even as the Son of God, he needed his Father.  No being in the universe exists in isolation, not even God.  Even before Jesus was born into this world, he was in community with the Father and the Spirit.

How much more so as a human being did he model for us that we need intimacy with others but especially intimacy with the Creator, our Father in heaven.  That’s prayer, and it’s simple.

But simple things are harder, and I find some aspects of prayer to be really hard.  So let’s not stop here.  Let’s spend at least a few weeks struggling with prayer, asking some of the tough questions, watching Jesus in action on his knees.

I don’t know a lot about prayer.  I mostly just know it’s worth the effort to learn more.  Join me on the journey.  Amen.