Sunday, May 25, Sixth Sunday of Easter

Psalm 147:1-11; Acts 2:42-47; Revelation 8:1-4; John 16:23-33 

Service of Prayer and Preaching

Hymns: #528 “Oh, for A Thousand Tongues to Sing”; #789 “Praise and Thanksgiving”; #770 “What a Friend We Have In Jesus”; #691 “Fruitful Trees, the Spirit’s Sowing”; #781 “We Give Thee But Thine Own”; #783 “Take My Life and Let It Be”

It’s All About the Fruit, Part V: 

Who Do You Know Who Needs to Be Prayed For?

This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (John 15:8)

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

     As the blessed season of Easter continues, Jesus tells us in our Gospel reading, “My Father will give you whatever you ask in My name.” The early Church was a praying Church, and we need to be so as well. Our Lord has given us a sure and certain promise that our prayers will always bear good fruit for God. So who do you know who needs to be prayed for?

     Bill Bright tells this story about a man who traveled to a certain city on one cold morning. As he arrived at his hotel, he noticed that everyone there was barefoot, including all the clerks and guests. In the coffee shop, he noticed a well-dressed man at a nearby table and asked, “Why aren’t you wearing shoes? Don’t you know about shoes?” “Of course, I know about shoes,” the man replied. “Then why don’t you wear them?” the visitor asked. “Ah, that’s the question,” the man answered. “Why don’t I wear shoes?”

     After breakfast, the visitor walked out of the hotel and into the snow. Again, every person he saw was barefoot. Curious, he asked a passerby, “Why doesn’t anyone here wear shoes? Don’t you know they protect your feet from the cold?” The passerby said, “Believe me, we all know about shoes. See that building? It’s a shoe factory. We’re so proud of that plant that we gather there every week to hear the man in charge tell us how wonderful shoes are.” “Then why don’t you wear shoes?” the visitor persisted.

“Ah, that’s the question,” the passerby replied. “Why don’t we wear shoes?”

     When it comes to prayer, many Christians are like the barefoot people in that city. They know about prayer. They believe in prayer. They know how wonderful it is and what a blessing it can be. They often gather at church to hear sermons about how wonderful prayer is. But if you were to ask them why they don’t pray more, they’d say, “Ah, that’s the question. Why don’t I pray more?”

     The blessed early Church that we read about in the book of Acts “devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” They were “steadfastly continuing” in the apostle’s teaching; that is, in Bible studies. They were steadfast in fellowship, in communion, and in breaking bread together; that is, in the Sacrament. And they were continually in prayer. The Greek word there refers specifically not just to prayer itself, but to a place of prayer, to prayers in Church, to worship prayers, to corporate prayers, to praying as a Church together. They were coming to Church “religiously”, to be taught, and to share the Sacrament, and to pray with one another.

     And the result of all their devotion to those things was that “they bore much fruit.” “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.” They were filled with awe, with holy fear, and with respect and reverence for God. Signs and wonders and miracles were happening, and prayers were working and bearing fruit, and it was bringing them joy. They were a happy Church!

     “All the believers were together and had everything in common,” our reading in Acts says. For the Jews, common things - koina things, they called them, common things, unwashed, unclean, public things that are touched by everyone - were to be avoided. But for these new Christians, there were no such divisions; not anymore. They had a common faith, and a common cup, and common fellowship that was open to anyone willing to confess their faith in Christ. As St. Paul put it, “Here there is neither rich nor poor, Jew nor Gentile, slave or free, for all are one in Christ Jesus.”

     Now, the next sentence there in Acts has so often been misinterpreted and misunderstood. “Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.” (Karl Marx even quoted this passage in the Communist Manifesto!) But the early Christians were definitely not socialists or communists. The difference is that in socialism and communism, your goods are confiscated and taken away from you and given to others; but in the early Church, their giving and sharing was voluntary; not imposed, but from the heart. They were giving and sharing not because they had to, but because they wanted to. One is accomplished by compulsion and by force of law; the other comes from a changed and Spirit-filled heart.

     And look what all their devotion and steadfastness, all the teaching and preaching, all their breaking bread and praying together, did: It bore good fruit for God! “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

      So who do you know who needs to be prayed for? Who might your prayers add to the number of those being saved? Who might even your little prayers (if there is such a thing as a “little prayer”) reach and touch for God?

      In the book of Revelation, apostle John weeps and weeps, because no one is found in heaven or on earth who is worthy to open the seals on God’s Book of Life. And John knows that if that Book isn’t opened, everyone will be lost. And then Jesus, the Lamb of God, having won the victory, by His cross and Resurrection, over sin and hell and death, is able to open the seals. The first six seals are opened one by one, as time and events play out on the earth, until the end of time comes at last. And when Jesus opens the seventh seal, there is “silence in heaven for about half an hour,” John says. There’s a “pregnant pause,” a dramatic pause for effect before the final drama plays out

      Then John sees “seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.” The trumpets are sounded, one by one, also as events here on earth play out – and who knows how much time we have left before the last trumpet sounds? The early Christians thought Jesus was coming again any day – so how much closer must that day be now? “The hour is closer now than when we first believed,” St. Paul said. So “now is the day of salvation,” both for us, and for everyone we know who doesn’t know Jesus yet. So knowing that time is short, and that people we love are dying, where’s the sense of urgency for us? Why don’t we wear our prayer shoes? We certainly do need to be praying and working for God, with all our hearts and all our souls and with everything that’s in us.

     John goes on here: “Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand.” Did you know that your prayers are a sweet aroma to God? “Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor,” says the old hymn. “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective,” says St. James. “May my prayers rise before You as incense,” the Psalm says, “and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

     What value do our simple prayers have? What good do they do? How sweet must out prayers be to God, that He in love would promise to hear and answer them all? What does it say about how much God loves us, that He’s promised to listen to us and answer us when we pray? And who do you know whose life you can touch and change, just by remembering to pray for them? And by the way, while it’s a good thing to pray anonymously for someone – it’s even better to tell them you’ll be praying for them. Promising someone, “I’ll pray for you,” and then doing it, is the greatest thing you can do for another human being. People feel the touch and the presence of God when you pray for them. I feel it when you pray for me! It’s all about the fruit, folks! It’s about these lips of ours producing “the fruit of lips that confess His name,” and about this Church of His bearing the fruit of faith in God in the world around us. 

     Jesus, in today’s Gospel reading, is teaching His disciples about the power of prayer, and about what their simple prayers can do. He tells them: “I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in My name. Until now you have not asked for anything in My name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” That is a marvelous promise, to the first disciples as well as to us - but it does come with a bit of a catch. “In My name” is the key phrase here. Why is it so important that we pray “in Jesus’ name” when we pray? What’s the difference, Pastor, between a Christian prayer and a Muslim prayer and a Hindu prayer? Doesn’t God in heaven hear them all? 

     The  service order we’re using this morning calls for a little Catechism instruction, so here goes: In the introductory section on the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism, the question is asked: “Whose prayers are acceptable to God?” And the answer given is: “Only those who believe in Jesus Christ may pray to God and expect to be heard.”

     What, pray tell, does this mean? It means that our prayers, to be effective, have to go through the cross. The only reason we’re able to pray, and have the hope and expectation of having our prayers heard, is because our sins have been forgiven by the blood of Christ, and because His cross had opened heaven for us. Those prayers in the angel’s “golden censer” are the prayers of those who have been redeemed, the prayers of those who’ve been bought back from sin, by faith in the precious blood of Jesus Christ. There is no forgiveness outside of the cross, “no other name in heaven or on earth by which we must be saved.”

     The next question in the Catechism asks: “What should be the content of our prayers?” And the answer comes back: “In our prayers we should ask for everything that tends to the glory of God and to our own and our neighbor’s welfare, both spiritual and bodily blessings. We should also thank and praise God for who He is and what He has done.” 

     So we should pray for what God’s Word tells us is good. Not for earthly wealth or success or tonight’s lottery numbers. Not that God will hit that old so-and-so with a lightning bolt, but that God will touch that child of God and change his heart and lift him up and save him. Pray for things that you know will please God and send that “sweet aroma” up to Him. In other words, pray for things that will bear good fruit for God’s Kingdom. 

     And one more Catechism question, the next one: “How should we pray?” And the answer given is: “We should pray A) in the name of Jesus, with faith in Him as our Redeemer; B) with confidence, that is with firm trust that for Jesus’ sake our prayers will be answered; and C) according to God’s revealed will.

     This is where Bible study, that part about “being devoted to the Apostle’s teaching” comes in. If you want to pray for God’s will to be done, and to live your life according to God’s will, you simply must take the time to find out what His will is. (Don’t forget to fill out your Bible Study Survey!)

     Jesus says to His disciples in our Gospel: “Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about My Father. In that day you will ask in My name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father Himself loves you because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God.”

     God’s Word is clear enough, isn’t it? The gist of the thing, anyway, isn’t some riddle we have to try to solve. We use “it’s too hard to understand” way too often, as our excuse not to turn our hearts to God’s Word as we should. There are some complicated and difficult things in our Holy Bible, to be sure. I’m still learning and struggling and praying to understand things myself, and I’ve been at this for years. But the basic things, the things that matter most, are as clear as they can be. “Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus says. Love one another. Pray for each other. Pray even for your enemies and for those who would hate you persecute you, because how else are we going to bring them back to God?

     Keeping God’s commandments isn’t really so hard as it seems. “Love keeps the commandments,” Jesus says. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul and with all your strength; then love your neighbor as yourself. Ask God to help you do that, and you’ll find yourself keeping the commandments, and bearing good fruit for God. Keeping in mind that, as the Catechism says, “God both commands and invites us to pray,” who do you know who needs a prayer today? Who can you pray for? Who can you pray with? Let’s pray about it!

     Dearest Lord Jesus, You have told us these things – through Your precious Word, and by the grace of Your Holy Spirit – so that we may have peace, in what can be a very unpeaceful world. “In this world you will have trouble,” You warn us; and we know by experience that that is true. Help us, O Lord, to take heart, to take courage, in knowing that You have promised to be with us always, and to never leave us, and that Your cross and resurrection have overcome every evil thing in this world. Lord, may our prayers continue to go up like incense, on behalf of all those who are lost and hurting and in need of Your grace. Help us, Lord, to devote ourselves to this fellowship, and to Your teaching, and to this holy work of prayer. Help us to bear good fruit for Your kingdom, until the whole world has heard Your name. We pray in Jesus’ name; Amen.