As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Great God, we’re not sure how to pray, what to pray for, or why we pray, sometimes. Yet, out of habit, out of hope, out of despair, it often seems like the only thing to do. Hear us as we pray, and connect us as your family. Grant unto us now the ability to go beyond our limits, so that we might experience you more fully. Speak Lord, your servants are listening. Amen.

On March 31, the front page of the New York Times contained an article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?ex=1301461200&en=4acf338be4900000&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss) which showed the results of a long awaited study on the power of prayer. If you know the study, then you know why I am preaching a three sermon series on prayer.

What the study did was take 1,800+ patients who were undergoing coronary bypass surgery. 604 patients in group 1 were prayed for by strangers after being told they might or might not be prayed for. 597 patients in group 2 did not receive prayers from strangers after being told they might or might not be prayed for. And 603 patients in group 3 received intercessory prayer from strangers after being told they would receive it.

The praying strangers came from 3 congregations: St Paul’s Monastery in St Paul, Minnesota; the Community of Teresian Carmelites in Worcester, Massachusetts; and Silent Unity in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Prayers were offered for two weeks for each patient, starting the night before the surgery.

Patients in group 2, the only group not to receive prayers from strangers, fared best, with 51 percent suffering from complications within 30 days of surgery. Patients in Group 1, who received prayers but weren’t assured that they would, fared slightly worse, 52 percent suffering from complications. Those differences are obviously within the margin of error.

The biggest surprise, and the landmine of the study, is that 59 percent of patients in group 3, who knew they were being prayed for and were, suffered from complications. Group 3 fared the worst, by a good margin.

It was conjectured that informing patients that strangers would definitely pray for them may have increased their anxiety levels.

So, what are we praying for? And what should we pray for? With that, we turn to the Psalmist, perhaps history’s most famous praying persons. Open your hearts and listen to The Word of the Lord.

Psalm 133.

¹How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! ²It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes. ³It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the LORD ordained his blessing, life forevermore.

The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

Open memo to the congregation.¹ Dear Friends: You can stop praying now. In fact, as your pastor, I am asking you: please stop praying. The New York Times has reported, a study has been done and has concluded that praying for those you don’t know does them no earthly good.

In fact, the researches concluded that prayer may do patients some harm. Back away from those prayer lists immediately! At this church, prayers for others should cease until further notice.

Some of you have told me in the past that you wished to thank all those who prayed for you during an illness or tough time, because you felt so upheld in prayer, but you couldn’t, because you didn’t know who they all were. Well, turns out, it’s a good thing you can’t thank all those anonymous people; it would only encourage them.

Please don’t pray for AIDS victims or people who have recently lost a loved one. They already have enough to worry about.

In light of this study, we will be making some changes at church. Instead of teaching people to pray, we will be giving people the tools you need to resist the impulse to pray. When I leave your bedside after visiting you in the hospital, I will now say, “I just want you to know that I will not be praying for you. You’re welcome.”

If prayer is dangerous, it is probably best not to wish strangers well, either, just in case that has a similar effect. So, I urge you to focus just on yourself and your own needs. I know that will be difficult, but it is important to try. Especially in this society that strongly persuades you to think of others first, I implore you, as always, to go against worldly culture and think of yourself first.

Yes, you can continue to pray for yourself. The study did not examine prayers for the self or prayers offered by close family members. So, go ahead and continue to pray for your own well-being. Beginning later today, we will make a few changes in the Lord’s Prayer. We should now say, “Give me this day my daily bread and forgive my debts,” just to make sure we don’t implicate anyone else in our prayers.

I urge you to stop praying for others. For once, just for once, think only of yourself. That is a moral imperative – at least until the next study of prayer is reported on the front page of the New York Times.²

Obviously, that is a little more than just a little tongue in cheek. Which is why it is so funny. That said, there is something to the New York Times thing, and even shows up in the Open Memo to the Congregation. Why do we pray, especially for others? The answer is not because our prayers will make God aware of something. Do you think we say, “Dear God, Suzy is sick,” and God says, “Really, I didn’t know.” That whole omniscient business means that God knows all. God knows individual human struggles before we do.

Nor do we pray to tell God what we want. “Dear God, we want Suzy to get better,” and God would say, “Really, is that what you want?” Again, omniscient. From Omni which means all, or encompassing, and sci or scienta, meaning know. We get science from that same root, and conscious. All knowing. All knowing. God knows our needs, our desires, our wants before even we do. We’re not informing God of what is going on. God knows.

One of the reasons we pray, one of the reasons we are supposed to pray, remember, three part series, we’ll cover two more of these, but one of the reasons we pray is that prayer connects us to each other. Prayer connects the living saints as humans to each other. It takes us out of our selfish nature, and binds us together, with cords that cannot be broken.

If you were at Montreat this past October, you heard this. I apologize for reading it again, but it bears repeating. It is from RealLivePreacher.com, a favorite book of mine. If you like, you can order the book at the link I’ll include on the website version of this sermon, and you can request that the author sign it for you. (http://www.reallivepreacher.com/book). Anyway, he has a great essay about prayer and how we are connected by it.

“Why don’t you write something about prayer?”

“About prayer? Whaddya mean?”

“Just about prayer is all. I don’t know, it seems like that’s a part that’s missing. You write about everything else. You do pray, right?”

“Well yeah, but...”

“So okay, why don’t you write something about it? I think that would be nice if you wrote something about prayer.”

“Yeah? I don’t know.”

“See, that’s what I don’t get about you. Sometimes I think you’re this deep person. You know, spiritual. And then sometimes you’re like...something.”

“I’m like, SOMETHING?”

“I couldn’t think of a comparison. You’re like a preacher who won’t write about prayer, I guess. I don’t understand that.”

“OKAY, I’ll write about prayer.”

“Good.”

“I’ll just write something.”

“That’s all I’m sayin.”

“I DO pray, you know? It’s not like I don’t.”

“Okay.”

“Only if I do this, I’d want people to understand that you can’t tell anyone how to pray. That’s what I hate about a lot of things that are written about prayer. They sound like instruction manuals. It’s not origami.”

“Yours wouldn’t be like that. You’d write it good.”

“Maybe...I don’t know. Anyway, I’d also want people to understand something else. You don’t pray so you can change things in the world. It’s not magic. You might ask, and you might hope for change, but ultimately changing things cannot be your motivation. That’s important.”

“Yeah, I guess. Sure.”

“I’ll tell you something else. It’s going to be hard to get all that into an essay and still have room to say anything about praying. I mean, by the time you set those conditions and explain all that, you’re done. You’ve used up all your energy. You’ve gone in that direction, and it would be hard as hell to bend the essay around to where you could say anything positive about prayer. Hard as hell.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Something About Prayer

What’s the weirdest thing I ever prayed for in church?

A hermit crab.

A little girl raised her hand and asked if the whole congregation would pray for her sick hermit crab. I don’t remember exactly what was wrong with this crab. I don’t know how you determine that a hermit crab is sick in the first place. She seemed pretty sure he was sick, so we took her at her word.

Among those who bowed their heads that day was Roy, whose father died when he was nine. This was back in the Great Depression. His mother was left alone to scratch out an existence for herself and her two small boys there in the flatlands of the Texas Panhandle.

Chris was there that morning, too. Her father abused her for years and years, and no one in her family ever came to her rescue. As I recall, she used to sit in church when she was a little girl and pray that he would stop. I sneaked a glance at Chris and saw her head go down.

There were others with similar stories. The room was full of people who had seen plenty of hard times in their lives and done plenty of praying.

It’s funny how a preacher’s mind can wander, right in the middle of a sermon or even just before a prayer. I couldn’t help but think of Julie, the little girl I prayed for years ago. She was five years old and had vaginal cancer. I prayed first that she would be healed and later that she would die in peace. The silence that led to her death was deafening. After she died in great pain, I said to God, “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”

All the heads bowed except mine. I was left standing at the front, wondering how you pray for a hermit crab in the presence of a man who prayed that his daddy would live. How do you pray for a hermit crab while looking at the bowed head of a woman who prayed that her daddy would stop?

And what about Julie, God? Exactly what was going on with that situation? Maybe it’s like the butterfly causing a hurricane on the other side of the planet. Maybe you have complex reasons for letting things develop freely, but what grand scheme would have been derailed if you had let her die with no pain?

If letting Julie die in peace was outside your self-imposed limits, what will you do for a hermit crab that we hear is a little under the weather?

Like I said, it’s funny how a preacher’s mind can wander. The people in my church have gotten used to the occasional pause before I begin to pray. This was one of the longer ones.

You know what got me started praying? The bowed heads. Roy’s head and Chris’ head. All of them. Rows and rows of bowed heads, waiting expectantly. Toward the back I saw the head of the little girl who asked for this prayer. Her hands were clasped in front of her so seriously. It was a precious sight, and my heart was filled with love for these people. I was like the Grinch looking down on the little town of Whoville and having a stunning revelation of his own.

“Maybe prayer,” I thought, “Means a little bit more.”

Here were people who would pray for a crab in church. They loved this little girl that much, and she felt comfortable enough to share the concerns of her heart. Even in the midst of their own unanswered prayers, they were big enough and small enough to pray with their little friend for her hermit crab.

Suddenly, I wanted to be like these people. I wanted to be praying with them, and I didn’t care if it made sense or not. I said to myself, “The hell with it. I’m praying for the damn crab.”

When the prayer was over, all the heads came up and no one knew what had happened to me. As far as they knew, a kid had asked for prayer and we had prayed. Business as usual.

But it wasn’t business as usual for me. Whatever I was praying for, I got what I needed. And I did not miss the irony either. The one leading the prayer knew less about praying that almost anyone in the room, including the little girl who loved her hermit crab.

That little girl was my daughter, by the way. The second of three sisters. The crab was named “Pinchy,” and he lived in our house all the days of his life.³

Prayer connects us with each other, and that is powerful. But, as always is the case with power, it can be dangerous.

Once, there was a husband and wife. While she was away on business, he had a routine physical. But the results were not routine at all. It’s cancer, and the road ahead will be a long one. This isn’t the kind of thing you want to tell someone, especially someone as intimate as your wife, over the phone. He mentions that he has something to tell her, and they can talk about it on Tuesday, when she comes into town. Perhaps they can get dinner on the way home from the airport.

But that’s not the kind of thing you can keep in, so he tells his best friend, who happens to have the office just down the hall. They share a tear and a hug, and head home for the weekend.

At church on Sunday, the best friend brings it up during joys and concerns. One member of the church knows said best friend, and through him, has played golf with the cancer stricken husband. On Tuesday, the member of the church runs into the husband who has picked up his wife from the airport at the restaurant. The church member is on his way out, the husband and wife are on their way in. The husband’s mind is obviously on what he is just about to say to his wife, and he doesn’t recognize the church member. But the member recognizes, and stops to say hi. And then, he says this, “Heard about your diagnosis, and we’ve all been praying for you. Will you have chemo?” Instantly, the wife knows, but not the way that it should have happened. The husband should have been the one who told her. Imagine their dinner now. Instead of supportive, she, along with the husband, are frustrated. The prayers said do not have the desired effect of bringing folks together, but instead of creating togetherness of community, create tension.

I think we are supposed to offer prayers for strangers, because it unites us to each other, because it does make us less self centered. But if you believe that prayer has power, if you believe that it connects us, if you believe that prayer is more than just words, than you’d better ask the person you want to pray for if you can pray for them and how you can pray for them. Perhaps folks who share their intimate struggles with you want them to stay confidential, at least for a while. It’s a small world, and chances are someone else knows whomever we are praying for. Make sure its okay with them to share their intimate details in a public forum. It’s easy enough to do. “I’d like to mention this in our church so we can pray for you, is that okay?” Heck, you might even open the door to invite them to church. Heaven forbid.

But then you can ask the question, “How can we pray for you? What would you like us to pray for?” And that will really connect you with the person you are talking to. You become an ear to really listen, and can share that so that others may pray rightly.

When I was in college, my Granny Alice was dying. She was old, and in pain, and had herself publicly asked why Jesus was keeping her around, she was ready to go. I mentioned to my professor that I would probably be heading to Tennessee for her funeral in the coming weeks, and might miss some tests. Our family, her church, we were praying for her quick and painless release.

A week later, an acquaintance came up to me and informed me that she had overheard about my Granny Alice, and that she was sorry to hear it. I thanked the acquaintance for her thoughts. She then said something that made me angry, and still can raise those feelings of anger today. She said this, “We’ve been praying in our Bible study that she will get better, and that God will allow her to live for many years to come.” That’s not what we wanted. It’s not what she wanted. And, thanks be to God, she died within a week, so it wasn’t what God wanted. When we pray for someone, we should know how to pray for them. It’s nothing less than common courtesy, and is something that can help us connect with people. If the acquaintance had asked how they could pray, I would have told them, and felt much closer to them, and felt much more supported by them, which should have been in their equation.

Prayer is an important part of the Christian life, and praying for strangers is a way to get outside of ourselves and involved in other people’s lives. If getting involved is the benefit of praying for others, let’s not shortchange ourselves, or those we pray for, by stopping at prayer. Let’s go all the way to relationship. It’s what we pray for. Amen.