Talking
to God. Yeah, right. That sounds good coming from a pastor. That
sounds so easy for a pastor to talk about when I can't see God or touch God and by all
indications, I'm not even sure God is there.
And
you're right, coming from a pastor, whose job it is to be spiritual,
it maybe a little hard to swallow especially with what you're facing.
And there are plenty of places in the Bible that prayer is a lot
easier to talk about than the one we'll look at today.
Click here for the link for today's scripture passage: Mark11:12-25
Let me
start with William Barclay who I read from a couple of weeks ago.
Barclay speculates that, “Maybe our trouble [with prayer] is that
what we want from God is our answer, and we do not recognize his
answer when it comes.”
We have
tried to make out prayer to be something so easy. The church through
the last few centuries has tried to make out talking to God to be
nothing more than talking to your BFF. Yet we know from experience
and from the Bible itself, talking, and having a conversation with
God are different things. Prayer is conversation and sometimes, even
in conversation, we don't hear correctly.
On the
surface, this story may not look like it has much to do with prayer
at all. It has this odd scene of Jesus cursing a fig tree and the
clearing of the temple. And yet, the consist theme surrounding these
verses is prayer – communication with God.
We're
walking in the footsteps of history now. Just a few weeks from
Easter Sunday, we're in the middle of the story, retelling how Jesus
came to Jerusalem. I get the feel, reading the words, the disciples
are little bit on edge. They knew the leaders of the Jews weren't
happy with Jesus. The situation is escalating.
Jesus
gets hungry for a snack. He goes to the figtree. Even out of
season, the pre-fruits of the fig tree should be showing that the
tree is going to provide something. Jesus finds nothing, and he
prays, in fact, his prayer is a curse. It may seem odd and out of
place to us, but WAS part of being the Messiah: Jesus did in fact
come to pass judgement and he did so in the same way as the prophets
of Old (Is 20:1-6; Jer 13:1-11, Ezek 4:1-15).
It
wasn't rash. It wasn't cause Jesus was being petty. It doesn't mean
we curse the drive-thru when the fries aren't ready. There is a
bigger picture, Mark seems to say. Step back.
And so
in the middle of this figgy story, comes the casting out of
moneylenders and cleaning up the riff-raff out of the temple. Jesus
could have said a lot of things about this incident. A lot of verses
could have been pointed to but he called out one in particular...Isa
56:7 NKJV Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them
joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their
sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called
a house of prayer for all nations."
Jesus,
now done with living out his parables and done with turning heads,
turns to his disciples and to us. He says, in essence, prayer is
marked by two things.
Faith
in God (v.22)
Forgiveness
of Others (v.25)
When
we talked two weeks ago, the sermon was on the mark of Faith, and how
we need to plant whatever faith we have, no matter the size. Jesus
gets back to that here: our prayer is dependent on faith.
But
then Jesus adds this piece of forgiveness and our focus clears a bit.
He wasn't very forgiving of that poor little tree nor was he calm
and collected in the temple. None of that demonstrated
forgiveness...well, yes, yes it did.
You
see, over and over again God has forgiven Israel. And it is clear
God is not going to stop forgiving so throw that idea out. Jerusalem
in the first century was at a cross roads of civilization and people
were coming from miles to the temple, people who were coming to know
the one true God.
Yet
the leaders were content in living by law. They had more faith in
practices than in prayer. And Jesus steps in, taking on the full
responsbility of the Messiah, as a prophet, priest and king. Jesus
steps out and steps up, fulfilling the prophecies that speak of a
place for all people. This is to be the way of the Cross. This is
to be the way of the Church.
God
is not interested in just forgiving one people BUT all people. And
all people who are wanting to walk God's way must walk the way of
forgiveness.
Prayer.
The marks of it come from sowing the seed of faith and forgiving
others. Along the way to the cross, Jesus is going to come back to
this very same thing: forgiving others. This was not the last part
of Jesus story.
I
cannot tell you who to forgive. I can tell you need to start. You
probably already know the negative issues related to grudges anyway,
we leave a trail of that. But God seeks us to be like him, to be
people, yes, of justice but more importantly, to be people of
forgiveness. In a sense, it is your first intercessory prayer.