Have any of you seen the show Long Lost Family? It’s a favourite show of mine because it’s all about family finding each other. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the show’s producers are approached by people who are searching for who they really belong to. For example, a man who knows he was adopted but wants to find his birth mother; a woman who knows she was abandoned as an infant and wants to know who her mother is and why she was abandoned. And more often than not such searches turn up unknown brothers and sisters.
Not once have I seen a story where the person being searched
for refuses to meet or doesn’t want to know their natural child or sibling. In
every case there are strong emotions when someone finds out they have a family,
or the natural parents discover their child is looking for them. And when the
moment of meeting happens, the show has done its work, there are tears all
round. What makes it such a good show is that the emotions are real, not acted.
Each person on both sides of the search has a revelation of belonging. They
have a real mum or dad or brother or sister.
It is a similar scenario with the reunification of Joseph and
his brothers in today’s reading from Genesis. I am Joseph! Is my father
still living? But his brothers were not able to answer him because they were
terrified at his presence. Then as the revelation of belonging unfolds, Jospeh
threw his arms around his brothers and wept, and Benjamin embraced him weeping.
And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterwards his brothers
talked with him.
Now with the story of Joseph there are two points where the
desire for belonging is deeply expressed. First, there is the grief of Jospeh’s
father Jacob when Joseph’s brothers showed him Jospeh’s bloodied coat and told
him Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. The background is that Joseph’s
brothers were jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt as a slave. The story
they told their father was an outright lie to cover up the crime of selling
their brother. But they did not expect their father to show such grief at the
loss – the desire for belonging is traumatised. The second point where the
desire for belonging is deeply expressed is when Joseph reveals himself to his
brothers. The story says he wept so loudly that all the palace could hear him. The
desire for belonging is fulfilled.
It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that the depth
of desire for belonging and long-lost family for Jospeh and Jacob were the
subjects of prayer to Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Were those
prayers answered? Yes! Joseph was finally reunited with his long-lost brothers,
and Jacob travelled to Egypt and was finally reunited with his long-lost son.
Their answer to prayer brings to mind words from psalms 138 and 34: when I
called, you answered me, and, I sought the Lord and he answered me. Both
psalms celebrate the revelation of answered prayer, just as the emotional
reunions of Joseph and Jacob did.
It is the gift of answered prayer from our Father in heaven that
can be so astounding it can bring us to our knees in the depths of emotional
expression, especially for a new Christian who hasn’t experienced it before.
What was it like for you? Can you remember? I can. It was like the Long-Lost
Family show. I was lost but now I’m found; blind but now I see. I now see that
I have a father who is in heaven and a brother who sits at my heavenly father’s
side; a brother who shared human life with me, Jesus Christ, and he is the one
who brought me home by his death and resurrection. I have a father and a
brother! My long-lost family!
What is the key to the success of Long-Lost Family, and the reconciliation of Joseph with his brothers? Relationship. Same with our heavenly Father and brother. Prayer is relational, not transactional. Prayer shares our lives with God and shapes us through it. Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes us. Pause for a moment and think about how your prayer life has helped make you into the person you are today. In prayer, through the difficult and the easy, through the fun and the pain, through encouragement and repentance, God has shaped us. It is the work of God in us; it is not our work on ourselves.
On one occasion, the disciples asked Jesus, Lord, teach us
to pray. Excellent question which Jesus was more than happy to spend time
answering. And he gave them a worked example, which we now call the Lord’s Prayer.
Unfortunately for many of us in this century, the impact of that worked example
at its first hearing has been lost. And by that, I mean we reel it off with so
much familiarity we may as well just tick the boxes. It has almost become
transactional, hasn’t it.
There is a sign in our church’s prayer corner that says, out
of the depths I cry to you. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to
my cry for mercy (Psalm 130). Out of the DEPTHS I cry to you. It does not
say out of the shallows I cry for you. Can you not hear in those words the deep
desire for relationship with God that the psalmist has? Can you not hear the
emotional intensity of it? Do you not have any empathy with the psalmist for
the depth of need he is experiencing? Out of the depths I cry to you, is where
prayer begins.
Our Father: the first desire of relationship. Our God is so
close that the Christian is privileged to call him Father, for he is indeed our
heavenly Father.
Hallowed be your name: the holiness of God’s name is
paramount and we worship in the name of our God. That is why the third
commandment says do not take the Lord’s name in vain.
Your kingdom come and your will be done in heaven and on
earth: the deep desire for God’s heavenly reign to be seen done on earth, that
we surrender ourselves wholly and completely to it. That is why Jesus often
taught about the cost to self of following him – the cost of discipleship.
Give us today our daily bread: our dependence on God for all
our needs. During a recent aged care visit I sat in on a reading activity. The
staff member read a poem about prayer, and I took the opportunity to raise a
question about the position of hands in prayer. Or course they all put their
hands together in the traditional way. Then I suggested holding out open hands
with palms upwards. Why would that be an appropriate position of hands in
prayer? Because it expresses our desire for dependence on God to fill our empty
hands. We should not go to God when all else fails. God is not a credit card,
as it were, that we can pull him out only when needed, and then put him back
again. Desire to ask for our daily needs? To use the words of psalm 42, as a
deer longs for water, so my soul longs for my, O God. And our father and
brother in heaven are more than pleased to provide for the daily needs of those
who ask in faith.
Forgive us our sins: a healthy relationship with God is
predicated on the forgiveness of our sins. There has only ever been one person
in human history who has led a sinless life, and that is our Lord Jesus. After
all, he was divine Son of God. Every other person throughout human history has
been, is, and will be with sin while ever this earthly age lasts. God is so white-hot
holy and so perfect that it is against him we sin. We cannot get anywhere near
that perfect white-hot holiness and sinless nature of God. The best of our own heart
is but a filthy rag in comparison and it will do well to learn how to repent. Psalm
51, which is King David’s confession of his sin of adultery with Bathsheba, he
prays to God, against you only have I sinned. David was a man who had a deep
desire for God’s own heart, and he knew how to repent, how to throw himself on
God’s mercy.
It is like the tax collector at prayer in the temple who
beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. And Jesus ends that
story by saying he was the one who went home justified, and not the
self-righteous Pharisee who gave thanks to God that he wasn’t like the
despicable tax collector. Be a person after God’s own heart, come to the cross
with your sins, and they will be forgiven. And then you must go and forgive
your neighbour, because you yourself have been forgiven.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil: so
much to unpack here that I could spend a whole sermon on. Just because we are
Christians does not mean we are immune from trials and temptations. They will
come. The last thing Satan wants is an effective Christian and an effective
church. An effective Christian is a direct threat to him, and opposition to
that effectiveness will be levelled against us in many and various ways. And it
is subtle. Satan likes to portray himself as an angel of light, appealing to
the merits of human wisdom, and he can twist the word of God to suit himself,
as is evident in the three temptations that Jesus faced during his wilderness trials.
One such way is to get us to treat Christianity like a
religion. All you have to do is show up, when you’ve got time, recite the
prayers, sing the songs, and you’re done. Christianity is a relationship with
your long-lost father and brother in heaven, and with each other as God’s
church on earth. I noted well in last year’s Leading Your Church into Growth
(LYCiG) conference the warning given about becoming a maintenance church, that
is, a church that has let mission and outreach slip into the background of parish
business – a transactional church.
We need to be on our guard and be ever watchful. St Peter,
in his first letter to the churches in Asia Minor, writes, be alert and of
sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for
someone to devour. And that is why St Paul, in his letter to the church in
Ephesus, counsels the faithful to put on the full armour of God.
For the kingdom, the power, and glory are yours now and for
ever: God’s power and glory reigns supreme. Satan is a lost cause. The cross
has defeated him, even though he is still a dangerous enemy in this age. With
sincere prayer and study of God’s word, God’s kingdom will be done on earth as
in heaven. And I encourage every one of us to be faithfully engaged in those
two as the foundation of all we do and say.
The opening words of psalm 40 express the revelation of
answered prayer very well: I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined
his ear to me and heard my cry. He brought me up from the pit of roaring
waters, out of the mire and clay, and set me feet upon a rock. He has put a new
song into my mouth, a song of everlasting thanksgiving to my God.
The revelation of answered prayer feels like coming home. It
is the homeland of prayer, and it is where our Lord dwelt during his time with
us on earth. The homeland of prayer is where Jesus discerned his vocation, the
work his father had for him to do. And if we are to follow that example, we
also must dwell in the homeland of prayer where we also discern our vocation,
our choices, and the work God has for us to do.
So, ladies and gentlemen, be encouraged by three promises
found in scripture. Concerning corporate prayer, Jesus said, when two or
three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Concerning
private prayer, Jesus taught, when you pray, go into your room, close the
door, and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is
done in secret, will reward you. Concerning how to pray, St Paul writes, in
his letter to the Romans, the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do
not know what we ought to pray for, but the Holy Spirit himself intercedes for
us through wordless groans, that is, when human language fails us.
And finally, be open to, be amazed at, and be surprised by
the revelation of answered prayer. Come home to your long-lost family, your
Father in heaven, and his Son, your brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you
will look into the eyes of your answered prayer in awe of God’s faithfulness.
Philip Starks
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