Be Prayerful

Baptism of the Lord Sunday
Readings: Psalm 29, Isaiah 43:1-7, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-17,21-22
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church on January 9, 2022

As we continue into a New Year, I want to focus your attention on a little detail that Luke tells us about the baptism of Jesus. Luke 3:21 reads, “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven opened”.

It’s that little phrase, “and was praying” that caught my eye. Somehow, I had got the picture in my mind that the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus as He was being baptized. You have maybe seen pictures in Christian art with that familiar image of John baptizing Jesus in the River Jordan, and the Spirit alighting on Jesus as this took place.

But that’s not how Luke tells it. Luke tells us, all the people were baptized, then Jesus was baptized, and then Jesus prayed, and then the Spirit came. Luke does not picture everything happening at once but gives us a sequence of events that take place. Baptism in water, prayer, and then the Holy Spirit.

In religious life there are the corporate things and the individual things. There are the things that we do, together, and there are the things we need to do for ourselves. Through His baptism Jesus shows us that both are important, the external things and the internal things. But it can be a hard job to keep them both in balance.

In church life there are a whole lot of external things that need to be done.  We need people to serve on session and as deacons. We need people to be on committees to plan and arrange things.  We need Sunday School teachers if we are going to have a Sunday School.  We need choir members if we are going to have a choir. We need to care for one another.

We need to give our time and our talents and our treasure to the churches work if the church is to flourish. We need to be physically involved and seen to be involved with our church. We should rejoice in those times we get to share in the sacraments of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper. These things are an important part of Christian life. But they are only one side of the coin.

The other side of the coin is that we need to be people who, on a one-to-one basis, are getting their act together with God. We need to have a personal walk and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We do not just need to hear the Bible read on Sunday; we need to read it for ourselves. We do not just need to sit under the preacher’s prayers; we need to be cultivating a personal prayer life. We do not just need to be just listening to a sermon on a Sunday morning; we are called to be a living sermon for the entire world to read 24/7, 52 weeks of the year.

As we head into a New Year of church life, I would urge all of us to be active in the different activities of the church, but more than that I want to invite you to be prayerful. Whether in the Church you hold positions of responsibility or you just attend occasionally, be prayerful. We all lead such busy lives. Personal devotions, and in particular prayer can be pushed aside. We need to find time for it.

One of the great things about prayer though, is that the only equipment we need to pray, is a heart willing to listen to God.  We can pray anywhere, anytime. We do not need an iPhone, or a device, or a book, or anything external. We do not need to be in church or at any office or in any special place. This opens a lot of opportunities! Particularly when Covid forces us to take personal time.

Some people like to pray when they are driving to work. Turn off the radio and tune in to God instead.  Some like to take a walk around the block and have a word. Some like to jog and pray. Some work-out and pray. Some chill out and pray. Some like to have a special time of the day when they can shut the door behind them and be alone with God.

Some people have ways they like to approach their prayer times. Maybe a song or a piece of music. Maybe a bible reading.  Maybe a breathing exercise or meditation. Others find it easier to just keep chatting away throughout the day, whenever they get a chance. We are all different and there is no one way or one discipline or one system of prayer that suits all.

If you have not made any resolutions this year,
(or maybe did make some but have blown them already),
then why not resolve to make 2022 a more prayerful year?

To be prayerful will bring all sorts of benefits. You will be far more centered on God and better focused on the things that God can do through your life. You will find other ‘full’ things start to come along – you’ll be a little more joyful, peaceful, and hopeful.

It is no secret. Even an atheist, secular, psychologist will tell you that if you take a little time out of a day for reflection and meditation then you will become far more focused on the tasks that you have to do each day. That it is something that reduces stress. Prayer has definite health benefits!

But more than all of that, I keep coming back to that little detail about Jesus’ baptism that Luke tells us. That it was after His baptism, when He prayed, that the Spirit came down and He received the assurance, “Thou art my beloved Son, with thee I am well pleased”.

There is Jesus. In the middle of all that religious activity and expectation. There is Jesus being baptized. He comes up out of the water. And He prays. A deep personal and heart felt prayer.

This was the start of His new life. He was about to embark on a road that would lead Him to the cross.  He would be filled with power from on high. There would be those who would love Him and those who hated Him. There would be so much to share and so much to do. So, He prays. And assurance comes. An assurance that He would need to hear again, for doubts soon set in.

Time and time again we see Jesus withdrawing from the busyness, walking away from all the things that needed doing then and there, walking away from the needs of the people and the disciples clamoring to learn, walking away to take time out to pray.  If He who was already so close to the Father’s heart needed to do that, then how much more do our lives need to be prayerful!

Prayer has been called ‘the most talked about and least practiced discipline of the Christian life.’ You hear sermons about it, buy books about it, think about it, talk about it, muse about it, wonder about it, see the benefits in it, hear the testimonies concerning it, hear people extolling it and praising it, yet still never get around to really doing it! That should not be so!

So, I urge you, if you want to be a better husband or wife, a better friend, a better parent or grandparent, a better son or daughter, better at your schoolwork or better at your office work or better at whatever makes up your daily lot, if you want to be a better contributor or a better caregiver, or a better lover, or a better worker… then be prayerful.

If you want to be a real treasure to your church, to your family, to those you love, to your community, and you value your own personal growth and your own well-being, then let 2022 be a prayerful year.

We have no knowledge of the challenges this year will bring our way. We simply cannot predict how anything, be it Covid, or politics, or family, or just the simple act of daily living might look like in coming days.

So, this is a win-win resolution to make. We are not being asked to give anything up. We are being invited to deepen our relationship with God. We are being invited to deeper fellowship with God and a deeper experience of God’s love.

Luke tells us, it was when all the people had been baptized, and Jesus Himself had been baptized, “and was praying” that heaven opened, and the Holy Spirit came down as a dove and Jesus received the assurance, He needed to see Him through the tumultuous days that lay ahead.

We do not know what the days ahead may bring to us.
But we can know that God will walk every step of the way with us.
How?
By being prayerful!

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.