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We sinners do beseech thee to hear us, O Lord God; and that it may please thee to rule and govern thy holy Church Universal in the right way, We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. That it may please thee to illumine all bishops, priests, and deacons, with true knowledge and understanding of thy Word; and that both by their preaching and living, they may set it forth, and show it accordingly, We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

I Timothy 2 (1-7) (The Message) 1-3 The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Savior God wants us to live.  4-7 He wants not only us but everyone saved, you know, everyone to get to know the truth we’ve learned: that there’s one God and only one, and one Priest-Mediator between God and us—Jesus, who offered himself in exchange for everyone held captive by sin, to set them all free. Eventually the news is going to get out.  This and this only has been my appointed work: getting this news to those who have never heard of God, and explaining how it works by simple faith and plain truth.

The next section of The Great Litany is what I call the “Beseech” section, and you will see that word very frequently over the next few days. Beseech means to ask, or from my Southern upbringing, it means to “ask nicely”, but with urgency, fervently and frequently. We humbly ask God, without demands, without pretense, and without entitlement to meet our needs, the needs of others and to guide us through this life.

These “beseech” prayers are all about the working out of God’s redemption and mercy that we have received. For today we begin with prayer for our churches and their leaders. We will move on to prayer for our community of believers, our own lives and then on to the world, so that God’s will be done, “on earth as it is in Heaven”. Believe me, from my observations over the past few years, these prayers are desperately needed for our churches and our leaders today. True knowledge and understanding of the Word, and living so that the Good News of Jesus is apparent in our daily lives is woefully absent in many of our church leaders today.

More and more I often hear sermons about creating a culture instead of cultivating a deeper relationship with Jesus. Only when your heart beats in time with Jesus Christ will you have any chance of healing your household, or changing your Homeland. When we pay attention to Jesus’ command to go and make disciples instead of lobbying the legislatures about tax breaks and drag shows, we may draw more people into God’s Kingdom instead of barring the doors. It is Jesus Christ who transforms us, not the Tennessee legislature.(or any other governing assembly).

So pray that all leaders be illuminated by Jesus, the Light of the World, whether preaching from a pulpit, teaching Sunday School, leading a Bible study or simply mentoring a friend. Pray that we all live transparently, and continue to be transformed by God’s good grace. Pray that we are led by the Holy Spirit, motivated by love to leave the legacies of goodness and mercy in our wake. Pray that we understand our first calling, getting the Gospel out, and “getting this news to those who have never heard of God, and explaining how it works by simple faith and plain truth.”

Peace. Phil Parsons

* * * * *

From Rodger:

Two thoughts come to mind almost immediately; the 1st short and simple and to the point, the 2nd something I’ve preached, shared, written and thought about many, many times over the years, which I’ve outlined perhaps in far more detail than some might want:

1st:  Beseeching God?  That is EXACTLY what a hedge prayer is!  It’s not a casual, tip our hat to any deity that might be listening just in case it makes a difference.  It’s vital, essential, crisis-moment emergency.  It’s remembering that when the barn is burning down and all the animals are in mortal danger, it is not time to perhaps stop and ponder, should we maybe pray for God to protect the sheep and horses?  It’s a screamed, “GOD!  SAVE THEM AND HELP ME!  (Prayed on the run with a bucket or water hose.)  It’s what Joe Clark told the faculty of East Side High School in Patterson, New Jersey at his first meeting with them.  “If YOU could run this place, then I wouldn’t be here!  Get used to this – this is not a damn democracy, this is a state of emergency!”  That is beseeching God.  It’s hedge prayer.  And it’s exactly what I’m getting at in the essay / sermon below:

A Case For Prayer
Isiah 62: 6 – 9 / Luke 18: 1 – 8
Rev. Rodger Sellers

I want to make a case for prayer – much like a lawyer presents a case to a jury. (Phil will have to be the judge of whether or not I’m even close to being “attorney-like” in my attempt.)

But I want to present prayer – the “beseeching” that Phil is talking about, and essentially what a “hedge prayer” is – as being one of the two or three most central and radical things we can and should do for the kingdom of God. By central, I mean this… Prayer is not the only thing we are to be about but it’s at the very center of what we do. The center is where the heart is, the place that pumps life into all the other parts of the body. And if the center isn’t strong, if it’s not intact, it’s like a wheel with a hub that’s beginning to weaken. After a while the wheel won’t be able to bear up under the weight of what’s put on it out at the rim… There’s a lot of weight on all of us today, and at the center, where we need to be strong, there are really only a few things. The Scripture is one, worship is one, ministry and service are one… And prayer is every bit as important. So by the center, I mean that prayer is not all we do by any means, but if we don’t do that, and do it well and right, everything else will fall apart.

By radical, I use that word as it comes to us directly from the Latin. (No, I don’t mean what so many of us heard the word used in 1960s, those “long-haired, dirty, RADICAL hippies dancing around the streets in Haight-Ashbury.) I mean that prayer is “RADDIX,” which simply means that it goes right to the root. It goes right to the heart of the matter. So much in our world just touches on the surface. I’ve spend over half my life in the ministry, and I’ve convinced that about half of what the church or almost every Christian organization does just deals with the surface. But prayer gets down past the surface, past the veneer, to what’s at the heart of things.

Luke chapter 18 talks about prayer in one of Jesus’ parables. There are times in the Gospels where you get the sense that the disciples were thinking, “Jesus, would you just say it straight for once!” But here Luke tells us, before he tells the parable, what this parable is about. Luke 18:1… “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

Luke is saying here, “Look, if you don’t get this parable, I’m going to give you the answer first, OK? So, read my lips people, this parable is about prayer, and about not giving up in prayer, not losing, heart, OK?” And he tells the story.

In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God or cared about people. Now back in those days a judge was someone who determined what was right and who made it happen. If the judge didn’t know what was right or the judge didn’t have the will to make it happen, it didn’t happen; it’s as simple as that. So we have this judge, and right away, we’re told that this is the worst combination of qualities. He has the power to say what’s right and wrong, he has the power to make it happen or not make it happen… and he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care what God thinks, and he doesn’t care what people think. People, is that not the world we live in?

Now, there was a widow in that town, who kept coming to the judge with the plea, “Grant me justice, against my adversary.” She’s coming with a legitimate need, not just a capricious want, she’s asking for justice – something important; she’s not asking to win the lottery! And this lady is at the absolute bottom of Jewish society. She has no power at all, except for her will. There’s no place in the 1st century world for widows; no welfare, no money, no support. She is the epitome of helplessness.

So, in this story, we have a confrontation between two distinct – in fact – polar opposites. A man who has enormous, unlimited power, and no heart… He’s callous… And a woman who has enormous needs… and no power. And she comes to this man asking for justice. So what happens, when these two kinds of people meet?

It’s been more years than I like to think about now, when I was in Seminary, but there was a really popular cartoon that made the rounds of the dormitories. It was a short subject, lasted about 40 seconds or so, called “Bambi meets Godzilla.” Ever see it? There’s a lovely scene, with the famous section from Rossini’s William Tell Overture called the “Call to the Dairy Cows” playing in the background. Bambi is nosing flowers and looking around the meadow, and then this shadow looms up and we see Godzilla’s foot come stomping down… WHOMP! Sorry, no more Bambi! As I mentioned, it was a very short subject! This is what happens when the judge meets the widow.

However, as we read on, “For some time he refused, but finally he said to himself, “even though I don’t fear God or care about people…” Jesus is letting us know that this judge is about to change his mind, but he wants it to be very clear about something. “Even though I’m about to give this lady justice, it’s not because I’ve started caring, about God… or about her. I will see that she gets justice so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming.” Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the New Testament puts this wonderfully: “So that she doesn’t beat me black and blue with her badgering.” That’s not a bad literal translation of the Greek compound verb used, by the way.

Now parables make points in a variety of ways. Sometimes by direct comparison and sometimes by contrast. Jesus is here making a point by contrast. He’s saying, “Listen, if this callous, powerful man can be badgered into doing something right once in a while, how much more, will God do the same for you? Will not God bring about justice for his people, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

The widow badgers the judge because he doesn’t care. How much more should we persist in prayer because God DOES care? That’s the point!  Which makes more sense? A woman continually coming to someone who doesn’t give a rip?  Or Christians persisting in prayer to a God who does care?

If judges can be badgered, how much more should we Christians badger God? And please, please, get the point here – not because God doesn’t care, but because he does care. Badger God to bring about justice. Badger God to bring about the justice of His kingdom in this world. So Jesus is saying, “Pray! Pray people! Don’t give up! In fact, when I return, will I find that you had been doing this? Will I find that you’ve been faithful?

It’s really a good question. Do we pray like this?  Really pray like this? Do we badger God? Do we regularly beseech God? Does our daily routine include something that looks remotely like a hedge prayer? And understand: I’m NOT talking about prayer that’s like tipping our hat to God at the start of a meeting, or the invocation at high school graduation where a pastor is timed to make sure she doesn’t go over the 30 seconds allowed and monitored to make sure he doesn’t offend someone of a different religion. I’m talking about persisting in prayer – beseeching God, lifting the same hedge prayer over and over and over – because it’s one of the most important things we can do for God’s kingdom. Do we? Do we persist in prayer for those things we’d rather forget, or perhaps would rather gripe about?

The Apostle Paul said in First Timothy to pray for the king… (He actually uses the plural to cover not only the emperor of Rome but other kings as well.) (1 Tim 2:1 2) But have you ever thought about who Paul is asking Christians to pray for? Nero… Most of us remember our history lessons. Most of us know the legend of how Nero played his fiddle (it wasn’t really a fiddle) while Rome burnt.  Nero… Insane… A sexual pervert. A man so bad, that when he dies, all of Rome – Christian and non-Christian alike – all of them, dance in the streets with celebration. And Paul says “Pray for him.” Trust me; as someone who has made a personal commitment to lift a hedge prayer to God every single day for the next four years concerning the President of the United States… as someone who every single morning prays, “Dear God, Hedge him in. Contain his madness. Keep him from doing more harm than can be undone. Continue building a hedge of thorns around him so that he has absolutely no where to turn that you do not allow him”… as I play my own version of the persistent widow every day, I fully understand the irony of what Paul is saying to his young protégé Timothy in that passage.

And of course we pray. I know that. I’m really not questioning that. But do we see our prayers as the “real stuff” that we are all called to? When we really want to get down to work, what do we do? Pray? No… We get out our flow charts… We form a committee. We boot up the laptop and open Excel. And of course we pray, but do we miss the point that prayer is more than just the prelude to the real meeting? Do we tip our hat to God, and then get on with other things? Or do we dive in and badger God / beseech God / lift a hedge prayer to God, for those things and people that are most important and most needed?

Let me give you a positive example. Susanna Wesley had 19 kids, of which two, John and Charles, of Methodist fame, were well known. Every day of her adult life, she would stop for an hour in the middle of the day and pray. She would tell her 10 surviving children, “I can’t be bothered for the next hour, so whatever comes up, you deal with it, I’m praying.” Yea, I know, today that would probably occasion a visit from the County Department of Social Services. But that’s not the point. Even though 9 of her children died as infants, she still had 10 Kids! And Dad’s not around – he left for a couple of years and spent a few in debtor’s prison, so she’s a single parent and yet still daily… she manages to spend an entire hour in prayer! Do we do that? Do we pray like that? I don’t, not always. And that’s the point this parable is showing us. Do we see just how important our prayers are in the life and work of God’s church?

Now a negative example. And understand, I’m not making fun of this man. I know what he’s dealing with. Hans Kung, one of the greatest Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century, wrote a book in 1974 entitled, “On Being a Christian.” It’s good book. But until a 2nd or 3rd revision came out, the 1st edition completely skipped over this subject. Remember, this is a magnum opus on living the Christian Life… and at first Kung didn’t include a single chapter in it about prayer. In fact, he was asked about this. Someone asked him, “You know, Hans, you wrote this book on the Christian life and you don’t talk about prayer.” And I love his answer. You know what he said? He said, “I forgot!” How can you forget about prayer? “Well, there was a publisher’s deadline… The Vatican’s been breathing down my neck…” (The Vatican eventually censored him and declared that he was “not allowed to continue teaching as a “Catholic” theologian,” so he taught from that point on as a “ecumenical” theologian.) He went on to say, “I got busy!” Now, can we make fun of Hans Kung here? Anyone want to make fun of him? No, we can’t.

So… When we pray; do we “badger” God? Are we beginning to understand the way the Great Litany uses the word “beseech?” Continually, repeatedly, seeing that our prayers – including those hard to utter but vitally needed hedge prayers, are as much WHAT we should be doing as everything else we do?

Or are we in a bit of a rut, seeing prayer as only an appendage on other things we do for God? Like the sign on the Alaska Highway that reads, “Pick your rut carefully, because you’ll be in it for the next 200 miles?”

Do we really need this? Is it truly necessary? Isn’t this being just a bit fanatical? We should know that, sad as it is, there are whole denominations that run without prayer, or at least not with prayer like this. There are churches that run without prayer, programs that run without prayer.  (In case you are wondering about Phil’s emphatic statement about as to why our churches and leaders desperately need our prayers?  Here it is in a nutshell.)  But my final question is, if it can be done without prayer, prayer like this widow’s persistence shows us, then is it worth doing anyway? For, given everything else we do, praying about those things, that’s the central and radical work, and it needs to happen, and happen first.

Here at the end of something perhaps much longer than it needs to be, I want to share two great quotes. One’s a two-liner; or a one-liner, depending on how you punctuate it. It sums up everything I’m trying to say. A. J. Gordon (of Gordon College and Gordon Divinity School – later Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary)  puts it this way: He says: “You can do more than pray, AFTER you’ve prayed. But you will never do more than pray, UNTIL you’ve prayed.” There’s more for us to do than pray. Yes, there really is. But we won’t do it, until we’ve prayed.

The second is from Mary Sclessor. This Scottish Presbyterian missionary… wildly eccentric woman, spent years in Nigeria, rescuing and saving the lives of hundreds of orphans. She would face off between warring tribes, sort of like an angry mother, and tell warriors, “Stop this nonsense RIGHT NOW!” And they would! So she’s earned the right to say what she says here. She wrote in a letter, “My life is one long record of answered prayer. Prayer is the greatest power God has put into our hands for service. Praying is harder work than doing. But the dynamic lies that way to advance God’s kingdom.”

It’s not easy. Praying. Badgering. Hedge prayers. But God told the prophet Isaiah, “I have posted watchmen on your walls, Isaiah. May they give me no rest, nor themselves no rest, until I establish Jerusalem and make her the pride of the earth.”

I think we can agree on this. (Or I devoutly hope we can.) We need God to move in a sovereign and mighty way in this messed up world of ours. We are living in a time when hedge prayers, when beseeching God, had better be a priority, lest we perhaps will be the last generation who understands what freedom really means. (And no, I’m not intentionally being hyperbolic here: I think this is a very real risk we are facing in the next year or so.) Let’s face it; our world IS really, REALLY screwed up. I really don’t think anyone can argue that. And it’s been God’s good pleasure to do just what we need, when his people pray.

Let us pray now:
Lord, we beseech you… that may we know your grace… to be your people, and when you come back, may you indeed, find faith on the earth.

Amen.