I’ve just started reading Philip Yancy’s new book on prayer called, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? The story about Einstein on the front of your bulletin comes from that book. Apparently Einstein thought that there was a vastly under-explored area mine-able for good research, and that area was prayer. Yancy, as one of the few writers read as often by liberal Christians as conservative ones, delves deep into the topic of prayer with as many questions and confessions as he attempts answers. He talks about the inadequacies of our prayers – that if it’s meant to be a dialogue why does it feel so one-sided, that just a few minutes can bore us, and that our unanswered prayers can lead us to not praying at all. He lays it all out. Like exercise, it’s something we know we should do more of, that we would feel better if we did, and yet we can’t seem to make it work. Why is that? What is keeping us from one of our most important life time tasks - seeking a relationship with God?

You may or may not have recognized Anne LaMott’s two most authentic prayers in today’s scripture reading from Luke. The lepers approached Jesus saying, “Have mercy on us.” Their collective prayer is, “Help us, help us, help us.” But only one of the lepers who had been made clean returned to Jesus saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” The “God help me” prayer is one we all understand. We’ve all heard that there are no atheists in foxholes. In moments of fear for ourselves or for someone we love, “help me” is on our lips in a flash.

On June 22 of this year, the “help me” prayer stands out as about all I could think of to pray. Rushing to the hospital with a baby coming too early and then seeing her for the first time in the NICU, I was praying all day long, “God help me. God help us.”

We were fortunate. The stay in the hospital turned out to be relatively short. We saw mothers and fathers and babies around us whose cries were out of more need than our own. Our prayers soon turned to “Thank you,” as Ryleigh, our gift from God, became stronger and the nurses kept giving us little bits of good news on her progress. When we brought her home on July 4, we could empathize with the Mullins who brought home a preemie baby on the same holiday several years before. I think their remark to us was, “As he gained his independence, we lost ours.” We felt the same about our Ryleigh! But when you get lost in a baby’s love, attached to their very being – independence becomes overrated. “Thank you,” is a mother’s sigh and prayer.

The story of Jesus and the lepers has a few sermons in it that you’ve probably heard before. The preacher can focus on Jesus’ compassion for the unclean lepers and make a leap to social justice. The preacher can lift up the thankfulness of the one grateful leper as the one who remembers to send a “thank you note.” My grandmother would be proud. Or the preacher can beat up on the other 9 thankless lepers who got their prayer answered but didn’t say a thing. Then an even more prim and proper grandmother somewhere out there would be proud. Those sermons come around again and again with different illustrations attached.

Today, I simply want to recognize and maybe even validate both prayers evident in this story – the “help me” and the “thank you.” One could go into greater detail about the nuances of prayer, praise and lament, confession and intercession. One could talk about the language of prayer and the importance of silence. One could write that dissertation for Einstein and then some. But I am amazed that so much of our prayer fits into the these two, two-word prayers, three-word prayers if you address “God” first.

Also from Yancy’s book on prayer is a quote from Walter Wink who says, “Biblical Prayer is impertinent, persistent, shameless, indecorous. It is more like haggling in an outdoor bazaar than the polite monologues of the church.” Wink is right. We have learned to pray very politely in comparison to our biblical ancestors. Our “help me’s” are barely audible. We fail to give voice to the needs that we truly have as if we thought we were capable of handling things all on our own. God knows our needs before we ask. God knows how deeply our needs are affecting us. Withholding from God doesn’t do us any good. Praying polite prayers sounds nice in church, but does it bring us any closer to a relationship with the divine? I’m not so sure it always does. Praying “help me” prayers doesn’t make us weak or inadequate, but it does show us the truth. We need God in our lives. We are desperate, broken, sinful, and small in a world that could easily overwhelm us. The practice of prayer is one that helps put our needs into perspective, and may give us courage to keep on going.

The thank you prayer is also one we hide pretty well in our churchiness. It’s easier to thank the people who teach Sunday school and the ushers and counters than it is to thank God for our lives. Gratitude toward God is a less tangible thing. Sometimes it’s also hard to be thankful when we wonder if God is even paying attention. When wars, and hatred, and disease, and church conflict abound, to thank God for the small victories seems like little thanks at all. But again our gratitude, our thanks and praise, makes a difference. It opens the door to a relationship with God, an imbalanced one to be sure in which our answers will be incomplete, but again it reminds us that God is God and we cannot be God.

As your pastor, as someone who prays for you daily though my practice of prayer is far from disciplined compared to where I’d like for it to be, my prayers for this church follow the same line – God, help me and God, thank you. God help me to be a faithful pastor, to practice my authority humbly, to speak important words with care, to listen more than spouting off, and help me to truly love this congregation. And when I pray, thank you, I thank God for the opportunities for growth in my own faith that have happened among you, I thank God for brining me to Oak Ridge, I thank God for the people here who challenge me and who care for me. I also pray the “help us” prayer so that we may see where we need God’s help as a congregation, and I say “thank you” in those times when steps are taken in faithfulness together. Are these prayers eloquent or well thought out? Perhaps not. Sometimes they’re rushed prayers getting to a meeting or prayers for God to give me the right words as I’m driving to the hospital. Sometimes my prayers seem like those “haggling in an outdoor bazaar” prayers that Walter Wink says are all throughout scripture.

Does prayer make a difference? Does it change us? I believe it does. I hope to deepen my own practices, not by being more wordy, but by being more quiet, more attuned, more authentic. Help me God. And thank you for promising to listen.

Amen.