Prayer is more than words we say to God. Prayer has to do with our basic stance and attitude. It has to do with the focus of our living, what we are seeking in life, and what we really love. Or, another way to get at the heart of true prayer is to examine what we really trust. This is what I want to talk about today—prayer as trusting God and trusting God as prayer. 

The passage that was read today is one of the classic passages in the Bible dealing with the issue of trusting God. However, when the passage is dealt with superficially, it seems to encourage a very naive and self-centered religion: “Because I trust God to take care of me, I will not have any problems or pain.” This sounds something like the simplistic little ditty: “Don’t worry. Be happy.” Anyone who has even casually read the context of this passage in the Sermon On the Mount knows that such an escapist understanding is not what Jesus was trying to communicate.^[1] 

The passage we read today begins with Jesus telling his disciples (and us) that we cannot serve two masters. But, of course, this is what we try to do. It is not that we reject God: it is just that we want to be happy, to enjoy true peace and to have our lives to mean something. After all, doesn’t God want all this for us? And so, we pursue wealth, power and popularity. After all, no one (not even Jesus) ever said that wealth, in and of itself, was evil or that power, in and of itself, was evil or that popularity, in and of itself was evil. Solomon was wealthy. Joseph was powerful. David was popular. “It’s okay to have these things,” we tell ourselves. And, of course, this is true if in having these things we are serving God rather than serving these things. 

It is one thing to be wealthy; it is another to believe wealth can make us happy. It is one thing to have power; it is another to believe power can give us true peace. It is one thing to be popular; it is another to believe popularity will make our lives meaningful. To serve mammon is to believe, to assume and live as if wealth, power, and popularity can give us happiness, true peace and meaning. 

In the passage we read, Jesus told us that first of all we are to strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness. The phrase “kingdom of God” can also be translated “the reign of God.” The word “righteousness” has to do with right relationship. So, what Jesus was telling his disciples and us is that our first priority is to live under the reign of God in a right relationship with God. 

Jesus told us we cannot serve both God and mammon. As much as we may pretend and wish it so, there is no middle ground compromise. Life eventually pushes us to choose one of the other. We have only a limited amount of time and energy. So the key question is, where are we going to invest our time and energy? We have to make choices in our pursuit of happiness, true peace and meaning. We finally have to decide between striving to seek wealth, power and popularity or striving to live in a right relationship with God. We must choose God or mammon. 

It is not only our longings for happiness, true peace and meaning that lead us astray; so do our fears. Fears of not having enough, fears of being powerless, fears of being disliked and rejected, fears of our lives not making a difference—all sorts of fears tempt us to turn away from trusting God and to turn toward trusting mammon. Driven by our fears and doubting God, we play god and try to run the universe (at least the little universe we live in). Longing for significance and importance, we grow impatient with the promises of the Gospel, and try to do it by ourselves. Wanting instant gratification, God’s promises seem to be empty fairy tale dreams. 

Focused on our fears and our longings, we forget. We overlook the lessons to be learned from birds of the air and lilies of the field. Anxious about what might happen around the next bend in the road, we fail to see what is in front of us right now. Anxious about tomorrow, we miss the opportunity of making the most of today. Our fears are strong and our longings are powerful. Left to ourselves we become their pawns. Left to ourselves we surrender to our fears of discomfort, emptiness, meaninglessness and loneliness, and we cave in to our longings for wealth, power and popularity. We abandon God for the sake of pursuing mammon. “After all,” we tell ourselves, “isn’t this what everyone else is doing, and in a democracy the majority is always right isn’t it?” 

“No one can serve two masters,” Jesus said. “He will end up loving one and hating the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore,” Jesus said, “therefore, quit focusing on yourself and what you want and focus instead on God and what God wants. Strive first for living under the reign of God and in a right relationship with God. Do that and everything else will fall into its proper place.” 

But how do we do that? How do we begin living, trusting God rather than allowing our fears and longings to shape our lives? Now we are back to the sermon I preached a few weeks ago dealing with the passage from John^[2] in which Nicodemus asked Jesus: “How can a person be born again?” Or, in the language of today’s sermon, how do we who have so many longings and fears ever begin to live our lives trusting God so completely that our desire to live in relationship with God, doing what God wants us to do, sets us free from our bondage to our fears and longings? 

Jesus told Nicodemus that it was a gift from God. Jesus also said (in effect), “Do you know so much about the ways of God and yet still do not know this?” Jesus did not give Nicodemus an easy formula, or simple steps or a short prayer that would magically bring about this transformation. So. we are left with Jesus’ comments. On the one hand he tells us that such a transformation is a mysterious gift from God, but on the other hand he also tells us that we already know what we ought to be doing. 

Learning to trust God is something like learning to trust water so we can swim. How does a person learn this? First he is told he can float on water, and so, he begins to risk getting in water. As he chooses to risk trying to float, he begins to try to swim, and in swimming he learns to trust water to hold him up. And as his trust of the water increases, he swims even more; and as he swims even more, his trust of the water also grows. 

So it is, that our trust in God develops and grows. It is in choosing to risk so trusting God with our lives, that our trust in God grows. Just as swimming can increase our trust that water will hold us up, our efforts in faithful living increase our ability to trust God. 

So, what is this swimming, this faithful living, that increases our trust in God? This is what Jesus was talking about in The Sermon On The Mount—from which the passage we read was taken. In the chapter and a half preceding what we read today, Jesus had told the disciples (and us) that the blessed people view life differently than most folks. They are poor in spirit; they care so deeply they mourn; they are humble; they hunger to be in a right relationship with God; they are merciful; they are pure in heart, that is, they focus on what is good; where there is strife, they bring peace; and for all their efforts, they are often misunderstood and persecuted. 

Jesus called people such as these the salt of the earth and the light of the world. They are people who do not merely follow religious rules blindly; they follow Jesus and the result is they understand and live as life should be understood and lived. They not only give of themselves for their friends, but even for their enemies. They do not pretend to be more religious than they really are; they live simply and without hypocrisy. Their charity is genuine and without ulterior motive; and when they use words to pray, they are humble and simple. Their priorities have to do with pleasing God rather than with making a name for themselves or accumulating wealth for the sake of self-indulgence or power. 

This, according to what Jesus said in the first chapter and a half of the Sermon on the Mount, is the way the people who trust God live. And it is in striving to live this way that we discover what it is to trust God. 

I have been talking about trusting God. But at the beginning of the sermon I said I was going to talk about prayer. What does trusting God have to do with prayer? Trusting God is what makes prayer possible. Prayer is trusting God, and trusting God is prayer.

God, enable us to so trust you that we are able to let go of the fears and longings that distort our living and block true prayer. Amen. 

Pastoral Prayer:
            God, it is easy for us to live under the tyranny of “What if ‘this’ or ‘that’ happens.” All too often, we are looking so far ahead of where we are that we miss seeing the positive potential and the possibilities that are available to us today.
            God, help us to trust You. Help us to live with such faith in You and Your grace that we can allow the future to remain in the future. Free us from the burden of trying to live today and tomorrow at the same time. When we pause to think, we know it is all we can do to deal with today without trying to deal with all the options of what might happen tomorrow.
           And God, just as we need to be released from our worries about tomorrow, we also need to be set free from our bondage to what is in the past. Sometimes the chains that bind us to our yesterdays seem to be more like jewelry than chains because we are in bondage to past glories and memories of good times long gone. But, God, more often what limits our ability to live in the present is our bondage to some pain in our past. God, set us free from dragging around resentments about what was done and disappointments about what did not happen and bitterness about old wounds.
            Give us the faith we need to trust You and Your grace so that we can let go of the past and the future and live as You intend us to live in the present. This we pray, remembering Jesus was teaching us how to live when he taught us to pray: “Our Father …”