Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying

Matthew 4:1-11

 

        Music touches our heart in a variety of ways. Sometimes we just like the beat. Remember the first time you heard Nancy Sinatra sing, “These Boots are made for Walking”. You had no vindictive rage against anyone, but I bet the steady back-beat sent for feet to walking.

        Sometimes it is the tune. I don’t even have to like the song. When “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees invades my radio I quickly change the station. TOO LATE! I can’t get the blasted tune out my head for the rest of the day.

        For me, it is the lyrics. Some of my favorites are Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make it through the Night”,   Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, Springsteen’s “The River”. These are songs that interpret my story. They are not casual lyrics created from nothing. They are gut wrenching expressions of pain followed by eventual reclamation.

        Most great songs have a back story. Lyricists harness emptiness through well placed words offering a road less taken. Guy Clark shares a difficult incident with his wife.

        She ain’t going nowhere, she’s just leaving.

        She ain’t going nowhere she can’t breathe in.

        She ain’t going home and that’s for sure.

 

        Through the Sundays of Lent we are going to look at songs we sing on Sunday morning. Each has a back story. I have tied them to a piece of scripture. Sometimes the relationship between text and song are obvious. Sometimes, like this morning, I had had to be a bit creative.

        The back story to Jesus’ time in the wilderness is the years the Israelites wandered through the desert. They left Egypt a broken people going nowhere. Eventually they left the wilderness and headed for a new home. When reading Exodus we discover a people with no sense of direction or dreams. They wanted out of the wilderness but hardly knew which way to turn. A three days journey took years. Most of them died. But in the desert a nation was born. They crossed the Jordan with a purpose.

        Jesus also stepped into the wilderness. The Jesus portrayed by the Gospel of John knows the path he must take and time in the desert is not necessary. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is more like us. Each of us believes we know and understand God. Lent offers the chance to discover the God beyond our understanding. Jesus will not remain in the desert very long. But he needs time to understand what it will mean to cross the Jordan.

        He walks into the wilderness without water or food. Hunger is a powerful opponent. I suspect most of us have gone on a diet. Most of us barely lasted a day. Hunger gnaws at you. Hunger wears you down. Hunger is even more powerful than guilt.  Hunger convinces you a diet was never what you needed in the first place. Like Audrey, that plant in Little Shop of Horrors, hunger drones day and night crying, “Feed me, Feed me.”

        What method did Jesus embrace to combat the loud voice crying out for a simple piece of bread? Nutri-system? South Beach? Weight Watchers? How about the obvious, The Mediterranean Diet? My suspicion is Jesus was heavily invested in the power of prayer.

        Ken Medema wrote a song that thankfully is found in  our hymnbook. It has been sung around campfires and youth rally’s for years. There is nothing complex about the words. But it will stick to you like flypaper.

        Lord, listen to your children praying.

        Lord bring your Spirit to this place.

        Lord, listen to your children praying.

       Send us love, send us power, send us grace.

        The song has not one but two back stories. Medema was working with a youth group in 1973. One of their adventures was to visit folks in a local hospital and spread some joy. On one visit they discovered not everyone in the hospital is over 65. They ran across a young man their own age. Joy left the group as they imagined themselves in that bed. Once back at the church they began to imagine what they might do to life the spirits of their new friend. “Let’s write him cards, let’s bring him food, let’s call him on the phone.” One kid responded, “Let’s pray for him.” Medema responded, “We can do that right now.” I can tell you from experience I don’t care if someone is nine or eighty-nine, public prayer is not easy. But once it starts remarkable things happen.  Initially the prayers were short, but each heartfelt. In the midst of the prayers a tune came to him. He said, “I was humming, then mumbling, and then one kid cried out, ‘Lord, listen to your children praying’.” By the end of our prayers a new song had been written.

        This was not an unusual way for Ken Medema to write music. He was born with almost no sight, but that never stopped his insights. He is a self taught musician who holds a graduate degree in music therapy. He has spent the majority of his life helping folks with perfect sight learn how to see. The name of his music company is Briar Patch. He says, “Briar Rabbit lived in a place not comfortable for anyone. I decided to follow him there.”  

        While Medema lives in his own wilderness, he embraces this darkness in order that others might find light.  I suspect he understands it is not our hunger or blindness that conquers us. It is our inability to visualize beyond what we have accepted as truth.  Can you imagine finding the holy kingdom of God in your unholy anxieties and insecurities?

        That is a scary thought, yet that is what a great song writer will do. Jesus didn’t venture into the wilderness alone. He popped his personal top 40 into his spiritual ipod. When darkness fell he sang, “Even though I walk through the darkness, You are with me.” When Jesus was beyond loneliness he sang, “For God alone my soul waits in silence.” And when things became even more than could Jesus endure, he looked into tomorrow and exclaimed, “Help me make it through the night.”

        Each song became his prayer.  And each of those prayers has become our songs. In the wilderness we find time to pray for a friend. In the wastelands, we stumble across the courage to pray for forgiveness. In the darkness, we discover the clarity to pray for God’s grace. Renewed and refreshed we cross the Jordan. And when we stumble, it is always a song that leads us home.      Amen.