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Parish Prayer - 1
Lead me from death to life ...
Sermon preached by the Rector in Street Mission and Parish Church
January 2006
The readings were:
Psalm 25:1-10; John 14:1-6
As we begin our look at the Parish Prayer for this year the first thing I want to say is that it is a prayer, and that a prayer is for praying, and I hope you will all pray this prayer through the year. It is a prayer of Mother Teresa a small lady but a great Christian, a wise soul, who in her humility knew the needs of humanity, she was both a person of action but also a lady of prayer, an example for most of us today.
Lead me from death to life, from lies to truth
Lead me from despair to hope from fear to trust
Lead me from hatred to love from war to peace
Let peace fill our heart, our world our universe... Amen
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
The first thing that I see is the acknowledgment that we all need guiding - Lead me - In our self sufficient 21st Century it easy to fall into the trap of thinking we can do it my way, this is misguided thinking. The truth is that if life is to be all it is meant to be we need to be led, guided. The other thing that we should ask our selves is, who is leading me? If we are not seeking God's direction on this life's pilgrimage then who's way are we following? Some would answer this by saying "my way" others would say "I am following my destiny" I am not sure what people mean by that but they would seem to agree that there is a pull on their life. My concern is that if we don't know who is doing the pulling we can't be sure where we will end up, and to me that is a very sobering thought. Mother Teresa knows who she trust and seeks Jesus help in life's journey. Lead me, Guide me is her heart felt prayer.
I came across a couple of one liners that seem to speak about this, the first by Bob Pierce:
God gently leads His children along. Me, He yanks! There are times when I am sure we all have understood Bob's sentiment. The second is about how we need each other -
Sign on the back of a trailer: "If I'm not headed west, stop me and turn me around."
The Psalmist in our first reading understood this when he said
"He guides the humble in what is right
and teaches them his way."
It is when we come to the point of understanding our need of guidance, and being willing to be humble and ask God to lead us that our faith journey gets properly under way.
The next thing that I noticed is that Mother Teresa understands that our journey will have many destinations. We will move from one place to the next.
Now look at our starting place. Does that come as a surprise?
Lead me from death.
Our Christian pilgrimage begins at death. Our sin, our human nature has condemned us to death, so this is where we are to begin.
Yet we cannot begin until we are willing to recognize this truth, and that we need help, for if we are dead there is nothing we can do for ourselves.
Paul makes it clear in Romans, Ephesians and Colossians that humanity is dead in sin. This is our natural state so we need to be brought from this place of death to life.
Mother Teresa's prayer now helps us to begin the journey, to move from what keeps us imprisoned.
To these prison bars she gives names: -
lies,
- despair,
- fear,
- hated
- and war.
Today we will just take a glimpse of the first prison bar, the rod of lies.
There are at least two kinds of lies, one is the lies we tell others and the other is the lies we tell ourselves.
I must confess that there are times when it seems much simpler to tell the odd lie as the editor of a small-town newspaper discovered when he grew tired of being called a liar, and announced that he would tell the truth in the future. The next issue contained the following item:
"Married -- Miss Sylvan Rhodes and James Collins, last Saturday at the Baptist parsonage, by the Rev. J. Gordon. The bride is a very ordinary town girl, who doesn't know any more about cooking than a jackrabbit, and never helped her mother three days in her life. She is not a beauty by any means and has a gait like a duck. The groom is an up-to-date loafer. He has been living off the old folks at home all his life and is now worth shucks. It will be a hard life."
Even so the truth is, that, it is only the truth that will bring freedom to live life to the full. Lies deceive, lies ensnare, and lies are very destructive.
Have you noticed how lies often seem more attractive than the truth. Satan uses this trait of lies to hold humanity from discovering forgiveness and life. He is also very good at telling us that the truth can be embarrassing but as this story shows when the truth is not told often misunderstanding leads to greater embarrassment.
There was a nice little old lady who was slightly incontinent. She was planning a week's vacation at a particular campground, but she wanted to make sure of the accommodations first.
Uppermost in her mind were toilet facilities, for having a problem with urinary control she was fearful others might know and she could not bring herself to write "toilet" in her letter. After considerable deliberation, she settled on "bathroom commode", but when she wrote that down it still sounded too suspicious, so she wrote the letter to the campground and referred to the bathroom commode as the "BC."
"Does the campground have its own BC?" is what she actually wrote.
The campground owner was baffled by the initials so he showed the letter around to several campers, but they could not decipher it either. Finally the owner figured she must be referring to the location of the local Baptist Church, so he sat down and wrote:
Dear Madam,
I regret very much the delay in answering your letter, but I now take pleasure in informing you that a "BC" is located nine miles north of the campground and is capable of seating 250 people at one time. I admit it is quite a distance away if you are in the habit of going regularly, but no doubt you will be pleased to know that a great number of people take their lunches along and make a day of it. They usually arrive early and stay late.
The last time my wife and I went was six years ago, and it was so crowded we had to stand up the whole time we were there.
I would like to say it pains me very much not to be able to go more regularly but it is surely no lack of desire on my part. As we grow older it seems to be more of an effort, particularly in cold weather.
If you do decide to come down to our campground, perhaps I could go with you the first time, sit with you and introduce you to all the other folks. Remember, this is a friendly community.
Now I know that was a very silly illustration but it clearly show the mess we can get into if we are not prepared to live and speak the truth.
When we lie we are seeking to deceive, which has many dangers, for e.g.. We fear the truth, we have something to hide, we seek harm to others and even more dangerous is we are acting like Satan.
We will look further at fear next time, but our final thought this morning must be a warning that we cannot be a child of God if we seek to deceive.
Satan is called the father of lies.
From our first encounter with him in the scripture we find him undermining God's love and authority and seeking to deceive Eve. Lies and deception are his tools, tools that are used to carry out his handiwork.
When we lie and deceive we excommunicate ourselves from God, His love and His protection and place ourselves in danger.
Here in this prayer Mother Teresa makes it very clear that if we are to move on from death then we have to leave the ways of the "evil one" behind and seek the strength to live transparent truthful lives.
It is very wise to seek God in prayer and ask Him to help us to live truth- centered lives, and to banish all deceit and lies from our lives.
Lead me from death to life, from lies to truth
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Friday 12th of March 2010
