Prayer

Scripture: Luke 5:33-39; Psalm 20:1-2; Psalm 119:105; Luke 10:38-42; Luke 23:39-43; 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Drawing an analogy that eating is to fasting as drinking is to praying, the sermon teaches that prayer is both petition (asking for what we truly want) and contemplation—a love-shaped, unproductive presence with God practiced through habits like lectio divina.

Illustrations: prayer-stained-glass-window, longhorns-game-prayer, lady-bird-lake-water, transitive-intransitive-verbs, idle-talk-weather, prayer-like-falling-in-love, thief-on-the-cross, mary-and-martha, birders-practice, von-balthasar-prayer-quote

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September 21, 2025

Prayer

Psalm 20:1-2 Luke 5:33-39

The Lord answer you in the day of trouble,
 The name of the God of Jacob protect you!
May he send you help from the sanctuary
 and give you support from Zion. - Psalm 20:1-2

Then they said to him, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.” Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding attendants fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise, not only will one tear the new garment, but the piece from the new will not match the old garment. Similarly, no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and will spill out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine but says, ‘The old is good.’ ” - Luke 5:33-39 Luke 5 takes place early in the ministry of Jesus Christ. We’re in this transitional period between John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, and the ministry of Jesus. Some people are challenged by the followers of Jesus. They come up to Jesus and say, John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink. Parallelism was very important to ancient Greek poetry and to Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry didn’t have rhymes. Rhyming was not important. Parallelism was the central poetic device in Hebrew poetry, in the Proverbs, in the Song of Songs, in the Psalms.

Parallelism in poetry is the expression of one idea in two ways. Like in Psalm 119:

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. (Psalms 119:105)

Lamp and light are paralleled. Feet and path are paralleled, and the point is emphasized.

We have a parallel clause here in our Gospel reading today. Your disciples eat and drink. Their disciples fast and pray. There is a simple connection to be made between eating and fasting. Eating is when we consume food, fasting is when we don’t. But what is the connection between drinking and praying?

Series intro

My friends, we are continuing our series on the stained glass windows at Covenant United Methodist Church with this next window: prayer. Prayer is one of the responses we can make to God. Baptism is a one-time thing because God doesn’t make a mistake. Prayer is an all time thing because there’s never a moment when we shouldn’t be praying.

Paul in Thessalonians talks about praying without ceasing, endlessly praying. Prayer though can be a hollow signifier, that is, it’s a word that we fill it with meaning. And that meaning is based on our own experiences and ideas.

A few weeks ago, I talked about prayer and the language that Herbert McCabe gives us that we should pray for what we want. We’ve got to start there. Don’t pray for what you think you should want. Pray for what you actually want. If what you’re thinking about all day is whether the Longhorns are going to win this weekend, pray for that. Don’t pray for starving children in Africa unless that’s what is on your heart. Pray what is on your heart. Pray for a new job. Pray for your kids to call more. Pray for an early freeze so that there won’t be more mosquitoes. Pray for what you want so that God can shape your desires.

The drinking going on here was wine. Folks didn’t drink a lot of water because water was filled with pollutants. It would be like taking a sip from Lady Bird Lake. Folks knew you weren’t supposed to drink that water. The disciples of Jesus were drinking, they were partying. They were eating and drinking. And it made some people confused. It might have been a fairly diluted wine, but wine nonetheless.

I want us to think about how the disciples are eating well and drinking wine well to the point that other people don’t understand what is going on. They thought religious followers, students of religious teachers weren’t supposed to be having so much fun. This is where Jesus starts to disabuse them of this notion of what is going on here.

All of this also gets us to why I want us to think about the connection between prayer and drinking alcohol. Eating is to fasting as drinking is to praying. I mentioned how prayer is something you can do at any time. One of the few times you can’t really pray is when you’re drunk. Part of the necessity for prayer is being present with yourself and present with God. And when you are drunk, you are neither present with yourself nor present with God.

This also helps us to remember that prayer is not limited by what we call intercessory prayer. Prayer is not just praying for someone. To pray is a transitive verb. It is also an intransitive verb. And if you remember from English class, a transitive verb needs a direct object. An intransitive verb does not. I walk. Walk is an intransitive verb. I don’t need an object. I open the jar. Open is a transitive verb. It needs an object. I open is an incomplete sentence. Pray is not the only verb in English that is both transitive and intransitive. Play, only one letter difference, also functions in that. I play baseball is a coherent sentence. I play is a coherent sentence.

This matters because how we talk about God matters. The definition of idle talk is talk that doesn’t matter. Some weather we’ve got here? Them longhorns, I tell you what. This is talk to fill the time. It is precisely what we should not be doing with prayer.

I pray for you is coherent. It makes sense. I pray also makes sense.

So, Herbert McCabe’s advice on praying for what you want works for the transitive function of prayer, for praying for someone, for what we call intercessory prayer, praying for something as an intercessor. The intransitive form of praying doesn’t start with what we want, because it’s not about what we want. It starts with where we are. This leads to the contemplative tradition of Prayer within Christianity. This tradition goes back centuries. It has especially high roots within Catholic monasticism. Monks and nuns throughout the world dedicating their life to prayer. But there’s also portions of it in almost every Christian tradition. For contemplative prayer, the object is God. When pray is used in an intransitive manner, the object is God. The real question is, how do we enter the space of prayer? Because that can be hard to do. How do we enter contemplation?

There are two historic methods. One is lectio divina taking a scriptural text and having that as a source. Another is starting with silence disciplining our mind around that. In this way, there is an understandable sense in a comparison between drinking and praying. Eating is to fasting as drinking is to praying. Prayer is about our relationship with who God is and entering deeper into that. Not for any material reason, not to get anything out of it.

Prayer is like falling in love. It’s like walking on the beach with someone you just met who you may spend your life with. Time becomes irrelevant. There’s nothing productive about prayer. You don’t gain extra points on your heavenly resume and prayer and said prayer at its best is like lingering at the beach with someone you love longingly, spending time with them as if there’s no one else in the world. Someone you can talk to for 20 minutes or six hours and you don’t notice the difference.

We can pray before we know God. The thief on the cross prayed before he knew Jesus. He sought redemption from his moment of capital punishment. Prayer is an act of faith. To believe in someone beyond yourself. To believe in the God who created everything who became human in Jesus Christ to save you when you couldn’t save yourself. Who forgive your sins and wants to just spend time with you in prayer.

But when we get back to the biblical text for today, the gospel reading, it’s not just about praying. We actually have this distinction that Jesus is talking about. He’s challenged by someone that his disciples aren’t fasting and praying and he mentions that while the bridegroom is there they will celebrate. But there will be time for fasting and praying in the future.

Similarly, no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and will spill out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine but says, ‘The old is good.’ ”

No one puts new wine into old wine skins. What they are doing is different then what came before. It can’t be seen in the same light. There’s a time for contemplation. There is a time for celebration. There’s a time for contemplation. There is a time for service. There’s a time for Mary and a time for Martha. Mary, at the feet of Jesus, is the figure of contemplation. She’s entirely present with Jesus. Martha, in the kitchen, is a figure of service, but also of celebration, of getting ready to eat and to drink. And that is good and important. Jesus doesn’t dismiss Martha as so many readings have it. Jesus lifts up Mary as the better share, but the love of God is not zero-sum. For God to praise one person is not to condemn another. These activities are good for our own time. Jesus has gone to the Father. We are seeking Him now. We seek Jesus through the means of grace, with worship and praise and fasting and service. We also seek Jesus through prayer. People aren’t born good at prayer, it is a habit we can practice. Contemplation is a habit that we can practice.

I am not a birder. I know a few birds, but most of the time, when I see a bird, if it doesn’t fall into one of four categories, I don’t know what it is. Birders have hours and years and decades of experience so that they can look at and see a bird and know what it is. They can hear a bird and know what it is. They can be still and wait for a bird to come.

As one of my teachers once said.

…looking to God is contemplation. It is looking inward into the depths of the soul, and hence beyond the soul toward God. The more contemplation finds God, the more it forgets itself and yet discovers itself in him.¹

So how do we do this? Let’s take the time to contemplate.

Let’s try some contemplative prayer, beginning with Lectio Divina. We’ll start with this phrase from the Gospel Reading New wine must be put into fresh wine skins. New wine must be put into fresh wine skins.

I want you to close your eyes, find a comfortable position, and under your breath repeat that line over and over again. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Take a moment to rest in the words of Jesus. Let them guide you back to the Father.

New wine must be put into fresh wine skins.

When you come into this holy place and you see this window, may you seek out the time to contemplate God, to fall in love with God, to find space for God, not for any material reason, but out of love.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Footnotes

1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, 24. ↩