ARE YOU RUNNING WITH ME, JESUS?
Rev. Dr. Robert R. LaRochelle
September 28, 2008

For the many special guests who are with us this morning to celebrate this joyful occasion in the life of this church...... I want you to be aware that you are walking into the fourth week of a five part Sermon Series on the subject of prayer.  Everyone will be happy to know, I am sure, that I’m not going to take this time to walk you through the first three sermons before I plunge into this one. That’s why we have them all online with hard copies on our back table and I’d really like it if you WOULD give them a read. But I do want to say as we begin and as so many of you are here to honor Carol Howard and her life and ministry, that it is something far more than pure coincidence that we are talking about PRAYER on the day of this great dedication because it is clear to me, as someone who, unfortunately, never knew her but has been inspired by the music she wrote and the stories people here in this church have told me about the way she lived her life, that this woman we honor today WAS  a woman of prayer, in the deepest, truest and finest sense of that phrase.

You know, a couple of years ago, we began running a link on our web site with a short biography of Carol. It’s the link you see printed out in this insert in your bulletins today. When I first read it, it meant a lot to me. But when I reread it this week, in preparation for this service, I’ve got to tell you: it brought tears to my eyes, especially as I thought about it while typing out some of Carol’s words to these songs we are singing this morning, all the while thinking about the way she faced her life: A 22 year battle with cancer, yet, through it all, finding her voice in offering praise to God, blessing God, counting it all joy, making her music yet another powerful means of prayer, naturally flowing from the prayer that was her life. It is clear to me, from what I have heard from the people whom I love here at this church and her friends I have gotten to know, that Carol Howard’s life WAS a prayer. Faced with the prospect of confronting as deep a fear as any of us can face, the fear of our mortality and inevitable death, she was able to offer consolation and HOPE to the people she served. Her personal prayer was no isolated, self centered, me + God or me+ Jesus thing.....NO.....her inward prayer turned her outward, outward in the direction of those who needed HER leadership, those who drew strength from HER courage!

All of which brings us to this sermon I seek to preach today, a sermon that goes by the curious, yet, for some, perhaps, familiar title ARE YOU RUNNING WITH ME, JESUS? It’s a title I didn’t make up for, as some of you know, back in 1966, a man named Malcolm Boyd wrote a book of that title, a collection of honest, straightforward, from the heart prayers, a book that had a profound impact on this preacher, then teenager, who happened to read it at the time. The underlying premise Boyd’s book, I think, is that prayer’s not just some religious act that you do or Sunday or this superstitious thing that you use to stack up the odds in favor of something you want, but instead that the heart of prayer lies in this relationship that you have with God, for a Christian God incarnate in the person of Jesus, a relationship that spills over into the way you live REAL LIFE! If we are doing it right, the way it’s clear that Carol Howard did, then prayer’s a RELATIONSHIP that will make a positive impact on ALL the relationships we will have and it’s those relationships we must cherish in this fast paced world, one in which Boyd’s image of RUNNING makes such complete sense!. So, then, what we are exploring this morning is what we might call the EFFECTS of prayer, but, you see, I am NOT talking about the EFFECTS of prayer on the shaping of events (  ‘Dear God, please take away my illness ‘ and whether or not the illness is taken away )..I’m talking instead about the effects of prayer on the PRAY-ER, the impact of prayer on the one DOING THE PRAYING!

You know, there are people out there in the real world beyond the walls of the church who look at  ‘quote’ ‘RELIGIOUS ‘ people who pray and hurl some pretty strong criticism our way. They talk about people who go to church on Sunday and oftentimes are very involved in their churches and this includes Pastors, people who, for all of their RELIGIOSITY really don’t act much differently from those who aren’t under the influence of God and who exhibit characteristics of meanness, disrespect, self centeredness, abusiveness, intolerance and bigotry that so clearly contradict the religious faith they claim to espouse. As much as I hate to say it and how hard it is sometimes to try to defend organized religion, I’m going to tell you: these critics have a point. Because a person is ‘ SPIRITUAL ’, because she or he goes to church or sits on committees or reads or preaches from pulpits, sadly, does not mean that the person necessarily exemplifies that which she or he claims to believe. It’s sad, but it’s true, and, if you don’t think Jesus would agree with that statement, just ask yourself what would make him him so mad that he would throw a Lou Pinella like tantrum, tossing tables over in that sacred worship space of his people, arguing forcefully that this place which was supposed to be a ‘house of prayer’ had instead become a ‘den of thieves.’

The point here, my friends, is that prayer is supposed to have a GOOD EFFECT. THAT is a strong counter to those who quarrel with institutional religion!  Think about this. If you and I are nurtured and nourished by our relationship with God, should that not have some effect? Please take time and consider this with me:  I am simply one, just ONE, of the billions of people who live on earth right now, ONE, just ONE, of the billions upon billions who have lived since the beginning of civilization. WHERE I live, South Windsor, Ct., is this little tiny dot on the map, my very house, my own town looking so miniscule, so small when the flight patterns cause me to pass over it in the air. I was born, I will live and I’ll die, taking my place among the many, a simple DASH marking the time from my beginning in 1953 to my end. Now, how’s THAT for depressing?

Well, let me tell you: I DON’T THINK IT IS! Because if I go to God in PRAYER, if I have a RELATIONSHIP with God, what happens? Might I suggest that in this relationship, I might gain PERSPECTIVE? This life of mine is MORE than a tiny dot, that DASH contains LOVE and LEGACY and ACHIEVEMENT and maybe some kind of contribution to the welfare of someone else. If I have a relationship with God, my friends, in that very relationship, God is telling me that, small as I may be in the big scheme of the universe, I’m God’s child and I am loved and the work that I do, the way I live my daily life is important! And, if I am really listening to God and attentive to the big picture, I’m realizing something else as well.......that the person NEXT TO ME is important in God’s eyes too and so is that starving child in Darfur and so is that prisoner and so is that person we have been taught to demonize and hate. You see, at its very best, this relationship with God, this relationship nourished and nurtured in PRAYER, gives us NEW PERSPECTIVE. We see things differently. In the words of the Bible I read this morning THE EYES OF OUR HEART are truly enlightened. Religion becomes more than this thing we USE to get us through our lives and pull out of the hat to serve as a supernatural footnote to our prejudices, but instead religion is a LIVING, RELATIONAL FAITH which makes a difference in the way WE TREAT others and even in how we treat ourselves! Because we know we are LOVED by a power far greater than ourselves, because we know we DID NOTHING to receive the opportunities we have been given, we come to expect more of ourselves than what the world so often expects, a world that tantalizes us with its offers of security and status, a world that lures us into wallowing in our fears. But, again the Bible is right: ‘ GREATER IS HE WHO IS IN ME THAN HE WHO IS IN THE WORLD’( 1 Jn 4;4)  Because of our perspective, WE MARCH TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER.......You know, when most of us went through school and read famous American writers, we had to read Henry David Thoreau, you know, Walden’s Pond...  Someone gave me this  great plaque years ago and I have it in my office at school, a plaque containing the words of Thoreau:

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because HE HEARS A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

Let him march to the music that he hears, HOWEVER MEASURED OR FAR AWAY

My dear friends, as we saw in the life and, may I say , the DEATH of Rev. Carol Howard, when we march to that different drummer, when we come to God and hear God speak to us through the VOICE that IS the life of Christ, it just has to make a difference in our lives. The Bible says that by ‘ our  fruits ‘ others should know who we are. The song tells us ‘ and they’ll know we are Christians by our love’. Paul, in Galatians 5:22, lays it all on the line saying that for those filled with the Spirit of God that comes from RELATING to God, the fruits are very clear and do you know what they are? From this relationship, the Bible says, come  forth the fruits of LOVE, JOY, PEACE, KINDNESS, LONG SUFFERING, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS and SELF CONTROL.  This isn’t religion in a bubble, religion enshrined in some sanctuary, this is EVERYDAY RELIGION: Kindness at work, gentleness with those who drive you nuts, faithfulness under trial, long suffering in the midst of disappointment and fear, peace where revenge is SO TEMPTING, JOY when the markets are falling and doom pervades the land, PEACE as both goal and way of life ( Let there be peace on earth...and let it begin with me!), and LOVE that pulls it all together, LOVE for a God who made it possible to LIVE, LOVE for a WORLD of different colors and cultures, ALL CAST IN THE IMAGE OF GOD!

As we close today, I offer something of which I was reminded this week as I sought to speak of prayer and as I thought of Carol’s life. I offer the words of a prayer I first read a very long time ago, one that meant something then, one that I hope might speak to you as this service draws to a close and, as we leave the security of this house of worship to go back to those people and places that fill the preponderance of our days, as we go forth from this house now, with peace in our heart, and with joy to impart! With gratitude for our past and with an eye toward tomorrow, might we bow our heads and thus pray? :

It’s morning, Jesus. It’s morning and here’s that light and sound all over again. I’ve got to move fast, get into the bathroom, wash up, grab a bite to eat and run some more.

I just don’t feel like it. What I really want to do is get into bed, pull up the covers and sleep. All I seem to want today is the big sleep...and here I’ve got to run all over again.

Where am I running? You know these things I can’t understand. It’s not that I need to have you tell me. What counts most is just that somebody knows and it’s you. That helps a lot!

So, I’ll follow along, OK? But lead, PLEASE!  Now, I’ve got to run. ARE YOU RUNNING WITH ME, JESUS?

AMEN+