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Speaking Terms
A sermon
by Dr. Jesse Fletcher
Interim Preacher, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, October 28, 2007
I am reading from the Gospel of John. I’d like to read from the
old traditional 1611 version that most of us grew up, most of us my age, excuse
me, grew up with. “If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love even
as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things
have I spoken to you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be
full. This is my commandment – that you love one another as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his
friends. You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth, I
call you not servants for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. But I
call you friends for all things that I have heard from my Father, I’ve made
known unto you. You’ve not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you
that you should go forth and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should
remain. That whatsoever ye shall ask of the father, in my name, he may give it
to you.” May God add his blessing to the reading of his word.
The message is about prayer. Sounds like there are several things
linked here. The friendship idea, the loving commandment, and asking for
prayer. Prayer’s at the heart of our faith and I keep having to learn it over
and over again.
When I was a young pastor, and by the way you ought to hear old
pastors like myself get together with other old pastors and compare stories from
our first churches. If you want to be entertained sometime, that will certainly
do it. In fact, one of the stories that I was telling somebody just recently
that I wasn’t sure I should have told – my wife and I decided to try to activate
an old parsonage at one of our student pastorates. And so, the only builder in
town was a kind of a reprobate who never came to church. But he agreed to try
to help us fix it up. It was four rooms, bathroom, kitchen, living room, and
the bedroom. And he was trying to help us put it together. We had several
problems. The toilet had fallen through the floor. And that had to be rescued
and put back on solid footing. And we were all gathered in the bathroom area
one afternoon with this reprobate builder, trying to decide what to do about the
old cracked linoleum in the bathroom. And he had fixed the toilet and
everything and so he needed to know what to do next. And my wife had brought a
few swatches and she was showing what we wanted there and he was saying, “We can
do that” but my treasurer’s wife was looking in the window. We still hadn’t put
windows back in it. She was looking in from the outside and she said, “Well, I
want you to know, that linoleum is good enough for anybody.” Talking about the
old cracked linoleum that was on the floor. My wife looked at her, and got this
kind of horrible look on her face, and went over to the old reprobate and took
the linoleum knife out of his hand, hooked it in the corner of the linoleum,
took it all the way across and said, “It’s not good enough for me.”
And I started praying right then and there. First, I started
praying for my next church.
You won’t believe how it was all made right. The old reprobate
started coming to church. Another one of the people there that every pastor had
tried to line up was one of those who just didn’t come to church but who was
someone in the community so I just had to try to get him back in the church. I
went out to visit him, spent some time with him, and finally, I cut to the chase
and said, “Sir, do you know the Lord?” He looked at me for a minute and then he
kinda’ smiled and said, “We are on speaking terms.” Now, that’s West Texas
laconic, meaning you don’t know what he means. He may be saying, “I barely know
him.” He may be talking about his best friend. For we exaggerate things down
in Texas. But we exaggerate ‘em both ways. Sometimes we understate ‘em. You
always hear about us overstating ‘em. Probably because we do that more than we
do the other. But we do understate things. So I still didn’t know exactly what
he meant. But as I spent time with him, he taught me more about prayer than
anybody up to that point other than my father. He did know the Lord, he was on
speaking terms with him, and he spoke to him regularly.
One time, we had prayer together and it wasn’t a sonorous voice
of someone addressing the Almighty. It was the simple conversation of a man
talking to a friend. And I learned something about talking to God that has
stood me in good stead ever since.
Now, we are talking primarily today about private prayer. Public
prayer has a role. It is the place where the gathered believers gather their
voice and petition their God. It’s an act of worship. It’s a collective reach
for the presence of God who promises to be in our midst when we come together
and worship like this. But it’s in the closet, as Jesus referred to it, it’s in
those private moments where we seek his face that we most know what prayer’s
about. It’s where we most sense the presence of God or it’s where we most sense
the absence of God.
Now and then, I find myself talking to God and I have no idea
where he is. And I’m just praying he has an idea where I am. But my faith says
he’s there and he knows.
Jesus’ private prayer was so powerful that his disciples wanted
to know about it. He would draw off to one side – you remember, we talked about
the power of aloneness. Jesus could take that aloneness and convert it into
something that seemed to not only energize him but bring something so exciting
and positive to whatever happened next that the disciples said, “Teach us to
pray.” And the prayer we were led in a moment ago was the model prayer that he
uttered with the real lesson – the real lesson was the drawing aside and talking
to God, the friend.
We need to learn that, folks. If you haven’t become the kind of
pray-er that can turn aside and share your heart with God as friend through
Christ, you need to get hold of it.
You talk about a friend in high places. Doesn’t get any higher
than that. Every now and then, I’ll hear somebody talk about somebody they know
who is their friend and they know I’ll know who that person is. It’s name
dropping in the highest order. But when you are talking to God, you have a
friend well-placed indeed.
Now, when you start talking about prayer like this, you really
need to think of it in terms of friendship as you understand it. How do you
understand friendship? Do you have friends? Often, when I take that inventory,
I ask myself, “OK, at what level am I going to talk about, because I know some
people at this level, some people at this level, some people at this level, and
a very few people at this level.” And I am not talking about rising and
descending, I am talking about the depth of the relationship. And usually when
you get to that deepest level, you’re talking about somebody you could share
almost anything with.
As I think about friends, how I came to know them, how the
relationship developed, two came to mind for this purpose. The first - one
night I was flying my plane in from a speaking engagement into Abilene and got
in real late. I had spoken in the evening and then flown through a beautiful
West Texas night to Abilene and parked the plane, and got my gear out, started
walking back, and I noticed a tall man standing there in the dark, just near my
plane. He had evidently walked out as he saw me coming in and unloading. And
he says, “Hi, how are you doing?” And I said, “I’m fine.” He says, “My name’s
George Bush.” Now folks we are not talking about the current one – we’re
talking about the older one. You do remember how old I am? And I thought, “I
know you! I’m Jess Fletcher.” He said, “Oh, yeah.” I said, “You know me?” Or
at least I thought it. The reason was, he wasn’t President then. He was
director of the CIA. And that bothered me a little bit. Then I remembered he
was in Abilene speaking while I had to be elsewhere and he was waiting for his
plane to take him back to Washington and probably had been briefed on some of
the people that he might meet in Abilene. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there. But
it was a very interesting meeting there, just the two of us in the darkness of a
flight line late at night.
Now, fast forward, actually backwards, to my first class in
seminary. I’d just finished my army stint, was starting my first year of the
seminary to try to prepare myself to be a minister, and I was in a Greek class.
And folks, at A&M, we didn’t even have Greek fraternities, much less teach
Greek. I am sitting in this class and the guy sitting next to me, a real
attractive man, obviously confident young man, knew Greek. And I asked him
later, I said, “Why are you in this class?” He said, “Well, I wanted to build
my base a little stronger.” Turns out he was from Baylor and had majored in
history and in Bible and had already had Greek. And I decided rather than
resent that and say life is not fair, which it isn’t, I would simply get to know
him.
Now, which of these friends do you think influenced me the most?
Well, that’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? The next time I saw George Bush, it was at
a distance. He was in a phalanx of helicopters flying into Houston while
Dorothy and I were circling over Galveston where they had sent us while his
phalanx of helicopters came in. We didn’t wave at each other. Distance was a
little great. But it caused me to be late getting to Abilene – a front came
through and I carried a load of ice that just scared me to death and I thought,
“Thanks, George.” But I respect him – anybody that would jump out of an
airplane at age 80 has my respect. Not my emulation, but my respect.
But the other guy became a friend. Russell and I spent a lot of
time together. Now, we are talking about Russell Dilday – your first interim
preacher, during the first quarter of this year. Remember that guy? That
friendship has grown and been solid over the years, and I think there are very
few things we haven’t shared with each other or wouldn’t share with each other.
As I pointed out to the group this morning, I was the first non-family
babysitter for Robert. I really was. And I remember the problem… well,
Robert’s not a problem, but I kept setting him up and he would fall over. And
so I had to prop him up. Finally, I gave him a newspaper and he just tore it to
pieces, gleefully. He was so entertained. I should have known he was going to
be a newspaper man at that point.
Russell and I continue to be close. We’ve talked to each other
several times in the last couple of months. Even as I read his sermons when he
was here in the spring, he’s been reading mine this fall. We’re such good
friends, we don’t comment on it to each other. I would tell him almost
anything. Almost.
The friend we are talking about and the kind of prayer we are
talking about you can remove the almost. You would tell him anything.
I had a man share with me after the early service how really,
really meaningful that is. To be able to tell someone anything. How important
it is to let God do the work he wants to do in your life.
Do you pray? This is not something that you need a formula for.
This is not something that you need a time for. This is not something that you
need to stop whatever you are doing for. You can learn to pray on the run,
folks. You are with a friend. Talk to him.
First of all, it is the primary act of faith. You say you are a
believer. Don’t trot out your doctrine to me. Don’t trot out your latest works
to me. Tell me how often you talk to him. “He that cometh to God,” the
scripture says, “must believe that he is and that he is the rewarder of them
that diligently seek him.” Do you talk to him?
I must confess to you that occasionally I have crises of faith in
terms of prayer. And I am not sure I would have confessed that had I not had
one this week. A couple that I know pretty well has had some tough sledding
lately. The wife was diagnosed with a very harsh disease from which there is
almost, there is no known cure. And I have felt my friend’s heart as he worried
about what was happening to his wife. And then before I left a week ago, he was
in the hospital with a circulatory problem. And I went to see him and I could
tell again his main worry was not about himself but about her. And then this
week, he had a massive stroke. I’ve been waking up at night for months, praying
for her. And for him. Talking to my friend. Talking to God. That’s not what
I envisioned. Wasn’t what I wanted. Wasn’t what I asked for. So last night, I
found myself talking to God in terms of the questions I had.
We are back to faith, folks. We are back to the idea if you
believe in a God who can order the universe, who can take the speck in time and
space that we are, and know who we are, and care about us, then he can handle
this.
Paul was reaching for some kind of explanation when he said, “All
things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to
his purpose.” That has become the passage that I have tried to live by over the
years. I’ve never been afraid of science or cosmology. I’ve not been afraid of
the telescope or the microscope. They’ve all enlivened my understanding of
God’s creation. And a God that can handle that kind of creation can handle my
kind of predicament. And I have to trust that somehow in a much broader scheme,
in a much larger venue than I can understand, he’s making things right.
So this morning, I’m still praying. I’m still praying about the
same situation. And others, even as you are. Because I believe God is a friend
that cares, who listens, and who is acting in my behalf.
Would you bow your heads with me?
Thank you, father, for being there for us. Help us when we lose
heart or find ourselves faint of faith to renew again our confidence in your
love. To sense again that in reaching out in Christ to us, you cared about us
more than we could ever realize or ever deserve. But your promises are sure and
we will continue to reach out to you, Father. In Christ’s name. AMEN
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