It is the Jazz Festival Worship Service once again at Evergreen Christian Church. Are you all excited to be here? Can I hear an "Amen" from the congregation?

I believe we all look forward to this experience. In the last several years I have preached on: "The Gospel and All That Jazz" and "If You Like Jazz, You Should Love God."

This summer I am preaching a summer series at ECC on Christ and Culture and we are exploring the relationship of Christian faith to the kind of culture we are living in in the 3rd century of the American experience and the 3rd millennium of Christian history. I want to continue that series today, letting you in on our pastoral conversations, with some reflections on Christ and Culture: Jazz and Prayer in a Culture of Longing.

I.

Three Things Jazz and Prayer Have in Common

One: Jazz and Prayer both come out of the depths of our human experience and speak to our human longing.

Two: Jazz and Prayer both seek to "go" to places in the human spirit where "mere words" cannot go alone. They both belong to the world "beyond words." They both belong to the world of sighs and cries and joys to deep for explanation.

Three: Those who engage in the experience of Jazz and the practice of Prayer actually "give themselves" to the music of life. They both-Prayer and Jazz-engage the "raw experience of life."

To wit: When I was a chaplain at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, I stood in the middle of a hot summer night in the emergency room with a young woman who had just lost a child. Oh, go down death! I asked her, "Would you like to say a prayer?" She replied out of that place of deepest longing, "I don't know any prayers." Here was a young woman who didn't have a prayer. We may find that strange. But again, maybe not. Do you have a prayer in the face of culture, in the face of anxiety, in the face of uncertainty?

II.

You see, the Disciples of Jesus didn't have a prayer.

That is the point of this text in Luke. John's disciples had a prayer. Other rabbis had given their disciples a prayer. But Jesus' disciples didn't have a prayer. So they come and say: "Lord, teach us to pray." And so might we to, in our 21st century culture. Lord, teach us to pray. Why?

Because many of us like the woman in the emergency room don't know any prayers.

Because many of us are like the man who sought counsel from the psychiatrist Paul Tournier by saying "I have lost God's address."

Because prayer in our culture has become so trivialized…made into a technique to get what we want.

Because for many of us there are times we don't so much address God in our prayers but just our own anxieties.

Because so often we come up empty. The words just elude us.

III.

And so, Jesus teaches us to pray.

Only thirty seven words. Only four petitions. All of which, like jazz, comes out of the depths of our humanity, out of our true experience, out of life and death itself.

Pray for the coming of the kingdom of God…that is for the redemption of all life by the love, compassion and mercy of God.

Pray for your daily sustenance. My job as pastor is simply to help people make it through the day…and night.

Pray for forgiveness. Who among us doesn't need it? Doesn't need a second chance, a new start.

Pray for deliverance from being overpowered by evil…from the ever present death forces of oppression and confusion and injustice and terrible sufferings in life.

Prayer and Jazz…out of the depts., out of deep human longing, our of the need to connect with life and grace and meaning in places where life is just too much for words, out of the need to give ourselves to the music of life…and the source of life itself.

IV.

Let us pray.

Holy God, make out of our sometimes dull, sometimes listless, sometimes selfish, sometimes desparate prayers, whatever will be useful to your life and love in this world.

Make out of our silence, the "rests" in the musical score of life, a form of prayer for we must "speak" with you even if what we feel cannot find words.

In the symphony of our lives there are sharps and flats, there is fortissimo and pianissimo, there is crescendo and diminuendo. Hold all the music of our living, holy God, in the grace and mercy and guidance of the maestro of our humanity…even Jesus Christ our Lord who taught us to pray…

Our father in heaven…



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