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

You might know that I made a quick trip to Oklahoma this past week for a few days.  There is a foundation in Oklahoma City called the Oklahoma City Public School Foundation, which annually bestows humanitarian awards on a few members of the community.  It is a very distinguished recognition. 

This year, the Foundation honored a recent mayor of Oklahoma City who established a plan which is improving the buildings and the quality of education in Oklahoma City’s public schools.  Wayne Coyne, who I had not heard of before this award, who is apparently a world-famous rock star and 3-time Grammy Award winner, was also honored by the Foundation this year.  Wayne, and the members of his band, The Flaming Lips, are all graduates of Oklahoma City public schools.  Even though Wayne travels the world giving concerts – and sometimes performing with the Rolling Stones – and could live anywhere, still chooses to call Oklahoma City home. 

My parents were recognized and honored with these award winners for their lifetime of volunteering and support of the Oklahoma City community.  In addition to what they’ve given and done for the community, they are graduates of Oklahoma City public schools, they sent my siblings and I to public school, and they advocate and actively work for the improvement of the quality of Oklahoma’s public schools.  I am very proud of them.

There was a presentation of awards and a dinner to celebrate this year’s honorees on Thursday night.  Seated at a table right in front of the stage, along with my brother and parents, I listened to the elaborate description and touching introduction of my Mom and Dad and felt certain remarks catch my breath and fill my eyes with tears of pride and love.  As I watched and listened to the presentation of their award, I thought to myself how happy I was that I was able to be with my Mom and my Dad on such a special night.  These kinds of things don’t come around very often in a lifetime, so we need to be there when they happen.  My parents are wonderful role-models and it meant so much to me and to them that I could be there Thursday night.

Being thankful I was there wasn’t the only thing on my mind over the last couple of days.  You are never far from my thoughts.  I had read through our Scripture readings for this morning earlier in the week and was giving a lot of thought to what Luke’s story about the Pharisee and the tax collector meant to me and how I could talk about it in the context of our contemporary lives.  Having in my mind on one hand what Jesus said in the Gospel about making yourself look good in public, or trying to look better than others in the eyes of God or those around you, I was feeling some dissonance between the Scripture and what I was seeing happen right in front of me. 

How could I explain to myself the difference between this award recognition and what Jesus said?  It wasn’t too hard to see that, in the first place, it wasn’t my parents who were standing up making news out of some of the good things they’d done in life, as the Pharisee did.  It was others who gathered around and told the story of two people who had done significant things yet had never sought recognition for themselves. 

Not only that, it was clear in the description of the Pharisee and his public prayers, that his purpose was not to speak to God and confess his short-comings.  He set out to speak, through prayer, to anyone who would hear, his self-righteous message about his own piety, up-right-ness and honorable-ness.  I get the sense that since he was so ready to sing his own praises, that he wasn’t even accurately describing himself.  He was making himself sound far better than he really was.  He was duplicitous, and this is not what happened when my parents were recognized on Thursday.

In the story of the Pharisee and the tax-collector, an alternate form of prayer and relationship with God is described and held up as the preferred way to behave.  One is to be aware of one’s own short-comings, and not to be intent on building oneself up to look better than one really is, whether in front of God or in front of anyone else. 

You know, I have always found an enormous amount of comfort in the collect for purity which we say every Sunday at the beginning of the service.  It is the prayer which starts: “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid …”  If you take this to heart, it means that you never have to break the news to God about what you’ve done or not done.  God already knows.  There is no chance of “slipping one by” or pretending in front of God that you are without fault or blemish. 

If our hearts are open and all of our desires are known to God, it would be pretty silly to stand up in public and pray aloud about all of the good you’ve done, if God knows you are leaving part of your story untold.  The thing to do, obviously, is to turn in humility and honesty to speak privately with God about the way things really are.  No matter how shameful or painful it is, if you face with God the reality of WHAT REALLY IS, God will be present with you in it … and in the time to come.  You won’t be left alone.

When I was very young, around six, I had a very specific experience of this kind of prayer with God.  The memory of it, its power and its effectiveness have been foundational to my entire life of faith.  I remember being in church with my parents and being hard at work on whatever I was drawing on the bulletin.  We don’t give kids enough credit for how much they are paying attention when it looks like they aren’t.  It was unusual that particular Sunday because not only did we have a guest preacher, which never happened, the guest preacher had also turned out to be a woman.

During the course of her sermon, she talked about how to pray.  My ears pricked up because I was pretty sure I didn’t know how to pray and I was interested how someone was supposed to do it correctly.  She went on to say something to the effect that if, in prayer, you asked God, or Jesus, to come into your heart, God would – it was that simple.  Being aware that there were too many things in church which could distract me from prayer, I “logged” the idea and thought I would try it later when I had a chance to really pray.

After church was over, my family and I piled into our brown, wood-sided station-wagon.  I sat in the back, behind the driver’s seat.  I’m pretty sure my Dad was driving.  Anyway, you know when you’re small, you can sort of curl up with your feet on the seat and rest your head on the arm-rest of the door – and it’s actually comfortable.  That’s what I did.  Finding myself able to block-out whatever else was going on in the car, I shut my eyes and prayed a little prayer in my head, asking God to come into my life and into my heart.  At that moment, I had a powerful sense of certainty that what I’d prayed for had been completely accomplished.  I was surprised, amazed and filled with happiness – it worked!!  My simple little prayer had worked.

I never forgot that experience, and I never doubted from that moment on that God was present in my life and in my heart.  I’ve never lost that feeling.  As significant as that moment was, I didn’t tell anyone about it at the time.  As a matter of fact, it was 30 years later, when I was in the ordination process and starting to share the story of my faith life, that I began to talk about this experience for the first time.  Over and over, this story speaks to me of the power of prayer – there is enormous power in prayer whether it is uttered sophisticatedly or not.  The point is turning to God … without pride. 

When we pray the Prayers of the People each Sunday, after we say the Nicene Creed, there are points at which we are all invited to add our own petitions silently or aloud.  Some of us share some of our prayer concerns aloud, but I know the great majority of prayers are offered in silence during such a pause.  This is a special moment, a sacred time.  It is one of the times in our corporate service of worship where we can turn to God with an open heart and in humility ask God to stand with us in WHAT IS. 

Join God in facing the truth about your life.  Ask God to join you in dealing with the truth of the lives around you.  Ask for God’s will to be done.  Ask for God’s presence with you.  This is the way Jesus has told and shown us we should pray.  Not to impress anyone else, not to exalt ourselves or gloss-over flaws and short-comings.  Like the tax-collector, turn to God in humility.  And when the angels gather around, you will know how it feels to be exalted by God. 

It works. It really works. 

AMEN!