Emmanuel Episcopal Church

Service Bulletin for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

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Homily for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost - Learning to Pray

Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
Luke 11:1-13

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

If you want to make an Episcopalian uncomfortable, ask him or her a question that requires some biblical literacy. 

In general, many of us feel we know very little about scripture despite the fact that our worship services often have more readings from holy scripture than do the worship services of many denominations we associate with biblical literacy.

But if you want to make an Episcopalian really uncomfortable, ask about his or her prayer life.¹ 

I suspect that reluctance comes out of some embarrassment, fear that we would have to admit that our prayer life is not as developed or as satisfying or maybe even as existent as we sense it ought to be. 

And though we may have been Christians most of our lives (and some of us can’t remember a time when we weren’t), when it comes to prayer we can often feel like inept beginners.

In part we often are!  Many of us really haven’t developed too much in our prayer life from the time we learned some version or another of that morbid bedtime prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

To that we may have added concerns for others, “Bless my mom, my dad, my dog Tippy, and my teddy bear Theodore.  Or please, Lord, I need an X-Box 360, and if you would throw in a Corvette that’d be super.” 

We might, at least at times of formal meals, say a blessing for the meal: “Come, Lord Jesus, and be our guest; let this food to us be blest.” 

And then I suspect in time some of us stumbled upon prayers of penitence, “O Lord, if you just let me recover from this headache, I’ll never do that again.” 

And for many, if not most, our “prayer life” seems to have too little “prayer” and even less “life.”

Service Bulletin for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Download the Service Bulletin for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Service Bulletin for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Download the Service Bulletin for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Service Bulletin for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Download the Service Bulletin for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Service Bulletin for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Download the Service Bulletin for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost