FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

 

May 17, 2009

 

CHRIST AT THE CENTER – THE FAMILY OF FAITH

THE PRAYERS OF THE FITZROY STREET METHODIST CHURCH

 

Scripture:  Matthew 6:1-13, 7:7-11; Philippians 4:4-9

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Almost thirty years ago, on a Sunday evening in 1980, I tuned in to KDKA radio from our suburban home in Sewickley and listened, as was my custom every week, to the sermon delivered earlier that morning from Shadyside Presbyterian Church by my close friend and mentor Dr. Robert Cleveland Holland.

 

It was one of the greatest sermons I have every heard, entitled “The Prayers of the Fitzroy Street Methodist Church.”  After he died in 1983, Dr. Holland’s devoted wife Donna put together this book of his sermons, including the one that I am quoting from today.

 

So please listen now to the introduction, a story Bob Holland told about the power of prayer that I will never forget, and which I hope all of us will remember.

 

I

 

          “I want to tell you a story, and then we’ll talk about it.  The story is true.  I first heard it when we were in Australia three years ago, and it has troubled me ever since…

          In August, 1860, from the city of Melbourne, there departed what was known at the time as ‘The Great Northern Expedition.’  The objective was to be first in crossing the Australian Continent from the south to the northern tropics and the Coral Sea.

          There were eighteen men who started out, equipped with camels imported from India.  I won’t mention all the names involved, but those important to our story are Robert Burke and William Wills (the leaders)…and John King, another explorer about whom the story is especially concerned.

          The day they all left Melbourne…thousands lined the roads out of the northern suburbs.  They were fascinated with the camels, and off did those men go, with cries of ‘Good Luck!’ echoing in their ears.

          The expedition was ill-fated from the beginning.  Not one of the leaders was experienced or equipped for the tropics.  Burke and Wills were impetuous and impatient, and couldn’t wait for the slow gait of the camels, so they, with one other man and John King, pushed on ahead, leaving the main body of the expedition to follow as swiftly as possible.

          Those four did make it across the continent on foot, enduring unspeakable hardships of hunger, thirst and weariness.  But they reached the Gulf of Carpentaria in February, 1861…then they started back.  Burke almost died because, nearly starved, he ate a poisonous snake.  The fourth member of the team, a man named Gray, did die of exhaustion; and the other three sat resting and mourning, one long day and one long night by the makeshift grave, thereby sealing their fate.

          At a place called Cooper’s Creek in Queensland, the main body of the expedition had been awaiting the return of their leaders, but finally gave up and departed without them.  Six hours later, Burke and Wills and King staggered into the deserted Cooper’s Creek camp and found a note, a message left by the others, dated earlier the same day.  Not far from there, within the next week, first Burke and then Wills also died of exhaustion.  That left only John King.

          Now, John King’s sister lived in Melbourne, and she was hearing the frightening tales that somehow filtered back, that the expedition was in disarray, that some were lost and some were dead.  John King’s sister, like King himself, was an active member of the Fitzroy Street Methodist Church in Melbourne and the whole congregation joined together in a united concert of prayer until the expedition, or whatever was left of it, was safely home.

          And so they did.  For months there were special prayer meetings daily in the Fitzroy Street Methodist Church, and John King’s sister never missed.  She was at prayer for her brother in the church every day.  Finally, a search party was organized…and one day they came upon a ragged man with tangled hair and haggard eye who had temporarily even forgotten how to speak, and who was wasted to a shadow.  They soon made out that this was John King, and after a while, bit by bit, they drew from him the terrible saga of loss and death in the desert.  They sent out squads to find and gather the bodies of Gray and Burke and Wills, and they started home for Melbourne.

          When they returned, people in the thousands waited in somber silence at every point of vantage.  Then in the distance came the sound of the drums and the bagpipes which had been sent to the city’s edge.  And to the heavy tramping of the horses, the wagon rolled past bearing the bones of those who had so proudly ridden forth two years before.

          There were smothered sobs and strong men brushed away tears.  And then came a wagon with the sole survivor, John King, and his sister seated by his side.  That same day King and his sister and many others attended a special service at the Fitzroy Street Methodist Church, where they all gave God thanks for answering their prayers and bringing King home alive.

          Now, that’s the end of the tale.  Australians love to tell that story, and so do I.  But now comes the hard part: the questions it raises.  Was King spared because of the prayers of the Fitzroy Street Methodist Church?  If so, did the others die because no church had been praying for them?  If so, does God do good for His children only because they pray for it; or get enough people all at once to pray for it; or pray for it so hard, so urgently that they attract God’s attention and finally move Him into action?  Those are the difficult questions for a Christian.  And because they are, they deserve an answer…”  (From a sermon entitled “The Prayers of the Fitzroy Street Methodist Church,” preached by Dr. Robert Cleveland Holland at Shadyside Presbyterian Church on April 13, 1980)

 

Dr. Holland’s answers to those questions were theologically profound and very meaningful to me.  And if you would like to have a copy of his sermon, just let me know.

 

II

 

So now, with the time we have left, these are a few of my own responses to those questions which I hope will be helpful to you.

 

First – was John King spared because of the prayers of the Fitzroy Street Methodist Church?  The answer that he, his sister and the entire congregation offered was “Yes.”  But remember this: God did not answer their prayers in a vacuum.  The people prayed, and then they sent out a search party to look for and to rescue those who were lost.

 

That same kind of story is found over and over again in the Bible.  God promised Abraham and Sarah that He would give them a Promised Land.  So they prayed for a sense of direction, and then picked up their tent stakes and walked every step of the way to Canaan (Genesis 12 – 20).

 

The prophet Elijah, fearful of the wicked King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, fled into the desert and in despair, fell down on his knees in prayer.  Then, when God spoke to him, Elijah rose up and went back to Jerusalem where he anointed a new leader and helped to restore the Kingdom of Israel again (I Kings 19-22).

 

In our gospel lesson from the 6th chapter of Matthew, Jesus teaches His disciples to pray.  And then, in chapter 7, He tells them what to do:

 

          “Ask, and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you…in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:7,12).

 

Those are all dynamic verbs, encouraging us to pray with words, and then to act upon them.  When Paul wrote to the Philippians, he said: “In everything, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God…”  and then he added this:  “Keep on doing the things that you have learned…received…heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:6,9).

 

Do you see, when we pray for direction, when we ask for help and search for hope, when we lift up the Lord’s Prayer and then let our requests be made known to God through Christ Jesus, He almost always expects us to do something too: to put our faith into action and to cooperate, to collaborate with Him.

 

You say “Preacher, are you telling us that God helps them that help themselves?”  No, that’s not in the Bible.  Ben Franklin wrote those words on the cover of Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1758, and from the Christian point of view, that statement isn’t true.

 

Why?  Because sometimes, when the storm strikes and our lives are invaded by sickness, suffering or sorrow; sometimes, when we have been knocked down through some kind of trouble or trauma and can’t get up by ourselves, then we can and we must depend completely on the Lord in prayer.

 

A member of this church who is also a close friend, wound up in the hospital not long ago with a life-threatening heart condition.  As the family members and I joined hands in a circle around her bedside, I said “You know, Presbyterian prayers go straight through to the top.”  She smiled and whispered back “That’s what I need Preacher.  That’s what I need.”

 

And so the vigil began, as that brave and faithful woman was surrounded by intensive care from the medical staff and by the prayers of a wide circle of family and friends and members of this congregation.  The doctors said if she made it through the first three days, things might turn out okay …and so there was great celebration on the 16th day when they brought her home where, thank God, the recuperation process continues to go on.

 

III

 

But that leaves us with one last question about “The Prayers of the Fitzroy Street Methodist Church,” which is probably the most difficult question of all.  John King made it safely back home.  But that did not happen for the other members of “The Great Northern Expedition.”

 

The story reminds us that the entire congregation prayed for every single one of those men lost in the desert, yet only King was found.  The others died – just one survived.  So the question is “Why?”

 

That has been our age old question down through the centuries of human history.  Most painfully in the Old Testament, it was Job’s question as his life and everything he held dear collapsed into ruin.  “Why is this happening to me and my family?” is what Job wanted to know.  His friends blamed him for something they thought he must have done, he blamed them for their lack of understanding and compassion, and Job’s wife blamed God, saying “Why don’t you just curse God and die?” (Job 29)  In the last chapter, the question “Why?” is never answered.

 

Then in the New Testament, it was Jesus who cried out for Himself and for all of us when He hung on the cross to die:  “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  (Mark 15:34).  What we know and believe now, this side of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, is that God transformed that painful tragedy into the hope and promise of our salvation.  But on that first Good Friday, when Jesus died, there was no apparent answer to the question “Why?”

 

Which leads me to this conclusion.  If, in most cases, there is no adequate answer to the question we have been asking God for so long: “Why?”…if, after trying to figure out how things went wrong and who was at fault… if we cannot completely understand it all until we cross over to heaven, then can you imagine letting go of the question “Why” and asking God instead:  “What do you want me to do?”

 

And that, my friends, is a question that can be answered, even as we pray every day, just as Jesus taught us, saying:

 

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name” – we praise Him.

 

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” – we trust Him.

 

“Give us this day our daily bread” – that’s what we need, both physically and spiritually.

 

“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” – which takes away our guilt and helps us live by grace.

 

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” – which is the way the Lord wants us to live according to His will.

 

“For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever” – rejoicing that God is always with us, in this world and in the next.

 

Christian people: there are some things in life that we will never fully understand.  But none of us should ever be paralyzed by the question “Why?” because when we change the question to “What do you want me to do?” and lift that up in prayer every day, the Lord Jesus has already shown us the way.

 

We believe in this church that prayer works.  There are groups of people praying every day right here at the corner of 16th and Peachtree and in their homes throughout the week.  Tuesday mornings we gather in the chapel and we work our way through this prayer list, lifting up what are now more than 75 people to the Lord who are in need somewhere right now.  And of course on Sundays we gather here corporately to worship God and to lift up our prayers to Him, believing that God will answer us through the Lord Jesus Christ, not giving us what we think we want, but giving us what He knows that we need. 

 

CONCLUSION

 

We believe in prayer right here in this church, and so did the people of the City Temple in London, England.  And this is how Bob Holland concluded his sermon, telling about their pastor Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, who is known to many of you as the author of “The Will of God.”

 

“Leslie Weatherhead and the congregation met on Sunday mornings but they also gathered on Sunday evenings as the story tells us. It was 1954 in August.  The pastor had heard during the afternoon about a child of seven named Alistair who was seriously ill with poliomyelitis.  Unknown to Alistair’s parents, who were parishioners, that evening in Church the minister asked the whole congregation of two thousand to pray silently, together, all at once, for Alistair and to think of Jesus Christ as if He were standing by Alistair’s bed laying his hands on the boy’s brow.  They prayed.  Weatherhead says: ‘We cooperated with God, and became, with the doctors and nurses, part of the healing team.”  These prayers were prayed at City Temple at seven o’clock.  The service had started at 6:30.  Three days later, Dr. Weatherhead got a letter from Alistair’s mother; and in it she said this:

 

          ‘All day Sunday Alistair was ill and feverish; and at 6:30 his temperature was 103.  At 7:30 he said to me, ‘Mummy, I feel better now.  Can I have some supper?’  His temperature had dropped three points.  Today we went to the hospital and the orthopedic surgeon said that while Alistair will be left with a permanent disability, he will be able to walk again, and someday maybe even run.  It is going to be a long time ahead for him, but there is every hope of a good recovery.’

 

It was only after these things had happened that Alistair’s family learned of the prayers in City Temple.”

 

Is there power in prayer?  What do you think?  As for me, I have no doubt.”  My friends, that’s what we believe in this church – that prayer really works.

 

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

 

 

 

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