We are such a multitude this morning, some tormented by a destiny near at hand in a doctor's word, a job's end, a family's broken pieces…many tormented by a destiny now become randomly vulnerable to a sniper's aim at all things ordinary…each of us tormented by a national destiny thrust upon us in the night and now, theoretically, held in the hands of a single human being. With these griefs, these confessions, these thanksgivings, these woes, we have gathered, as we do every Sunday morning, to get God's ear on behalf of our lives and in the face of our deaths.

It goes without saying that we are not the first generation to do this. Week after week in these holy pages, we listen in on the conversation of those who have gone before us, who have--successfully or unsuccessfully--addressed the Almighty in times of war and peace, well-being and hardship, defeat and victory. Wanting to be a part of that conversation now, we turn to the church, to the institution that has presumed to know how God's ear can be had, to the body that has routinized the way in which people are to call upon God, generation after generation.

Of that routinized conversation as it is recorded in our texts this morning, we may say, on one hand, that such routine breeds confidence in those of us who would call upon God in time of need. "The higher Christian churches," writes Annie Dillard, "come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed." Therefore, prayed the Pharisee with confidence, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people, thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all my income." I have the routine down, O God: hear my prayer!

Yet there is also the possibility that the routine words we use to get God's attention have not only numbed us to the majesty and mystery and so to the reality of the living God, but in the changed circumstances of our world, have caused God to grow angry against our prayers, according to the psalmist, have made God burdened and weary in the midst of our assemblies, says Isaiah to the people of Judah.

We cannot know for sure the historical details of Isaiah's first chapter, wherein God chooses not to listen. A good guess is that the time is post-701 B.C. Intelligent leadership in the person of King Hezekiah is gone from the land. In the years following his death, the nation of Judah reaches its nadir: righteousness succumbs to blood-letting, justice gives way to bribery, silver becomes dross. Though God has preserved a faithful remnant, their voices cannot be heard over the voice of God's "sustained indictment against a nation that has lost its bearings," says Christopher Seitz, "against a leadership that ignores basic acts of justice and simple-not elaborate-acts of contrition and obedience."

Though disturbingly, God's anger in Isaiah's first chapter burns not against the leaders of the nation but, in the face of a nation unbearably lost, against those who worship as they have always worshipped, pray as they have always prayed, maintain the routine of their religion as though God were in heaven and all was right with the world. "I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity," says the Lord. "Your new moons and your appointed festivals, my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them." Therefore says God to the congregation, "When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood."

Given the changed social context, the places of Judah's worship have now become places "of self-indulgence and satiation," says Walter Brueggemann of our text. "Yahweh has become a function of a religious enterprise that is manipulative and self-satisfying, but that has completely forfeited any reference to the sovereign God…Whereas the cult was authorized to be a vehicle for the unlikely practice of communion with Yahweh," he concludes, "it has now become a place where the reality of Yahweh, in Yahweh's true character, is almost completely disregarded and forfeited."

Yet why would this be? After all these years of abiding their solemn assemblies and appointed festivals, why would God now turn away, angered by their prayers? We can only surmise that, in the time of Hezekiah, when the common order was an order that provided for the widow and the orphan, rescued the oppressed and sought justice in the land, then the routine of worship and the ritual of prayer did no harm. But now the common life has no place for the least of these, making routinized prayer into complicity with injustice and worship into an affront against God's word. Now enter the prophet, who speaks not in prose, but in poetry, who addresses "a culture competent to implement anything and to imagine almost nothing," the prophet, whose vocation it is to "keep alive the ministry of imagination," says Brueggemann, "to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one."

My friends, the context of our praying has changed. More and more, these times feel like a nadir, of sorts, in this nation's history. There is, of course, the economy, stupid, and the consequences of its decline felt most deeply by the vulnerable in our society: the working poor, single parent households, the elderly, the ill facing a crumbling medical establishment. There is the cacophony of war's alarm sounding all around and rousing us to assert military might against international snipers we can no more catch than we seem able to find the ones stalking the perimeter of our nation's capital.

But more to the point of getting or losing God's ear, there are voices across the land claiming God's imprimatur as though we were completely good and the other completely evil, as though, in the words ofi the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertsberg, "we are exempt from fallen human nature and stand outside history…" as though, "if the other side is absolutely evil then we must be absolutely good, so it's fine for us to be absolutely powerful."

To the arrogance of such power and such presumption, to those whose prayers begin, "Thank God I am not like the other people-thieves, rogues, adulterers," the God of the biblical witness does not listen, but rather retorts, "remove the evil of your doings before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." It is what many have been led to believe we are doing by the prose of politicians and pollsters. It may even be what is intended in the halls of power as we rattle our sabers and seek to secure our borders. Why should we not pray God's blessing upon this crusade to rid the world of evil?

The answer offered by the One whose parable would teach us to pray is an answer that turns our prayers on God's deaf ear! The point of the parable we think we know so well: that God prefers humility to arrogance when we pray. What we miss is the sharp edge of Jesus' words to those who were humbly certain that their words and actions and so their prayers were justified in God's hearing and beyond the reproach of God's anger.

I felt that edge, this week, as I happened upon Mark Twain's very short story, "The War Prayer," and heard, in his midrash on Psalm 80 and Jesus' parable, the sharp edge of God's anger against our prayers. Written in 1905 during the American occupation of the Philippines, the story went unpublished until 1923 because the editors "thought it unsuitable for publication at a moment of high and patriotic feeling." The story begins: "It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was swept up in arms…in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism…On every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun…Sunday morning came…the church was filled…The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read…Then came the 'long' prayer…The burden of its supplication was that an ever merciful…Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers…help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory."

While the minister prayed fervently, an aged stranger walked up the aisle. At the prayer's conclusion, the stranger motioned the minister aside and began to address the congregation. "I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God…He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd…For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he pause and think." The stranger then speaks the prayer that God's ear hears beneath the prayer spoken by the minister,