Prayer:  Let us pray.  Gracious God, we give your thanks for your Word as it is written in Scripture; for your Word as it is lived out in the lives of your people; and above all, for your Word made flesh in Jesus Christ.  In this moment, may our words melt away so that only your Word remains.  In Jesus' name, amen.

Many years ago, as a second year student in seminary, I was called upon to serve as the assistant director of a prison ministry program at the Deep Meadow Correctional Center in Powhatan, Virginia.  I must say, I accepted this offer with excitement and zeal.  In retrospect, however, I should have been absolutely intimidated and frightened.  One of the primary duties of this position was to organize a weekly two-hour worship service in the prison cafeteria each Thursday night for approximately two hundred prisoners.  It was a weighty task that should have frightened me and the colleagues who went with me.  After all, the guys to whom we ministered were incarcerated for any number of reasons, some for rather benign repeated infractions, but others were at Deep Meadow for more violent offenses.

I, however, refused to be intimidated. I was a twenty-three-year-old seminary student who had successfully completed enough seminary courses to know I knew it all.  As a candidate for ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church, I had often heard my bishop repeat that traditional charge given to newly ordained clergy in the Methodist tradition, "Take thou the authority of Christ, and go into the world."  And believe me, that is exactly what I intended to do.  My plan was to charge into that prison each week, taking the authority of Christ with me, with every intention of winning souls for Jesus and spreading the Kingdom of our Lord in this world.  Ironically, I was even proud of the fact that I was humble enough to take on this position while my colleagues were taking positions at large downtown churches - proud of my own humility.  As my grandmother once said of me, I was so heavenly minded that I was up to no earthly good

On one particular Thursday night, shortly before the worship service was to start, a local minister who was scheduled to preach that evening called to say that he would not be able to make it.  This caused a bit of a crisis.  The sermons that were given on those Thursday nights were not ten-minute homilies or reflections.  No, they were a full forty-five minutes to an hour long, in the great revivalist tradition, and they required the physical stamina of an athlete.  At first, we were not sure how would use that time.  After a few minutes of thought, however, we decided to try something different.  We decided that the guys attending the service should be given the opportunity to individually pray with any of the worship leaders during that hour that was normally filled with a sermon.  So, we positioned ourselves in different areas of the cafeteria, and any prisoner desiring individual prayer was invited to go to the worship leader of his choice.