…Father Riley will lead in Holy Eucharist August 4, 2019. Please invite others to come and see.
7 PENTECOST, PROPER XII - C - 19 LUKE 11. 1-13
When I read this passage from Luke where Jesus’ disciples are asking him to teach them to pray like John Baptist is teaching his disciples to pray, it makes me wonder what their prayers looked like before. On the other hand, did they even pray before?
Who taught you to pray? Did they teach you what to pray? My mother taught me as a child - “now I lay me down to sleep….” You know that one. Perhaps you learned it yourself as a child and have even taught it to your own children. What does it teach us about God?
What is God like? How can we know God? We cannot fully know and understand God in this life, but if we pay attention to what scripture tells us about God, we come a little closer to knowing who He is and what He is like.
Jesus responds to his disciples with what we have come to know as the “Lord’s Prayer.” It contains the basics of prayer. Without going into it in detail, perhaps the occasion for another sermon, Jesus’ emphasis is on asking, but in his example to his disciples, the order of the petition forces us to subordinate our personal wants to the honor of God and to His purposes.
Jesus is teaching us how to pray not what to pray for and he follows it with a parable that enforces the idea that we should be persistent in our praying.
Hospitality was taken very seriously in Jesus’ day. The parable he gives has a logical ending. His audience would not have expected anything less.
Even though it was in the middle of the night when the neighbor knocked on his friend’s door, the out come was a fore gone conclusion. His persistence in knocking brought his neighbor to his feet. Although he may have been reluctant in responding, he did so and met his friend’s need. What does it tell us about God?
The point of the parable is not that God is like a man who does not want to be bothered and answers prayers only because he is tired of listening.
Rather it is the typical rabbinic argument from the lesser to the greater. If the reluctant man responds to requests, how much more will God, who is anxious to meet our needs.
In the Old Testament lesson, Abraham persists in his asking of God on behalf of the innocents abiding in
Or does our first lesson tell us something about the true nature of God? That God hears our prayers. That God is judge. God is patient and his response is merciful. Likewise, Jesus’ response to his disciple’s request tells us something of who God is as well.
God is the one who is to be praised above all else. The one who always hears our prayers, forgives our sins, and provides us with our daily needs. God is our Father, sustainer, friend, one whom we can ask, and the giver of all good gifts.
Jesus does not tell us that we shall get what we want when we ask, or that when we seek we will find exactly what we are looking for. Moreover, that when we knock at the door that what awaits us on the other side will be altogether to our taste. What he is telling us is that when we approach God in prayer we should be persistent in our asking, seeking, and knocking.
We all know how difficult prayer can be difficult at times. Times, for example, when we are grief-stricken. Our hearts are broken. We are in pain and we do not understand why things happen the way they do.
Prayer can be difficult when our minds are filled with too many things to make room for God to work in giving us and answer. Prayer becomes difficult when we are too easily distracted by what is going on around us and in our lives. Distractions cause us to lose spiritual focus.
That is exactly what the collect for today prays that we will not do, so that we may pass through things temporal, and not lose the things eternal.
“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human conditions….and not according to Christ.” How difficult it is to be a Christian in today’s world and in our own society. Prayer is one way we stay connected to God and maintain our spiritual focus.
In our prayer, what counts is persistence - our not giving up on God for He will answer. Jesus is encouraging a kind of Holy boldness, if you will, like that of Abraham and the persistent neighbor. He is telling us that we should display a sharp knocking on the door, and insistent asking, and a search that refuses to give up.
This is what Christ tells us that our prayer should be like. Is that what your prayer life is like? One would hope that our prayer life has matured as we continue the journey to God.
I came to realize later in life the lesson about God that my mother taught me in learning that child-hood prayer; that whether in our sleeping or our waking our lives are in God’s hands. Everyday is a gift. I confess my prayers today contain more thanksgivings than when I first learned to pray.
The “Lord’s Prayer.” then, is not just a loosely connected string of petitions. It is a prayer for people who are following Jesus on the kingdom journey and in doing so, are gaining a greater awareness and understanding of who their God truly is and what He is like.
Staying connected to God through prayer, and being persistent in our praying, not only gives us a greater understanding of what it is that we can expect from God, the giver of all good gifts, moreover, what it is that God expects from us in our relationship to Him who has made us alive in Christ Jesus, by setting aside our sins and nailing them to the cross. AMEN+
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