Sunday, July 27, Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

“All You Have To Do is Ask”

Psalm 138; Genesis 18:17-33; Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13

Service of Prayer and Preaching

Hymns: #869 “With the Lord Begin Your Task”; #769 “Eternal Spirit of the Living Christ”; #779 “Come, My Soul, with Every Care”; #807 “When Morning Gilds the Skies”; #770 “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

     Opening Prayer: “Lord, ‘teach us to pray’ is a good prayer, and a very needful one, for only Jesus can teach us, by His Word and Spirit, how to pray. Lord, teach us what it is to pray, and stir up and quicken us to the duty. Lord, direct us what to pray for, and teach us what we should say. Amen.” (Matthew Henry)

     I love this story about a little boy who was praying the Lord’s Prayer; and like young children will do, he didn’t get the words just right. Instead he prayed, “Forgive us our trash baskets, as we forgive those who trash basket against us.” Not exactly the right words, but he sure did capture the spirit of the thing, didn’t he? 

     Because forgiveness is so central to the Lord’s Prayer – and to any Christian prayer, for that matter. Our Small Catechism asks the question, “Whose prayers are acceptable to God?” And the answer comes back, “Only those who believe in Jesus Christ may pray to God and expect to be heard.” The only reason we’re able to pray to God and believe He’ll hear us is because Jesus gave Himself on a cross to bring us forgiveness for our sins; all prayer depends on the cross. God in Christ, out of nothing but mercy and grace, forgives all the trash in our baskets, and He expects us in turn to open our hearts and forgive all the trash done against us. And with the trash and the sin taken out of the way, then we’ll be ready to pray.

     Our Gospel from St. Luke says, “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place; and when He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’” The disciples were so impressed by the way Jesus prayed - like a Son talking to a Father. No fancy words and no pretensions, reflecting a relationship just as natural as natural can be. I want to know how to pray like that, too! And Jesus proceeds to teach them - and us - just how to do that.

     You may have noticed that the version of the Lord’s Prayer we have in Luke’s Gospel today isn’t exactly the one we’re all used to. The “classic version” of the Lord’s Prayer comes from Matthew 6 and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where He says: "This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”

     In St. Luke’s version, read literally from the Greek text, Jesus simply says: “Our Father, holy be Your name. Your kingdom come. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” And that’s it. And neither Gospel has the familiar doxology, “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.” That ending was added as a liturgical add-on in the days of the early Church because, I think, the thing seemed to need a proper ending. (In our divine service, the doxology is actually set up to be sung, to make a clear distinction between the Scriptural part and the man-made. 

“For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever, Amen.” 

     The version in St. Luke just isn’t the same, is it? It sounds funny that way; it doesn’t fit the beloved, age-old formula. I, for one, like the Lord’s Prayer just fine the way it is. This isn’t how we were taught to pray it when we were little. But you know, maybe that’s a good thing. The fact that there are two different versions tells us that Jesus didn’t intend this as a formal prayer, but as a pattern to help us pray from the heart. He didn’t give it to us as magic spell, or as words to repeat because there’s some particular magic in them, but as a really fine way to prepare our minds and hearts to talk to God.

     The important things are all there in Luke: We acknowledge first who it is we’re praying to; and we ask for God’s kingdom, His Spirit, to come, to be present, while we pray. And we acknowledge that our daily bread, all the good things we need to live, come from Him - including the faith to be able to pray and believe we’ll be heard. And we ask that the sin that would separate us from God and keeps us apart from Him will be taken away, and that we’ll be able to put aside the unforgiving attitudes and resentments and anger that separate us from God’s will and from true communication with Him. And we ask that we’ll be free of the temptation to pray for things that aren’t good, and that we’ll be free from distractions from the devil and the world while we pray; and that we’ll be free from the temptation to doubt that our prayers will be heard.

     And that, says Jesus, is how we get ourselves ready to pray. The Lord’s Prayer isn’t “the whole prayer”, and Jesus didn’t mean it to be. It’s the preparation, the prelude, the preface to prayer; it’s the introduction, the opening sentences, to get you ready to talk to God, and to listen while God talks to you. Maybe we ought to be praying it at the beginning of our worship service instead of at the end. It’s good that in our Communion liturgy, we pray it before coming to the Lord’s Table, as a way to get our hearts ready to receive Christ.

     So, Jesus gives His disciples this “preface for preparing to pray”; and then, as He so often does, He gives them an illustration, a parable, about what prayer is and how it ought to work. Jesus’ parable is about a man who has a friend. The door-knocking friend in the parable is us, and the man he’s waking up in the middle of the night to ask for bread is God. Do you ever think God gets tired of answering our prayers? All the prayers and needs keep coming to Him by the millions and billions, hour after hour and day after day. Do you ever think He needs a vacation, or a day off once in a while, or even just a good night’s sleep? (And no, I don’t know how God hears all those prayers all at once, but He’s God, so I believe that somehow, He does!)

     The man tucked in bed in Jesus’ parable doesn’t want to get up; who wants to get up out of a warm bed in the middle of the night? But “because of the man’s boldness, he gets up and gives him as much as he needs.” God, of course, doesn’t treat us that way or get tired of our prayers; but this is a parable. Jesus is telling a story to make a point here. The Greek word for “boldness” is anaidea, a word that means persistent, shameless, or even impudent. Like father Abraham in our Old Testament reading, going back to ask of God again and again and again, even when he was afraid he might be making the Lord angry by asking “just one more time.” Jesus told His disciples in another place that they should “always pray and never give up.” And St. James says, “You do not have because you do not ask God.” If the cause is just and the need is great, you just have to ask and keep on asking.

     I heard a lovely story a few years ago about a missionary school – in the Philippines, I think it was. All the children in their compound had the croup, and they were praying for hot water bottles (remember those?) to clear chest congestion and help the children breathe. A shipment of supplies from a church in America came the next day, that had been shipped six months before; and when they opened the first carton, it was filled with… hot water bottles! From a little group of God’s people who had no idea when they packed the boxes what the need was going to be. 

     Know that God already has the answer to your prayers before you even know what your needs are going to be. If He seems slow in answering, it’s not because He’s lagging behind or not paying attention, or because heaven has a backlog or there are “six callers ahead of you” on the prayer line. The truth is, He’s way ahead of you, anticipating your needs and knowing what they are - and what they will be - far, far better than you do.

     So, says Jesus, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” This is such a wonderful affirmation from Jesus; it’s a promise to answer our prayers, from a God who always keeps His promises. 

It’s a statement that should erase all doubt about the power of our prayers; and doesn’t it even make any doubt we may have about the effectiveness of our prayers a sin? So given the greatness of the prayer promise, why aren’t we praying, and praying believing, far more than we do, when clearly, we’ve been promised that it works? Jesus doesn’t say might or maybe or could be here- He says WILL.What a pity it would be that our doubts might keep us from receiving the fullness of the gift.

     Jesus goes on here to talk about fathers and sons, and fish and snakes, and scorpions and eggs. The Father-child relationship is the big thing here - maybe the whole thing, and the whole point Jesus is making. Your Father in heaven loves you; He wants to bless you in every way there is to be blessed. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,” St. James says.

If you ask your Father for good things – like a fish or an egg, or a hot water bottle – He’s not going to dump a snake or a scorpion in your lap instead. No good father would do that.

     Now if you ask God to make you rich - “Lord, please give me the numbers for tonight’s Powerball” - most likely He isn’t going to do that. For most of us, that kind of money would be bad for us anyway; winning the Lotto or striking it rich has a sad tendency to ruin people. If your three-year-old asks for the whole bag of candy, you don’t just hand it over, because you know it’s going to make him sick. (If God has blessed you with wealth and prosperity, by the way, there’s a reason for that, too; He expects you to be generous with your blessings and to help the poor and those in need; what He give to you, he expects to flow through you). And He isn’t going to answer a prayer to zap your ornery neighbor with a lightning bolt, either.

     But as for your daily bread – what you need to live and get along and be happy from day to day – it’s His everlasting joy to give you those things. (The intangible things – love and joy and peace – are also included in daily bread; we need those most of all). And since we know we can trust Him for the smaller things, and we know that He’s caring for our everyday needs, why in the world wouldn’t we be bold to ask of Him when the really big needs come along?

     St. Paul says, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” That’s a call to prayer; that’s what a life of prayer looks like, and what it means to “pray continually.” I love the definition of prayer in the Small Catechism: “Prayer is speaking to God in words and thoughts.” Not a litany of memorized prayers, to be repeated day after day; not a prayer you can run over your lips without thinking about what it really means; but prayer as a running holy conversation with your Father in heaven. (If you ever catch me talking to myself, it wasn’t me I was talking to!)

     O Lord, what a marvelous gift we’ve been given, that we can bring our prayers to You and know You’ll always hear us. Father in Heaven, holy be Your name, and help us all to be holy like You. Deliver us from the evil one, and from the “hollow and deceptive philosophies” of this world, and from any human tradition or principle or habit or idea that might separate us from Christ or keep us away from Him. Father, circumcise and purify our hearts, as St. Paul says, and keep us forever in our baptismal grace. We know that Jesus Christ our Lord has triumphed over sin, death, and hell, by His death on a cross for our sakes, and that He’s opened the way to heaven for us by being raised up from the dead. It’s by His precious blood that the sin that keeps us from God has now been removed, and it’s faith in the forgiving blood of Jesus that’s opened the way for our prayers to be heard in heaven. Father, teach us to pray, help us to pray, and may our prayers be “powerful and effective” to change the world around us. We pray in Jesus’ name; Amen.