On Prayer

Readings:
Genesis 18:20-32
Colossians 2:12-14
Luke 11:1-13

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

Today’s message is about prayer and I’ll begin with a story. There’s a Catholic author named Devon Rose and he describes the following story about how he came to faith. He was originally an atheist. He was a convinced atheist, and I’ll quote from his own writings. He says: “as I began praying, saying God, you know I don’t believe in you, but I’m in trouble and need help. If you are real, help me.” I’ll pause there. How many of us have done that, when were in trouble? There’s a saying, there are no atheists in foxholes. There’s something to that. When we’re really in a bad place, we will turn to God. This is just something about our nature. We need God at those times, and we know it. Even if the rest of the time we neglect God, there are times when we know it. So Rose began to read the Scriptures and to talk to God, even though he was skeptical. He was overwhelmed by the awareness of God that came through doing that. I have to say, I, too, have experienced this. Years ago, I had a real challenge in my life that caused me to question absolutely everything. Even, how could there be a kind and loving God who would allow such awful things to happen. A friend of mine said, look, you don’t have to believe, just believe that I believe, and pray every day. And like Rose, I said okay, you know. And it worked. Prayer really works. Prayer does things for us that we could never do for ourselves. Rose began reading the Scriptures, and praying, and even though he was skeptical, he says, “still, I persevered”. I kept reading the Bible, asking my roommate questions about what I was reading, and praying. Then slowly, and amazingly, my faith grew and eventually it threatened to whelm my many doubts and unbelief.” The rest of the story goes, he became converted, is now a Christian, and a Christian author, too.

In our New Testament reading today, Colossians, Paul is approaching people who have lots of things that are challenging them, in particular things that are alien to the Christian faith. Like Devon Rose, we all hear things that are challenging to our faith, other ideas and so forth, and that’s just part of our experience as a person. In Colossians, Paul is telling these new Christians, who are Gentiles, who live in the Greek world, where there are other kinds of ideas, religious ideas, philosophical ideas, and so forth, that are challenging them. Paul says, no, that’s something else, it’s not part of who you are as a Christian. He’s telling them about their baptism. He’s saying, when you were baptized, you were made and adoptive son or daughter of God. I’ll read from Colossians, chapter 2: “You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” There’s a bond between us and God and that bond is forged by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we’re baptized, we are dead to who we were before, and we rise again as one of the Christian faithful. There’s this bond to us. This really connects importantly with the Gospel story that I will get to in a minute, but just remember for a moment that we’re adopted sons and daughters of God. I’ll return to that in a minute. In talking about prayer, we invite God into our lives, we reach out to him, and when we pray, that’s what we’re doing: we’re asking God to come into our lives.

The Old Testament story is a particular kind of prayer, relates to a particular kind of prayer, namely intercessory prayer. This is a story everybody’s familiar with. God is going to destroy the cities, because they’re so wicked. They are just awful places, everything that’s happening there is bad. Abraham’s brother, Lot, lives in one of the cities, and God says he’s going to destroy them. Abraham begins to bargain with God. He says, what if there are 50 people there who are not sinful, you will destroy the city, right? What if there are 45? What if there are 35? And so forth. He finally gets down to, what if there are only 10 people? Will you refrain from destroying the city? And God say, okay, fine. Now we know what happened. God did destroy them, but here’s the point: God is patient with Abraham and agrees to do all this. It doesn’t work out the way Abraham asked for, not because of God, but because of the people. It wasn’t because of God, it was because of the people in the cities who just couldn’t meet that expectation. But it shows us the reality of intercessory prayer. This is why the story is here in our readings today. It is about intercessory prayer in the sense that we are asking God to do something for other people.

This is a big part of our worship service. We have our Prayers for the People as part of our worship service. We pray for other people, both who are troubled now, and who have passed away. We do that every time, because it’s an important part of our worship service. Intercessory prayer is part of how we worship God. It’s a part of how we worship God, because we know that God listens when we pray. God does listen to us when we pray and God can grant the prayers that we ask. This is why it’s such a key part of our worship service, and we do it absolutely every time.

In the New Testament story, Jesus is asked by the disciples, how to pray. How do we pray? They see Him praying and they say, teach us how to pray. John taught his disciples how to pray. Teach us how to pray, too. And He teaches them the Our Father. The familiar prayer we say in our worship service, we say it on our own. It is, in a sense, the paradigm of prayer. It is the perfect prayer, that’s been taught to us by Christ. There are a few aspects of this that link up with the other things I’ve been talking about. One of these is the petitions that are in the prayer. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” These are petitions. We’re asking God for basic needs, our daily bread. We’re asking God to forgive us our sins, and were asking God to protect us from future sins. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” To protect us from sin, to forgive our sins, and we note that we have to forgive others, too. This is a part of the prayer. We know we have to do our part, too. This is one aspect of it, the requests from God that are in this paradigmatic prayer, the Our Father. Another aspect of this though, and it’s in the Gospel story today, is being persisted in prayer.

He tells a parable of the neighbor in need. The story goes like this, the neighbor has a visitor, and he needs food to help his visitor. This kind hospitality was regarded as very important in Jewish life. It was just an important moral duty to be hospitable to other people. So the person really needs this, they need this help, they don’t want to be inhospitable to their visitors. So they go to their friend’s house, knock on the door and ask, can I borrow some food. To understand a little more about this and the way they lived, usually the whole family would sleep together in one big room. They had simple homes and everybody, children and adults alike, would all sleep in one big room. If you get up to go answer the door and let somebody in, you’re going to wake up the whole house. And so that’s what the neighbor is asking. I know it’s late. Can you help me out here? So in the story, the person who is in bed says, no, go away. Everybody’s in bed. Go away. Finally, though, he gets up and does it, because the neighbor is persistent. There is some humor in the Gospel, I think. He says, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” Jesus is saying even if he doesn’t like him enough, if the guy bugs him, eventually he’ll give him what he asked for. So that’s what happens. He finally gives the guy what he needs, and the guy goes on his way. Jesus tells them this parable right after he teaches them the Our Father. He’s telling them, be persistent in prayer, keep on praying. That’s the point: God will listen. God will take care of you. That’s what he’s saying. And note, what he’s doing here, what the friend is giving him in the parable, the request is to help him fulfill his duty to another person. The guy didn’t come to the door, saying can I have a new red Ferrari, or a million bucks, or whatever it is that I want to have. He’s not doing that. He’s saying can I do what I ought to do? And God grants that requests. Or in the story, the friend grants that request, because of his persistence. What Jesus is telling the disciples is about the nature of prayer. We’re asking to be what God expects us to be. We’re asking for the power, the ability to do the right thing and to fulfill God’s expectations for us. To fulfill God’s purposes in the world, that’s what prayer is about. Jesus is telling them, keep going, keep going back, keep going back to that well. Keep asking God for the power to do what you need to be able to do, to fulfill God’s purposes for you, that’s what he’s asking. So when we pray, we do ask for things, but what we’re really asking for is to enter into a relationship with God. Think about what the Our Father says: “Forgive me my sins.” Keep me alive, give me my basic needs, forgive my sins, protect me from sinning in the future, and help me remember that I have to forgive other people, too. Let me be what you want me to be. Give me the power to be what you want me to be. And when you ask God for that, you are entering into a relationship with God.

There’s a thing in the Gospels that links up with the Epistle. Remember, before, I said to make a mental note? Jesus is telling them, think about, if your children ask you for something. If your children ask you for something that was good for them, you give it to them. You wouldn’t give them something that’s bad, right, or something they don’t need, like they want ice cream at bedtime, or whatever. Jesus says, “what father among you would hand his son a snake, when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” He’s likening that to the parent-child relationship. That’s the kind of relationship that we have with God. That’s what Paul is saying in the letter to the Colossian’s, when we are baptized, we become one of the Christian faithful. We are now adoptive children of God. We are now children of God. As the Christian faithful, we are God’s children. Like our parents, if we asked them for something that we need and is good for us, we will get it. God will get us what we need in order to fulfill His purposes.

And so that’s the nature of prayer that Jesus is teaching us about in Luke today. Again, this also links up with what Paul is talking about in Colossians. Prayer isn’t just about asking for stuff that we want. That is the kind of magical practice that Paul warns against. The background of Colossians, if you read back a little further from the excerpt that we had, he’s talking about these kinds of magical practices the people in the Greek world engaged in. You know, I want this, so I’m going to do this, and I’m going to get that thing. That’s not that’s not the way prayer works. Prayer isn’t like that. Our faith isn’t like that. That was a very common kind of thing among the Greeks, in which the church in Colossus lived. It’s not just about asking for what we want, it’s about asking God into our lives, so that God can change us into the kind of people he wants us to be.

I’ll summarize with a quick vignette CS Lewis. You may have heard of CS Lewis. He who wrote a really wonderful book called “Mere Christianity” and various other books. He was a literary person, but he wrote a number of important things about the Christian faith. His faith was challenged and also strengthened through his wife’s illness. His wife had cancer and ultimately died of it. Somebody asked CS Lewis if he really thought he could change God with his prayer for the cure of his wife’s cancer. He’s asking God, please take care of my wife, please cure cancer, and Lewis replied, “prayer doesn’t change God, it changes me.”  It doesn’t change God’s intentions or will, or any of that, it does change me in the way I respond to it, by deepening my relationship with God. Even when bad things happen, we can still grow closer to God through prayer.

To sum up, prayer puts us in a relationship with God and changes us. It doesn’t give us maybe what we initially want out of our own nature, the million dollars or whatever it is, but it changes us so that we’re open to God’s will. It changes us so that what we want, as we develop our relationship with Him, is what God intends for us, too.

Amen.