Gospel: Luke 11:1-13
1st Reading: Genesis 18:20-32
2nd
Reading: Colossians 2:6-19
My dad was not much
of a churchgoer in his adult life. He got enough church as a kid to
more than make up for it. However, he did love to play church league
softball. He was the coach of the Good Shepherd softball team for
many years. As coach, though, he was expected to pray before games.
He believed in God and he believed in softball, but praying out loud
in front of a group was out of his comfort zone. So this is what he
did. He wrote his prayer on an index card—I remember the card
being that coral color, I think he always used the same one—and
he'd tuck it in the inside of his baseball cap. When he took off his
hat to pray, he'd have it right there in front of him and no one
would be the wiser. It worked for him. And probably he could have
prayed that prayer without the help of the card, but it gave him the
confidence to lead the team in that spiritual part of the game.
Maybe some of you
feel similarly about prayer. I know I even sometimes feel
uncomfortable when I'm put on the spot and asked to pray, especially
if I think the other person knows how to pray “better” than me!
Is there anyone else who sometimes feels uncomfortable praying out
loud? Whoever doesn't have their hand raised will be leading the
prayers of the people today!
Today, we're
talking about prayer, what it is, why we do it, what it says about
who God is, and why we feel so nervous when the pastor asks us to
pray out loud in front of a group.
The disciples ask
Jesus in the Gospel reading this morning to teach them to pray. I
picture the disciples gathered around saying, “Yeah Jesus, we're
already in the 11th chapter of Luke! Maybe it is about
time you taught us to pray!” So Jesus teaches them the Lord's
Prayer. This is great for Lutherans because we like to know what
words to say. I can't tell you how happy I was years ago. I had a
dream and the earth was shaking and all the buildings were falling
down around me and in my dream I started praying the Lord's Prayer.
I thought to myself, here is proof that I could stay calm, that I
would know what to do. It was kind of like when you're learning a
new language and you start dreaming in that language, you know you
are really immersed in it. Praying the Lord's Prayer meant that I
had internalized my faith so much that it was showing up in my
dreams.
Jesus gives us
these words of the Lord's Prayer. These are the words we say every
Sunday. We say them after council meetings and other church
meetings. This is our go-to prayer. Jesus said to pray like this.
The concern is that we start to recite this prayer out of habit and
we stop thinking about what it means. So let's take a closer look.
The prayer starts with God, not as someone distant and inaccessible,
but as a daddy, our abba. And this prayer says something about God,
that God is Holy, that God is different from others we know. Our
prayer is best focused on who God is. It reminds us of our
powerlessness, and maybe helps us to let go of situations that we
have no control over. But to remember that God is in that position
of incorruptible power and love, means hope.
Then Jesus prays,
your kingdom come. “This is about you God and your plan. We don't
know how to fix this world. We know it doesn't work very well.
We're asking for your Kingdom to come and we're preparing ourselves
so when it does, we don't push it away and say, nevermind!” This
is also about the big picture. We can't see what is best in any
situation, so we remind ourselves to let God be God.
Jesus says, give us
each day our daily bread. This is about basic needs. Not “Give us
this day a Cadillac car or marble countertops,” but something we
need for survival. However, this isn't just about me getting my
daily bread, this is about each person having enough, and each
animal, each creature in balance and health.
The prayer goes on
to address how God treats us, that God forgives us, and that God's
forgiveness impacts how we behave toward others. That forgiveness
and love doesn't end with us, but goes on and is shared. The way God
loves us, changes us for the better. We behave differently out of
gratefulness for the way God behaves toward us.
The two stories
that follow about asking for help from a neighbor and a child asking
for food, put us in the right mindset when we pray. We can address
God as beloved children, unafraid, familiar, knowing God is kind and
wants to provide for us.
The first reading
from Genesis is also about prayer. For us there is a lot of baggage
with this reading, because other Christians have tried to tell us
what this reading is about and what the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah
was. However, if we go on to read Ezekiel 16:49 it is clearly
explained that “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and
her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did
not aid the poor and needy.” Sodom's sin was that of inhospitality
and indifference. So now that we've removed that first distraction,
I think there is only one other, and that is the idea that God might
be destructive. This is another case of explaining something after
the fact. Scholars agree that fire did rain down on Sodom and
Gomorrah at one point, and this is scientifically attributed to a
volcano. So people wanted to explain in the Bible why Sodom and
Gomorrah would be so completely destroyed and this was their best
explanation.
However if we look
at this story as a description of prayer, we can learn a lot. We
have a lot of hymns about God never changing. “Built on a rock,
the church shall stand.” “The wise man built his house upon the
rock.” “Which wert, and art, and ever more shall be.”
However, I don't find the thought of such a God very warm or
comforting, not like the Abba that Jesus would have us pray to, not
really the picture we get from these stories of Jesus about a
responsive neighbor or a parent tending to the needs of his or her
children. This story and many others from the Old Testament do show
God changing God's mind, really listening to people. Remember Noah's
ark? God regretted destroying all creatures and vowed not to do it
again, even hanging his weapon, his bow, up in the sky and vowing not
to go that route again. Then there is the story about Jonah and when
the people of Ninevah listened to him and repented, God changed his
mind about the destruction he was planning to visit upon them. In
these stories, God seems to listen and respond.
In this story of
Abraham and Sodom, Abraham is learning how to pray. He is practicing
communication with God. This prayer has Abraham in his proper place.
He's communicating with God. He's being humble, rather than
demanding. He's speaking on behalf of others, hoping for the best
for them, showing them mercy and appealing to God's mercy. This is a
prayer about who God is, forgiving, careful, judging rightly, kind,
accessible, and relenting. This isn't a God who just swoops down in
anger at a few ruffians and gets rid of them. This is God who
carefully considers each person and will spare even people who are
inhospitable if there a few good ones sprinkled among them. And when
we hear the story, of course, we know for the sake of one, Jesus
Christ, we are not destroyed, although we might deserve it, but we
are given new life and forgiveness and claimed as Children of God.
We can almost hear Abraham saying to God, “But what if there were
one who is righteous?” And God saying, “There is one, my son, and
I am sending him to make you all my children, so that even if a
volcano destroys you, you will still have life, and even if you are
inhospitable, you will find another chance to show love, and even if
you break the commandments, God will be with you to help you to find
a more life-giving way.”
And one other
important part of this stoy is that Abraham is persistent. Prayer is
something that will come more naturally to us, like many things in
life, if we practice it often. Be persistent. Set aside time. Set
aside a space that is conducive to prayer. Make prayer a priority
and it will become more a part of you.
Finally, our
reading from Colossians is about prayer. It speaks of the church as
one body, with Jesus Christ as our head. A body has many ways of
communicating so it can work together in unity. When we communicate
with God, when we pray, we are keeping the body working in unity.
And when we act in ways that are consistent with God's love and with
our faith, isn't that another form of prayer that builds up the body?
When we think of
prayer, we often think of the right words. But prayer is
communication with God. Prayer is about listening to God and being
open to what God's will might be, apart from our own desires. Prayer
is about how we live our lives. Prayer is about our thoughts.
Prayer is about finding our proper place in God's Kingdom. They say
that words only make up about 10% of communication. Most of
communication is nonverbal. That's why they say, “Actions are
louder than words.” So let our whole lives be a prayer, of
gratefulness, of hospitality, of openness, of generosity and may
prayer transform us to reflect our loving God.
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