Sermon – July 28, 2019 – Prayer

Sermon – July 28, 2019 – Pentecost 7 – Prayer

When I was about 17, I was on a double date with my boyfriend, John, and two of our friends from school, Marilyn and Ian. We’d gone to see a movie and Marilyn had invited us back to her house for a coffee. It was about 11:15 by the time we got to her house and I mentioned to John that I had to be home by 11:30. I didn’t live far from Marilyn’s house. I could have walked home. They cajoled me into asking my parents for an extra ½ hour. I was reluctant to do this because I knew the rules for curfews in my house were very strict and left little room for discussion. But I phoned home and Dad answered the phone. “Hi Dad, do you think I could stay out an extra ½ hour tonight?” I said. He replied, “No, your Mother is very worried about you. You had better ask her. Let me call her to the phone.” So, Mum came on the phone and she didn’t sound too worried, so, I asked my question again. “Oh, no, dear” she said almost whispering into the phone, “you better come home at your usual time. Your father is very worried about you.” Needless to say, I went home.

In our Gospel reading, the scene begins with Jesus at prayer. Luke, more than any other evangelist, stresses the importance of prayer in Jesus’ life[i]. His disciples saw him pray on many occasions and this time they asked him to teach them how to pray. Even then, people wanted to know how to pray to God, like there was some secret way of doing it. He gave them a simple prayer by which to approach God. Luke has simplified the prayer that we know so well, from the version in Matthew and, in so doing, emphasized the more down-to-earth concerns of securing “bread for tomorrow” and tending a community.[ii] Jesus invited his disciples to talk to God as one would to a parent. Then he told them a parable, that one can only assume was meant to back up the teaching about prayer, but as with all parables is seems to carry many messages. We can almost understand why the disciples spent much of their time when Jesus was teaching in a somewhat confused state. This parable seems to raise questions about whether God is reluctant to answer prayer, whether he needs cajoling into keeping his promises. In many interpretations of this parable, the notion of persistence is said to be what one needs in prayer, but scholars today believe that the Greek word conveying this idea is better interpreted as being bold and shameless, i.e. not being timid and ashamed in our prayer. It might be more helpful to read Jesus’ instruction as inviting trust – ask, search, knock…confident that you will receive what you ask for.  Of course, there was no one who would give a snake or a scorpion to a beseeching child, so how then, Jesus implied, can we not trust that God, as divine parent will give us all that we need, including and especially the Holy Spirit?[iii]

This boldness we also see in Psalm 85. This Psalm is set in the time just after the Israelites’ escape from Egypt and is a prayer in the midst of crisis for the ancient faith community. They prayed for joy, that can come from God’s presence in the midst of the community.  The verses are filled with terms central to Old Testament faith: peace and salvation for the community. This proclamation of salvation is a strong word of encouragement and assurance in a community crisis. It is a word of hope, and it seeks to call the community to trust and faithfulness in the God who will bring about this salvation.[iv] If we compare the Psalms to the prayer which Jesus taught his disciples, we discern similarities.  In Psalm 85, God’s glory will again come to the land. In other words, God will again be present to bless the community and nurture it to fullness of life[v] echoing the Lord’s Prayer: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done; Give us this day our daily bread; Forgive us our trespasses and lead us not into temptation.

In today’s world, how to pray is still a big concern. You know the questions around this. How do we pray? How does God answer prayer? Why does God sometimes seem to ignore my prayers? Perhaps I’m not doing it right. We tend to fixate on the mechanics of prayer: how, why, when. We get frustrated and disillusioned when we don’t notice a response. We seem to pray because we want things, but is that all prayer is? We say to ourselves, “I prayed about that a long time ago and have kept praying, but I haven’t received an answer.” Do we think God is hard of hearing? Or maybe he was doing something else when we prayed so we’ll repeat it. Perhaps we expect the answer to our prayers to come in a specific form and when we don’t see that we think our prayer has gone unanswered.

I was talking to Mum many years ago about prayer and she said, “Well I talk to God all the time; when I take the dog for a walk, when I see lovely birds and animals in the woods; I tell him how beautiful the trees are and how breathtaking nature is; I tell him what I’m sad about, what I hope for – for my family, for me. Is that prayer?” And I realized that’s pretty much what prayer is: a conversation with God, a seemingly one sided one, but a conversation none-the-less. It’s not just about our wishes, although they are important, it’s really about the ‘who’ and this is what Jesus’ instructions to his followers convey. As important as our questions are, it’s also important to recognize that Jesus seems more interested in invitation than explanation. In this passage, Jesus invites us into relationship with God through prayer, offering us the opportunity to approach God with the familiarity, boldness, and trust of a young child running to her parent for both provision and protection.[vi] And maybe the answer to our prayers will come in a wholly different way that we were expecting. When I phoned home for an extension on my date, the answer was no, but really deep down, maybe I wanted it to be no.  I didn’t want to have that argument with my friends about staying out late and I wasn’t one to push boundaries, so when my parents said no, it was like an answer to a prayer.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers about prayer. We are all learning together and it’s a lifetime project. What we do know about prayer is that it’s not all about getting what we want when we want it, but rather it is about the relationship we have with God. Anne Lamott, in her book Travelling Mercies, says that the two best prayers we have are ‘help me’ and ‘thank you’.[vii] While this might not give us everything we want, it will definitely give us everything we need.

Amen

[i] Lose, David Commentary on Luke 11:1-13, July 25, 2010, www.workingpreacher.org

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Bellenger Jr, W.H. Commentary on Psalm 85: 8-13, July 12, 2009, www.workingpreacher.org

[v] Ibid

[vi] Lose, David Commentary on Luke 11:1-13, July 25, 2010, www.workingpreacher.o

[vii] Lamott, Anne Travelling Mercies, Random House of Canada, Toronto, 1999.