Sermon preached 7/25/2010 at Glyndon Lutheran Church. Note, I usually try to avoid gender specific language for God (viz. "him" or "his" but went with it on account of the relational aspect of the text, most notably: Father).
Text: Luke 11:1-13
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Let’s be honest. Prayer is confusing. It is foreign and strange and a bit
counter-cultural. There is hardly time to sit and eat our daily bread during
our days let alone to stop and ask for it. It is an odd and curious habit to pause and pray in order to
give thanks and thought for things that seem to come even when we forget to
ask. What’s more, the mechanics of
it leave us in a tailspin. We
think that we don’t have the right skill set, or have studied our faith enough,
or are good enough.
Let me say
this: There is no right or wrong way to pray. Just to pray is to do it right. Pray with the words given to you today in our Gospel
reading, what we call the Lord’s Prayer.
Pray as if you were having a conversation with a friend, telling what is
happening in your life, what you’re afraid of and excited for. Pray with tools in your hand or as you
hang the laundry or mow the lawn.
Sit in silence.
Breathe. Read the Psalms,
the prayers of the whole people of God.
However you do it, it’s right.
And it’s better to do it than not, even if you’re distracted. God takes you as you are.
Jesus
instructs us further: Ask God for things with the same boldness and
shamelessness of a daughter who asks her father for a hug or a son who asks his
mother for a fire truck. What’s more, Jesus tells us that if we only ask, seek
and knock we will be given everything we ask for just as a parent who is asked
for fish will not give a snake. Jesus opens up prayer as a relationship between
God our Father and us, God’s children.
Now, imagery
for God as parent runs beautifully through the breadth and width of the
Bible. It is a popular metaphor
because people often encounter God as a parent. Take Hosea, the prophet who described God as a parent who
tends to children, teaching them how to walk, taking them into his arms,
dandling them on his leg, even bending down to feed them, and, my favorite, God
is like "those who lift infants to their cheeks." Prayer is our end of the relationship
with God. We pray to a God who
lifts us to his cheeks; while we may babble like infants, God hears us and
gives us what we need.
Imagery of
God as parent is deeply understood by parents who know about tough love. Though God may be upset or angry with a
situation, God still deeply loves God’s children. Listen again to Hosea: How could I give you up, how could I
hand you over? My heart recoils
within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger.
You can
almost hear the tears getting caught in God’s throat. Even in judgment, God
comes in love, sits us in his lap, consuls us and wipes away every tear; his
own included.
Now, these
are all beautiful images for the way that God loves us and they help us to see
God as Father. But here’s where we
need to be honest once again: one image we often encounter and never expect in
God as parent is God’s absence or hiddenness, though some of us do know our own
parents in this way. We feel God’s absence especially when prayers for healing
seem to go unanswered; or prayers to end abuse; to stop addiction; for the
right path to be taken; for work to be found; for this month’s check to last;
we feel hurt and can feel our fists start to clench as we begin to beat on
God’s chest as screams of WHY burst from our guts.
It may be easy for some to look at this Gospel reading today and assign blame to the one praying: you are not praying enough, hard enough, right enough, long enough. Feelings of guilt and inadequacy tend to surface when we’re given a simple direction only to get lost. But it seems to me that Jesus is indicating that any way we pray is the right way. To pray is to be in a relationship with God in the ups and downs ordinary and extraordinary moments of our lives. It’s a relationship cultivated over time.
What’s more, we’re not alone in feeling like we haven’t had our
prayers answered. It doesn’t
happen to just you or just that poor guy down the street. The Book of Psalms is a collection of
150 prayers and song written by folks who were close to God’s heart who spoke
openly and honestly about how they felt about God and their life
situation. 60 of the Psalms are
lament psalms, prayers asking God’s help, prayers demanding God’s attention in
the presence of God’s supposed and felt absence.
Like the Psalmist we could say, “How long, O Lord, Will you forget me
forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my
heart all day long?” (PS 13) Or, “Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our
bodies cling to the ground. Rise
up, come to our help. Redeem us
for the sake of your steadfast love.” (PS 44)
Scripture shows us that such honesty is appropriate and faithful and,
what’s more, that God can handle it. The Psalms show us that honesty, above all
else, is invited into the relationship that is prayer. It should also be noted
that most—but certainly not all lament Psalms—end in praise, recalling to mind
the way that God has been faithful in the past, which leads to a future hope
despite present circumstances.
This week I had the honor and pleasure to start making visits to
people in their homes. In one visit
I met a woman from this congregation who has breast cancer and is waiting to
hear her options for treatment.
The subject of prayer was brought up. Prayer has been a large part of her sustenance. She said, “I used to feel so cliché
when I would tell someone: ‘I’ll pray for you,’ but what else can you say…Now,
I can actually feel the prayers that people are praying.” She herself has found her own way to
pray, on walks in the early morning stillness; in the car on her way to work;
in silence. I was humbled and
awe-filled. She tended to the holy
ground that was around her as a practice, one that nourishes her in this time
of uncertainty and waiting and hoping.
God does listen and hear our prayers, whatever they may be. Jesus tells us this much. Jesus could have told us so much more. In truth Jesus should have told us that some prayers go painfully unanswered; that some prayers just can’t be answered in the way we would like; and that some prayers require so much energy and wrestling that in the end—though we come out with a blessing—we are forever wounded, walking limp.
Jesus knew
all of this, in the end, of course.
Painfully all too well…Father if this cup could pass from me. And quoting the psalm, “My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?”
In all honesty I don’t know why some prayers are answered but not
others. But I do know that God is
listening and hears us when we pray.
I don’t know why things are the way they are. But I do know that God is
with us in whatever we face. God’s
relationship to us is so tightly woven that it is actually God who meets us in
the darkest, hardest, most painful moments of our lives. God knows pain and
suffering, fear and loss first hand. In Jesus God took on our life and our lot
and died so that we might know there is no where we can go that Christ hasn't
already gone, and that there is nothing we can do – or have done to us – that
God cannot love and forgive, redeem and save. (David Lose)
That
is the promise God gives us today in our reading, and that’s the promise that
we’ll invite K into today in his baptism.
In the
waters of baptism God brings us through death to new life in him. God claims us as children and binds
himself to us, promising to be with us and for us, a promise we take in each
week at Communion. These promises
are not nullified by life’s situations and can still be trusted even when life
doesn’t go the way we would like and hope. Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ
Jesus, our savior, friend and redeemer.
Amen.
Sources:
Roberta Bondi, To Pray and To Love
David Lose, WorkingPreacher.org