When you pray... A Sermon on The Lord's Prayer

"So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you." - Luke 11:9

Genesis 18:20-32

Luke 11:1-13

Any kind of bargaining has to reach an end point.  Whether in an auction room, on eBay or in a market place, at some point someone makes the final offer to be accepted or rejected.

Abraham’s pleading with God is pretty audacious.  He is seemingly defending the indefensible. Sodom is an evil place which God is going to destroy. But Abraham pleads with God – are you going to destroy the good with the bad?

What if there are fifty people there who are righteous?

Oh OK – If there are fifty – they can be spared.

Abraham must have realised that actually Sodom was pretty bad and maybe fifty righteous people was pushing it a bit – How about forty?

Right – forty – if you can find forty people then yes, they can be spared.

Thirty?

Oh – go on – thirty but no less.

Ten –

Ten it is – and that is my final offer. 

Generations of people who read the Bible have exercised their imaginations a little too freely when it comes to the sins of Sodom. (Some Christian minds are all too fertile.)

Trust the Bible more.  Ezekiel spelt it out for us.  He wrote:

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. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it. [1]

The story of Sodom, a city which in the end was destroyed with fire and sulphur, is another story in the book of Genesis, with the same theme.  Link it if you like with the story of Adam’s fall and the flood.  It’s a story of the corruption of our human nature, our struggle to get it right and God’s judgement which is always laced with redemption and compassion.

In this little vignette of a story Abraham is pleading with God so that the innocent are not punished with the guilty.

He is interceding on behalf of individuals he doesn’t know who act justly when all around them people are not.

Later in this service, we will have our prayers of intercession. We will play Father Abraham and plead with our God to spare the world from destruction, even if only for the sake of those who have been working to rescue the planet from oblivion.

There is a cheekiness in Abraham’s dialogue with God. No harm in trying the same tactic.

Prayer is essential to our human nature. As our society moves further and further away from traditional religious practice, people still pray.

Many people who do not practice faith, instinctively turn to prayer in times of crisis.

However imperfect, however clumsy, those prayers are not to be looked down on.

‘Spiritual not religious’ is woolly. It separates the feelings of wellbeing which come from spirituality from the obligations of faith and belonging to a community. But it is a start.

Prayer, for the Christian, is a fundamental component of our lives. In the teaching of Jesus, what the early Christians called ‘The Way’, we are given instructions on how to pray.

We know by heart the prayer which Jesus taught us. We call it the Lords’ Prayer but maybe it should be called the Disciple’s Prayer.

It is beautiful – profound - hopeful. It is down to earth and yet transcends this life.

The Lord’s Prayer can be prayed equally, by Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus.  It is God centred not Jesus centred.  It displays an intense compassion and commitment to the whole of humanity and it embraces the future alongside our present needs and acknowledgement of past failings.

The Lord’s Prayer is a formula.  We say it by rote.

I remember years ago watching a documentary about East Timor which was then occupied by Indonesia. It showed a group of protestors being fired on by the army during a massacre in which 250 people were killed.  They took shelter in the graveyard of Dili, the capital city.

On the film you can hear the protestors, scared for their lives, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary, over and over again.

Prayer in action.

Prayer in crisis.

Prayer when God’s intervention is so urgently needed.

I told this story to a group of theologians at Kings College Cambridge.  I had been asked to talk about liturgy and justice. If I am honest, it didn’t go down at all well.  They didn’t ask me back!

I was trying to show how the worship of the church can be taken outside the sanctuary and into day to day life and especially to situations of injustice. 

How to take prayer to the streets of Sodom!

One of the professors pointed out that if those people hiding among the graves had not been reciting the prayers by rote week in week out at Mass, they would not have been able to bring it to mind when they so urgently needed it.

I didn’t think so at the time but of course he was right.

There is a difference between repetition and vain repetition.

The routine of prayer really matters. Christian life has a rhythm and our Sunday mornings here are part of that.  So too are the quiet prayers that we pray every day.

Sometimes our prayers may seem to be unheeded. We pray for healing which doesn’t come.  We pray for justice in the world and it goes worse.  We pray for common sense among our leaders and well…….look at them!

Jesus tells us to be persistent. 

Imagine you have a friend who wakes you up in the middle of the night and asks for three loaves of bread. Well no – not matter how good a friend, it is not reasonable to expect them to get out of bed, disturb the entire family just because you have run out of bread.  Even if it is embarrassing if someone turns up and you don’t have anything to offer. 

But the parable is making a point. Keeping banging on with your prayers. Be bold.  Be persistent. Don’t give up. The door will be opened to you in good time.

Be like the troublesome friend.

Be like Abraham challenging God to save a city even if there are only ten good people left.

As it says in Hebrews:

Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. [2]

There is no need to be timid in prayer.

The environmentalist George Monbiot wrote an article last week for the Guardian which annoyingly I could not find again.  In it he mentioned some research which showed that change comes when thirty per cent of the population really believe and really want it to happen.  That is the tipping point where politicians have to take notice and ring the changes.

I don’t know if the research is correct but it sort of makes sense. It is not enough to believe on your own.  You need to be part of a critical mass.

We need to understand that prayer is not just an individual thing but it contributes to the whole. It is a tool for changing ourselves and our world for the better.

Every time we bang on to God about climate justice or compassion in human relationships we are engaged in its transformation.

We should not always think of prayer as just asking God for things and hoping that God will answer. 

Perhaps we need to think of prayer as the means of grace by which God transforms our lives – from selfishness to community – from isolation to belonging – from hopelessness to creative impulses for change.

Prayer is not self-indulgent and it is not a waste of time.

It is to be with God.

To identify with God’s kingdom.

It is to align ourselves with God’s way with the world.

Jesus’ teaching on prayer gives us an expansive portrayal of the God to whom we pray – our Father.

In the Hebrew Bible God chooses Israel as his son. God is Israel’s father. In the New Testament Paul tells us that we have been adopted into Israel. We too, gentile believers are children of God. 

God is our Father.

Our Father cares.

Our Father loves us.

Our Father rushes out to greet us when we are far off with a robe to put on our shoulders and a ring for our fingers and sandals for our feet. He loves us as the Father in the parable loved his wayward son.

Jesus tells us that no father would give a snake to a child who wanted fish and chips for tea. And no father would substitute a boiled egg and soldiers with a scorpion.

Just ask.

Just seek.

Just knock on the door.

You will be given.

You will find.

The door will be open for you.

As the persistent neighbour discovered – by asking he was given bread. By seeking out a friend he found what he needed. By knocking hard, the door was opened.

St Paul wrote:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. [3]

This is the Christian life. In our asking, seeking, and banging on the door, we are given good things. Above all, we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I know it is not always easy and sometimes our prayer life dries up. We should never judge ourselves or others when that happens.

When I was candidating for the ministry and in training, you would have to meet with various worthy people in the church hierarchy.  One of the questions they would always ask was:

‘How is your prayer life?’

I never really knew how to answer.  What should you say?  Up and down. Very good thank you.

It isn’t easy to say how our prayer life is.

Our prayer life ………is our relationship with God and God will not judge us if we don’t get it right….

Yet prayer is everything we need for living.

It is right to persist –

There is an evil world which needs rescuing and like Abraham we must plead, even bargain, for the good.

In every moment, without ceasing our lives, no matter how busy, need to be lives of asking, seeking and door breaking!

[1] Ezekiel 16.48-50

[2] Hebrews 4.16

[3] 1 Thessalonians 5.16-21