(Proper 12; Sermon text: Luke 11: 1 - 13) Given at St. Stephen’s Church, Harrisburg, IL
“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you….”
How do these words of Jesus strike us? Do we believe them? Really believe them?
After all, Jesus seems to be giving us some sort of a guarantee: For He goes on to say, “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Let’s take a closer look at today’s gospel reading, which contains some of Jesus’ most extensive teaching on prayer. We’ll look very briefly at the version of the Lord’s Prayer that Luke records, but, for most of our time together today, let’s look at the nature of prayer, and God’s responses to our petitions.
Because the Lord’s Prayer that we use most commonly in our worship is the version from Matthew’s gospel, let’s consider the differences in the Lukan version….
Luke’s version of the model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, contains fewer phrases than Matthew’s does….In Matthew, we find seven phrases, whereas Luke has five. Missing from Luke are these phrases: “who art in heaven”, and “but deliver us from evil”. In addition, the adjective, “our” is missing from “Father”.
Luke’s version seems more direct and less polished in its wording, somehow.[1]
Why do we have two different versions? Some scholars think that Luke’s source(s) remembered a different version than the source(s) that Matthew had. It’s also possible that Jesus offered different versions of the prayer at different times in his ministry. The truth is, we may never know definitively why the two versions are different.
Let’s turn our attention to the nature of prayer, and to God’s responses to our prayers. We begin with the nature of prayer, and especially our role in praying: Jesus’ teaching seems to affirm the following:
- We are to be active in petitioning God: Notice the action verbs “ask”, “search”, and “knock”….Not only does Jesus use the imperative tense (giving us a command), but He tells us that God intends for us to actively place our needs and concerns before God.
God expects us to do our part. We can’t be passive in our prayer life, but must be actively ask God to fulfill our needs. - Persistence pays off: Jesus uses two illustrations to show how great is God’s willingness to answer our prayers…Both illustrations use a rhetorical device called “lesser-to-greater” (a tool in teaching or in speaking that Jesus used quite frequently)….
In it, a commonly known example is used to enable the listener to grasp a greater reality.
The first one is a short parable,[2] sometimes called “The Parable of the Shameless Neighbor”.[3] In it, Jesus drives home the point that the need for bread is fulfilled not because of the neighborly relationship (in traditional, first century Palestine, the obligation to meet the needs of one’s neighbor would have been taken for granted) between the person asking and the person who has the bread, but because of the persistence of the asker. Jesus makes this point very clear, saying, “Because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”
The second illustration[4] that Jesus uses carries the listener from the commonly known and understood gift-giving of earthly parents, which is then used to enable the listener to grasp God the Father’s greater gift-giving ability.
Jesus’ instruction to be persistent in prayer stands in sharp contrast to a very common attitude many people have about relating to God: some treat God like an ATM machine. That is, they expect to put their “God card” into the machine, punch in their special prayer code, enter their prayer, get an immediate (and exact) answer, and be off to whatever else life has to offer (but without God’s involvement in that life). Isn’t that typical of much of 21st century relating to God? - Prayer comes with a guarantee: God answers prayer. Jesus tells us today, “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
This last point raises some serious questions….If we know that God always answers prayer, then why is it that some of our requests don’t seem to result in an answer (or at least, not in the way we expected them to be answered)?
Understanding the nature of God’s answers to prayer is critical to our spiritual maturity, and to our ability to see and to know God’s answer when it comes. So here is a practical guide to God’s answers to prayer (hope it is useful – or at least prompts further thought and meditation!):
- The forms of God’s answers: God answers prayer in three ways: a. “yes”; b. “not now”; and c. “I have something else-or better in mind”.
Looking back into our life experience, perhaps we can identify times when these three answers to prayer have occurred.
Scripture seems to indicate all three, and especially the last one, “I have something else-or-better in mind”….consider St. Paul’s request to have his “thorn in the flesh” removed (II Corinthians 12: 7 – 8)….Three times, Paul says, he asked the Lord to remove this “thorn in the flesh”, but the Lord’s answer was “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God’s answer, Paul says, prevented him from being conceited about God’s revelations to him.[5] In Paul’s case, he was never delivered from this “thorn in the flesh”, but God was able to mightily use Paul because of Paul’s humility and willingness to accede to God’s plans, rather than his own personal wellbeing or comfort. So, despite an apparent “no” from God, Paul was enabled to better serve the Lord, and all of us who are now Christians are the beneficiaries…so, the greater good was served.
Similarly, Jesus’ prayer to be delivered from His passion and death in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it be possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” was not answered as Jesus prayed. God the Father had other (and better) plans in mind, far better plans with far-reaching benefits for you and me.
Sometimes, God’s answer is “yes”! But sometimes, God’s timing is different than ours, for God knows far more than we do about the timing and the overall situation that our request involves. And finally, sometimes God’s ability to see the larger picture means that He has other – and better – things in mind.
Consider this Collect, for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost (prayed last week), which says (in part), “Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking….”
But ignorance isn’t the only thing that we, as mortal human beings, are subject to. We are also prone to ask for the wrong reasons, or for the wrong motives. The writer of the Letter of James (chapter four, verse three) states this problem quite succinctly when he says, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives….”
The problem seems to be that we can easily ask for the wrong reasons, or we – being finite creatures with limited knowledge – ask out of our ignorance of the greater or larger circumstances.
So what have we said? Simply this:
- God answers prayer, always.
- God’s answers are likely to be “yes”, “not now”, and “I have something else-or-better in mind”
- We are prone – at times - to ask for wrong reasons, or out of our ignorance, for things that God, being far wiser than we are, will not provide.
- But, we are to be active in our praying, and we are to be persistent, as well.
Our prayer might well be that of St. John Chrysostom,[6] whose prayer[7] says:
“Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved son that when two or three are gathered together in His Name you will be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us, granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting."
Amen.”
[1] This idea is drawn from R. Alan Culpepper’s commentary on Luke as it is found in the New Interpreter’s Bible, Vo. IX, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), p. 234.
[2] Verses 5 - 8
[3] R. Alan Culpepper’s title
[4] Verses 9 - 13
[5] II Corinthians 12: 7
[6] Eastern Church Father, who lived from 347 – 407 AD.
[7] The Prayer of St. Chrysostom may be found in The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, at page 126.
