This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 25, 2010.

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Readings

Genesis 18:20–32
Psalm 138 (antiphon v.8)
Colossians 2:6–19
Luke 11:1–13

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Prayer

We ask you, heavenly Father, to give us your Holy Spirit, so we may pray to you in faith and may trust that you will meet our needs through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Message

Sometimes you get more than you ask for.

Today’s Gospel begins simply,
with Jesus praying,
and one of his disciples asking for guidance:
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1b, NRSV)

So Jesus gives his gathered disciples a prayer,
a prayer deceptively simple,
a prayer we have come to know as the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father.

The form of this prayer in Luke’s Gospel
is a little different from the one in Matthew’s account,
and the version we use in worship and devotions,
but we still can recognize our most familiar prayer in its ancient form.

We call God our Father.
We hallow his name and look for his reign to come.
We ask for our daily sustenance.
We plea for reconciliation.
We seek deliverance from trials that test our faith.

It’s a prayer we know so well that—if we are not careful—
we can find ourselves shifting into autopilot
as we begin to mouth the words
and then waking up somewhere
amid “the kingdom and the power and the glory”
without remembering exactly how we got there.

But here’s the curious thing about this Gospel.
It’s almost as if Jesus anticipated that this simple prayer would,
in human hands and on limited lips,
inevitably devolve into a nearly rote incantation.

Because as soon as he finishes sharing the prayer,
responding to the disciple’s simple request,
Jesus goes beyond the question.
He digs into the wisdom surrounding and supporting the prayer,
the motivations of those who pray,
the expectations we might have of the God who hears us.

The first thing Jesus does
is to compare praying to God
with bugging a friend in the middle of the night for a favor.
Even though our friend might want to close the door,
turn off the light, and go back to sleep,
our persistence wins out,
and our friend gives us whatever we need.

I don’t think the point of Jesus’ teaching
is that God is easily annoyed,
or that we are merely pests,
or that he answers prayers just to get us to go away.

Instead, the focus of the image is on persistence.
The wisdom Jesus offers
is that for us to pray faithfully as he has taught us
is for us to pray persistently,
to come to God our Father over and over again,
telling him what we need
and asking for him to respond.

That means that while we can grow overly accustomed
to the words of the Lord’s Prayer,
we never exhaust their power to share with God our Father
the praise and petititions,
the needs and requests
we bring daily to him.

Why should we bother with repetition?
Doesn’t God hear us the first time?
Doesn’t he have a memory big enough
to listen once and then to know what we need?

Part of the power of the Lord’s Prayer
comes in the patterns of repetition.
When we pray as our Lord has taught us,
we submit ourselves to God our Father,
we are being trained to adopt holy habits.

Not only are we asking him for daily bread, for example,
but by asking him each day for that bread,
we are learning the truth that the bread is his to give.
When we pray for remission of our sins, debts, and trespasses,
we acknowledge that only God can pardon us
and only by his grace can we forgive one another.
When we plea for our Father to rescue us from trials,
we are reminding ourselves that—left to our own devices—
we can only imperil and never deliver ourselves from threats.

This is the value of persistence.
This is why Jesus raises it up as a virtue.
It’s like we are a knife and the prayer is whetstone
and the repetition is God’s way of honing the edge of our blade.

And what happens when we are persistent?
Our practice of the virtue bears fruit,
as Jesus then tells his followers:
“‘So I say to you, Ask and it will be given you;
search, and you will find;
knock, and the door will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives,
and everyone who searches finds,
and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.’” (Luke 11:9–10, NRSV)

This is why we don’t retire the Lord’s Prayer from worship and devotions.
We pray it persistently, repeatedly, daily even,
because each new day brings fresh opportunities
in which to hallow the name of our Father
and new moments in which to acknowledge our need for his graces.

And for the sake of practicing the virtue of persistence,
for training ourselves to turn to God for grace,
we pray every week for all who are sick,
for peace in our world and our families,
for the Spirit to refresh the Church,
for our Father to guide our search for a pastor,
for our Lord to receive our joys and pains.

And finally, Jesus takes his last step in going beyond
what the disciples had asked to receive from him.
He jolts his followers with some strange questions.

“…if your child asks for a fish,
will [you] give a snake instead of fish?
Or if the child asks for an egg,
will you give a scorpion?” (Luke 11:11–12, NRSV)

Instinctively we join our voices with the disciples and say,
“No, of course not. Absolutely not!”

And then, finally, Jesus brings us all the way around,
back to the first question about prayer.
In his wisdom, he has led us along a path
through prayer offered with persistence to God our Father
to the absurdity of imagining mothers and fathers
who would feed their children snakes and scorpions.

And because we cannot imagine that,
because even we who are frail, who fail daily,
who find ourselves so dreadfully flawed,
will give our children fish and eggs,
will give our offspring what we know they need,
“…how much more will the heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13, NRSV)

How much more?
How much more?
More than we can comprehend,
more than we can put into words,
more than we either can expect or deserve,
but not more than God freely chooses.

And so, all we do is ask for daily bread and fish and eggs.
And then, give God thanks and praise,
because we do receive more than we ask for:
the gift of love from God our Father,
the blessings of grace from his Son Jesus Christ,
and life in communion with their Holy Spirit. Amen.