Sermon not preached in person, due to having Covid-19
Eventually, one of Jesus’ disciples asks his rabbi to
teach them to pray (Luke 11:1-13).
So far, Jesus has mostly been performing healing
miracles and exorcisms, engaging in public debate about how to live a life that
pleases God (in contrast to trying to live a life that does not offend God),
with a handful of nature miracles and raising the dead thrown in for good
measure.
Now one of his disciples asks, teach us to pray. This
disciple reminds me of the boy in the film who asks the old man to teach him
karate but becomes disappointed with waxing his car and painting his fence day
after day.
Jesus tells them, pray that God’s wonderful
sovereignty would be more fully manifest in the world around us; that everyone
would have enough to live, a fair share of the earth’s resources; that our
failings would not be held against us, but removed from the record, in the same
way that (and so, and also that) we cancel every debt owed to us that cannot be
paid back; and that God would not put us on probation, to ‘prove ourselves’
worthy, but move to rescue us from the pain-ridden experience of life labouring
under hard-hearted indifference.
It is, in essence, a form of prayer lifted straight
from the ancestors living in Egypt, whose cries reached heaven and moved God to
send Moses.
Jesus continues, drawing on the dynamics of
relationships, emphasizing persistence in prayer, as an active pursuit: keep on
asking, until you receive an answer; keep on searching, until you find an
answer; keep on knocking at a closed door, until it opens. The door might not
open onto the room you expected, the answer might not look like the one you
imagined—the persistence of prayer is in part about transformation of
ourselves; the shaping of a people through whom God’s sovereignty is manifest—but
God’s answer, when it comes, will certainly not disappoint.
Imagine a hungry child asking their parent for
something to eat, a fish or an egg. Even if the parent did not have a fish or
an egg at hand, even if they could not respond as requested, when requested,
they would not give something harmful instead. Jesus continues, If you, then,
who are evil (that is, whose existence is pain-ridden due to collective,
systemic, and even personal hard-heartedness) know how to give gifts that are
inherently good to your own children (to alleviate their pain, to acknowledge
sheer goodness in the world) how much more will the heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
How much more will the parent of all, who is not
wearied by slavery to evil (and yet, who is not impervious to our pain, but
who, in Jesus’ torture and execution at our hands will take into god-self the
pain-ridden bodily existence, and, ultimately, transform it into something
unexpected, into glory) breathe the Life of heaven into our earthly bodies.
Thinking back over your experience of prayer,
How has praying changed you? How has prayer, including
‘unanswered’ prayer, transformed what you prayer for, and how you, yourself,
seek to be God’s answer to your prayer?
Where have you seen God’s sovereignty made manifest in
your circumstances, in answer to persistent prayer?
What part of ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ do you find most
challenging, and why?
What have you given up praying for?
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