Sermon on Luke 11:1-13
St. Matthew's, Austin 29 July 01, SJB
I was supposed to preach next week, but Joe wanted to give me the chance
to talk about Sodom and Gomorrah. After prayerful consideration,
though, I felt called to preach the Gospel, instead.
And I was going to begin with a joke about the drunk who stumbled into
a baptism in the river. But I just can't do it--I got stagefright.
For me to stand in Joe Di Paola's pulpit and tell a joke would be like
standing in front of Luciano Pavarotti and singing an aria.
Jesus said: "Ask and it will be given to you." This is one of the most
frequently quoted Bible verses--I hear it all the time, out of my own
mouth. It sounds so simple; and it's nice to think that God listens to
our little requests and gives us what we want.
But it can be dangerous, too, particularly when it's used as to support
a perversion of Christian values. Here's how that reasoning goes. You
attend church. You give your money. You get in good with God. You ask.
God gives. If you have a big house and expensive car, God really loves
you. For the prosperity-gospel people material wealth is God's reward
to the faithful. That has a very dark side, of course: if you fail
when the economy turns sour, or if you're poor to start with, you must
have fallen short in God's sight.
No. That reading distorts the truth. God's kingdom isn't of this
world. God's giving is not about our toys. God's promise is about the
spirit--as Jesus clearly says here. God will give the Holy Spirit to
those who ask.
What on earth does the Holy Spirit bring to you and me? Nothing that
money can buy: companionship, guidance, consolation, love,
forgiveness--for a lifetime on earth and then for all eternity.
As usual, Jesus's teaching here was radical and visionary. In Hebrew
scriptures, God was altogether Other--so powerful and aloof that Moses
dared not look on God's face, nor speak God's name. Abraham ventured
to bargain with God over the fate of Sodom. But that God was wrathful,
destructive, a god to be feared and appeased.
Jesus gave his disciples an entirely new image of God: as Father. By
the way, let us recognize that for people whose earthly fathers are
cruel, the image of the father can block their path God. We must
remember that and respect their need image God in some other way. In
any case, Jesus' point was not to be literal, but to convey that God is
loving, benevolent, and approachable. Hence the metaphor of the wise,
caring parent who and gives children what is best for them.
And we need that. No matter how old and wise we are ourselves, at
times each of us is like a lost child. When our vision falters, God's
does not. God sees the big picture--always. God commands a perspective
of time, space, and purpose that we cannot begin to imagine.
God sees it all. God understands it all. God knows it all. Even so,
God can't save us from the fallout of our free will. God can't
intervene to stop or to undo human error and evil. But God can help us
transform the effects of the messes we create or stumble into. The Holy
Spirit will comfort us, strengthen us, inspire us and enable us to
transcend the tragedies and trials of life.
This is God's amazing gift to us. And it is ours--but only for the
asking. That was Jesus' point: Ask and it will be given, Seek and you
will find. We have to ask. We have to seek. We have to open
ourselves, inviting God's grace to enter in.
Fortunately we don't have to know precisely what we want or need. God
is God, after all. God really knows far better than we. So, we just
need to pray, in the words of the writer Annie Lamott: "Help me, help
me, help me."
And God is ready to give far more than we dare to ask. That's the
lesson of the Prodigal Son, who came home looking for shelter and a
scrap of food, never he could rejoin the family he had scorned. But his
father rushed out to meet him, to shower him with love and forgiveness,
and restore his place of honor. Like the Prodigal son, if we can make
the first steps toward God, God will rush to meet us.
Jesus knew that God is waiting for us to make those first steps, so he
paved the way with the Lord's Prayer. Deceptively simple, it contains
everything that we need to know and to say to God.
Jesus came to redeem the living, to restore us to wholeness in our
relationship with God and with one another. Jesus not only commanded
us: love God; love one another. In the Lord's Prayer he told us how.
In the time I have left, I would like to give you a couple of thoughts
about the Lord's Prayer. I confess I really struggled with writing
this. It was hugely humbling. So I offer this as a small meditation on
The Great Prayer.
The words we know so well come from Matthew. So let's stick with
Luke's: the differences may help us hear it freshly.
In the first phrases of the prayer, we recognize who God is to us:
"Father," we say, claiming our intimacy with God; but, then, "Hallowed
(or holy) be your name," This is not any earthly parent, but the one
God, whom we come to worship.
"Your kingdom come". In the original Greek, the verb in this and the
following phrases are imperative. That mood makes our appeal urgent and
unqualified. "Let your kingdom come!" We beg for God's reign to enter
our hearts and our lives now and for all time.
The last three phrases are supplications. With them we surrender our
wills and entreat God to give us what we must have as human beings, and
which only God can give.
"Give us each day our daily bread". Bread is the minimal
nourishment, without which we will die. By asking for it, we admit
that we are totally dependent upon God for our life every day.
"Forgive us our sins". We all sin all the time, because sin is
anything that we think, or say, or do that separates us from God. Jesus
says we can ask God to take us back, forgive us in our endless
lapses--as only God can or would. But Jesus put a condition on our own
forgiveness, saying
"As we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us." Our English
translation softens the meaning of the Greek. It actually says as we
"have forgiven". Jesus told us to ask forgiveness after we had forgiven
others.
That is how we love our neighbors. We forgive them, and we love them,
as we want God to forgive and love us.
Finally, we plead with God to protect us from whatever temptation or
test may befall us. "Do not bring us to the time of trial."
Elaborating on that would be a sermon in itself.
In fact, Will Willamon, the great preacher, suggests spending six weeks
of sermons on the Lord's Prayer. Now I know why, and I hope, sometime,
to do so. In the meanwhile, let me suggest that we take time to
meditate on the Lord's Prayer individually. This week I plan to change
my daily prayer routine to dwell on these phrases, one per day. I am
persuaded that it is the only prayer we need to keep ourselves in right
relationship with God and each other.
My prayer for us all is that we come to understand in a new and deeply
personal way the words of this powerful, comprehensive prayer that we
know and say "by heart".
It is never too late to let Jesus teach us how to pray.
Amen.
