7th Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

As I was reading and pondering our Bible readings for today, one recurring theme that I noticed is that of boldness.

Abraham negotiates with God. That is pretty darn bold! God has decided to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham is trying to change God’s mind. God could have stopped this conversation at the get-go; could have said, “Have you any idea whom you are talking to?”; could have pulled rank; could have said, “I made up my mind and that’s all there is to it.”

But God doesn’t do any of this. God listens to Abraham, engages with Abraham, agrees that Abraham has a point, and adjusts his plans.

In the gospel story, the disciples come to Jesus and say, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” No ‘please’. No ‘it would be nice if’. Just a bold request to get what other disciples get from their rabbi.

The parable Jesus tells describes a man who goes to his neighbor’s house in the middle of the night to ask for bread. It’s pretty bold to wake someone up at midnight. We would be annoyed by such a request. But we would be able to flip on the light, walk into the kitchen, get the bread, hand it over, and go back to bed, all without interrupting anyone else’s sleep.

In Jesus’ day that would not have been so easy. The houses were tiny, one room of maybe 100 square feet. At night, the family would roll out mats and lay down tight as sardines. On top of that, they would bring their animals inside, for safety and warmth. The space would be crowded. It would be completely dark.

When the man asks his neighbor for bread, he is asking him to stumble over his sleeping family members, navigate his sheep, fumble for bread on the shelf, all in pitch darkness. Yes, the man’s request is a bold one indeed!

Jesus responds to the disciple’s request by giving a sample prayer, what we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer (because the Lord gave it to us). It, too, includes rather bold requests. No ‘please’ or ‘if possible’ or ‘maybe’. It teaches the disciples to say give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us.

So one lesson we can take from our readings this morning is to be bold in our prayers to God.

I want to explore this boldness a bit more. What is its aim? And what does it reveal about God and our relationship to God?

First the aim. Looking at the bold petitions in detail, it is interesting to notice that they are not asking for any thing or favor for the person doing the praying himself or herself.

Abraham is boldly praying, asking God to spare two cities from destruction.

The friend at midnight is asking for bread for a guest, not for himself.

The disciples ask, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Us plural. This is for the whole group to grow in their prayer life.

Likewise, the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer are all plural: Give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. The prayer is asking for all people to have food and forgiveness and deliverance.

The bold prayer the Bible is encouraging is prayer on behalf of others, of people in need, and of the community as a whole.

Next, what does this kind of prayer reveal about God and our relationship with God? A lot! Here are a few of these revelations.

Through his bold praying, Abraham is able to change God’s mind. How awesome is that! This shows that not everything about the future is mapped out and fixed. As one commentator wrote, God is not a kind of activities director who has our whole life planned in detail. This story gives the impression that the future is flexible, that our relationship with God is dynamic.

In his prayer, Abraham is appealing to God’s own sense of justice. “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing.” Would it be fair to let 50 righteous people die because of what other people did? And God agrees that it wouldn’t be fair. Abraham’s prayer boldly asks God to act according to God’s own integrity and justice.

The Lord’s Prayer begins with “Father”. Jesus encourages us to relate to God as a father. In Luke’s version, there does not follow the familiar “who art in heaven”. This God is near to God’s people and pays attention to their need for daily bread and debt forgiveness.

The image of parents caring for their children is picked up at the end of the gospel reading. Jesus uses a rhetorical method called arguing from the lesser to the greater. He asks his audience if any parent would give their child a snake when it asks for fish, or a scorpion when it asks for an egg. Everyone in the audience would say that no parent in the world would do such a thing. Jesus builds on that response: If even human parents with all their shortcomings know and love their children enough to do the right thing and give them what they need, how much more likely is God, our perfect divine father, to give us what we truly need?

Food is at the center of the parable about the friend at midnight. A traveler has arrived late at night, and the hospitality culture of the time demands that he be served bread. The host has no bread. So he goes to the neighbor and rouses him. The Bible says, I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. Most scholars think that “persistence” is not a good translation. “Shamelessness” is much better. Shame was really important back then. The whole society was regulated by shame and honor. Not providing hospitality to a guest by giving him bread would bring shame, not only on the host, but on the whole village!

Scholars point out that Jesus’ audience would not have been surprised by a man asking his neighbor for bread at midnight, no matter how inconvenient the request might be. Jesus’ audience would have gasped at the neighbor who at first is unwilling to get the bread. That kind of refusal would bring shame on the whole village.

It’s this shame that in the end motivates the neighbor to get up and find the bread in the dark and hand it over. He knows what is expected of him. He knows that right thing to do and does it.

And again, Jesus argues from the lesser to the greater: If even a grumpy reluctant neighbor does finally do what is needed, how much more likely is God going to respond to your requests, who not only knows what is right, but also loves you!

 In the end, what today’s readings are about is not so much the need to pray persistently or the mechanics of prayer. Rather, they teach us about God and our relationship with God. They teach us that God is engaged with us, listens to us, responds to us, takes our petitions into account in the shaping of the future. They teach us that God is a loving parent who is always willing to respond, any time of day and night. They teach us that we have such a solid, loving, trusting relationship with God that we can be bold in our asking for justice, for daily bread, for forgiveness, for deliverance, for God’s kingdom to come, for God’s name to be hallowed. Prayer is the conversation that keeps our relationship with God intimate, fresh, loving, inspiring, strong, life-giving.

“Lord, teach us how to pray.” I don’t think the disciples wanted to know the mechanics of prayer or the three-step outline of the best prayer practices. I think they wanted what they saw that Jesus had. Jesus prayed all the time. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is constantly praying. Before every major event in Jesus’ life, Jesus prays. He prays from the beginning of his ministry in the wilderness of temptation to the end of his ministry hanging on the cross.

The disciples see that. They witness how much prayer means to Jesus, how essential it is to his life and ministry, how it draws him into such intimate connection with God. That’s what they want. How can we get that, they ask?

Jesus responds by telling his followers to think of God as their loving Father. Trust that God loves you. Trust that God has your best interest in mind. Trust that God wants a relationship with you. Trust this relationship that began in your baptism and will continue into all eternity.

Secure in that relationship, be bold in your praying. Ask, knock, search. Plead for justice. Advocate for others. Beg for bread for the hungry. Dare to inconvenience God with your bold request on behalf of others.

Shamelessly call God on God’s promises. What are those promises? Not stuff or health or the good life. What God promises is divine presence, accompaniment, strength, hope, community, a peace that passes all understanding. In the last line of our text today, after Jesus encourages us to ask, knock, call, he promises that God will give the Holy Spirit to all who ask. Through the Holy Spirit, God will be with us in all circumstances, guide is in times of trial, sustain us in times of anxiety or depression, encourage us when we feel weak, show the way when we feel lost. Through the Holy Spirit, we will have the kind of prayer life Jesus models, that intimate closeness to God that will anchor us and shape us into people of God.

One commentator writes that “prayer has nothing to do with us telling God what God must or must not do. Prayer is instead the essence of God’s Spirit weaving around and between and through us, encouraging us to speak, listen, engage, think, and act. Prayer tunes us into the mind of God and the feelings of God.”

As a result, we look at the world with God’s eyes, with God’s vision of the kingdom come near. We are moved to advocate for others, to pray for God’s will to be done on earth. “Hallowed be your name,” we pray in the Lord’s prayer. We hallow God’s name by honoring God’s vision for life together in this world. We hallow God’s name by praying and working towards the day when every child of God has daily bread, when all debts are forgiven, and when all people are delivered from the trials of life.

I am closing with this quote from Professor Matt Skinner at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota:

“I confess that when it comes to prayer, I’m certainly not one of God’s better conversation partners. My attempts usually betray that I have the attention span of a goldfish. I worry that prayer doesn’t accomplish much. Therefore, I appreciate Jesus’ reminders that the God who hears my words, silences, and incoherent anxieties is generous.

“It’s also invaluable that Jesus urges his followers to persist in prayer. This doesn’t necessarily mean we need to increase the volume and pray the same things over and over all day. It means that with a God like this the door is always open. An occasion for relationship always exists. […] Do not walk past an opportunity for intimacy with the Divine.”

Amen.