Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The sermon text is from Luke 11:1-13.
When you read the Gospel of Luke pay close attention to sequence. Immediately before our text, Jesus rebuked Martha for thinking the important thing was her getting dinner ready instead of sitting at Jesus’ feet with Mary listening to the Word of God. True worship of God is about receiving from Him first, about being fed by Him. Mary chose the better thing that would not be taken away, because she let God be the giving God He wants to be for His children. In faith, she valued what she received from God more highly than anything she could offer to Him. Only after God’s Word works in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, do Christian good works flow in service to God.
Now that we see the importance of being fed by God’s Word, Jesus turns to prayer. True Christian prayer is always responding to God. As His Gospel has its way with us, our hearts are led to call upon God as “dear children ask their dear father.” It’s so true if you want a fuller prayer life, be fed by the Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament and the Holy Spirit will lead you into a more vigorous life of praise and thanksgiving and prayers for every need.
Sometimes people who long ago quit hearing God’s Word will say, as if to reassure even themselves, “I’m still a Christian I believe in God. I pray.” St. Luke in this week’s and last week’s lesson wants us to understand that you don’t sustain your Christian life through prayer. Rather prayer is faith’s response to the God who sustains our faith through His Word.
So the disciples ask what should always be our prayer: “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus begins, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be Your name.’” At Jesus’ Baptism God proclaimed Jesus to be His Son. Earlier in chapter 10 Jesus prayed to God as Father. Now, isn’t it amazing that when Jesus teaches the disciples to pray He says, “Father, hallowed be Your name.” Jesus places the disciples and you and me into the same relationship with God that He has. He’s our Father. In Holy Baptism, you were clothed in Jesus and made sons and daughters of God. Now Jesus says, when you pray, you pray like little children calling to a loving daddy. Joined to Jesus through faith in Holy Baptism, God regards our prayers as dear and precious to Him.
More than anything else receiving our true identity in Jesus – sons and daughters of God – makes us bold to pray. Because human fathers are sinners, this isn’t a perfect analogy, but imagine for a second how hurt and saddened a father would be if their child never turned to them for help. Imagine if a youngster sought all advice and counsel and aid from not-so-good friends, a bad group. The loving father would crave the prayers and the questions and requests from the child, not because it made the father more, but because his wisdom and resources are best able to meet the needs of his child.
That’s why we need to be taught to pray to our Father God, because our sinful hearts chase after false gods, seeking wisdom not from God through His Word but in empty idols and foolish peddlers of human wisdom. Our wisdom corrupted by sin and destined for hell chases after the world, following dead end roads that lead to hell. But through faith in Jesus, we have a Daddy, a heavenly Father, that knows how best to meet our needs.
Many homes can relate to this… In our home we’re working on how to ask for things. To this point, when a need arises in our home we hear a shrill, “Juice” or “Milk” or “Snack”, or something less dignified when it concerns potty training. Children need to be taught how to ask. It’s a good proof of the reality of the devil and our inborn sinful nature that children don’t have to be taught to be rude and selfish and demanding, but they do have to be taught to be good.
The Lord’s Prayer is God’s perfect prayer, containing everything God’s children need. Remember all these things we pray in the Lord’s Prayer we pray not only for ourselves but also for all of God’s Church – every believer. Praying God’s name be kept holy is praying that His Word is taught truthfully and that we live our lives according to that Word, honoring God’s name with our lives. Praying for God’s Kingdom to come is praying for the Holy Spirit to create and strengthen our faith and others through His Word, and that He takes us to His heavenly Kingdom. Praying for God’s will to be done is to say, “God beat down and kill my sinful will and the will of the devil and sinful world. Teach me to will what you desire.”
Praying for our daily bread is learning to be thankful that God is the source of everything we have, and asking Him like little children turning to our true Father for our needs. Praying for God’s forgiveness is the life of repentance, confessing our failures and bringing our sins to our gracious Father, even as we pray that God’s forgiveness will move us in true love and forgiveness to those around us.
Praying that God would not lead us into temptation is praying for God to deliver us from the devil’s traps, and asking God to sustain us through life’s trials as we bear the crosses and challenges of life. Only our Divine Dad can get us through this life safely and bring us home, and so we pray that God would deliver us, and all our brothers and sisters in Jesus, from every evil, sin and death and finally take us with Him to our perfect, heavenly home.
God also wants us to pray our own prayers, the specific things that are on our hearts, for our family and nation, for our church and the spread of His Word. Yet, if we consider it rightly all these things are in the Lord’s Prayer – this perfect prayer from God Himself. It has everything. But it’s also the most abused. It’s so easy to roll through the Lord’s Prayer and not think about it. We know it so well sometimes we don’t consider what we’re saying. Luther even suggested as we pray the Lord’s Prayer, praying each petition at a time, and naming all the things that are included under that petition as a way to remember what it’s all about. A good way to grow in prayer is to read each petition and meaning from the Small Catechism and then praying it for all the things included in that petition. A good hint for growth in prayer is to read a Psalm or Scripture passage and then pray for what God is teaching in that passage.
Next, Jesus teaches about the boldness of prayer and God’s heart to answer us. “Suppose of you of you has a friend that comes to you at midnight… because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.” The point here: If even sinful people would be ashamed to turn away a friend who comes at an inopportune time, how about a God that Scripture promises: “Watches over your coming and going forever.” We pray boldly, because God commands us to pray and promises to hear us. James wrote: “Let him ask in faith, without doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is tossed and driven by the wind. That person must not think he will receive anything from God.”
True faith doesn’t pray as if buying a lottery ticket. This isn’t any normal dad we’re praying to. It’s the Heavenly Father, who spoke the earth into being… the Father who knows us so intimately He knit us together in our mother’s wombs… the Father who sent His sinless Son to die and rise from the dead to make us His sons and daughters… the Father whose Holy Spirit claimed us in Baptism and shouts our identity as forgiven and loved kids of the King in the promises of His Word. We are bold in prayer, not because we deserve His answer, but because His love assures us: “Everyone who asks, receives; he who seeks finds; and to him to knocks the door will be opened.”
Our prayers are always tempered with the words, “Thy will be done”, not because we aren’t sure God can handle it, but because we aren’t clinched-fist, screaming children demanding our way. Our Father knows best how to care for us, and even when He doesn’t give us what we want, He always gives us what’s best. He’s not a father who gives a scorpion instead of an egg or a snake instead of fish. He’s a Father who always gives the best – as evidenced in Calvary’s cross – when He gave His own Son to make us forgiven members of His heavenly family.
Dear friends, claim this great gift that God gives you – the gift of prayer. Let your homes and families be joined in one voice to the true Father, “Giver of every good and perfect gift.” “Give thanks in all circumstances. Pray without ceasing,” 1 Thessalonians 5 says. Fed by God’s Word, ask the Father to send you His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s work is to create and strengthen our identity. He roots us in our place in God’s family as loved and forgiven children by joining us to God the Father through Jesus His Son.
We pray: Dear Father, You call us your children through Jesus Your Son, send us Your Spirit and make us bold to live our lives with praise and thanksgiving, calling upon You in every need, through Jesus Christ, our Brother in the flesh and Your eternal Son. Amen.
And now may the peace of God which surpasses human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.