SERMON Prayer Partners

Pentecost C Lectionary 17 2007: Genesis 18:2-32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13

I am not a big fan of media preaching. The death of Tammi Faye Baker this past week reminded me, however, that there is one time of year when I am a captive audience to it. This is that time. Almost.

Before I came to Wicker Park, I was an avid runner. I had stopped running after moving to Wicker Park because I had somehow managed to lose my running bag with my favorite running shoes in the move. By the time I found the bag and the shoes, almost two years had passed since the move, and it was time for our annual trip to the outer Cape where, in one direction, the winding and hilly road leads to the ocean and, in the other direction, leads to Boston Bay. Thanks to the multiple stairs in our Wicker Park house, I was back into my Cape Cod, early morning running routine almost immediately. After two years, everything was as it had always been.

Except for one thing.

For years, I had a Walkman so for at least part of every run I could listen to the Cape's one classical station (if I was running to the ocean) or Provincetown's decidedly funky public radio (if I was running toward the Bay). The year I started running again, the Walkman could pick up neither station. Instead the only station available was -- and remains -- a conservative, evangelical Christian station broadcasting from Boston -- obviously with a strong signal. So, for the first fifteen or twenty minutes of every morning's run, I listen to a wide variety programs and preachers before the station fades. That very first year of running, there was a woman preacher (not ordained, of course) who was truly excellent. Articulate, funny, confessional, compelling, on the mark. As the week went on, I was beginning to feel mildly ecumenical even though theologically and politically poles apart from those to whom I was listening.

But then I heard twenty minutes of a sermon on why Christians should not pray the Lord's Prayer. I first I thought that I had misheard. I hadn't.

According to the preacher (if memory serves, he was from Nashville), Jesus never intended that any of his followers pray the Lord's Prayer. And certainly never intended that Christians pray the Lord's Prayer together in church. This particular preacher had actually left worship services where the Lord's Prayer was prayed because he was so offended by the practice. The only possible use for the Lord's Prayer -- a use that his mother had pointed out to him after being born again late in life (after he had gone into the ministry) -- the only possible use for the Lord's Prayer might be for people like his mother who had never prayed before and didn't know how to pray. Otherwise, no one should ever pray the Lord's Prayer. Period.

As the preacher from Nashville began to fade, he was telling his congregation that they should be persistent in asking God for what they want. "Pray without ceasing." "Ask, and it will be given to you," he told them.

And, as I finished my run, I was reminded of Tammy Faye Baker who, before the downfall, would urge her PTL viewers to be persistent and specific in their prayer requests whether it be for a new car (year, make, model, color) or a high tech camera (brand, model, make) or an ostentatious house (colonial, ranch, Normandy). Pester God. Wear God down. "For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be open." Did the Nashville preacher's sermon end on that note? Probably not as blatantly as Tammy Faye Baker would have ended it, but it was certainly headed that way.

And, after all, isn't wearing God down what Jesus is urging when he tells the parable of the man going to his neighbor's house in the middle of the night and pestering the neighbor to such a degree for loaves of bread to feed the unexpected visitor that the neighbor gives him what he needs? And doesn't Abraham simply wear God down by persistently asking God to agree that if an ever smaller and smaller number of righteous men are found in Sodom, the city should be spared? And isn't Jesus saying that God will give his children more than they ever asked for?

The answer to those questions would appear to be an unqualified "yes" -- if it were not for the Lord's Prayer.

The Lord's Prayer is the context which makes sense of the parable and Jesus' sayings on prayer that follow. It sheds light on Abraham's interchange with God.

And it does both because, in Luke's gospel, the Lord's Prayer is not -- as the Nashville preacher believed and preached -- optional. One of the disciples comes to Jesus and says, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." Recall, in response, Jesus directs, "When you pray, say:" He does not suggest this is one prayer among many or even (as he does in Matthew's gospel) that it is an example of how one should pray.

The prayer that we are directed to pray in Luke's gospel is bare bones and, with one change by the author to make it understandable to the gentile readership, probably very close to the prayer or prayers that Jesus originally taught his disciples to pray. (The Lord's Prayer that we will pray today is primarily from Matthew and the doxology at the end is from the Lord's Prayer found in an early Christian manual called the Didache.)

The Lord's Prayer in Luke has an address and only five petitions. It simply begins "Father" (the author of Matthew probably added the "Our") -- the Greek word for the Aramaic word "Abba," a word something akin to "Daddy." The first two petitions are wishes: (1) that God's name be sanctified (an ancient feature of Jewish prayer) and (2) that God's rule will be made effective in the world of humans -- that God's kingdom come.

The three prayer petitions that follow are all communal.

The first prayer petition is that the disciples have food enough to sustain them each day, day after day. This meant real food. And, as we saw three weeks ago when Jesus sent out the seventy, a real concern.

The second petition is a prayer that their sins be forgiven. The word "sins" is Luke's word. The original word is "debts" -- and means "debts" -- a huge issue for first century Jews in Palestine which Luke's Gentiles would not have understood. This forgiveness is requested even as they forgive their debtors (here Luke does not change the original).

The final prayer petition is that they be spared the persecution and testing of their faith that would precede God's reign.

This, then, is a prayer for food and subsistence for survival. It is a prayer for our own forgiveness and God's righteousness. It is a prayer for the forgiveness of others' debts to us and justice. Like Abraham's conversation with God, it is prayer for God's mercy to spare the righteous.

And, not surprisingly, the parable Jesus tells about the midnight visitor and the man's request of his neighbor has many of those elements.

What we as twenty-first century westerners overlook in this parable is that first century Palestinians Jews had an obligation to house and feed visitors. Even as recently as fifty years ago, three loaves of bread were considered the equivalent of a meal for one person. The man's request for the loan of three loaves of bread is not only reasonable but, as a fellow villager, the neighbor is morally required to respond with bread. The word translated as "persistent" in Greek also means "shamelessness." In the original parable, it is the shamelessness of the neighbor in not immediately responding that is probably the focus of the story. As used by Luke here, it refers to the man's shameless persistence pressing his neighbor for bread and in being willing to expose the neighbor's shamelessness if he doesn't respond.

The point being that, when asked, God harkens to the cry of the needy for food. Just as God harkens to Abraham's prayers for God's mercy that the fewer than ten righteous citizens of Sodom not be killed in the destruction of the unrighteous. (Which, incidentally, is what happens when the story resumes. Fewer than ten righteous people are found and the city is destroyed. But those fewer than ten righteous people are rescued).

It is, I believe, what is asked for and what is sought that opens doors. Jesus certainly does not have in mind requests for Hummers or Apple IPhones or estates in Barrington when he say, "Ask and it will be given to you." He does not have in mind material wealth or goods when he speaks of how much more than earthly fathers the heavenly Father gives. Rather, Jesus speaks of a child asking for a fish and another child asking for an egg. He is thinking of sufficient food, true righteousness, real justice, and abundant mercy in making that comparison. Not SUV's, digital cameras, or McMansions.

In praying (as we must!) the Lord's Prayer we are praying as a community of faith for food, righteousness, justice, and mercy. For the wholeness and health God's kingdom represents. God invites us to do this. God shows us how to do this. God depends on us to do this. We pray, as Abraham did, as persons in covenant with God, as partners of the living God.

And that partnership does not stop with our communal prayer. It is further strengthened in our personal prayer life -- a prayer life that is a little bit like running. So much better when it is done regularly. A kind of exercise that shouldn't be abandoned (but frequently is) because we are missing our favorite running shoes or the right words. A kind of exercise that deepens a relationship that starts here, in community. But also a kind of exercise that, because it does deepen that relationship, leads, as it does for us as a congregation, to real exercise, to real doing, to carrying out our part of the partnership with and for others in the world.

The preacher from Nashville was not only misguided but wrong. The Lord's Prayer is our prayer because it is Jesus' prayer for us. In the end, that prayed for and that given is the gift of the Holy Spirit -- a gift that enlivens and empowers this congregation and each of us. And for that we thank God!

Amen.

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church