Texts:           Luke 11: 1-13                   Colossians 2: 6-15
Date:           July 25, 2010
By:               Jerry Hurst

A few years ago, Pam and I linked up with my friend Rick Young, was then the pastor at the Conroe Presbyterian Church, to a group from our respective churches to the Middle East, Jordan and Israel to be specific. Neither of us had been to Israel, and I was particularly interested in seeing and experiencing Jerusalem.  In fact one of the highlights of the trip was being able to join other Christians and Jews at the Wailing Wall. As you may remember, the Wailing Wall was part of the original temple that was standing when Jesus came to bring God’s word to his people.  It is a fascinating place, and as you get close to the wall, you can find prayers that had been rolled up and placed within the crevices of the stone and masonry. And you are definitely aware of the vocal nature of many of the prayers, and the distinct wailing sounds that are uttered.  To that end, I am reminded of a story told of a journalist who was assigned to the Jerusalem bureau of his newspaper.  Upon arriving in the Holy City, he gets an apartment overlooking the plaza which leads up to the Wailing Wall.  After several weeks, he realizes that whenever he looks down from his apartment at the wall, he sees the same Jewish man praying vigorously.  The journalist sensing a possible storyline, goes down to the wall and introduces himself:

          “You come here every day to this wall.  What are you praying for?”

          The old man replies: “What am I praying for?  In the morning I pray for world peace, then I pray for the brotherhood of man.  I go home, have a cup of tea and some bread, and I come back to the wall and pray for the eradication of illness and disease; then I pray for healing and hope for my people.”

The journalist is taken by the sincerity of the old man – and his persistence:  “You mean you have been coming to the wall every day to pray for these things?

          The old man nods.

          “How long have you been coming to the wall to pray?”

          The old man becomes reflective and then replies:  “How long? Maybe twenty, twenty-five years.

The amazed journalist finally asks: “How does it feel to come and pray every day for over twenty years for these things?”

          “How does it feel?  … It feels like I’m talking to a wall! …

but someday; someday – who knows …”

          In teaching his disciples how to pray, Jesus taught them to pray with boldness, “ask, and it shall be given to you … for everyone who asks of the Lord so shall he/she receive.”  In the letter to the Hebrews are these words:  “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”  Do you see that the boldness must be placed in Christ? That boldness must be with eyes looking towards Christ who knows who we are and that we are not able, on our own, to do what we must do.  So we come looking for mercy, asking for God’s healing in body, mind, emotion and spirit.  We cannot come with arrogance, nor can we come with any sense of entitlement.  But we can come with a persistence which asks only that our needs be met

          So, in line with this persistence, Jesus offers a short parable when the disciples asked him about prayer.  He said “pray this way” – like some poor man who kept pestering his neighbor at midnight, persisting in his requests until the man got out of bed and gave him the bread he needed.

          It has always seemed strange to me that this parable falls hard upon Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer.  But instead of using the parable as a simile for prayer, it is instead a contrast.  Jesus is offering to the disciples a question which is seeking an emphatic negative answer.  Can you imagine going to a friend with a need, no matter the time, and having that need refused?  Which one of you, having a friend in need would refuse that friend, no matter the time or circumstances?  That is the question which this parable raises in the disciples’ minds, and one in which they would respond with a resounding “NO!”

          Seek … and you shall find; ask … and it shall be given to you; knock … and it shall be opened to you.  These words offer to us the assurance that ours is a God who gives, opens, and allows us to find.  But the danger here comes when we take these words to be a “blank check” on which we can write anything our hearts desire.  Jesus assured his followers that God answers prayer, but he did not guarantee that they would receive whatever they requested.  The assurances that follow from the Lord’s Prayer assume that those who ask, seek, and knock are asking from their own need, are seeking the keys to the kingdom, and are knocking at the door of the neighbor at night.  We may be unclear or even confused as to what are the needful things in our lives, but Jesus, through his own persistence, calls each of us to a higher pursuit:  Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you … for it is your Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  Our praying should be consistent with our seeking.  Then when we pray as Jesus taught us, the assurance that answers is hardly needed.

          William Willimon, when he was chaplain at Duke University, provides an interesting teaching perspective when he says that in the process of obeying Jesus’ command to pray as he taught us to pray, our lives are bent toward God in a way that is not of our natural inclination, and we become, as we pray, more Christ-like.  In effect, Willimon is saying that this is a profiling prayer – it helps identify who we are.  If you are asked, “Who is a Christian?  The best answer to give is, “A Christian is none other than someone who has learned to pray persistently and consistently the Lord’s Prayer.”

          What Jesus did was to establish a pattern for prayer, and the pattern goes pretty much like this:  it begins with the praise of God and recognition of who he is - an appeal for his ways to be known here on earth follows - then comes a petition for our common daily needs such as food - next is a request for the grace of his forgiveness even as we are involved in the same matter with our fellow human beings, - finally, there’s a prayer for help in resisting temptation, in resisting evil (it’s better to understand it this way rather than as a petition to keep us from difficult times.)

          Such a well known prayer, and which likely is the best known and most memorized part of scripture, can have many applications. For example, a minister parked his car in a no-parking zone in a large city because he was short of time and couldn't find a space with a meter. Then he put a note under the windshield wiper that read: "I have circled the block 10 times. If I don't park here, I'll miss my appointment. Forgive us our trespasses."

          When he returned, he found a citation from a police officer along with this note. "I've circled this block for 10 years. If I don't give you a ticket, I'll lose my job. Lead us not into temptation."

          Unlike our Catholic and Episcopal sisters and brothers, we do not have a prayer book out of which we offer our worship to God.  The only constant in the Reformed church is the Lord’s Prayer.  The hymns change, the liturgy changes, the people up in the chancel change, but every week you can count on the Lord’s Prayer as part of our offering to God. Like the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem, maybe our saying this prayer has become rote; we are saying it while our minds are off somewhere else.  But there are times, as many of you can attest when our persistence in praying this prayer becomes a true instrument of grace and of tender, healing mercies.

          All you and I do in the Lord’s Prayer is to testify to God how he persists in his compassion toward us through the saving grace of the Christ who taught us that prayer.  You are not saved because you know the Lord’s Prayer, any more than you are saved because you have read the Bible from cover to cover.  But being persistent in praying this prayer orients your life to the assurance of salvation.  Therefore, salvation comes through having your life bent toward God when all you thought you were doing was being persistent in your prayer life.  The Lord’s Prayer is a lifelong act of bending our lives towards God in a way that God has opened to us so that … his will is done, and his kingdom comes … on earth as it already has in heaven.
AMEN