Sermon Archive

A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Fr. Stafford
Sunday, July 29, 2007 @ 12:00 am
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The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

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Scripture citation(s): Luke 11:1-13

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“`Lord, teach us to pray…’” (Lu 11.1b)

Four weeks ago, the Evangelist Luke began the lengthy and substantial portion of his Gospel known as Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem (9.51-19.44). This material, remember is unique to Luke and emphasizes teaching over miracle. Today, as in the preceding weeks, Luke gives us another installment in this epic journey wherein our Lord meets and receives his destiny.

Note, if you will, this morning’s account is a Gospel devoid of any miracle or magic. Instead, it is laden with instruction; a didactic discourse between Christ and his disciples consisting of theological teaching in the style of the ancient Jewish rabbinic tradition. In other words, what Christ says today is intended as spiritual direction, advice set forth by record of the Evangelist as an appeal to the minds of rational men and women in order to bring them into holiness of life.

Furthermore, and at risk of sounding like the English major I was, the Gospel today is structured by the Evangelist in two parts.

The first part is the giving by Christ of what has traditionally been called “the Lord’s Prayer” (11.1-4), but might more accurately be called “the Disciple’s Prayer,” because it is given by Our Lord in direct response to a request from his disciples, “…teach us to pray…” (11.1b); the only time in Jesus’ ministry there is a request of this sort. The disciples’ request is answered with the familiar prayer used by Christians and non-believers alike for twenty centuries. This same prayer that we each and all know from our earliest induction and instruction in the faith is unique, not only because Christ gives it, but because it outlines what is meant or intended in Christian discipleship.

The second part of the Gospel is a parable (11.5-13), a familiar story with two themes. The first theme illustrates God’s faithfulness in answering our prayers as is best for us; for example, God as a loving Father not giving a son a stone if that son asks for bread (11.11). The second theme is the need for boldness as we make intercession to God – the ask, seek, and knock (11.9) material familiar to us all.

The two parts of today’s Gospel, taken as a whole, therefore, instruct us about prayer. This permits Luke to incorporate prayer under the two greater themes of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem: the first of which being the kingdom of heaven; which Christ is and brings through his Incarnation, passion, death and Resurrection; and, the second of which being discipleship; the purpose or intent of the journey to the Holy City, where the destiny of one and all await the promised fullness of divine revelation, which is also understood as the reign of the kingdom of heaven.

So, what specific spiritual direction does Luke on this particular leg of the journey to Jerusalem set forth about prayer as it relates to the kingdom of heaven and discipleship? I want to answer that question by looking more closely at the first part of today’s Gospel, the Lord’s Prayer material. And, in so doing, I hope I am not answering a question no one is asking, a fault preachers can easily slip into!

The importance of part one is that it tells us that the role of prayer in the kingdom of heaven and in discipleship is essential.

Luke begins our spiritual direction by telling us about the origin of prayer, showing us, in the person and teaching of Christ, that prayer is something God gives or sparks in us; as for example, a desire or willingness to pray. In other words, it is a mysterious something God prompts or calls forth in us, better understood perhaps as a relationship, a relationship in which something is demanded on both sides! For example, in the Lord’s Prayer, the attitude of the one uttering or making the prayer is clearly submission or surrender to a God who is a Power greater; in the Jewish tradition, this is understood as a God who is Deliverer and Savior. This God, however, is not a God who is indifferent, but a God who is revealed as being like a Father; authoritative, yet beloved and also intimately concerned and involved with the life and needs of His children. This intimacy, however, must not obscure or confuse God’s holiness/transcendence over creation and its creatures. Again, as in the Hebrew understanding of God, the Lord’s Prayer tells us that God’s uniqueness is that the Hebrew God alone and above all is God, a teaching echoed by the Psalmist, who says, “…there is none like you O Lord, nor anything like your works” (86.8).

Thus, prayer and discipleship with God begin in surrender, a letting-go, if you will, of one’s willfulness, which results in a loss of one’s illusions, especially dependency upon vain wants and comforts. This letting-go is a spiritual death. And, spiritual death, or surrender is needed if we are to undertake or begin to develop and to grow in God’s will, another term, I think, for the journey to Jerusalem, the destination which the disciple seeks in prayer and is ultimately called to make known in action to and in a world captive to fear, violence, and death, thus making the disciple a partner with Christ in the Father of Creation’s work of redemption and salvation, the kingdom of heaven, in other words, that is coming amongst us amidst the people, places, things, and events of daily life.

In this spiritual death, that marks our infant steps on a lifetime road and walk with God, we are not left empty or abandoned in powerlessness. In the words of the Lord’s Prayer, God gives what we need to truly live, that being “…daily bread” (11.3). It is an image of the Passover and Exile, the food of the Israelites that fell from heaven each morning to sustain them on the journey to their destiny. It is heavenly bread that is also a reminder of God’s faithfulness, as essential to life as prayer is to discipleship. God, in other words, through God’s generosity of mercy and goodness, gives His People, those who follow Him, what they essentially need as they walk with Jesus on a new Exile to a new Promised Land. And what is essential for a Pilgrim People are life and power from heaven, truth to a perishing world of costly illusions and falsehood, and compassion to a troublous and suffering humanity, men and women, like ourselves, in need of help and healing, the wholeness that only God’s own self as the bread and Spirit of Divine Love can provide.

Towards the end of the Lord’s Prayer, the importance of forgiveness is established; both, in receiving it as a gift or blessing from God and also in the grace of giving the same to others. This is a reminder that eternal life is kept by simply giving it away, as God does, for example in the Cross of Christ, Jesus giving himself, as his destiny commands, to and for us, a sacrifice “…for the sins of the whole world” (c.f. PB Euch Pr).

Therefore, three characteristics of prayer and discipleship are set forth and inextricably linked to the kingdom of heaven by Luke; surrender, mercy, and forgiveness. To practice those three things, three steps in the ascetic/spiritual life, is to be called by God and also to be given the power to accomplish them. It is also what it means to live faithfully and presently in the kingdom of heaven while still amidst a world captive to fear, violence, and death (sin/Satan). Surrender, mercy, and forgiveness are therefore for the Christian, a way of living daily life that is always a journey on a new way, the dawn and light of a new time. Furthermore, they are the occasion and with the grace of God, the means for us to be new, transformed into the likeness of the one we follow and whose will we seek to emulate. This metamorphosis is what Scripture terms resurrected life, or in the words of the Apostle Paul, the admonition to put on the armor of God (see Eph 6.11) in a victory that the Cross of Christ reminds us is always God’s, not ours!

Finally, the Lord’s Prayer concludes with an invocation for protection, which is to say that in prayer and discipleship as we walk with Christ to the Holy City, we need help, much like those fabled travelers on the Yellow Brick Road, for example, needed help so as to not lose heart, help not to turn back or to be distracted from one’s ultimate destination by being overwhelmed by the lie sin is; especially, when beset by the forces of fear, violence, and death; the forces of darkness for example which threaten to undo Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter or anyone on that epic journey each and all are called to walk, each and all with some stumbling or falling like the bloodied Christ staggering through the streets of Jerusalem shouldering the weight of his cross.

The journey to Jerusalem is therefore never without peril or cost. “Sometimes…” writes Holocaust survivor and Jewish author, Elie Wiesel, “we must accept the pain of faith so as not to lose it” (All Rivers Run to the Sea, p. 84); a reminder that prayer and discipleship in the kingdom of God are always risky and sacrificial ventures, because authentic suffering is required, what Scripture terms bearing one’s own cross. Like Christ’s suffering upon the Cross, this agony is also our witness, our oblation/offering, caught up in that same perfect sacrifice of and with our Lord.

What Luke sets forth in today’s Gospel is therefore a theology in which the Lord’s Prayer is the unique prayer of those who are coming to believe as they walk in discipleship on the way to and in the Kingdom of Heaven. As such, the Church has incorporated its use at the Eucharist, the meal of discipleship, the Messianic banquet of God’s kingdom come, the anticipation and celebration of that end time and restoration of a fallen creation, where bread is by our Lord’s command taken, blessed, broken and given, proclaiming the triumph of God’s victory over fear, violence, and death. And, finally, Luke sets forth the Lord’s Prayer as the blueprint of a new community; a relationship of people and their God, who make known in surrender, mercy, and forgiveness the wonder and glory of a God and new world revealed in Love.

But, it can be argued, and rightly so, I think, that the real prayer of the Church is simply the life of Christ, a life that is seeking, asking, and knocking at the door of our hearts so as to become our own life that we may identity more and more with him whose passion, death, and resurrection have swallowed up all fear, violence, and death on this world’s behalf that we may become who we are not. That is our eternal destiny; to be who we were intended to be. And, it is a mystery that Scripture reminds us is hid in Christ, the image/icon of what it means to be fully human. It is the destiny we share with Our Lord and God!