A little boy was asked one day if he said his prayers before a meal and he replied, ‘I don’t have to, my mum is a good cook !’
In our readings today we think very much about prayer and about how we live with prayer at the centre of our lives…
Rowan Williams wrote, ‘The Lord’s Prayer is completely fresh, it never gets stale because what it’s talking about is the human condition in the presence of God. It’s about the world we live in and the world God wants us to live in… And what it’s praying for is the most revolutionary change you can imagine in the world…’
As we pray the Lord’s prayer through our services and perhaps in our private times of prayer I wonder if we recognise that what we are praying for is revolutionary change… But when we are praying for God’s kingdom to come, for daily bread, for forgiveness of sins as we forgive the sins of others we are using revolutionary language and that is how it should be… And this revolutionary power is actually applicable to all our prayers….
Thinking about the readings today we have examples of prayer and the value and power of prayer in each one….
In the reading from Genesis (18:20-32) we hear the destruction of Sodom being predicted and Abraham in his conversation with God questions what this means when considering the grace and mercy of God and Abraham asks if there are 50 good people in the city will God destroy it and God says he won’t. Abraham continues, then what about 45 and God again says he won’t, then maybe 30 or 20 and again God says he won’t destroy it and finally Abraham says, ‘what if there are 10 good people there, will you destroy it then ?’ And God replies ‘for the sake of 10 I will not destroy it’…
Persistent and honest prayer and maybe the sort of prayer that we might ask when we wonder why bad things happen to good people or why there is any suffering in the world…
The psalm we said (Ps.138) is a real psalm of prayer, offering praise, giving thanks and expressing real trust in God’s love and power…
Then in Paul’s letter to the Colossians (2:6-15) we have a less clear reference to prayer but one that is implicit in what is being said… Paul writes to the people there asking them to continue to live lives rooted and built up in Christ. He writes ‘See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit’… Paul is asking the people there to live their lives centred on Christ and his strength and his teaching and his love… He is asking them to be dependent on God, effectively for their daily bread – dependence gained through a close relationship in prayer and trust built through that relationship…
And finally in the gospel according to Luke (11:1-13) the disciples have watched Jesus pray and ask for guidance how to pray for themselves and Jesus teaches them what we know as the Lord’s Prayer… And he goes on to tell the disciples a story about this man asking for bread to provide for someone who has visited – the person who is asked for the bread is naturally angry at this late night call – he’s angry because of the time but he’s also angry that the man is not ready to receive visitors knowing the demands for generous hospitality that we thought about last week…
But still the man because of the persistence of the other gets up and gives him what he needs…. Later Jesus says about the parent who, if asked for fish, would surely not give a snake instead, or if asked for an egg would surely not give a scorpion… Jesus then compares the love of an earthly parent to the even more powerful love of God who will provide generously what is needed…
And in between those two little stories we have Jesus’ teaching about the need to ask and it will be given, to search and you will find and to knock and the door will be opened….
Four very different bible readings but linked by the thread of prayer and there are lessons for us from each of those readings…. In the reading from Genesis we notice that God listened to the prayer of Abraham – he listened to what he was saying and he responded, recognising that even if there were 10 good people in the city of Sodom he would save it… I’m not sure what size Sodom was at the time but 10 people would have represented a tiny proportion with the idea that God could save the many through the presence of a few…
And the fact that God was so concerned about tiny numbers of people really emphasise that God is concerned for the individual, God cares about people, whoever they are and regardless of their strength or power…. God knows and loves each one of us individually and each one of us, with our occasional faults and failings is precious to him…
And for that love, that grace and mercy which God shows to us all, we should be thankful just as the psalmist in the psalm we read this morning was thankful… I’m not going to get into any sort of political debate this morning, there’s probably been quite enough of that through this week, but some of the most striking things around political coverage and around so much else today are the negativity, the scepticism, the suspicion….
Helen said that in the summer school for people training for ministry this week each of the dioceses were asked to get into groups and they had to produce a slogan as to why people should come to Swansea & Brecon diocese as opposed to any of the other Welsh dioceses – each diocese did the same and our diocese won ! They won with the reason why people should come to Swansea & Brecon as ‘Beacons, Beaches and Blessings’ !
It’s actually a pretty good slogan and it’s a ‘feel good’ slogan – I said last week that, as Christians, we are called to be a blessing to others, to be good news ourselves as well as to proclaim good news… In our thanks and in our praise and in our sheer positivity, trusting in God’s love and power and wisdom, we can be good news….
We then thought of that section from Paul’s letter to the Colossians where the message for us as it was to those early followers at Colossae is to know God at the centre of our lives and not to become distracted by other things – we don’t need to set our standards by the standards of the world, but by the standards of God… It’s really easy to try and fit in with the world, to try and make ourselves and our churches look completely normal, but what is normal – if it doesn’t have God and his laws and his love at the very centre then normal is not the place for us to be…
We may well get the practice of putting God at the centre of our lives wrong at times – unconditional love, abundant and generous hospitality, being and sharing good news are all things that don’t always come easily but with prayer God can and will strengthen us to help us to be the people that he wants us to be, so it is God’s power not our own, that we seek…
And then in the gospel reading we have the example of the Lord’s Prayer teaching us how to pray, but we’re reminded of the simplicity of prayer and of our need not just to speak and listen in our prayers, but to be ready as people of action. Martin Luther wrote ‘Pray as if everything depends on God then work as if everything depends on you’…
And that gospel reading reminds us of the need to be persistent in our prayer trusting that God is listening even when the answers we want don’t seem to be forthcoming because a huge lesson of prayer is that it is not about us, but about God – we need to ask and we need to trust and we need to do God’s work generously caring for others who express need…
Ask and it will be given… Search and you will find… knock and the door will be opened – those are promises that God makes to us, promises where the answers may not look exactly as we expect them to, but answers…
Prayer is at the heart of our lives, or should be at the heart of our lives as Christians – formal prayer in our services, regular prayer in our lives and an attitude of prayer in all that we do and seek to do… It is one of God’s wonderful gifts, but a gift so often ignored, neglected or forgotten…
Let’s not be those people but let’s be people relying on prayer, trusting God with everything, seeking and knowing his power and living out and sharing his good news and his love everywhere…
I’ll finish with a quote from William Barclay who wrote,
‘When we pray, remember :
- The love of God that wants the best for us
- The wisdom of God that knows what is best for us
- The power of God that can accomplish it’
AMEN
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