Learning to Pray - Sermon for Pentecost 7C (Luke 11)
I imagine most of us engage in some form of prayer, perhaps each day. We may start the day with prayer or end it in prayer. We might use set prayers from a book or simply freely pray from the heart. Whatever form our prayers take, God is listening. When we don’t know how to pray, Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit “intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8:26-27). This is good news, so whatever form your prayers take, keep on praying, no matter what is happening.
Our reading from the Gospel of Luke focuses on prayer. Luke begins by telling us that while Jesus and his disciples made their way toward Jerusalem, his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. That’s not surprising because that’s what religious teachers do for their students.
Not only did they ask Jesus to teach them to pray, but they asked him to teach them to pray like John the Baptist taught his disciples. That’s not surprising since some of Jesus’ disciples may have started out as John’s disciples. There’s even evidence that Jesus might have been one of John’s disciples before setting out on his own after his baptism.
So, here in Luke’s gospel, we find Jesus teaching the disciples to pray. It’s possible that the prayer Jesus taught his disciples was similar to the one John had shared with his disciples. The prayer he taught them is a familiar one, even if it seems a bit abbreviated.
Religious people engage in prayer, but why? What good does it do? Ultimately, prayer involves conversations with God. While we might want to go before God at specific times and places, as the medieval monk, Brother Lawrence, taught, we can even pray while we wash the dishes. In a conversation with Brother Lawrence that is recorded in the little book Practicing the Presence of God, we learn that:
Brother Lawrence insisted that, to be constantly aware of God's presence, it is necessary to form the habit of continually talking with Him throughout each day. To think that we must abandon conversation with Him in order to deal with the world is erroneous. Instead, as we nourish our souls by seeing God in His exaltation, we will derive a great joy at being His. [Brother Lawrence. The Practice of the Presence of God (Kindle, p. 2). Whitaker House].
Such is the meaning of Jesus’ message that we should pray without ceasing. Such prayers don’t require words. They simply require us to stay in relationship with God.
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, they hoped he would share with them a distinctive way of praying. Apparently, that is what Jesus did. The form he shared with them is the prayer we know as the Lord’s Prayer, though Matthew’s version is closer to what we usually recite in worship. Nevertheless, Luke provides us with most of the basic elements of that prayer. One thing that can be said about this prayer is that it is both simple and honest. That’s what prayer should be—simple and honest. This version of the Lord’s Prayer includes an affirmation of God’s holiness, a request that God’s kingdom would come into their midst, a request for one’s daily bread, forgiveness of sins, and a prayer for deliverance from the time of trial. While we might put greater trust in grocery stores for our daily bread, this prayer reminds us to be grateful for what we have. Of course, simply praying for daily bread doesn’t fill the stomachs of people. So as we pray for our daily bread, we’re reminded that others in the world, in places like Gaza and South Sudan, people are dying of hunger.
As we ponder the meaning of this passage, we hear God inviting us into a conversation that doesn’t have to include eloquence or even piety. God simply wants to know what is on our hearts. If that means borrowing words from a prayer book, then so be it.
After Jesus taught the disciples this prayer, he spoke of persistent prayer. As he often did, he used a couple of parables to get his point across.
In the first parable, Jesus invites us to imagine a situation in which a person needs a few loaves of bread to feed a friend who unexpectedly dropped by for a visit at midnight. I don’t know about you, but I don’t generally open the door at midnight, even for a friend. But that’s what's happening here. Since the host isn’t prepared to serve the friend, he goes next door and starts knocking on the neighbor’s door. The neighbor isn’t happy about being awakened in the middle of the night and tells the host to go away. He tells him the door is locked for the night, the children are in bed, and so he isn’t in a position to help. The neighbor may have made it clear that he wasn’t going to open the door, but the host was persistent and kept on knocking.
This story reminds me of how Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory would knock on his neighbor’s door. He had a very distinct knock, which accompanied the repetition of his neighbor’s name. He would knock and repeat Penny’s name until she finally opened the door to see what Sheldon wanted. It didn’t matter if it was mid-afternoon or the middle of the night, when Sheldon wanted to talk, he knocked until someone opened the door. That is what you call persistence.
Jesus concluded his parable with this message: “I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence, he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” Although Jesus’ interpretation of the parable suggests that if we bother God long enough, God will give in to our persistent knocking, I’m not sure that is a good description of how God responds to our prayers. Nevertheless, Jesus has a point when it comes to persistence in our conversations with God.
The second parable uses the themes of asking, searching, and knocking to help us better understand how God relates to us. Jesus does this by contrasting God’s goodness with our own deficiency when it comes to goodness. Jesus assures us that if we ask, we will receive. If we search, we will find. If we knock, the door will be opened to us. In other words, God will respond to our prayers. We just have to be persistent.
When it comes to contrasting God’s goodness with our struggles with goodness. Jesus asks us to consider how parents relate to their children. Consider for a moment this question: If a child asks for a fish, will a parent give the child a snake? And, if a child asks for an egg, will the parent give the child a scorpion? Of course not. So, if this is true, and of course there are exceptions to the rule, then if we who are “evil” give good gifts, then surely God, who is truly good, will give good gifts. More specifically, God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.
I do need to address the use of the word “evil” in this passage. I’m not comfortable with that description. After all, if we go back to Genesis 1, everything God created is declared to be good. That includes humanity. Now, in this setting, Jesus is contrasting God’s nature with ours. When we contrast ourselves with God’s goodness, we do fall short, and there is plenty of evidence that evil abounds in our world.
So, prayer plays an important role in our relationships with God. It’s important that we remain persistent in our prayers. As Brother Lawrence reminds us, we can even pray while washing the dishes. It is reported that “Brother Lawrence declared that we ought to ask confidently for God's grace in everything we do, trusting the infinite merits of our Lord rather than our own thoughts. He said that God would never fail to give us His grace, and that he could testify to this personally. This brother in the Lord sinned only when he strayed from God's company or when he forgot to ask Him for His help.” [Brother Lawrence. The Practice of the Presence of God (Kindle, p. 2). We might not get everything we ask for, but when we pray, we will receive God’s grace and the Holy Spirit.
One reason I don’t like hearing people, especially politicians, respond to mass killings and other disasters by offering their thoughts and prayers is that while prayers are important, thoughts and prayers don’t replace action on our part. It is through prayer that we stay in conversation with God. When we engage in conversation with God, we can participate with God in pursuing the common good. It is God’s gift of the Holy Spirit that empowers us to engage in God’s work in the world. And as Jesus reminds us, as he teaches us to pray, when we ask, seek, and knock, we will encounter God who is ever present.
Therefore, if, as I believe, what we call the Lord’s Prayer, serves as our pledge of ultimate allegiance to God’s reign, then when we pray, we affirm God’s sovereignty over all things. This includes families, nations, and the universe itself. So, let’s keep on praying, no matter what!
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
Tyrone Community Presbyterian Church
Fenton, Michigan
Pentecost 7C
July 27, 2025
Image attribution: Tanner, Henry Ossawa, 1859-1937. Thankful, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56998 [retrieved July 26, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Thankful_Poor,_1894._Henry_Ossawa_Tanner.jpg.
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