Ask

Deep Prayer, by Raymond Minnaar

Lections: The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 17), AD 2025 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What is the purpose of prayer? What does it do; what is it for?

People tend to imagine prayer as magic, I’m afraid—that if we say the right words, do the right things, feel the proper feelings with appropriate intensity, then we will get what we want. Maybe not always; maybe it’s like a slot-machine. But what we’re often going for is miracles on demand. Alas, God is not some jinni granting wishes. We think we would He were.

Once in Philadelphia, while searching for a parking space, a friend of mine asked whether I couldn’t pray for such a thing. And I told him that I could, but that God tends to operate on His own timeframe. For faster prayer response, one really ought to dial a demon. Tash always comes when you call.

But flippancy aside, our prayers are not only, nor even primarily, selfish. We pray for those in need. We pray for those we love. We pray for strangers, for neighbors, for enemies. We pray for peace. We pray for health. We pray for children fighting cancer. And sometimes those petitions appear to be answered in wondrous ways. Yet oftentimes they are not. And we are left to wonder why. Why are some prayers, good prayers, left unanswered? Why do bad things happen to good people?

Never is our faith so tested as when we must deal with evil. And I don’t mean horned devils in the night; at least then the confrontations seem straightforward. No, I mean the more mundane and awful encounters with pain and loss, illness and death, grief and sorrow. Where is God, we want to know, when our friends are cruelly mistreated? Where is God, we want to know, when someone’s child dies? That’s when we cling to our faith.

Faith is trust. That’s all it really is: trust that God is good; trust that God is God. Truly, what we place our faith in is the faithfulness of Christ. We trust that Christ is good and true; we trust that Christ is God in you. We trust in Christ amidst a fallen world. Because Jesus is the self-revelation of God; His Son, His Word, His λόγος; the visible Image of the invisible Father. If the Bible is God’s biography, Christ is His autobiography.

So where then is Christ, when we suffer, when we die? The Gospel answers this over and over again: He is right here with us, beside us, within us; in Word and in Sacrament; in Body, Blood, and Spirit. He seeks out the last and the lost. He feeds the hungry. He cures the sick. He raises the dead! And when we grieve and mourn, He weeps with us as well. Christ reveals the heart of the Father, and it is not that we suffer, not that we die, not that even one of His little ones would be lost.

He comes to us, teaches us, welcomes us, corrects us, and brings us home in Him. He loves us so intensely, so monstrously, that even as we murdered Him He called out our forgiveness. And then He went to hell and back, and all for love of you! There is no question, in Christ, of God being callous or evil or distant or deaf. He weeps for us, bleeds for us, dies for us. And He promises that when we pray, He gives unto us His own Spirit, His own breath and life; so that when we are one in Christ, then we are one with God.

I don’t know why God allows these evils to persist for a time. I don’t know why He tolerates starvation, war, disease. I suppose in one sense certainly He does not: for in Christ He is God-With-Us, and takes all of our pain in Himself, there to drown it in His love. But why doesn’t God just snap His fingers and force us to be good? Force the world, force the people, force the elemental spirits! Isn’t that what we would do, if we were God?

I can only surmise that this is because it is not in His nature to force, to tyrannize, even for our good. For God is love, and love cannot coerce. Love can only welcome, beckon, implore, seduce. But neither can Love give up; neither can He tire; neither can He cease to seek our good. God cannot fail! Yet His victory comes not by the sword but by His Word, by His Spirit, by the love of the Father poured forth.

And that I can begin to understand. I understand the love of a father for his children. That is why I know that Christ will never let us go. Hell couldn’t keep Him down; what hope does the world have against Him? And to know this love changes us, resurrects us. Prayer in us is the answer to itself. “You pray for the hungry,” Pope Francis quipped, “then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.”

In our reading from Genesis this morning, a cry has gone up to Heaven for deliverance from the terrible towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. 4000 years ago, the Ancient Near East held hospitality to the stranger as little less than divine. Theirs proved a harsh world with a harsh environment. Sojourners were vulnerable, wanderers exposed. Abraham exemplifies heavenly hospitality when he feasts three strangers, not with simple bread and water, but with cakes and meat and curds.

Now, if you know your Bible, then you know very well that these three guests prove anything but ordinary. One of them is God in human likeness, the others angelic attendants, as befits a Canaanite deity. And God sends the angels to Sodom to answer people’s prayers. Abraham fears that this will light a powder-keg. He knows very well the reputation of those cities, what awful things they do to strangers in their midst: pillage, rape, murder. If they try that on the angels, then it won’t go well for them. Think celestial bombardment.

And so Abraham parleys with God. They can’t all be bad, can they, he wants to know? What if there are but 50 righteous people, innocent people, in those cities? Surely God won’t wipe away the just along with the unjust. Far be that from the Most High. And Yahweh agrees: for the sake of 50 people, He will spare the guilty city. But having established his proposal as sound in principle, Abraham now negotiates the price.

He haggles Him down. What if there be but 45, 40; 30, 20, 10? Will God allow His angels to let 10 innocent civilians get caught up in the crossfire? And God says no, He will not. Of course, you may recall from Sunday School that the angels do not find 10 just people in Sodom and Gomorrah; they only find four, and those four far from perfect. Yet they go to great lengths to rescue the family of Lot, for God will not do evil, however small.

Such is why Judaism points to Abraham as their patriarch, more so than Adam or Moses; because Abraham wasn’t afraid to believe better of God; to refuse to accept the notion that God ultimately could countenance evil or injustice on any scale. 2000 years later, Jesus teaches to us a similar lesson. “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,” He chides, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask of Him!”

Never give up on prayer, Jesus says. “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened.” God is always with us; God is always here. And this isn’t wish-fulfillment; this isn’t some pie in the sky; Christ is not naive. Jesus suffers terribly, dies unjustly, abandoned by His friends, tortured and humiliated by those He came to save. He prayed in the garden that the cup might pass from Him—and it did! But the only way out was through. To follow Christ is to take up His Cross, and die.

Prayer is the milk of our faith. It’s what gets us through all of the horrors. Prayer is how we stay connected to the God who sits not aloft and aloof but who suffers beside us and with us; who leads us through this valley of tears, up from the earth of the grave, up to life, up to grace, up to resurrection. We pray for our bread for tomorrow. We pray for deliverance from our debts, both in this world and the next. We pray for our forgiveness that forgiveness flow from us. And we pray this as God’s children, trusting that He loves us all. Whatever we can pray, He gives us more; He gives us Him.

We will suffer in this life, but we will never be alone. And the world can take nothing from us that Christ returns not seven-fold. Every child will be raised, every wrong will be set right, and every death shall be undone. This is the promise of God! And until we see this promise filled, we live as those who know that it is true. Every prayer is answered in the Resurrection. And the Resurrection Spirit lives in you.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA

Twitter: https://x.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064841583987

Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074108479275

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026