When you pray

A Sermon preached at Pentecost VII 27 July 2025 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Hosea 1:2-10, Colossians 2:6-15, Luke 11:1-13

An offering of daily prayer was part of our preparation for our 160th anniversary. For 160 days, from 10 February until last Sunday, 20 July, inviting anyone and everyone who wanted to was invited to join in a simple daily prayer at 12 noon. Those of you who were here last week, will have heard that one of the guests, Jürgen Otto from the Catholic Church (Regionalleitung Wiesbaden/Taunus/Rheingau) was particularly impressed and made this a focus of his speech. The short service I prepared for us all during this time contains two verses from Psalm 84, the psalm that we said at last week’s service, a framework for intercessory prayer, and of course the Lord‘s Prayer, the one we heard Jesus teaching his disciples in this morning’s gospel reading. More than creeds and sacraments this is genuinely the one thing all Christians have in common, and I think the one prayer you can guarantee that everybody knows by heart. “When you pray, say…” is what Jesus commands his disciples. Wouldn’t it be nice if we kept all those other commandments as well!

But what is this prayer that Jesus teaches? You’ll notice that Luke’s version is a little shorter and not identical with the one we pray in worship. In fact, Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is the basis for the one we use in our services.

The first thing to note is that it is a communal prayer. Even when we pray alone at home, we still pray to our father, and the “you” when Jesus says “when you pray” is the plural you, so in German Sie or Ihr, in the American South Y’all, and all the petitions are plural too: we , us, our …. In its setting in Luke’s Gospel, as a direct consequence of a request from the disciples to be given a community prayer such as John the Baptist's community has, we could also call this "the Disciples' Prayer."  Being in community before God, sharing the same goals when we pray, is a major part of discipleship.

Secondly it is Jesus’ prayer but, like so much of our scripture, liturgy and beliefs, cannot be separated from his and our religion’s Jewish roots. There are similarities to parts of the Kaddish, a prayer that often closed synagogue services, and which begins with the words: “Exalted and sanctified be His great name” and includes the petition “May He establish His kingdom,” as well as prayers for “Ample sustenance and salvation, From the Father who is in heaven” and for “Healing, redemption, forgiveness, and atonement.” So, many of the themes of the Lord’s Prayer.

Thirdly, what do we pray for? It is much more than a checklist of specific wants and needs.

Father, hallowed be your name: This is both an expression of familiarity and relationship – God is our father, the source of all being – and of God’s authority and otherness. God is holy because of who God is.

Your kingdom come: I talked about the kingdom a couple of weeks ago in my July 6 sermon, when I said that the kingdom is both a present reality and a future promise, and that is what we pray for here too. That we live as if the kingdom were already here, and that we hope and pray that God’s good creation will be restored to its fullness and that evil and injustice be banished. Our action and our prayer are what will bring that about, in God’s time.

Give us each day our daily bread: This reminds us of our reliance on God for our daily needs and sustenance. And at the same time, it is a prayer that we will all receive what we need, note ‘us’ and ‘our’, and not ‘me’ and ‘my’, and certainly not a prayer for more than we need!

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us: This reminds us to trust in the love and mercy of God. The call to also forgive those indebted to us is complementary, not a condition and is part of the active love of neighbor – and even enemy. that Jesus also commands! The apocryphal Book of Sirach or Ecclesiasticus (28:2) has a similar petition: “Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.” But Jesus reverses the order and removes the condition. God’s love and mercy are not conditional on our behavior.

And do not bring us to the time of trial: This is a prayer for strength in the face of temptation. Temptation cannot be avoided, even Jesus was tempted! This is a prayer for spiritual strength to be able to resist that temptation.

That is “what to pray.” The short parables that follow are intended to explain “how to pray” and may seem a little odd (nighttime awakenings, snakes, scorpions ..). The first one, about waking up a friend at midnight, can only really be understood if we know the background and meaning of hospitality in the Middle East both then and now. To give hospitality, to provide a guest, even an unexpected one with food and water was (and still is) an absolute duty. It overrides other sensibilities like waking up the neighbor and all his family, who would probably have been sleeping in one room. Our translation calls the behavior of the one seeking help “persistence” but shamelessness would be a better rendering, even holy boldness! And we should note that the person in the parable is shameless or bold not because of one’s own need, but because of the need of another!

Jesus encourages boldness and trust in prayer. We should never be ashamed to pray to God, we should never worry about what we ask, and never to assume that it is too much. God’s answer or response might however not be something that God does directly, but us being strengthened through the spirit and empowered to do those things we think are so necessary and vital that we pray for them, and that we pray for them together. God is ready and waiting to respond to us. All we need to do is ask, search and knock.

These are not blank check promises that God will give us anything we want but instead promises that we will be given what we need. The reference in the final verse to the Holy Spirit that will be given to those who ask God, tells us that God is always willing to give spiritual aid, support and succor to those who seek it. Jesus encourages us to be active in our relationship with God, always reaching out to God in prayer.

So even if our 160 days of prayer is now over, I still encourage us all to set apart a time for prayer each day: ask for what you and the world needs, seek and search for guidance, and knock on the door of God’s kingdom, a door that is always open.

Amen.

 

Harvesting the kingdom

A Sermon preached at Pentecost IV 6 July 2025 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

2 Kings 5:1-14, Galatians 6:7-16, Luke 10:1-11. 16-20

This morning’s Gospel story in Luke about the sending of the 70 others (or in some translations the 72), is as the word “others” indicates, the second of two similar mission events. In the first one, from Luke 9:1-6 that we never get to hear on a Sunday (only at a weekday Eucharist) it is the 12 disciples who are sent. Their task was the same as today’s: “to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.” (9:2). Both groups are sent without any baggage “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic.” (9:3) And they receive very similar instructions on what they are to do if they are not welcomed: “Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” (9:5)

Why do we have two such similar stories? For one thing it is an important reminder that even during Jesus’ physical mission on earth it was not just the 12 disciples/apostles, often seen as the precursors of our current bishops, who were actively involved in his mission. Many more people – both men and women – we commissioned directly by Jesus to do his work of healing and proclaiming. In fact, I have read an explanation in one commentary that one reason the 70 were sent out in in pairs is because they were mixed pairs, one woman and one man to be able to bring Jesus’ message to both men and women.

The second reason is because the mission they were being sent on was both important and urgent. We heard the urgency already in last week’s gospel reading when those who wanted to follow Jesus were told to leave without burying their dead, without saying farewell to their family. In today’s passage we hear and feel the urgency in the call to take nothing with them, to set off at once. We sense the urgency in Jesus’ call not to waste time with a town that does not welcome then: And we hear about the necessity and urgency when Jesus says: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” (10:2) Twelve people are not enough, nor for that matter were seventy!

What is the mission? In the first story it was “to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal,” in the second to bring God’s peace and “to cure the sick, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.” (10:9) I don’t think the different order of first proclaim, then heal vs. first heal, then proclaim is important, as the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven always includes both wholeness and well-being. The kingdom of God is much more than a future promise of heavenly bliss; it is also a better way of life. That is why the seventy are told to say – both in the towns that receive and welcome then and those that don’t – ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ (10:9, 10:11) We should not be surprised, Christianity is full of “both/and” concepts and ideas. God is both one and three persons. Jesus is both divine and human, we are both sinners and saints, both faith and works are essential, and the kingdom is both a present reality and a future promise.

Politically, I identify as a democratic socialist - in the European sense, not the American one, but I am still not so naïve as to believe that we can achieve heaven on earth on our own and now – though we can definitely do better than the hell on earth of Gaza, and the Ukrainian front and cities when the Russians attack. Heaven on earth through human power and means is not what the “proximity of the kingdom” means - the myth of inexorable and inevitable progress has shown itself to be very mythical indeed.

But nor is it a tantalizing glimpse of something unobtainable. Jesus calls us to live as if God’s kingdom is both possible and real. I see that in Jesus’ teaching – the Sermon on the Mount for example, and in his actions, and in what he commissions and empowers his followers to do, as in this passage. The healing of body, mind and spirit are tangible evidence of the presence of God's reign. But to say the kingdom is near, that it has begun to manifest itself, is not to say that everything associated with the kingdom has already been realized. There is much more to come, and more joy awaits us than we can ever realize in the here and now, this is the glory that is constantly being referred to throughout the Bible.

Paul too, in this final part of his letter to the Galatians, writes about a new reality, a new creation that God has initiated and that the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 6:14-15) is the sign of. The cross stands both for Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice and rejection of all that corrupts us – greed, fear, hate, jealousy – and for our re-creation as a family of faith and the Israel of God: that universal family and nation that knows of no boundaries or limits. His concern, and his annoyance with the Galatians who have been following some very bad advice, is getting this message across, convincing people that they not only need to change but will benefit from changing!

To borrow a phrase, I found elsewhere: Getting people into heaven isn’t Paul’s concern. Getting heaven into people is. God sent Jesus to change and open up hearts and Jesus sent the twelve, then the seventy, and now us to do the same, always without fear or force. It is interesting that both Paul, “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up” (Gal. 6:9) and Jesus, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2) use harvest metaphors to show how the kingdom of heaven grows.

Before we can reap, before we can harvest, we must first sow. First, we sow the seeds of the kingdom, the seeds of love, peace, healing and God's Word, and then reap a harvest of love, a harvest of gratitude, the joy of response, the coming of the kingdom. But we must remember that reaping a harvest almost never happens on the same day as sowing the seed. In between sowing and harvesting we let God do God’s work: As Paul writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 3:6) “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” And in today’s Gospel passage the seventy are sent “on ahead of him …to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” (Luke 10:1) Their and our role is to prepare the way, not to do all the work of Jesus on their and our own: success and failure are not up to them or us. We just need to be faithful to our calling. And that in itself brings joy and fulfillment. The seventy return with joy, joy in having participated in God’s mission, delight in having been chosen and commissioned, and great wonder at the power they were given when they acted in Jesus’ name.

Amen.