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“God Hears Us”
Hosea 1:2-10; Psalms 85, 138, 25;
Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 11:1-13
Rev. Sandy Nuernberg
Oakland-Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, WI
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 9th
Sunday after Pentecost
July 29, 2007
Please pray with me, O God, as we crowd
ourselves into your presence now, bring your Holy Spirit upon us, that in
our hearing Your Word, we believe, and in our believing we may conduct
ourselves to be your disciples in and through Jesus Christ, Your Son.
AMEN.
A
regular habit for my brother, sisters and us as children at home was praying
before a meal and at bedtime. In fact, our God Father, Uncle Woody, taught
Cindy, my twin-sister and me a bedtime prayer that I have prayed all my life;
Uncle Woody was incensed with one small change, many of you might recognize:
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my
soul to keep.
My love be with me through the night,
God bless Mommy, Daddy, Susie, Sandy, Cindy and Terry
(our siblings)
Nanas and Grandpas, Aunts, and Uncles, all my little cousins,
EVERYBODY (emphasis, mine) I love; make me a good girl. AMEN.
My Uncle Woody, a principal in Fond du Lac at the junior high school, wanted us
to ‘feel good’ about evening bedtime praying and going to bed happy. He wanted
us to wake up refreshed, not ‘if I die before I wake’, hence the change in our
bedtime prayer. Today, sometimes, I have to admit, I fall asleep before I end
this and other prayers, and recognizing this, I wake up later wanting God to
know I was tired and hoping that God hears me!
So it seems with the disciples. They were, sometimes, like us, exemplary for
being tired, and not getting it (comprehending) what all was told them by Jesus.
I tried to find any place, anywhere in the N.T. when Jesus’ disciples prayed
together, like on their own, but honestly, I couldn’t find that. But I did find
in the gospel of John, that familiar prayer where Jesus prayed, kinda
long, for his disciples; it’s the whole chapter, and he prays, mentions
personally His “Father” five times! But the ending I like, “Righteous Father,
the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent
me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love
with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them (John 17:25-26).”
Doesn’t it sound here in this prayer like God heard Jesus? Here, Jesus is
preparing his disciples for his absence and arrest, and death on the cross.
In
both of our texts this day we find where Christ Jesus taught prayer as it was
taught to him; as Paul says, to build up and to establish (the disciple’s or)
our faith, as “God made you alive together with him (God) (Col., v. 13).” Our
theme of living in God’s ways of love for God and neighbor began with God living
in Jesus Christ and we, living in our Christianity today, live in certain
ways. We respond in ways that honor the grace and glory of God, with
hope that in our actions through God’s love for us, we can trust God’s will for
us ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’
Aha, here is where our Pentecost (9th Sunday) theme comes to the
forefront for us. For me it’s in the last verse of Luke’s gospel reading, “…how
much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
We can ask, have we ever prayed the Lord’s Prayer in the hopes for the Holy
Spirit to cling to us, live in us, and act upon our hearts in our daily lives?
It’s in our asking that we receive, isn’t it? And Jesus tells us, in our
praying, to ask, often! If we ask for something, we just might get it!
In
today’s world, we hopefully come to Sunday worship to become enlightened by/of
God’s Word; we want to hear a sermon relating to our life in this world. We
probably know and trust that we’ll find something helping us understand the
differences in our world versus the ways of God’s world. In this short time of
worship, we are perhaps most comfortable in a tradition in the worship of the
church to verbalize our closeness with God in saying the Lord’s Prayer
together. We will do it today; we may use trespasses, sin, or debts, but we
say the words that Jesus was taught, taught to the disciples and that came to us
of not anyone else’s prayer but the Lord’s Prayer. Just in our saying
these familiar words together, the noise of the language, the Holy Spirit
overwhelms me and sometimes I can’t finish the prayer out loud! This was
especially true at seminary for me at weekly worship as many tongues were heard,
but the obstacles of our faith and culture were laid to rest for these moments
of prayer together; (Koreans, Pentecostals, UUs, Baptists, Lutherans and
Presbyterians).
Yes, in Luke it seems to be the not so familiar Lord’s Prayer as we are
accustomed to praying together. But listen to the more familiar, yet similar
words in Matthew’s gospel:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive
us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the
time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one (Matthew 6:9-13).”
In
good Spirit, someone in our congregation asked me, just a few weeks ago, “Where
is the Lord’s Prayer in the Bible, Pastor Sandy?” I was so glad to answer this
because I knew we’d be talking on this text this week. I suggested looking in
Ch. 6 of Matthew, though, not Luke, because of its familiarity. To which came
back the beautiful comment by her,“ Yes, and they even say it the way we say it
using debts, don’t they?” Now, isn’t that Presbyterian?
Biblically, however, there is a bit of a change. In Matthew the author follows
the Lord’s Prayer with the familiar Golden Rule, whereas in our gospel today,
Luke provides a bit of story-telling to set the reader straight, the midnight
story and the fish/eggs story. Jesus wants his disciples to know firsthand how
to apply the words to their learned prayer; he wants them to remember and use
the Father-son, or Parent-child image, the central part of the prayer that we’ve
all learned in our childhood. And in using this image, in Jesus’ examples for
us, there is a bit of 'persistence’ (v. 8) in receiving in our actions of what
is needed, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock and
the door will be opened for you (v. 10).” Perseverance pays off, doesn’t it?
This center-molding portion of the prayer is the innermost portion of our being
with God. Our salutation is “Father,” where we get personal, then private in our
own words, and are patient in receiving “Thy kingdom come”, in what the will of
God provides for us.
One area of growth for our confirmands this year was learning about prayer, what
is included in prayer, and then writing or saying in sharing our own prayer, a
short sentence or two. We defined prayer through many examples in the Psalms;
prayer includes ACTS, acclamation (praise), confession (admitting
to our faults), thanksgiving (gratitude), and supplication (ask).
But again, as in our previous reminders in Luke’s texts these weeks of loving
God, and loving neighbor, and now prayer, are familiar tasks aren’t they? If we
practice enough, we’re going to be good. Let me tell you, at the end of this
spring, in word and in deed, we shared our prayers in confirmand class openly
with each other.
The good news for us this day is that prayer, taught by Jesus to his disciples,
and taught to us, is a way for us to show our love of/to God, in word and in
deed. John Calvin called prayer the ‘chief exercise’ of faith (J. Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.20). In this exercise, we speak to
and about God, a ‘someone’, not a ‘thing’. As we practice our own prayer life in
confidence individually and as a community of faith, we can be sure that God
hears us, God will open the door for us; in our asking, in our seeking, in our
knocking, ‘For God so loved the world’, and that in believing in Christ, and in
receiving in our birth and baptism the power of the Holy Spirit thriving in us,
we are/become what God wishes us to be. God hears us, as we pray to ‘Our Father,
who art in heaven’ because we believe and also trust in Jesus as our God and
Lord.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
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