27 July 2025 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Hosea 1.2-10     Psalm 85     Colossians 2.6-15    Luke 11.1-13

The Lord’s Prayer, we say it often, but do we really think about what we are saying when we say these words.  We begin by acknowledging who it is we are praying to, Our Father.  Then we start with a list of ‘wants’.  Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
do not bring us to the time of trial.

And in this reading, Jesus goes on to tell us we should ask, seek, knock, and all will be given to us.  The problem is it sounds very ‘transactional’.  Jesus makes it sound like all we have to do is ask, and everything we want will be given to us.  All we have to do is search, and we will find the answers we are looking for, etc.

This week, one of the resources I explored compared this with a gumball machine.  We put in our money, and a gumball comes out.  Every time we put in our money, a gumball will always come out.  But is prayer really like that.  Do we always get what we pray for.  You have heard, I am sure, of the ‘car park god’, the god you send a quick arrow prayer to when you are wanting a carpark and don’t want to spend a lot of time driving around and around trying to find one.  So is that the god we pray to in this prayer or is there a difference between that god and the God addressed in this prayer.

Although we may agree there is a difference, sometimes/ often, our behaviour does not reflect it.  We expect healing when we pray for it, we expect God to do something about the world situation.  We expect God to solve all our dilemmas and if we question why we don’t get the result we are expecting, we may be told we just have to ‘pray harder, with more faith’, or God ‘did’ answer our prayer, and the answer was no.

But those sorts of answers do not allow us to approach God with confidence and we may end up thinking ‘why bother’.  And it causes me, maybe you too, to question does God intervene in world events, and does that intervention, or the lack of it, depend on how I ask.  Can prayer change God.  Does our prayer have a tangible effect on other people, even when they have no idea we are praying for them.  For some people these sorts of questions border on the heretical or are irrelevant because for them, they pray with full confidence for lost keys, or carparks or healings or good academic opportunities for their children and they are certain they will get the response they want.

So, if your prayer life is less ‘transactional’ and more ‘hopeful’, then maybe looking at this passage more closely might help.  The disciples came to Jesus and asked ‘Lord, teach us to pray’, a simple, innocuous request, but I wonder, have you ever made that request.  Have you ever asked God to teach you how to pray, and, I must admit, I am not sure I have ever thought it was askable.  And the thing is, the disciples were not ignoranant or inexperienced when it comes to prayer, they were faithful Jews who have likely grown up attending Sabbath services, holding up their hands in faithful prayer.  They knew how to pray, they were not asking for a better technique.  And the hint to the reason for their question is in the first line.  “He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him”.  We don’t know what they observed as Jesus was praying, but whatever they saw left them curious enough to want it too.  “Lord, teach us to pray.”  Teach us to attain what you have attained.  Teach us to be with God as you are with God.  To commune as you commune.  To communicate as you communicate.  Teach us to unlearn those false beliefs and false promises that keep us from praying as you do.  Yes, we are impatient, self-absorbed, and transactional creatures, greedy for quick answers and even quicker gains.  Unmake all of that.  Help us to start afresh.  Teach us to pray. 

And Jesus’ response is not a ‘formula’, it is not a ‘tick box’ of instructions, nor is it ‘reserved’ for special times or emergencies; prayer, as Jesus describes it, is what we are ‘wired’ for, it is what God’s children do, Jesus speaks of it as something that is ‘ordinary’ and something we do often.   But the question today is, is it.  Do we pray ‘routinely’ as an everyday occurrence in our lives or is it something we do ‘in emergencies’, like needing a healing or a car park.  Jesus tells the disciples that a prayer relationship, like the one he has with the Father, is a simple thing.  And prayer does not have to be ‘wordy’, long prayers do not win any more merit than short ones.

Jesus then gives the disciples two examples of prayer.  Ask, seek, knock, and he uses the story of a man needing some bread for a visiting friend as the background to this.  If you need something, ask for it, and keep asking for it, persist in your asking, and you will be rewarded for your persistence.  Now this is not like the gumball machine.  With the gumball machine, the result is for me, the man in Jesus’ story is asking on behalf of another, his unexpected visitor.  There is nothing selfish in what this man is doing, unlike maybe my actions with the gumball machine.  Jesus is not advocating nagging God for more ‘stuff’, but asking respectfully, yet persistently, so we can love others.  This is about permission, permission to name our longings, to acknowledge all our deep desires, to name, without reservation or embarrassment, what is not okay in our lives; that we are not yet full, that God’s kingdom has not yet come, and that despite the fact that it is midnight and we know our thumping on the door will irritate not just the homeowner but likely the rest of the neighbourhood, we do not care and we will persist in thumping because we still need bread NOW.  When you pray, say ‘your kingdom come’, when you pray say ‘give us each day our daily bread’, when you pray say ‘forgive us our sins’, and ‘do not bring us to a time of trial’.  Ask.  Seek. Knock.  Keep knocking.  Jesus’ invitation is ‘assertive’ and ‘pushy’.  It is longing named; named and named again.  It is a yearning that insists on itself to a God who can more than handle our ferocity.  I wonder how my prayer life would change if I accepted Jesus’ call to prayer as a call to wrestle, and struggle, and contend with a God who is not overly invested in my politeness.

The third example Jesus uses is that of a good parent and he offers only one promise.  Jesus tells us, if our children asked for a fish to eat, we would not give them a snake.  If they asked for an egg, a good parent would not give them a stone.  Jesus is still talking about basics, not luxuries.  These are not quail eggs or Atlantic salmon, this is a simple hen’s egg or a plain ordinary fish from Lake Galilee.  And Jesus finishes the story by identifying the precious gift we will be asking for – how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.

This is what prayer is about, more Holy Spirit, more of God intimately working in and through us.  More of God’s presence, more of God’s love, truth and comfort.  More of God’s justice, wisdom, compassion and joy.  This is the good gift God wants to give those who ask.  When we pray, when we persist in praying, when we name our longings in prayer without fear or compromise, God will never fail to give us God’s own, abundant, indwelling and overflowing self as the answer we actually need.  When we contend in prayer, God will not withhold God’s loving, consoling, healing, transforming, and empowering Sprit from us.  When it comes to no-holds-barred, absolutely self-giving, generosity, God’s answer to all our prayers will always be Yes.

And maybe this ‘yes’ is what the disciples discerned in Jesus when they watched him pray.  Maybe they saw the presence of the Spirit flowing through him and that is what compelled them to ask how to go deeper in their prayers.  However the Spirit manifested herself in Jesus’ life, she was so beautiful and compelling, the disciples wanted to experience her for themselves.

So the question before us today is, do we consider the ‘yes’ of God’s Spirit a good enough response to our prayers.  If God’s guaranteed answer to our petitions is God’s own self, can we live with that?  And honestly, it is probably a 50/50.  It is not easy to let go of that gumball god, it is not easy to persist in prayer and not get the answers I want.  It is not easy to accept the Holy Spirit as God’s perfect gift when we would prefer to receive healing for our friend, or better relations on the world stage, or an end to climate change.  We often prefer the ‘interventionist God’ of our childhood to sweep in a ‘settle everything’.  Resting in God’s ‘yes’ requires vulnerability, patience, courage, discipline, and trust – traits I can only cultivate in prayer.  And so we pray.  We pray because Jesus asks us to.  We pray because it is what God’s children do.  We pray because we yearn, and our yearning is precious to God.  And we pray because what is needed most is God’s own Spirit pouring God’s self into us.  With words, without words, through laughter, and tears, in hope and despair, our prayers usher in God’s Spirit and remind us that we are not alone in this broken world.  God’s Spirit is our Yes.  God’s Spirit is our guarantee.