10th Sunday After Pentecost: Luke 11:1-13
Hollywood has a way of making fun of our culture
and ideals. There was a movie that
came out when I was a youth minister that was a big hit
with all the high school kids. It
was called, Talladega Nights: The Ballad
of Ricky Bobby. I must preface, I am not all
recommending that you all go see this movie or rent it, unless you are fan of
Will Ferrell and prefer that Saturday Night Live kind of humor. There is a scene in the movie where
Ricky Bobby and his family are sitting down to eat dinner, and offer grace, and
it goes something like this, edited of course:
“Dear Lord Baby Jesus, or as our brothers to the
south call you Jesús, we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Domino’s,
KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell.
I just want to take time to say thank you for my family, my two
beautiful, beautiful, handsome, striking sons, Walker and Texas Ranger, or T.R.
as we call him, of course, my red-hot smoking wife, Carley who is a stone-cold
fox. Dear Lord Baby Jesus, we also
thank you for my wife’s father Chip.
We hope that you can use your Baby Jesus powers to heal him and his
horrible leg.
Carley responds, “Hey,
you know, sweetie, Jesus did grow up.
You don’t always have to call him “baby.”
“Well, I like the
Christmas Jesus best and I’m saying grace.
Carley’s mad, “Gosh Darn it (actually it was a
little stronger language). You know what I want? I want you to do this grace so good so that God will let us
win tomorrow and we can win a bunch of money.” Ricky Bobby is a Nascar Driver.
Ricky ends the prayer after much more dialogue
in one of the most memorable lines of the movie, “Dear 8 pound, 6 ounce newborn
infant Jesus, don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant and so cuddly,
but still omnipotent, we just thank you for all the races I’ve won and the 21.2
million dollars, love that money, and we thank you for all your power and your
grace, dear baby God. Amen.
If you haven't seen the clip and are not already offended -
If you haven't seen the clip and are not already offended -
I think Hollywood really captures our own
ineptitude at praying. As people
of faith, we struggle with prayer.
Some of us are newer to the faith, others of us, have been steeped in
the faith our entire lives, yet for some reason, prayer can be so confusing. Why do we pray? It can be inextricably difficult to
claim prayer in light of what I would call harmful theology. Carley’s desire to get the dinner grace
right so that they can win lots of money is a result of this theology. Yet this is often what we are
taught. Unfortunately, at some
point in our lives, we have been told, maybe we are not praying hard enough…or
that regardless of our prayers, it was God’s will to take the life of someone
we loved creating the image of a God who sits above the world, with strings as
an all knowing puppet master.
A dear and faithful friend, who has been
attending church nearly every Sunday for as long as I have known her said the
other day, “John, I don’t really pray right now. I don’t know why. Or how. Or the purpose.” Even as faithful Christians who gather here week after week,
we can have moments in our lives where we are completely impoverished in our
prayer lives.
Are we praying rightly? How should we pray? This question has been echoed
throughout the centuries, just like the disciples who so earnestly said, “Lord,
teach us to pray.” We want to
learn how to pray, we want to do it right. We have so many questions,
Is God supposed to answer? Does God already know
what I want before I ask? Why then
should I ask? Is it selfish to
pray for myself? Why would God
need me to ask to respond to the needs of others if God is good?
This Sunday, the Gospel reading in Luke reminds
us that Jesus has something to say about prayer. Jesus offers a commentary on prayer in three ways. He offers a form of prayer by giving us
the Lord’s Prayer. He also offers
a parable on prayer about a man who wakes up his friend in the middle of the
night. And he concludes offering some sayings on prayer. Where we get can get so caught up in
form, and the need to get prayer right, Jesus points our prayer to a
relationship. This is what
prayer really is about. Bare with
me.
There is a famous Rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel, who echoes this sentiment of relationship when he says, “the purpose of prayer is not
information but communion with the Divine.” Heschel is articulating that at the
core of prayer, it is not about what we offer, but a relationship. In both the form of the Lord’s Prayer
and the parable, what is understood is an intimate relationship. The Lord’s Prayer begins with our own
addressing of “Our Father,” indicating intimacy. While human parental relationships can be flawed, calling
God as Our Father, reminds us of a relationship which captures a father who
knows the child inside and out, in the purest and ideal form. While the form of the Lord’s Prayer
does begin to ask questions, what is established is a relationship.
In the parable we hear today, Jesus says that
there is a friend who is woken in the middle of the night responds to his
friends needs because of his persistence. However, the Greek word is more accurately
translated as shamelessness. Shamelessness is an interesting
concept. We have been talking
about hospitality over the last few weeks, and the friend in need here knows
that he is asking another friend to help in the middle of the night, and his
friend must offer help or else he will be dishonored, his reputation soiled. Remember the laws around
hospitality. Therefore the man has
no shame in asking for help. He
knows his friend is commanded by Jewish law to help, and his reputation is at
stake, and therefore will help regardless of any desire to help.
We understand shame as the pain that arises from
humiliation, from distress, and from brokenness. What would a relationship with the Divine look like where
there was no humiliation, or no distress?
Do you remember in Genesis when it was shame that caused Adam and Eve to
cover up their naked and God-given bodies? Shame changed their lives forever. What would it look to be
able to stand before God knowing and trusting that we are good enough in our
own brokenness to present our whole selves forward? Jesus is saying that prayer demands this kind of
relationship. Prayer begins with
us trusting that with all of our flaws, blemishes, and things we try to ‘cover
up’, we are good enough to be in a relationship with God.
Next Jesus gives the disciples some statements
on prayer. Ask. Seek. Knock. These
are the words of the famous hymn Seek Ye First. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.
I shared in the “Thinking Ahead” this week about
how I love the image of the door. When
I first read this passage this week, I imagined the beautiful red door at St.
Mary’s Cathedral, where I was ordained. I think that this door is a powerful
image because of the contrast of the depressed area of Poplar Avenue, to the
cavernous and mystical space of the nave of the cathedral. When you enter through the door,
you can still hear the traffic, the horns and sirens, but your orientation and
relationship with the area has changed.
You have entered into a new relationship with the world. This is just a metaphor and nothing
more.
Doors elicit this kind of response. We have the ability to move from one
space to another. We are offered a
glimpse of what is present on the other side of a door, and when we begin to
move through, our orientation changes.
What if prayer is not about seeking information or results but moving
from brokenness to wholeness? What
if prayer is moving from out of relationship to into relationship? We knock and a door is opened. And our relationship with Divine
Creator of the world is seen in fullness, unhindered, and uncovered, without shame.
This is what I imagine prayer can be. We offer our whole selves, our
whole bodies, and all that we are, unhindered, unabashed, uncovered, and shameless. And this way of being opens up a door to a deeper and more full
relationship with God. It is not
contingent on information. It is
not contingent on results. We ask
for a relationship “Our Father.”
We ask for God’s will to be the will of the world. We acknowledge our brokenness, and we
forgive the others, and we yearn to be delivered into the fullness of life
through an intimate relationship with God.
We might not find the answers that we thought to
grief, to anger, to pain. These
are some of the many reasons we initially turn to prayer. Yet instead of answers, we find a
relationship, a door being opened that can offer us so much more. There are many ways to knock on that
door, but today we have been given a great one, and if it is the only prayer we
can offer, it will suffice. So
join me in saying together the faithful words given to the disciples by Jesus. “Our Father…”
Sermon preached at Church of the Annunciation
July 28, 2013
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