Luke 11:1-13

9 Pentecost / Proper 12 / Year C

29 July 2007

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Wareham, Massachusetts

Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson

 

I know, I know that we are saved by grace alone, not by anything that WE do, but rather by what God has done, is doing and will continue to do on our behalf. I mean, the question is fairly interesting, what can any of us do to add to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross? The answer of course is nothing. There is nothing that we can or need to add to our salvation in Christ Jesus. All we can and need to do is to receive it, accept it, and give thanks for it.

That being said, however, I would like to say a word this morning about persistence because that is where our Gospel lesson is pointing us. In our Gospel lesson Jesus begins by talking about prayer. His disciples have asked him to teach them how to pray. In response, Jesus tells a parable about a very persistent “friend.” The hour is midnight and this so-called friend jumps the hedge between his house and his neighbor’s and starts banging on his neighbor’s door. You see, he is in a terrible fix. It appears that a friend of his has just arrived after a very long journey and is hungry and unfortunately he has nothing in his house for the weary traveler to eat. So he has gone to his neighbor friend to ask him if he has anything to eat in his house. As you might have guessed it, the man who is so rudely awakened says in as nice a way as he can I am sure, “GET LOST! My family and I are asleep in our beds. If you think we’re getting out of bed to fix your friend something to eat, think again! But this so-called friend is not so easily put off. He keeps banging on the door, calling him, leaving messages on his answering machine, in short making a very big nuisance of himself until his neighbor finally relents. Caring nothing for this man’s predicament, he relents only to get him off his back so he can get back to sleep. My cat has a way of doing that to me. She will come in about 5:00 o’clock in the morning and jump on my head and meow in my ear and keep doing it every couple of minutes until I finally get up and feed her.

In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus simply says that this is how we ought to be in regard to prayer. For Anglicans who pride ourselves in being so proper and civilized, this is a rather disturbing image. None of us want to be perceived as moochers, especially when it comes to God. But perhaps what is even more disturbing is the image we have of God in this parable. Is God really like that sulky friend at midnight, the friend that requires constant banging on his door in order for us to get his attention? That is an interesting question and I am not sure that it is answered here and I really think that it is beside the point.

The first thing we need to agree on is that prayer is more than the words we say to God. Prayer is all the things that we do and say in our relationship with God. In fact, our relationship with God is prayer. So this is not so much a parable about the right technique in prayer, but about how we are called to be in relationship with God. The Church is a praying community. If we don’t pray, then we don’t keep up our side of the bargain. If we don’t pray then we might as well change the sign out in the front here and replace it with a sign advertising us as the Wareham Rotary Club. Prayer is what makes us a church community, it is what marks us.

In the person of Jesus Christ, God has already done all that needs to be done to fulfill God’s part of the relationship. God sent Jesus to us, to teach us, to heal us, to live among us, to suffer with us and for us, and to experience death and then of course rise again bringing new life to all of creation. He came back to us and he has forgiven us. That was, is and will always be God’s part of the deal.

But what is our role to play? I believe that this parable is about that. Our part of the deal involves persistence. Over the years, I have heard a lot of people tell me that they feel distant from God. They say that when they pray they feel as though they are merely talking to themselves. They hear stories of how God is impacting other people’s lives, but these stories never seem to ring true for them. God has never interacted with them in such a powerful or meaningful way, they say. When I encounter folks who speak to me about this, I usually say to them, you need to persist.

We live in a society of instant gratification and it is destroying our souls. There are people who expect to have the fruits of the Christian life – joy, peace, trust, courage, confidence, and all the rest – without the disciplines of the Christian life. You and I need to be persistent in coming to this place week in and week out, to hear God’s Word proclaimed and to participate in the sacraments. You and I need to persist in our prayers every day whether we feel God’s presence in them or not, you and I need to read the Sacred Scriptures everyday whether we feel we are getting something out of them or not. That may sound silly, but if we persist, we will break through and we will discover the riches of God’s unlimited grace.

I have found, as I am sure that you have, that one of the reasons most of us have so few very good friends is that friendships take time. There must be hours, years, decades of being with one another, hanging out together, conversing with one another, hearing stories about life, and exploring the richness of each other’s humanity. None of us can have a really good friend overnight. Friendship requires time, no it requires persistence. The same is true in regard to our friendship with God. God is totally available to us at all times and in all places. But we, due to distractions, the numerous cares of the world, even sin, are not totally available to God. Therefore we must keep at it. We must keep focusing, listening, turning the attention of our souls to God’s gracious action around us and within us.

I want to conclude with a story from Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth century monk who has so much to teach us.

 

At my entrance into religion, [he says] I took a resolution to give myself up to God, as the best return I could make for His love, and, for the love of Him, to renounce all besides. For the first year I commonly employed myself during the time set apart for devotion with the thought of death, judgment, heaven, hell, and my sins. Thus I continued some YEARS, [emphasis mine] applying my mind carefully the rest of the day, and even in the midst of my business, to the presence of God, whom I considered always as with me, often as in me. At length I came insensible to do the same thing during my set time of prayer, which caused in me great delight and consolation. This practice produced in me so high an esteem for God that faith alone was capable to satisfy me in that point. Such was my beginning, and yet I must tell you that for the first TEN YEARS [emphasis mine] I suffered much. As for what passes in me at present, I cannot express it. I have no pain or difficulty about my state, because I have no will but that of God, which I endeavor to accomplish in all things, and to which I am so resigned that I would not take up a straw from the ground against His order, or from any other motive but purely that of love of Him.

 

Persistence! Knocking and knocking on that door until we hear God. We might be tempted to go to the self-help section of the bookstore, to find a quick fix for what ails us but ultimately that is not going to cut it. Don’t stop knocking, don’t stop searching, don’t stop until you hear the voice of God leading you by the hand.[i]

 

In Jesus Name, Amen.