August 12, 2001
Vicar Rick Marrs
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Gospel lesson on prayer (Luke 11: 1-13) read earlier.

Gimme, gimme, gimme. Ours is a society that seems to be constantly calling for more. Give me this, give me that. We start when we're infants. Our wordless cries are saying: "Give me a clean diaper, give me more food, give me your time and attention." We continue as we grow through childhood. Give me this toy. I want this dessert. Give me an allowance. Give me the car keys, please! We continue into adulthood. "Give me enough money to buy a nice home, a nice car, enough comforts." One might expect our Lord Jesus Christ to discourage such constant begging and pleading. But instead He teaches us that prayer is this: God's children asking their dear Father for more. We are to keep asking because we desperately need what only the Father can and does give. On our own, we have nothing. We need everything. The Father does the giving.

Our prayers become meaningless when we forget our needy condition. In Luke 18 Jesus tells a parable. A Pharisee and a tax collector are praying. The Pharisee asks for nothing from God because he thinks that he needs nothing. 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men-- robbers, evildoers, adulterers-- or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' The Pharisee says I, I, I do this, I do that. He's good enough on his own.

But the tax collector knows that before God he is a beggar. He needs everything the LORD has to give. He pleads: 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' As Jesus puts it, we are "evil". We are in a terrible state of affairs. Even the best earthly father among us, who would never think of giving his children bad things, is still evil, separated from the LORD and helpless to change it on our own. The neighbor who has a midnight guest come is moved to ask for bread because he knows he has "nothing to set before him." The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Children learn to talk by listening to their parents talk to them. We learn to talk to God by listening to Him talk to us. In the prayer Jesus gives us, He teaches us what to ask for, thus teaching us what we really need.

The name "Father" puts us in our place – a most blessed place. We all carry our earthly family name, a name that tells others from whom we come. But we as Christians carry our heavenly name with us as well, a name that tells others from whom we come. By Holy Baptism, God places the name Father on us, and we become His children. The true good Father gives only good gifts. He gives us his name so that we can always call on him and ask for his good gifts. Father, hallowed be your name, that is, I ask that your name be kept holy. We too often think our earthly names and reputations are most important. God's good name is our greatest gift. His reputation is kept special when his children know and confess who He is and what God has done for them. Without God's name in Jesus Christ, we have no life, no one to beg for help, no one who has suffered and purchased our gifts for us. Without the name of Jesus, we have no way to know the eternal truth of God's greatest gift, our salvation.

Father may your kingdom come. We too often think of chiefly our earthly kingdoms, our wealth, possessions, and power, the temporary gifts that can distract us from His greater gifts. But Jesus redirects us to want the best gifts, faith and forgiveness which lead to eternal life. It's easy to neglect and undervalue those best gifts. Our eternal life can appear so far away, especially for those of you who are young. We think, "it's hard to get excited about heavenly things when those are probably still decades away." But imagine that someone gave you a huge gift, say $50,000,000, no strings attached except that you were told you would have to wait patiently for it for perhaps a month, a year, or a few years. It would arrive when it arrived, and all you had to do was wait, expectantly and patiently, for it. Wouldn't you live a life of joyful, hopeful expectation, waiting for your soon-to-come riches? Well, you have been given a huge gift, way more than $50 mil. Christ's suffering and death on the cross purchased heavenly life for you, no strings attached. All we have to do is wait patiently for it, perhaps for a day, a month, a year, a few years, or a few decades. He decides how long. Christ's resurrection is the seal, the guarantee of your gift, and your Baptism is your personal letter confirming that gift to you. And we need not horde this gift. We can give it to others, encouraging them to trust that Christ purchased the same gift for them.

But Jesus knows that we live not just for the future. We need daily bread here on earth as well. He instructs his disciples, us included, to ask for daily bread as well. We cannot trust that our work, or even our prayer, gives us our needed sustenance. Instead we trust the Father who gives us work and prayer and gives daily bread through them both. We thank him for the many earthly gifts he gives us, especially here in the United States, the most economically blessed country that has ever existed in the history of the world.

But even his language in this petition, this request for earthly bread is couched in language that reminded Luke's first readers of heavenly bread as well. The original readers and hearers would have been reminded of the daily bread that arrived from heaven in the form of the manna in the desert. The careful reader would have been reminded of Jesus' response to the devil's temptation in the wilderness: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'"

By teaching us to pray and thank God for our daily earthly food and physical gifts, Jesus uses language that reminds us that the truest food that we need for our survival is his Word, every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4: 4).

We don't know for what we should pray, but Jesus teaches us here. His Father's kingdom, our daily bread, our forgiveness. In last week's lesson, Jesus said "Martha, Martha and taught her and us that our priority is to sit at Jesus' feet, listening to His Words of forgiveness, the purpose for which He came. Our lives, our new lives, are intimately connected with the forgiveness He purchased for us through his cross and grave. Our epistle lesson says it superbly: (You were) buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins The last thing Jesus teaches is to depend on His father throughout the temptations and challenges we will face in this life. Praying is serious business. We ask God for great things. Continuing to live this life trusting in Him alone is a difficult calling. We need to pray for ourselves, our own deliverance, and know that people like modern-day Abrahams and Pauls are praying for us. I am praying for you to be blessed with God's Holy Spirit and to avoid temptation. I hope that you are praying for me in the same way. We cannot succeed on our own. We need the Father's deliverance to be able to endure to the end. Our Father was not wearied by Abraham's endless pleas for Sodom (Genesis 18), so He is not wearied by our cries for help. He wants us to say "Gimme, gimme, gimme." He may not always respond to our prayers in the ways we would like Him to, just as a good parent doesn't always give their children dessert every time they ask for it. But He does delight to help us. So he sent His Son to live and die for us, to set us free. He sent His Son to teach us to ask for everything we need: forgiveness, life, peace, and His Holy Spirit.

The grace and peace; kingdom, daily bread, and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us always. Amen.