Christ Cathedral

Old Testament - Genesis 18:20-33
Psalm 138
New Testament - Colossians 2:6-15
Gospel - Luke 11:1-13

Both the Old Testament and the Gospel lesson today show us something about talking to God. In the reading from Genesis, we heard Abraham negotiating the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah with God. The Gospel account contains Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. These lessons have a lot to say about the subject of prayer, but I want to focus on a single aspect of prayer. Prayer is communication with God, and like our communication with each other, it is most clear when it is about concrete, tangible subjects. In other words, when you ask God to do something, it is never a bad idea to ask for something real.

Unfortunately, asking for real things can sometimes get you into trouble. I don’t know if you are familiar with the Brother Cadfael mysteries, but Holly and I recently read the first book in this series and I was delighted. Brother Cadfael, the main character of this series is a mystery solving monk in a twelfth century monastery.

In case you are wondering where this story is going, I’ll tell you right away that the climax of the very first book deals with a prayer for a very specific thing. Brother Columbanus is one of Cadfael’s fellow monks, and he is the frequent recipient of religious visions. Although seeing visions is generally taken as a sign of spiritual grace in Christianity, there are quite a few indications that the visions of Brother Columbanus have more to do with human ambition than holy revelation. At vespers one evening, Columbanus stands up in a full church and prays loudly and quite specifically for a vision of a local saint named Winifred. His desire for a vision is quite clearly a way of drawing attention to himself.

Unfortunately for Brother Columbanus, Brother Cadfael has begun to suspect the nature of his fellow monk’s piety. Cadfael knows that Columbanus is scheduled to spend the night in prayer in St. Winifred’s chapel, and so he arranges for a local girl dressed as St. Winifred to pay him a visit. In the wee hours of the morning, the girl, adorned in full Winifred costume, slips out of the sacristy and calls on Columbanus to repent of his false piety and numerous other sins.

In spite of his earlier prayer, a real visit from St. Winifred is the last thing that Columbanus is expecting. When Winifred appears, he is frightened, and he quickly repents of his sins. He is on the verge of promising to make restitution for his past wrongs when the girl’s flowing costume accidentally brushes his hand. Instantly, Columbanus realizes that his vision of St. Winifred is not quite as heavenly as he had believed only moments before, and his repentance quickly turns to anger.

This change in Columbanus’s heart is at least partly due to mistaken theological assumption. Columbanus reasons that if the answer to his prayer is made of flesh and blood, then it must not be from God. But today’s readings on the subject of prayer show that Columbanus is wrong. Answered prayers are more often than not about real flesh and blood issues. When God answers prayer, it is often in the most tangible way. Abraham’s chat with God about the fate of Sodom is about a pretty tangible subject. Likewise, Jesus instructs his disciples to pray for the most ordinary things. These examples show us that our communication with God primarily works itself out, not in disembodied spirit, but in our natural, physical life.

Consider Abraham’s request from today’s Old Testament lesson. Since last Sunday, Abraham has left the oaks of Mamre and been out for a stroll along the heights of Hebron with his three mysterious visitors. The four of them stop on a ridge overlooking the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the valley below. Two of the men carry on, but Abraham remains on the ridge with one of these men. The man who stays to talk with Abraham is no ordinary man. In fact, this man with Abraham is God, and he tells Abraham about his plans for Sodom. "Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come to me."

Before God can ever take a step toward these cities which have become synonyms for moral depravity, Abraham knows what God will find. Appealing to God’s sense of fairplay, Abraham begins to intercede on behalf of the two cities. "Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous men in the city. Would you destroy the place and not spare it?" God replies, "If I find at Sodom fifty righteous, for their sake, I will spare the city." Abraham has his foot in the door, and he decides to see if he can open it just a little further.

He begins with a little customary groveling, and you can almost picture Abraham nervously clearing his throat, "[Hmmm], before the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty are lacking. Will you destroy the city for the lack of five?" God agrees to save the city for the sake of forty-five righteous men. As you have already heard today, Abraham carries on until he has bargained with God down to saving the city for the sake of ten righteous souls.

Taking this interaction with God as a model for prayer, there are two things that I want to draw your attention to. The first is that Abraham is pretty content to wrangle with God. There’s never a note of pious standoffishness. When Abraham talks to God, it is not like someone who has hired both a lawyer and a speechwriter to help with his request for a presidential pardon. If anything, Abraham’s interactions with God are more like when Nathaniel, my three year old son, discovers a box of cookies on the counter. "Papa, can I have a cookie?" "Yes, Nathaniel, you can have a cookie." A second or two passes. "Papa, can I have two cookies?"

The second thing I want to point out is that this conversation with God is about a very specific thing, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If Abraham’s request is granted, the answer will be obvious. He did not pray that God would send a spirit of peace or enlightenment to Sodom; no, Abraham asks God about preserving the actual, physical infrastructure of the place for the sake of a certain number of righteous men. He wanted to know quite simply whether God would leave the place standing or not.

This emphasis on real tangible answers to prayer is also part of the Lord’s Prayer. In this prayer, Jesus encourages his disciples to follow Abraham’s example of communication with God. Luke’s text which we have heard today is the less familiar form of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s nice to hear Luke’s version from time to time; it has an urgency that is harder to hear in the version we all know from the Prayer Book. The text we recite each week is really much closer to Matthew’s text, which was probably being used in worship well before it was written down in the Gospel. Frequent use polished the Greek that Matthew eventually wrote down, and this literary style comes through even in translation. Luke’s text, on the other hand, is a bit more historical, and many scholars see evidence of a more literal rendering of the actual words of Jesus. But no one ever much recited Luke’s version in Greek, or in our case, English, because it just doesn’t roll off the tongue in the same way.

Luke’s language may not be as poetic as Matthew’s on this point, but it is more earthy. A fast and loose translation of Luke’s text would go something like this: "Father, make your name holy and establish your kingdom. Give us bread each day and forgive our sins the way we forgive debts and keep us out of trouble." After the opening address to God, the actual requests are simple. Give us food. Forgive our sins. And keep us out of trouble. Two of the three things are indisputably concrete: either we eat regularly or we don’t; either we are in trouble or we are not. As for sins, the concrete example of the forgiveness of sin is found right up there on the rood beam. That is what it looks like to forgive sin, and though we may forget it from time to time, Jesus, even in the Resurrection, still bears the marks of forgiving our sins.

In this light, we should perhaps consider how we pray. My guess is that most of us are too timid. We have all been cautioned about bargaining with God, and we don’t want to fall into a trap. Dear God if you will give me X, then I will do Y. But if you think that’s bad, what can we say about Abraham? He isn’t just asking God for something, he’s nagging God about it. And when God gives an inch, Abraham starts bargaining for a mile, a yard at a time. If we learn anything from Abraham, it is just how much God is willing to give if we just keep asking.

The Lord’s Prayer, however, shows us something else. The Lord’s Prayer shows us how much God is already doing for us when we pray. We pray that God’s name will be recognized and honored throughout the world. The name "Jesus" is still one of the top 100 boy names in the United States. We pray for God’s kingdom to be put in place on earth. There are signs of God’s work everywhere. There are of course churches and charities and other such things that are visible signs of God’s kingdom on earth, but there are other things that we often overlook. Like the seven day week. Did you ever wonder where that came from, or why it is considered absolutely essential to have a day off in seven? Maybe I’m out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that the idea of a seven day week with a day off got its start from the book of Genesis.

So what’s the point of all this? I think that we need to be a little more frank with God when we pray. If you need a job, ask for one. If you want to be healed, ask for it. God may say yes, and he may say no, but either way, there is no reason to wonder if God has heard you. The Bible is full of examples of people who ask for all sorts of things. You may not be a Biblical character, but there is no reason not to start acting like one when you pray. Ask away, if God put up with Abraham, he will put up with you.

But there is more. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, I think it should remind us that a lot of what we take for granted really comes from God. When Holly and I were getting ready to move to New York so I could attend seminary, we prayed that Holly would get a full time job. She sent out over fifty applications, she had a number of interviews, and still no job. Then Holly tweaked her resume, adding our New York address, and almost immediately she got an interview. In no time at all, the interview turned into a job. This happened about two weeks before we moved. The question is what got her the job? Was it God or was it the freshly tweaked resume?

It would be pretty easy to say that the resume work did just the trick. Moving to New York is tough, and many employers don’t hire outside the city. Changing the address on the resume seemed to be just the trick. But if it was the resume, what did that say about all our prayers? Were we praying for nothing? I don’t think so. I believe with all my heart that Holly got the job God wanted her to have, and that God did some of the legwork for her. But I’ve made a choice to see it that way.

God is subtle, and when he gives us things, it is usually in a way that requires faith to see. I believe that God is giving all the time, and when we pray, a little faith is all it takes to see that we often ask for things that God is already giving us. The food we eat, for example, is something that we can easily take for granted. We go to work, earn money, and use the money to buy food. There is not much room for God in this equation, but perhaps there should be. If we pray for bread, as we all do every time we come to this church, isn’t it just as likely that every meal we eat is God’s answer to our prayer?