a sermon on prayer
This is my sermon for today (the sixth Sunday after Trinity) here in Kew. The readings were Genesis 18:20-32 (Abraham interceding with God for Sodom and Gomorrah) and Luke 11:1-13 (The Lord’s Prayer). With thanks to friends and colleagues who send thought provoking text messages when you’re on holiday….
I.
“Dude, quick question -”
So began a text message I received from a fellow curate a few days ago.
“Can God change God’s mind?”
It turns out she was reading a book whose claim was that God can and does ‘change his mind’, consistently expanding his grace and love to include more and more people.
It’s an interesting question, one of those deep theological problems—can an eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful God change their mind? Or does God’s activity in the world, perceived by humanity, simply look like God is changing their mind? Was God always going to do the thing that seems surprising, or changeable to us? Do we rather come to understand God’s ‘mind’ better? These are questions that are relevant to our understanding of God and of prayer—particularly intercessory prayer. Does it work? How?
Our Old Testament reading today is one of the stories in the Bible that suggests that God does change God’s mind, as Abraham argues God down from destruction towards mercy.
But God always going to change their mind? What would have happened if Abraham hadn’t pleaded for Sodom and Gomorrah? Sometimes we are inclined to wonder what this says about God—but I wonder what it also says to us about our part in the world, through prayer. Because, essentially, that is what Abraham is doing: praying, interceding for the world with God.
II.
I want us to keep thinking about this question: what does it say about our part in the world as we turn to our gospel reading, which is Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s slightly different than the version found in Matthew, which more familiar to us from our liturgies: but it is fundamentally the same prayer in what it says about God and how we pray. It opens with praise, and then comes what we might call the main theme of the prayer: your kingdom come. This plea holds the other requests within itself: our daily bread, forgiveness of sins, and freedom from the hardships of trial and temptation are gifts of the kingdom.
We might see Abraham’s prayer for Sodom and Gomorrah as one for the forgiveness of sins—he is pushing at God, saying, God, this is what your rule looks like. Mercy, not furious judgment… And we see in Abraham that we don’t just pray this prayer for ourselves, but for the whole world.
But unlike Abraham, who gets to hear God respond, we often feel as if our prayers don’t change God’s mind. We say the Lord’s Prayer every week, many of us every day and sometimes we might wonder: to what end?
Nowhere does this feel more pressing than it does as we look at the news coming from Gaza at the moment, as we see and hear about the destruction and the starvation, famine and genocide. We, and thousands and millions like us, pray for Gaza – for daily bread, for freedom from trial – and yet nothing seems to change…
Does God not want to act here? Or is something else getting in the way? How can it, if God is God?
Are we not praying hard enough?
I’m not sure there are answers to these questions, almost certainly there are none that are satisfying… but it can be helpful to wrestle with their provocation and see where that takes us.
III.
And so, as we look at this gospel passage, in which Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, I notice three things.
First, I notice the context in which Jesus teaches the Lord’s prayer to his disciples. Luke places this scene within the story of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and the cross, and so the prayer exists a part of a life of discipleship that follows him in this direction, willing to lay down one’s life itself for the coming of the kingdom.
Secondly, I notice that in praying for ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those indebted to us’ we are reminded that sin has to do with our relationships, to each other and God’s wider creation. We are speaking of the obligations we have to each other and acknowledging the ways we fail and are failed by each other.
And thirdly I notice that we are reminded that prayer isn’t just ‘magic’. It isn’t an incantation or a matter saying of the right thing to make something desirable happen. The parable that follows the prayer emphasises the persistence of the asking, and the physicality of it as well: knock, seek.
This is prayer prayed within a life of faith and following. We seek the coming of the kingdom in the ways we live as well as in the words that we pray—our participation in prayer and in the world go together. And we are invited, as we look at the parable, to be the one who seeks and the one who opens the door. The one who asks for bread in the prayer, and the one who gives it, in the parable.
To receive the gift of life in the kingdom that Jesus offers through his journey to the cross and the resurrection that follows
And to follow him in offering it to others, as we become more like him, desiring to fulfil our obligations to each other and to repair the damages of sin,
IV.
Our ability to live this prayer grows as we pray it, as we come into the presence of God and say the words.
In a wonderful sermon on intercessory prayer (found in Open to Judgement), Rowan Williams describes the way that our praying draws us to identify our will and desire with that of God, steadily opening ourselves up to God and letting God live in us.
This is not so much a begging God to change his mind, but a deepening understanding of God’s heart and mind, a begging God to change us that we may be a part of the realisation of the coming kingdom. In Williams’ words: “If prayer works it is because of lives that have been crucified with Christ.”
“If prayer works it is because of lives that have been crucified with Christ.”
I don’t know about you, but I find that a terrifying prospect.
The responsibility. The pain. The endless coming face-to-face with our failures to love that much and meet our obligations, as we look at the world in which we live. In all honesty, I suspect I am not praying enough.
And yet. We have to be brave to step on to the road to Jerusalem with Jesus, and it starts with saying the words—even if it doesn’t end with them.
Williams describes intercessions as ‘thinking of someone or something in the presence of God’. To somehow manage to hold the goodness of God and the pains of the world together. And to remember that we see God’s goodness most clearly in pain: on the cross. Christ is crucified every day in Gaza, and in every place of horror and pain and injustice. To pray is to insist that God and God’s love are there.
The challenge of doing this in some way mirrors Abraham’s argument with God, as Abraham insists that God’s relationship with the world should be of mercy, not destruction. To pray thy kingdom come is a cry of naked faith (Williams, again)—the insistence that God is here too, that the love and mercy and justice of the kingdom is coming. And it is a cry that lets God in, to change us—and through us and with us, our world.
V.
As we pray our intercessions today; especially as we pray for places of violence and destruction, places like Gaza; and as we pray thy kingdom come in the Lord’s prayer, we will be opening ourselves up to this journey.
We will be sharing in God’s pain for the world he loves and made.
Insisting on our hope and trust that the kingdom is coming.
And opening ourselves up to the Spirit’s transformation of our hearts and lives—something that continues in every aspect of our worship and prayer, not just the intercessions.
But while intercession starts with these words, it doesn’t end with them. We cannot leave this prayer in this building. We must take it with us into our daily lives as we follow Jesus, becoming a part of the life of prayer and pray-er who walks towards the cross and the kingdom.