Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
As can often be the case, Friday when I visited several of Pilgrim’s members who are shut‑in or otherwise homebound, I had to knock loudly on the doors a number of times before I was let into the home. Older people can have a harder time hearing, especially hearing higher‑pitched or softer doorbells, sometimes hearing them over louder television volume or other sounds inside of the home. There is no such trouble hearing in today’s Gospel Reading when “Someone’s knocking at the door”. In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus taught His disciples—and still teaches us today—how to pray: with a version of what we usually call the “Lord’s Prayer”; with a “parable” of a sort about an impudent friend asking for bread at midnight, which “parable” is unique to St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account; and with encouragement to pray that consists of both a promise to those who ask, seek, and knock and a comparison between evil human fathers’ giving good gifts to their children and the good Heavenly Father’s giving the Holy Spirt to those who ask Him.
Not surprisingly, prayer is also emphasized in today’s Introit, for example, with its antiphon, “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 119:145-149; antiphon: Psalm 50:15). Prayer is emphasized in the Collect of the Day, which asks the Lord to teach us how to pray that our petitions may be pleasing before Him. Prayer is emphasized in today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 18:17-33), as Abraham intercedes with the Lord on behalf of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, or at least on behalf of his nephew Lot and Lot’s family. Prayer is said to be emphasized indirectly in today’s Epistle Reading (Colossians 2:6-19), as St. Paul encourages the Colossians and us to walk in Christ, abounding in thanksgiving, which thanksgiving would include prayers of gratitude (Wohlrabe, CPR 35:3, pp.31-32). Prayer is emphasized in today’s Appointed Verse (Luke 11:9), which anticipates Jesus’s Gospel‑Reading promise to those who ask, seek, and knock. And, all of those are not even to mention how prayer is emphasized in today’s hymns, such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism hymn on the Lord’s Prayer, which we sang moments ago as the Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 766).
We need such an emphasis on prayer! We need such an emphasis on prayer as both law and Gospel, as God both commands us to pray and promises to hear our prayers, including answering our prayers in the time and way that He knows to be best. Yet, too often we may not pray at all, as we may be prideful and reluctant to ask God for help, or we may doubt that God hears us or that He will answer us (Wohlrabe, CPR 35:3, p.33). We may pray for things or in a way that we should not pray. Or, we may have wrong ideas about when and why God answers our prayers. In today’s Old Testament Reading, Abraham prayed “with full realization of his own unworthiness, sinfulness, and origin as dust and ashes” (Wohlrabe, CPR 35:3, p.32, with reference to Genesis 2:7). As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, by nature we are spiritually dead in our trespasses, and so we deserve physical death now and the never‑ending torment of eternal death. On our own, we cannot decide to believe in Jesus or pray even the so-called “Sinner’s Prayer”, without God’s calling and so enabling us to turn in sorrow from our sin and to trust Him to forgive our sin. And, now is the time so to repent, for the day is coming when those shut out of the marriage feast will say, “Lord, lord, open to us”, but He will say, “I do not know you” (Matthew 25:10-11; confer 7:22-23).
When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful natures and all of our actual sin. God forgives our failures to pray as we should pray or whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake. For, before the Heavenly Father gave us the Holy Spirit in order for us to turn from our sin and trust Him to forgive us, the Heavenly Father showed His love for even the fallen world by giving His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, in Christ Jesus the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily; by His death on the cross, God cancelled the record of debt, or sin, that stood against us, and so God forgives our trespasses; and, as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, so He raises us through faith in Him. In today’s Gospel Reading, asking, seeking, and knocking is said to be less about our praying to God and receiving, finding, and having opened to us whatever we want; but, asking, seeking, and knocking is more about God’s leading us to receive, find, and have opened to us eternal salvation (Bertram, s.v. krouvw, TDNT 3:955). Likewise, Jesus says the Heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.
On the basis of Holy Scripture, we Lutherans believe, teach, and confess that, in order for us to obtain saving faith in Jesus, God instituted the ministry of preaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments, through which Gospel and Sacraments the Heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit (Augsburg Confession V:1-2). In today’s Gospel Reading, food figures prominently; for example, the impudent friend asks for three loaves of bread; and, in a parallel Gospel account, Jesus asks the human fathers among the crowd, if their son asked for a loaf of bread, whether they would give him a stone (Matthew 7:9; compare Matthew 4:1-4; Luke 4:1‑4). Truly, we who are baptized and absolved and admitted to this Altar and its Rail here receive both bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Notably, the bread of this Holy Supper throughout Church history has been understood at least to be included in the “daily bread” of the Lord’s Prayer.
In fact, all of the petitions of the version of the Lord’s Prayer that we heard in today’s Gospel Reading arguably are more spiritual blessings than material blessings. Of course, that observation is not to say that we should not pray for material blessings. But, we pray for spiritual blessings knowing that God’s will is to give us such spiritual blessings, whereas, when we pray for material blessings, we in a sense qualify our confidence that God will answer those petitions for material blessings by praying according to His will, which will we do not always know. We know that elsewhere, as we will hear in two weeks, Jesus tells us to seek His Kingdom and that other things such as food and clothing will be added to us (Luke 6:22-31; confer Matthew 6:25‑33). Likewise, St. Paul wrote to the Romans and to us that God, Who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will with Him also graciously give us all things (Romans 8:31).
When I worked for the N‑B‑C owned and operated television station in Denver, Colorado, I was able to attend Paul McCartney’s May 26, 19‑93, concert at Folsom Field at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. McCartney played some Beatles’ songs and some Wings’ songs, but he reportedly did not play the song “Let ’em in” (Google AI). As you may know, that 19‑76 Wings song starts out with the sound of a doorbell and then calls off the real and pseudonymous names of a number of people, whom, as it were, McCartney wants the listener to “let in”, as if to a party of some sort that he imagined happening in Liverpool, England. Among those named as “Someone’s knocking at the door” is “Martin Luther”, though McCartney later said that he was referring to Martin Luther King, Jr. (See Wikipedia and Reddit.) Regardless, the idea in the song seems to be that the people are let in because of who they are. Considering today’s Gospel Reading, we might say that we are let in because of Who God is. Thanks be to God that by His mercy and grace we are enabled to knock and then are let into His Kingdom and its peace and joy, both already now and forevermore.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +