Proper 12 – Year C

Luke 11:1-13

Church of the Atonement

Dr. Derrick Witherington

July 27, 2025

"Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." In the Name of the Father + and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There once was someone who was once faced with having to make a choice between taking a new and exciting job in a far away city or remaining in his current comfortable job in his hometown. He spent many long evenings talking about the pros and cons of each option with trusted friends, but despite this he was no closer to having clarity on his decision than before. As a person of faith, he was also praying for guidance and asking God for a concrete sign which would confirm his decision. After days of wrestling discernment and no clear divine sign, he found himself attending a weeknight service in a neighborhood church. Things were going as usual until the lector approached for the first reading and began reading from the beginning of the twelfth chapter of the Book of Genesis: “Now the Lord said to Abram, go from country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” Immediately his heart began to flutter. “Here’s my sign,” he thought! Just as he was thinking these thoughts, the lector stopped reading, flipped a couple of pages back and forth, and said: “my apologies, I was reading the incorrect lesson.” She then proceeded to read a scriptural lesson which had absolutely nothing to do about traveling to distant lands and being blessed in doing so. (For the record, this occurrence did not happen here at Church of the Atonement!)

Why do we pray? Why do you pray? As Christians we are told to “pray without ceasing” and to do so with perseverance: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” And yet we know that oftentimes our prayers are not answered directly or when they are, it happens on a timetable different from what we would like. This morning, I’d like to spend some first considering what prayer is and why Jesus is emphatic that we should persevere in it.

Writing in the early third century, the theologian Origen of Alexandria struggled with coming up with an answer to this question as well. Origen noted that if God is all-knowing, surely, he knows the outcome of all events already. What is the point of praying, then? For Origen Christian prayer is not about somehow changing God’s mind or convincing God to act in a certain way, rather, prayer changes us. In order for our prayer to be Christian prayer, we must, says Origen, purify any anger and resentment we have in our hearts and “pray for the things that are chiefly great and heavenly.” Through this process of purification and transformation – difficult as it is – we learn to slowly conform our will to God’s will, and thereby find that the “answer” to our prayers is found in joyfully and freely accepting God’s loving and providential will.

So perhaps the question to focus on is how prayer changes us if we only open ourselves to its transformative potential. I’d like to explore this with you by using the familiar lines of the Lord’s prayer as a framework, beloved words we perhaps pray daily and which formed the heart of today’s Gospel reading.

Father, hallowed be your name.

When I was in college one of the first philosophy classes I took was in philosophy of religion. The professor in that class defined God in a way which I have never forgotten. God, he said, is one worthy of worship. This definition compels us to ask: what or who is, in fact, worthy of being worshipped? Jesus calls God his Abba, his Father, and this is the reason why much of our liturgical and worship language has retained this way of speaking about God. Even though such language has unfortunately been used to justify patriarchy and the abuses and exclusions which come as a result of it, our theological and liturgical tradition maintains speaking of God in this way because we believe it also reveals something very important about the kind of God we worship. In the Roman society around Jesus and his followers, fatherhood was almost exclusively understood in terms of power and dominance. The father as head of the household had absolute power and control over everyone in the household, including his spouse and children. Some versions of Roman law even allowed husbands to kill wives due to infidelity (real or supposed), and fathers had similar control over the lives of their children. This fearful understanding of fatherhood is contrary to the way Jesus understood the fatherhood of God. Jesus’ Abba, his father, is not to be approached with fear and trepidation but with the sure confidence of a child approaching a parent for help. God as loving parent extends to us the possibility of life in the Spirit, that is life free from fears and anxieties, illumined by and radiating God’s love and mercy to those around us.

One way prayer should change us, then, is to move us away from images of God which, rather than modeling the mercy, love, and freedom of God as loving Abba, keep us confined in patterns of thought and behavior predicated on power, domination, and exclusion. Sometimes in order to pray properly then, we need to un-know what we thought we knew about God. For anyone who has experienced a Christianity which has encouraged exclusion in whatever form: racism, homophobia, misogyny, others – we know that this is an important first step towards healing and wholeness. It is also important for all of us to practice good discernment when it comes to maintaining a proper and authentic image of God. Human nature being what it is, all of us are only all too capable of falling into patterns of belief and practice which show God less as a loving Father calling all to communion and fellowship, and more about creating walls and barriers keeping various people we think undesirable at a distance. For the only God worthy of worship, worthy of having a name hallowed, is one which breaks down barriers and extends a loving embrace to all.

Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread

God’s reign, God’s kingdom, is already germinating in our midst, even though we await its final consummation in the fullness of time. When we pray your Kingdom come, then, I think we are praying for the grace of keeping our eyes open to where God’s kingdom is breaking forth already here and now. When thinking of the shape of God’s Kingdom, the first place my mind goes to are the words Jesus says to Pilate in John’s Gospel before he is condemned to death: my Kingdom is not of this world. Thanks be to God, it’s not! So much of worldly power then and now is predicated on force and violence. The sure way to determine if the “Kingdom” we’re praying for is actually God’s Kingdom is to ask ourselves how much it depends on these things for its existence and survival. It’s also important to ask who is included: if it’s not everyone, including my enemy, we have fallen into the logic of an earthy Kingdom and not God’s Kingdom. When discerning for the glimmers of the Kingdom here and now, then, we are looking for places of reconciliation, justice, and fellowship. Praying for God’s Kingdom should gradually change us to becoming perceptive to where God’s love is breaking into our world, and to do our part to always side with that Kingdom whatever the cost.

We next pray for our daily Bread, and this comes naturally on the heels of the Kingdom, for just as bread is meant to be broken and shared in fellowship, both our lives and the fruits of our hands are meant to be shared with others. Praying for our daily bread, then, is not praying for something we can hoard for ourselves, it’s praying for the grace of justly sharing our gifts with those in need, and this itself then becomes another sign of that Kingdom we prayed for as well.

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.

Forgiveness and reconciliation. They are sure signs of the Kingdom of God, but don’t we all know how difficult it is to sometimes both forgive and be forgiven. While anger is sometimes justified in the face of being wronged, allowing that anger to fester and develop into the burden of resentment turns us inward, not only from others, but from God as well. The practice of prayer should then help us heal from our pent-up angers and resentments, gradually enabling us to raise our heads and hearts to God acknowledging our own need for healing and our role in cooperating with that healing grace by forgiving others. Indeed the “trial” or “temptation” which we pray to be freed from is I think the temptation of staying locked in our cages of anger and resentment and letting no one – not even God – into them to help heal and liberate us.

So, we’ve spent some time this morning considering how prayer changes, or at least should change us, but it’s important to also emphasize that this is not meant as a kind of self-help program we can accomplish on our own. Prayer is a lifting of the mind and heart to God and then - importantly – being receptive to God’s grace and call. If you’re like me, I’d imagine that many experiences of prayer – whether in church or at home – feel like a routine and we may even begin to doubt whether they are actually making any difference when we don’t see immediate results. I think one of the great things about worshipping in a liturgical tradition, is that the church gives us the words to say in prayer even when we either don’t know what to say or grow tired in saying them. Words and prayers passed down to us from generation to generation are not only hallowed by centuries of usage, they are hallowed by our faith in a God who is always at work in molding and forming us, sometimes imperceptibly, through them. One way of looking at this is to consider how a small trickle or drop of water over time can gradually wear down a rock or even transform it into dazzling and sparkling stalactites we may encounter deep in a cave. So it is with God’s grace if we cooperate with it and remain faithful in our practices of prayer. If we do this, perhaps we will have a moment when we catch a glimpse of the smoothed and sparkling surface of our hearts, and then find ourselves enraptured in a mystical wonder, love, and praise for ways God has worked and continues to work in our lives through prayerTesting