July 27, 2025
Pentecost 7/Proper 12, Year C
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Essex, CT
Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 11:1-13
All of the gospel accounts tell of the times Jesus went away by himself to pray. It is clear that he found strength and sustenance by regular, undistracted time in communion with the one he called Father. Sure, there were plenty of times when his prayer was interrupted by the crowds who followed him, but prayer, for Jesus, was as necessary as water in the desert.
If that is the case, why did it take so long for him to teach this to his disciples? Was he waiting for them to ask? Maybe he worried that they would misunderstand what prayer actually is. Many Christians in our own time certainly misunderstand what prayer is. Given the impetuosity with which some of his followers wanted to call down fire and brimstone or work miracles like some kind of magic trick, maybe Jesus wanted them to at least figure out that prayer is not a coin you put in the God vending machine. They needed to learn what to pray for as well as how to pray.
I believe that prayer is the most misunderstood of all the spiritual disciplines. It’s not our fault, really. Jesus said to ask, and it would be given, so we do an awful lot of asking and end up devastated when those prayers are not answered the way we hoped.
Heal my child.
Help me find a job.
Let me beat this cancer.
And when those things don’t happen, it’s easy to give up. To believe that God doesn’t really hear our prayers or answer our prayers. And if sometimes God does answer our prayers but not in the way we most need in that moment, that isn’t much comfort when we are standing at the graveside, is it?
So, why do we pray at all?
Because Jesus did, and the way he teaches the disciples to pray in Luke, especially, helps us to understand why.
In this version of the prayer, Jesus omits the first-person-plural possessive. He doesn’t say “Our Father.” It’s almost like he’s teaching them a lesson without telling them he’s teaching them a lesson. God is not just our Father. He’s their Father, too. He’s all y’all’s Father. The one holy God is the God of all of us, and when we pray as Jesus did, addressing the Father as abba, or papa, or whatever word you would use to bring you close to the One who hears prayer – that’s how you pray. And this Father is not, according to Luke, in some far-off heaven. It’s just Father, Abba, hallowed – holy – is your name.
Pray that this God-of-all will do what God would do, would bring God’s reign on earth, would give us bread each day. Daily bread. Like the Israelites relying on manna in the wilderness that spoiled if they gathered more than a day’s worth, we don’t pray for more than sustenance, just enough for today. The images of starving children in Gaza whose need for daily bread is being denied not by God, but by an enemy that prevents supplies from coming and bombs the people who gather in desperation when they do come, as a people, we can insist, we can refuse to send arms, until supplies of at least bread flow freely. Just daily bread.
And so, we need to pray also that we would know how to forgive, and to be delivered from such evil. This is the kind of persistence in prayer that Jesus teaches, speaking with God that comes as easy as breathing, as carrying on a conversation with a parent who loves us, not a remote, distant invisible deity, but a God who took on our very flesh.
In our Eucharistic liturgy, we claim that we are bold to say this prayer, to speak with God as Jesus did, because Jesus’s Father is ours, too. And if we are bold enough to say this prayer every day, we are praying for a new world order, one in which we not only say God reigns, but we act as if God reigns. Now, not later. That’s not just bold, it audacious.
We don’t just pray for the hungry to be fed, we feed them.
We don’t just pray for the lonely to be comforted, we visit them.
We don’t just pray for the sick, we walk with them through their illness.
We don’t just pray for the grieving, we comfort them.
We don’t just pray for the children of Gaza, we have our legislators and decision-makers on speed-dial to advocate on their behalf.
This is how prayer works.
And if we do these things, maybe, just maybe, we are answering someone else’s prayer.
Prayer is a subversive activity. It’s a denial of worldly power. A relinquishing of reliance on our own efficacy, our own power. It’s trusting that God hears and guides our feet.
One of the most famous quotes that wasn’t actually said by someone is from the movie Shadowlands in which Anthony Hopkins, who plays C.S. Lewis, is talking with a friend about his dying wife, Joy, and the friend tells him to keep praying and God will hear. Hopkins as Lewis says, “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.”[1]
Prayer has a way of changing us so that our hearts and minds are more aligned with God’s will rather than our own. Our hearts are tuned to see God’s grace. Be persistent in prayer, not because God doesn’t hear you the first time and wants you to beg, but because in our prayer we are spending time with the one who created us and whose great longing in the creation of humankind was simply to be in relationship with us. God promises the gift of the Holy Spirit to all who ask. I wonder what would happen if all of us, instead of praying for success or health or some outcome we desire simply woke up every morning, and before our feet hit the floor, we prayed:
Abba/Father: Holy is your name. May your reign come. Give us bread for today, and forgive our sins as we forgive others. Don’t bring us to the time of trial.
Pray in whatever words are most meaningful for you but pray as if you are talking to someone who can’t get enough of listening to your voice. Who loves you without measure.
Nancy Desnoyers, whose funeral was held here yesterday morning, kept a copy of a rule of life written by her youth group right here at St. John’s back in 1954. The first thing on that Rule of Life? Pray daily, at least morning and evening. It refers to the prayer book and other prayer resources to help.
Let’s try it. Start tomorrow morning. Pray the words Jesus taught his followers. We might be surprised at the power we unleash on a world in desperate need of it.