The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

This Gospel leaves us with more questions than answers.  The first few verses are the familiar words of the Lord’s Prayer a crash course offered by Jesus at the request of the disciples. Then we hear this little story of the man who knocks on his neighbor’s door at midnight asking for bread to feed his unexpected guests.

Now really, can you imagine that happening in today’s culture? If someone bangs relentlessly on our door later than 10 pm, we’re likely to call the police. But Jesus is telling the parable in a very different time and place. It meant something for his first-century audience because the most important commodity valued in that society was hospitality.

So, this story speaks to that standard and is yet another instance when Jesus references the radical hospitality of God—a God who will get up at midnight from a sound sleep to answer the door and give us bread when we ask.

But this is also a parable that touts persistence—especially in terms of prayer. So, does God only answer us if we keep banging on the door, in other words ask and ask and ask? And what If I’m asking for something and someone else is asking for the opposite thing?

What if you pray for a sunny day because you are having a family barbecue and the local farmers are praying for rain? To whom does God listen first or most? Does God have a threshold for boring, whiny prayers? Yes, this Gospel leaves us with more questions than answers.

Much wisdom and humor has been written about prayer. Comedian Myron Cohen told the story of the Jewish grandmother watching her grandchild playing on the beach when a huge wave takes him out to sea. “Please God, “she pleads I beg of you to save my only grandson.” And another wave washes the boy back onto the beach, good as new. She looks up to heaven and adds, “He had a hat!”

President Jimmy Carter once said that “God answers all prayers. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer, “You’ve got to be kidding!” And President, Abraham Lincoln, said that he had been driven many times to his knees by the overwhelming conviction that he had nowhere else to go. I can certainly relate to that.

American Journalist, Mignon McLaughlin, said “I often pray, though I’m not really sure Anyone’s listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case God is literary.” Sounds like an Episcopalian to me. In her book Take this Bread author Sarah Miles asks a friend “How do you pray?” “Well,” she said, “I usually start off, ‘Okay, what the hell is going on here, God?’”

Since I’m not sure what more I can add to what Jesus told this morning about prayer, I will end with one more story.

A mother sent her fifth-grade boy up to bed. In a few minutes she went to make sure that he was getting in bed. When she stuck her head into his room, she saw that he was kneeling beside his bed in prayer.

Pausing to listen to his prayers, she heard her son praying over and over again. "Let it be Tokyo! Please dear God, let it be Tokyo!"

When he finished his prayers, she asked him, "What did you mean, ‘Let it be Tokyo’?"

"Oh," the boy said with embarrassment, "we had our geography exam today and I was praying that God would make Tokyo the capital of France."

Prayer is not a magical means by which we get God to do what we want. Prayer is an inner openness to God which allows his divine power to be released in us.

Ultimately, the power of prayer is not that we succeed in changing God, but that God succeeds in changing us. And it’s a life long process.