July 24, 2016

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The Rev. J.D. McQueen, II - All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Diego, CA

When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, he starts with a specific prayer, but more than that he’s explaining to them why we pray because we often get it wrong, without even realizing it.

So why do we pray?

v Prayer is not therapy, though aspects of it can be therapeutic.

v Prayer is not about achieving a higher state of consciousness, though it’s not at all uncommon for people to have mystical experiences in prayer.

v And even though God answers our prayers, prayer is not a magic formula for getting what we want.

v In fact, prayer is much more about learning to want what we get.

Prayer is a conversion of our hearts because it’s a turning our lives over to God and becoming like him.

v We’re made in his image and so we find our greatest fulfilment when his will becomes our will; when we love what he loves and desire what he desires.

v We find our deepest purpose when we let him lead us to the acts of love that bring about those desires on earth.

That’s why in the more developed version that Matthew gives us, we start by praying, “hallowed be thy name,” “thy kingdom come,” and “thy will be done.”

v It’s not a passive staying out of God’s way or simply being resigned to him doing what he wants.

v That’s not conversion; it’s oppression.

v If we want to be truly free, we have to surrender our lives, with all of our cares and concerns, to him, which is why Jesus reminds us from the start that God is our Father.

If we always remember that God is our Father, we’ll have the humility to know what we are children, with needs that we can’t meet on our own.

v So through all the petitions, Jesus is encouraging us to bring everything to him – God wants us to come to him with our material need.

v He wants us to bring him the pain of broken relationships and the seemingly irreconcilable debts we have with our brothers and sisters.

v He wants us to run to him when we’re tempted and faced with the evils and dangers of this world.

So we come to God humbly as children in need, but also with the boldness and confidence that comes from being his children.

v Who but the prince or princess can wake up the king in the middle of the night to demand a glass of water?

v And if we’re not ready to believe in God loving us that much, Jesus assures us with the image of the man’s imperfect response to his friend’s midnight request for bread.

v Jesus even goes so far as to say that everyone who asks, receives; that he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened.

Now, you don’t have to think about this too long before you say, “Wait a second, Jesus – how can you say that God always hears and answers our prayers, when we don’t always get what we pray for?

v Because God is our heavenly Father who always gives good gifts to his children.

v Jesus points out that when hungry children ask for fish and eggs, we don’t turn around and give them snakes and scorpions.

v We give them what will sustain them and help them grow, not something that will kill them.

Of course, children don’t always ask for good things like fish and eggs.

v In fact, hungry children rarely ask for the kinds of things that will best sustain them and help them grow, and younger children try to eat all kinds of things that aren’t even food!

v So then, no matter what you’re doing, raising children always comes back to some combination of protecting them from themselves, teaching them what’s best, and showing them how to get it.

v But while my goal is for Everett and Mattie to grow up and be free from relying on me, God is doing the same things, but with the opposite goal – he wants us to get better at being children, and become totally reliant on him.

For just a glimpse of what that looks like, take the first verse of today’s psalm: “I will give thanks to you O LORD, with my whole heart…”

v He’s saying, “Even when I’m uncomfortable or suffering, no matter the circumstances, I will praise and thank you with everything that I am.”

v We don’t always get what we want, so the only way to give thanks with our whole heart – not compromising or hedging our bets, not holding anything back – is by learning to want what we get.

Then, he shows us why we would even want to do this, when he adds, “before the gods I will sing your praise.”

v What’s that? That’s the natural consequence of wanting what we get.

v When he says “the gods,” he means all of the other things that we might turn to as needy children – the things that aren’t best for us, but will take the edge off of our sadness, hunger, loneliness, and other suffering.

v When he hasn’t gotten what he wants, instead of sulking, wallowing, or trying to get it somewhere else, the psalmist will stand up, look those lesser things in the face, and praise God for loving him better than he could love himself.

That’s what begins to happen when we get prayer right and our hearts are converted.

v We’ll begin to see how we need circumstances that challenge us because they strengthen us to receive greater joys.

v We can’t just be handed all that God wants to give because the greater something is, the more it demands of us.

v And whenever something demands more of us than we have to give, it’s crushing, no matter how good it might be.

With converted hearts we can always praise God because we can trust that our suffering is never meaningless, but always a preparation for something more precious and beautiful.

v What seemed like a serpent becomes a fish, a scorpion becomes an egg.

v What seemed like oppression becomes freedom.

v What seemed hopeless becomes a promise.

That’s why we pray – because learning to want what we get from God is the only way to give our hearts what they really want.