Date: July 21st & 24th
Preacher: Pastor Ashley Rosa-Ruggieri
First Reading: Genesis 18:20-32
Psalmody: Psalm 138
Second Reading: Colossians 2:6-15
Gospel: Luke 11:1-13
During my time in seminary, one of the requirements in my pastoral formation included being a hospital chaplain for a few months. My chaplaincy experience was during the summer after my first year of classes, and I was at a hospital on the west side of Chicago that was a Level 1 Trauma Center. Part of our program was that once a week, we would receive the chaplain pager, and stay at the hospital overnight for an on-call shift. The neighborhoods around my hospital had a large Hispanic population, and so it was common for patients to show up and only speak Spanish at my on-call shifts in the ER. Although I speak Spanish, there was often still a disconnect because I did not know medical words or because I did not know church words. This was before my field work in Hispanic worship contexts, and so I would sometimes feel ill-equipped to care for these patients.
One specific night I was with a family who had one young man in the ER and a young woman giving birth in labor and delivery, as they were in an accident on the way to the hospital. They were siblings. Both of them ended up fine and healthy—the baby too, but in those moments of waiting, a large group of family had gathered together in one of our family rooms. When I went to visit the family, they began to form a circle and asked me if I would offer them a prayer in this time as the chaplain. I did the best that I could in Spanish, though frustrated that there were some words I did not know as I was praying. At the end of the prayer, I realized that even when I did not know what to pray or how to pray, there was one prayer that this family most likely knew. I didn’t know all of it in Spanish, at least not by memory, and so I took a chance. As my own words of prayer ended, I said, “Padre Nuestro, que estás en el Cielo…” Our Father in heaven… Immediately, they began to pray the Lord’s Prayer all together, and I joined when I could. That day taught me the value in having a formula of prayer to connect Christians from many places and languages, when knowing what to pray is difficult.
Our Gospel reading today starts out with one of Jesus’s disciples asking him to teach them how to pray. Jesus responds by providing a formula of prayer. It is a formula we recognize from our own worship services, as it is one that has been tied to Christianity for hundreds of years. It is one that unites us, even when some of our other beliefs might be different. We have all been taught this prayer by Jesus, and that gift has blessed us with a way to pray at any time when it is hard to find the words ourselves. You may notice, however, that Jesus does not stop his response at only teaching the Lord’s Prayer. True to his common actions, Jesus follows up this answer with a parable of sorts, a story to deepen the disciples understanding.
Jesus tells a story about how one friend goes to another late at night and knocks on the door. The first friend says they are knocking because a third friend has come to visit and is in need of bread. The second friend, who is in bed and does not want to move or is not able to because his children are in the bed too, tells the first friend to go away. Jesus then says that because of the first friend’s persistence in knocking and asking, the second friend will eventually open the door and help provide bread for the third friend. This story from Jesus ends with a popularly quoted verse: “Ask and it will be given, search and you will find, knock and the door shall be opened.”
Quite often, this quoted verse is interpreted to mean that when we ask something in prayer, we are always answered in the way we want. But what if we consider the story that this verse follows? In the story, there are three friends, and the second friend acts as a connection between the first and the third. The second friend is not asking, searching, or knocking for themself, they are knocking for the third friend who has shown up at their house and needs to be fed. Jesus is not saying that in our own personal prayers everything that we ask for ourselves will be given to us automatically. Rather, when we consider the story that this verse is explaining, Jesus is showing how caring for one another in community, interceding for one another in prayer and action, helps to give everyone what they need. Ask for aid to help your neighbor and they will be given it, search out the policies or systems to care for your neighbor and you will find them, knock on the door of those in power while standing with those in need and the door will be opened. This is another way of Jesus showing us the kingdom of God and God’s purpose for us to live in community.
This story and explanation follow the Lord’s Prayer as a reminder that we pray in community. Jesus is saying, this is how you pray with words, and then, this is how your pray with actions. You pray for God’s will to be done, for daily bread, for forgiveness and forgiving others, and then you care for your neighbors to form a community where those prayers encourage your asking, searching, and knocking on the door to a new way of life. And then in the end, Jesus gives us a reminder of the intercessor gifted to us as a sign of God’s presence among us. The Holy Spirit walks with us in our actions and helps us to pray through our own sighs when they are too deep for words. Ending this explanation with the reminder of the Holy Spirit gives us one last push of confidence that when we do things around us to love our God and neighbor, to grow our community into the kingdom of God we pray for the Lord to bring about through us, the Holy Spirit is with us each step of the way. So that whenever we turn to the Lord’s Prayer as an unchanging form of prayer, we are not alone, and we are not discouraged. Rather, we are reminded of the huge community we are a part of, who all pray this same prayer in their own way, so that our words and actions are all living prayers that constantly seek the kingdom of God. May the words of the Lord’s Prayer continue to unite us in mission, and may the gift of the Holy Spirit accompany us in our asking, searching, and knocking for the betterment of our neighbors. Thanks be to God.