Series C
Pushy in Prayer
Pentecost 9
Luke 11:1-13
(also for Pentecost 20, Luke 18:1-8)
This past week, I
have been thinking about the words, bugging and bothering. I have
been thinking about those situations in which someone is bugging and
bothering me; they are being pushy and persistent. Those people have
crossed that fine line so I am feeling their pushiness and
persistence.
For example, the
other day down at Salt Water Park, I ran into Spence Braden, a
single father, and his little red haired, browned eyes, five year
old son by the name of Christopher. Young Chris had found portions
of sea shells, and this little five year old boy was bugging me to
identify the shells: the little necks, the butter clams, the horse
clams. Little Chris was persistent; he was pleasantly bothersome as
he repeatedly bugged me again and again to identify those sea
shells.
That’s the way
five year old children are. They bug you. They bother you. They are
pushy. They are persistent. They are bugging and bothersome as they
push for a new “game boy” or a new scooter. A few years ago,
they were bugging and bothering for Nintentos and Ataris. I remember
years ago how our children bugged us for new bicycles.
I have also
discovered that spouses can be bug and bother with the best of them.
In my marriage relationship, my wife bugs me no end about fixing the
dripping faucet, taking the garbage out, or getting rid of the
barrels of leaves. The nature of our marriage relationship is that
we bug and bother each other about all sorts of things.
Through the years,
I have discovered that you bug and bother people who are closest to
you. You don’t bother and bug family who are not close; you
don’t be persistent and pushy with neighbors who are not close
friends. It is only people who are the closest to you that would
tolerate you being so pushy and persistent.
We find this same
attitude in the Old Testament lesson for today. Father Abraham was a
close friend of God and walk with God daily, and out of that
closeness, felt free to bug God at certain times. In the story for
today, Abraham says to God: If you find fifty righteous people in
that wicked and immoral city, Sodom and Gomorrah, you won’t
destroy it, will you, God? God said, “No, if I find fifty
righteous people in the city, I will not destroy it.” “How about
forty righteous people?” “No, I will not destroy it.” “How
about thirty righteous people? Twenty? Ten?” This class story
reveals Abraham’s closeness to God and in those closeness, how
Father Abraham felt the freedom to bug God.
It is with these
stories that we approach the Gospel lesson for today about the
persistent friend at midnight in Luke, chapter eleven. But is it not
only this story but the parable from Luke 18, about the widow
whining night and day at the judge, that illustrates the theme for
today. Both of these classic parables of Jesus illustrate that we
are to bug and bother God, that we are to be pushy and persistent
with God in our prayer life. I would like to retell both stories.
As we have said
before, Jesus does not quote the philosophers of his day or the
erudite rabbis of his era. Rather, Jesus always finds moral and
spiritual truth in everyday experiences. And again, we discover
Jesus telling parables about everyday happenings.
The first parable
is this: It was about midnight and a friend unexpectedly showed up
to stay for the night. The friend had been perhaps walking from
sundown until midnight in order to avoid the hot dessert midday sun,
and so the friend shows up at midnight. The owner of the house does
not have any bread or wine to give his guest, and so the owner of
the house goes to his next door neighbor and knocks of the door
loudly. (Knock loudly on the pulpit or communion table.) He is
persistent in his knocking until a sleepy voice is heard, “I’m
asleep, and so are my kids and the donkeys and goats and chickens,
and you are going to wake everybody up.” Being a good, good friend
and neighbor, the owner of the first house is persistent in his
knocking until he wakes up his neighbor, his kids, his animals, and
his whole household.” Jesus then commented, “The neighbor will
give the wine and the bread, not because they are friends, but
because of the friends persistence.” And so also with you and me
in our prayer life, we are to be persistent and pushy, bugging and
bothering God with our requests. Jesus then continues with a very
famous saying, and “so I say to you. Ask and it shall be given
you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be open to
you.” Asking, seeking
and knocking are examples of being persistent and pushy.
Now, the second
parable is like the first. Again, Jesus finds his parables of
spiritual truth in everyday circumstances. Before this parable, the
Bible says, “We are always to pray and not lose heart.” Jesus
then tells this parable. There was a whining widow, with her
shrillness of voice, who persistently found the judge standing on at
a busy corner of the main gate to the city, and she persistently
whined to the judge to support her in his case against her accuser.
She leaned on the judge night and day, until he finally relented and
agreed to support her position.” And Jesus said, “And so it is
with us in prayer. We are to cry out to God night and day, with our
petitions.” In other words, the widow was bugging and bothersome,
pushy and persistent, and that is the way we are to be in our prayer
life. We are not to be reasonable and rational and proper in our
request, but we are to go over that fine line into being pushy and
persistent.
American Christians
don’t pray like this at all. American Christians knock on God’s
door once a day (knock once on wood pulpit or communion table)
whereas Jesus taught that we to knock often and long. There is an
enormous contrast being the teachings of Jesus about prayer (knock,
knock, knock, knock, knock) and the prayer life of American
Christians (knock). I would like to give you four reasons that
American Christians don’t pray much.
First, American
Christians are very busy. The richer a culture is, the less time it
has for prayer because money and wealth gives one so many
opportunities to be busy. Through research, we discover that the
average American Christian prays four minutes a day and the average
American pastor prays seven minutes a day. We are so busy, we just
don’t have time to pray. I recall the book about preaching by Dr.
Arndt Halvorson in which he said that the first thing to go in the
life of a busy pastor is his or her prayer life. That same principle
is true for all American Christians. In the life of a busy American
Christian, the first thing to be let go of is one’s prayer life.
Could I see a show of hands? How many of you are busy people? 99%
and the other 1% are lying. We are all busy people, and the first
thing to go in the life of busy people is our prayer life. …
Someone has suggested that if we only had 25% more time, we would
pray more. I think that is true: our prayer life would increase 25%
to five minutes from four minutes for the average lay person; to
nine minutes from seven minutes for the average pastor. Why don’t
American Christians pray very much? Because we are inordinately
busy.
A second reason
that American Christians don’t pray very much (e.g. four minutes a
day) is that we don’t believe prayer does that much good. For many
Americans, prayer is essentially talking to yourself; prayer is
positive pep talk; prayer is psychological motivation to be a better
person. … In the mid eighteen hundreds, in Great Briton, there was
an organization of Religion and Science that studied the efficacy of
prayer. The first study was to study the effects of prayer on the
royal family because no one in England was prayed for more than the
royal family. The Scientific Institute concluded that the royal
family was just as screwed up as anyone else, and all the prayers in
England did not help the royal family. A second study became a
classic which has been repeated often through the decades. There
were two hospital wings: wing A and wing B. People in neighboring
churches prayed intensely for all the sick in wing A; they didn’t
pray for anyone in wing B. Sure enough, the healing rate in both
hospital wings were about the same. Prayer did not help people
medically in wing A. … In other words, prayer is about as effective as star
gazing. It is beneficial to gaze at the stars; it is a lovely and
beautiful experience, but star gazing doesn’t change the stars.
Likewise, prayer is like star gazing. It is lovely and beautiful but
it does not change the mind of God. And so many American Christians
don’t pray much because they don’t think it does any good.
A third reason that
American Christians don’t pray very much (four minutes a day) is
that American Christians often believe that a good God should
protect them from the disasters of life, from the cancer, car
accidents and coronaries. When God doesn’t protect their friends
and family from cancer, car accidents and coronaries, then there
must not be a God. Following this logic, the Apostle Paul should
have been protected from his epileptic seizures. Three times Paul
asked God to remove his epileptic pain, and God didn’t protect
him. God should have protected Job from the disasters of life. God
should have protected the righteous man, Job, from the loss of his
wife, children, healthy body, wealth and riches. When God
didn’t’ protect Job from personal and economic disaster, that
proves that prayer doesn’t really do any good. God should have
protected Mother Mary from the loss of her son on Good Friday. She
was at the foot of that cross, most like praying that God would
prevent his disaster from happening. And when God didn’t prevent
the disaster from happening, that proves that prayer doesn’t do
any good. And so American Christians often don’t pray very much
because we intuitively believe that God should protect us from the
disasters of life; that God should prevent the disasters of life
from happening to us and our loved ones.
A fourth reason
that American Christians don’t pray very much is that we don’t
walk closely with God. To have any close relationship, you need to
talk often and deeply. You can’t have a close relationship with
anyone without persistent intimate conversation. That is just the
way it is with marriage, family, friendship, and God. Four minutes a
day is not much intimate conversation with God.
And so if you add
it all up, if you add up all these reasons and more, American
Christians ultimately conclude that prayer doesn’t work, that it
is like star gazing, that it doesn’t change the nature of things.
And so our society concludes that prayer doesn’t work. Our
society, that is addicted to sex and violence, that our televisions
are filled with so much sex and violence that we have actually
become numb to it. Our society,
that is filled with broken down marriages and broken down
families. Our society, that has the highest rate of people in prison
in the industrial world. Our society, that has twenty percent of our
children living in poverty. Our
society, that has the largest economic difference between the rich
and the poor. Our society, that is known world wide for our moral
decadence and spiritual poverty. Our society then concludes that
prayer doesn’t’ work. … It is similar to finding a drunk on
the street and in the midst of his drunkenness to ask him, “Does
alcoholic treatment work?” and he replies, “O no. Not at all.”
And so it is with asking American Christian who pray four minutes a
day, “Does prayer work?” And the American Christian replies,
“Well, I don’t think so.” Whereas, if you ask Christians in
South America, Asia and Africa about the effectiveness of prayer,
they answer, “O yes. Prayer works enormously well.” You don’t
ask for a drunk for advice about drinking and you don’t ask
American Christians for advice about prayer.
Jesus was not at
all like this. Prayer was enormously vital to him. I would like to
share with you four Biblical facts about prayer.
First, Jesus was a
man of prayer. All through his life, we learn that Jesus was vital
in his prayer life. In the gospel lesson for today, we notice that
the disciples, after they saw that Jesus had finished praying, they
approached him and asked Jesus to teach them to pray. They
physically observed Jesus praying; they saw and experienced him
praying. … Jesus prayed ritually and his ritual prayers were real
and authentic. That is, he prayed first thing in the morning to
thank God for the night. Do you? He prayed at noon time, to thank
God for the day. Do you? He prayed to God before he fell asleep,
thanking God for the day and asking God to keep him through the
night. Do you? He also prayed at very meal, before breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. Jesus knew that all food for his body was a gift from
God, and so he thanked God at every meal. Do you?
Jesus’s rituals for prayer were real and authentic for him.
… Jesus also prayed at all the disaster times of life such as at
the temptation by the devil in the wilderness or in the garden of
Gethsemane or on the cross itself and in the midst of all of its
pain. Jesus also prayed at the blessed times of life such as the
wedding Cana or his miracles and healings. During good times and bad
times and at all times, Jesus was a man of devout prayer, and seeing
that Jesus was a man of devout prayer, his disciples asked him to
teach them to pray.
A second Scriptural
fact is that Jesus wanted his disciples to be people of prayer. The
first quality that his disciples asked for was to learn how to pray.
Before they asked for the power to preach. Before they asked for the
power to do miracles and healings. Before anything else, they asked
Jesus to teach them to pray, and Jesus’ disciples have been asking
that same question through the centuries: Jesus, teach us to pray.
… Church history shows that disciples pray fervently and
faithfully. Mother Teresa is the greatest Christian of our century
and before and after she received the Nobel Price, she began her day
at 4:00 AM with prayer. The same is true of Martin Luther who wrote
numerous volumes of religious books and was the Father of the
Reformation. Before he was famous and after he was famous, he was up
each day at 4:00 AM to pray. And so it is with our current Pope
Paul. If you read books about his life, you learn about his devout
prayer. I am not suggesting that any of us are getting up at 4:00 AM
to pray, but that their prayer lives are signs to us of their
deepest of faith and devotion that we imitate in our own lives. It
is a Biblical fact: Jesus wanted his disciples to be people of
devout prayer.
A third Biblical
fact is this: Christians are to be bugging and bothersome,
persistent and pushy in our prayer life. We find this theme often.
From the book of Romans: be constant in prayer. From Ephesians, pray
at all times. From Colossians: be steadfast in prayer. From
Thessalonians: pray constantly. We hear it from the parable in Luke
18. Pray always and do not lose heart. We are to cry night and day
like a whining widow pleading her case. We hear it in the Gospel
lesson for today from Luke 11: the neighbor, knocking, knocking,
knocking, knocking, knocking, so persistent, so pushy. And so it is
with our prayer life. … In the story for today, we hear three
teachings of Christ which are an illustration of the parable: “Ask
and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the
door will be opened to you.” This teaching is connected to the
parable about persistence (both the parable and the teaching use the
word, knock) and it is not to be taken literally. We are to ask,
seek and knock and these are samples of persistence. Taken
literally, asking, seeking and knocking indicate that the prayer
will be answered positively for you. This is not what it means. I
remember intensely praying that Pat Dale would get over her brain
tumor but after years of medical treatments and prayers, she died. I
remember praying intensely for Ray Osterloh, but after years of
medical treatments and prayers, he died. The same for the Skelly
baby. For so many others. These teachings of Jesus are not to be
taken literally but are examples that we Christians are to be
persistent in our knocking on God’s door and persistent in our
prayer life.
A fourth Biblical
fact is that God answers prayers. Christians have always kept track
of who and want they have prayed for and are often amazed at how
faithfully God has answered our prayers, but not always in ways that
we had asked. … Last year, when I was sick and almost died, many
of you prayed deeply for my health and my family and those prayers
made a difference. Eventually, I get better. My neighbor, Nancy
Kennedy, has a mother from Pasco, Washington, and I was on the list
of her mother’s prayer group. One day, after I was better, I was
out on our deck and my neighbor’s mother from Pasco was visiting.
Her mother shouted from her deck to mine: “Is that you Pastor
Markquart? Are you better?” “Yes, I shouted back.” “Good,”
she replied. “We will cross you off our prayer list.” I am sure
a line was drawn through my name and the word, “answered” was
written. My wife is the same. She has a long list of people and
prayers through the years and she is constantly amazed at how many
prayers are answered in ways that pleases her, but in God’s good
time. … The most important prayer request is that God would give
us his Holy Spirit, so that we begin to pray in the Spirit and not
pray in the flesh. The resource and energy behind all prayer is the
Holy Spirit living within, and so we Christians ask for the Holy
Spirit to be given to us. You will notice this in the last sentence
of the Gospel lesson for today, “And God gives us the Holy Spirit.” The indwelling of
God’s Holy Spirit in us is what enables us to pray spiritually so
that our prayers are not merely mental exercises.
So these are the
four Biblical facts about prayer: Jesus was a person of devout
prayer; Jesus wanted his disciples to be people of devout prayer; we
are to pray with perseverance and persistence, with bugging and
bothersome qualities; and pray is effective and changes not only us
but the heart and mind of God.
The last point is
brief. I would like to tell you about my own prayer life. I really
don’t like to tell you these things. Like a lot of things in life,
one is private about these matters. But like stewardship and
tithing, I need to talk openly about my giving patterns. So also, I
need to talk opening about prayer and the patterns of my prayer
life. Like all disciples, I ask Jesus to teach me about prayer. I
have not been a very good prayer, and so I have asked Jesus on a
number of occasions to help me in my prayer life. Those prayers have
been answered over time and my prayer life has developed. Every
person of prayer is unique, and there is a particular individuality
to my prayer life as well. Yes, the rituals of prayer are important
to me. First thing in the morning, at noon, and the last thing at
night. Prayer of thanksgiving at all meals is important. These
rituals are real and important. But also, there are other prayers.
This is what happens first thing in the morning: I pray m mother’s
morning prayer that many of you know. I then pray three Scripture
passages: Psalm 23 with the Lord is MY shepherd, holding the fourth
finger of the left hand. I also pray Psalm 139 and I Corinthians 13.
I then pray for my family: my wife, Jan; her parents, my
parents, my siblings and their spouses. I then pray for my children,
from the oldest to the youngest, and their spouses. I pray for
myself as part of my family. I then pray for my friends and in that
sequence, I name personally twenty five men friends. Then the
Lord’s Prayer. I like to pray when alone in the car. I like to
pray when walking alone. It is harder to pray with people around in
those situations. I
have discovered that I have a long time spiritual disease: I have
spiritual attention, deficit disorder. That is, I am spiritually
flighty, and as I pray during any of the above, my mind will fly in
its flightiness. Again and again, I will start the 23rd
psalm or Psalm 139 because I get four phrases into it, and my
spiritual flightiness takes over. Like last week on the sermon about
listening, a person gradually learns to listen and a person
gradually learns to pray in the Spirit where the Spirit of God pulls
my Spirit into the spirit of prayer. Through the years, I have
learned to pray with people on the telephone and now leave many
prayers on member’s answering machines and they tell me they save
those prayers. I also pray for people in the prayers of the church.
Of course, during the day, I will be thinking and praying for a
friend in their need and myself in my need. What I am suggesting to
you is that I have asked Jesus often to teach me to pray and Jesus
has been forever teaching me.
Yes,
that is what happened in the Gospel story for today. The disciples
saw Jesus finish his prayers and they went us to him to ask him to
teach them to pray. I am sure that is one of the reasons that you
are in church today. You too have asked Jesus to teach you to pray
and that prayer has been answered and is continually be answered.
Amen.
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