The special gift of Christian prayer

Sermon for Rogate – Easter 5

James 1:22-27  +  John 16:23-30

The national day of prayer came and went this past week. Some years it gets more publicity than others. What should we think about such a day? More importantly, what does God want you to know about prayer, and what does He want you to do with what you know, so that, as James said in the Epistle, you may be, not just hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word?

The Jews were very familiar with prayer from the Old Testament, with beautiful examples filling especially the Psalter. And Jesus taught His disciples about prayer on many occasions—with the Lord’s Prayer, with parables urging Christians to pray often and persistently, and with His own example. How often He sought a private place so that He could pray! But as He, the Son of God, was about to fulfill His mission on earth (again, our Gospel is from Jesus’ discourse on Maundy Thursday evening), there would be an important change in the nature of prayer.

Some things wouldn’t change, like what prayer is. Praying, most broadly, is simply talking to God. But a good prayer, a godly prayer, isn’t just babbling or rambling. Prayer is talking to God with thanksgiving and praise. Prayer is talking to God with a confession of your sins or weaknesses or needs. But primarily, to pray is to ask God for something. God wants you to ask Him for things. Someone will say, “Oh, but that’s selfish. We spend too much time asking God for things already!” On the contrary, we don’t spend nearly enough. God is angered at any time when we imagine that we don’t need anything from Him, or whenever we think that He is unwilling to hear or to help us in our need. So ask for what you need, Jesus says. That’s always been the main purpose of prayer.

What was about to change, though, for Jesus’ disciples—and, really, for all people—was the way in which prayers were to be offered from then on. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Now, genuine prayer always had to be to the true God; prayers offered to idols or false gods were never valid. In the Old Testament, the Jews prayed to the true God who revealed Himself to Moses, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But now God has revealed Himself more fully as the one God who is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is the Father who sent His Son to be the sacrifice and the Mediator for mankind. God is the Son who fulfilled His Father’s will and reigns at God’s right hand. God is the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son and brings His Word to us. From now on, men are to approach God the Father in prayer specifically through Jesus the Christ, asking God the Father to hear us in Jesus’ name. That means, not necessary adding the words “in Jesus’ name” to every prayer. It means asking the Father to hear us for the sake of Jesus, because of Jesus’ saving work on our behalf and on the basis of Jesus’ intercession on our behalf. Now that Jesus has been revealed, crucified, risen and ascended, all prayers to God must be offered through faith in Jesus, who is “the one Mediator between God and man.”

That’s the first thing to understand about prayer, and it’s what makes a “national day of prayer” impossible, and even sacrilegious, because no nation on earth confesses that the name of Jesus alone saves, and any prayer offered to God that’s not in the name of Jesus—trusting in Jesus as the one and only Mediator—is open idolatry.

Now, for those of us who do know how to approach God the Father in Jesus’ name, we’ve been given a solemn command by God: You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. That’s the Second Commandment. It tells us not to misuse God’s name, but that also means we are supposed to use God’s name the right way. God commands us to use His name to pray to Him. And Jesus Himself says, Ask! So prayer has God’s command attached to it. It isn’t optional. We are to pray each day because God commands us to. Pray in obedience to Him, as Luther points out in the Large Catechism. Of course, don’t fool yourself, as many people do, into thinking that, as long as you’re praying regularly in your home, that’s basically all God commands, as if He didn’t also command you to go to church, to hear His word, to use His Sacraments, to support the ministry of the church with your offerings. All these things are commanded by God, and Christians must do them, not in order to earn God’s favor or the forgiveness of sins, but in the new obedience that God requires of those whom He has saved by faith in Christ and whom He is daily renewing by His Spirit.

Pray also because of the promise of Jesus. Whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Can you comprehend just how great a promise that is? The one who created all things, preserves all things, rules over all things, has promised to give you “whatever you ask in Jesus’ name.” So why wouldn’t you pray? Why? Because this wretched sinful flesh is sluggish and cold, and the devil drives you away from prayer, and the world gives you so many “better” things to do with your time. But over all those things that stand in the way of prayer stands the command and the promise of Jesus, Ask! And, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.

For what are we to ask? There are seven things Jesus teaches us to ask for, seven requests or petitions. You know them as they make up the Lord’s Prayer. First and foremost, God would have us pray for His name to be holy among us, for His kingdom to come, and for His will to be done among us. Then He would have us pray for daily bread—for all that we need for our life on earth. Then we are to pray that God would forgive us our trespasses, with the understanding that we, too, are to forgive those who trespass against us. We are to ask God to lead us away from temptation, and to deliver us from evil. Every need that you have in your life falls within the scope of those petitions. Study your Catechism—first the Small, then the Large, and see how much light God has shed on prayer in Martin Luther’s summaries!

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for specific things, too. Jesus tells us to ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into His harvest. Paul commands us to pray for kings and all who are in authority. He asks us to pray for ministers of the Word and for all the churches, for all the saints of God, and for one another. James tells to pray for wisdom.

And when you don’t know what else to pray for, don’t despair. It’s yet another reason why God has sent down His Holy Spirit to dwell with us here on earth in this Christian Church. As Paul writes, For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Why will God hear and answer these prayers? Not only because He has commanded it. Not only because He has promised it. Not only because we ask for things according to His will, for things He Himself wants to give. But, as Jesus says in the Gospel, because the Father loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God. The Father loves you. This is a different word in Greek for love than “God so loved the world, etc.” That word is the big word that expresses God’s selfless devotion to the world, not because He sees anything attractive about the world, but because God chooses to love it anyway. But here in our Gospel, it’s the friendship kind of love. The love of mutual benefit, love where there is something likable in the other, something we have in common with each other. What is that thing that the Father finds likable in you, the thing that He has in common with you? It’s the very thing His Spirit has worked in you, a love for Jesus. “This one loves My beloved Son. This one believes in Jesus, whom I sent to be the world’s Savior. Of course I will hear! Of course I will help!” Isn’t that amazing? You couldn’t love or believe in Jesus by nature. But God’s own Spirit has worked faith and love in your heart, and now God sees that love as the very reason why He should hear your prayers and help you in your need.

This is the gift of prayer—Christian prayer. Use it! Use it each and every day, for all the reasons we’ve considered today. You know the true God and how to approach Him. He’s commanded you to pray. He’s promised to hear. He’s taught you what to pray for. And He’s tied it all to Christ Jesus, the beloved Son of God, whom you also love, and for whose sake the Father also loves you. So ask, as dear children ask their Father! And when you ask, remember to give thanks for this special gift of Christian prayer. Amen.