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July 25^, 2010. MLC, Ocean View, NJ. Pr. Hartmut Fege, D. Min.

Lectionary 17, Pentecost 9. Gen. 18.20-32, Lk. 11.1-3, Mtt. 6.9-13

 

A couple of summers ago, just after we moved into the Grange a former member who had moved to Florida came in for a visit.  After the Lord’s Prayer, which is the one we most often use, he was heard to have asked, “When did they change the Lord’s Prayer?”

Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame and the “little town that time forgot” once said this about Lutherans:

            I have made fun of Lutherans for years. Who wouldn’t if you live in Minnesota?

            I have also sung with Lutherans and that is one of the main joys of my life, along with hot tubs and NJ sweet corn.

Lutherans like to sing except when it comes to a new hymn or a hymn with more than 4 stanzas. Lutherans believe in prayer but would practically die if you ask one to pray out loud…

As Jesus finishes praying, a disciple asks if he would teach him how to pray.

            When you pray say Father, let us hallow your name by the way we live as well as the words that       we speak. Let your kingdom come. Set the world right. Give us bread for today. Forgive us and we will do the same with those who have wronged us and keep us safe from all evil.

Since we started reading from the Gospel of Luke.

We have completed 11 out of the 24 chapters that make up the book; we are almost half- way.

We have heard about Samaritans who are “in” and priests and Levites who are “out”.

We have heard about Roman officers whose servants get well and widow's sons who are given a new lease on life… and we are told that the Kingdom belongs to those who give it all away; not to those who have second thoughts about it all.

And today we are told that forgiveness is linked to being forgiven.

It is not easy. Just ask any 4 year-old, who is told to go hug his little sister who he just clobbered… “But she hit me first.”

It doesn’t get any easier when we get older… there are families who have not spoken to each other for years!

Thy kingdom come… in The Press this Friday was a tiny little article by the AP. Let me read it to you:

WASHINGTON the Senate passed a $60 billion bill on Thursday night to fund the troop surge in Afghanistan after rejecting a 20 billion spending plan tacked on by the House.

What the 20 billion “tacked on bill” was for was for teachers layoffs, Pell Grants, $billion for summer jobs and $700 million for security along the US/Mexico border.

The last one is a waste anyway…

Making war is easier than taking care of people…

Think of it like this:

A friend shows up at midnight... he’s been on the road. When he gets to your house he is hungry and tired and you want to give him something to eat… But the fridge is empty. Not even a slice of bologna or cheese and worst of all, no bread.

You run across the street and beat on the door of your golf buddy and he tells you to stop drinking. And you say that’s not the problem… The problem is that I have unexpected company and nothing to give them…

First century houses of working-class people like the one Jesus came from were one room affairs with everyone living in one room… everyone, dogs, family, maybe even a rooster and hen, all on a dirt floor…

You keep beating on the door until the golf buddy opens up…

Jesus says he gets up just to stop you from waking up the whole neighborhood…

Prayer, Jesus says, is about persistence, perseverance, keeping it up…

That was then, what about now… How may of you pray? How many of you have given up?

Jesus knew that prayer is difficult… So he adds humor and tells us the story about two neighbors, one who needed bread, the other who was bedded down for the night.

I remember it well… It was raining cats and dogs. The doorbell woke me up at 2:00 a.m.

I listened maybe I was dreaming. MJ was awake too… it rang again. “Go down and see who it is,” she said. “You go down and see,” I said.

I turned on all the lights… and went to the side door. No one there.

I closed the door and it rang again.

Maybe it is the other door… but there is no light at the door… I picked up the flashlight and went to the door…   No one there either. Maybe someone is running back and forth and we are missing each other?

It rang again… this is getting spooky!  No midnight visitor, no ghost… just

me, now wide awake at 2:00 am. I decided that rain water had shorted out the remote doorbell.

Jesus injects a bit of irony in his illustration of prayer. 

The purpose of prayer he tells us, using down-to-earth words, is no different from what we do every day.

As good parents we give good stuff to our children. If they ask for food we don’t give them things that would hurt them…

So, if we as sinful parents know how to give good gifts, how much more does God give good gifts… and the greatest of all gifts is what Jesus calls the Holy Spirit! Hold to that for a moment.

Translation – when we pray “your kingdom come” we are reminded that KINGDOM is a synonym for God’s activity …

Luther was once criticized for stopping off at the local pub on the way home, to his beloved Kate.

How can you sit here with a pint of Ale while the Pope and the Kaiser are after you… he’s response was “I can drink my Wittenberg Beer while the Gospel runs its course.”

As he held high his Stein of Ale…

Our business is to do what we can, where we can, when we can… to witness to the Kingdom’s presence, bit by bit, step by step – even in us.

In closing I want to tell you about a woman named Sara Miles whom I have gotten to know through a book a friend gave me.

Sara came to the Christian life late in life.

She was a journalist reporting on the fighting in Latin America during the 80’s.

In her book “Jesus Freak” she tells how she came to be the director of a food pantry in San Francisco that feeds over 700 people each day. This is how she tells it:

            I walked into this building thinking– Hu, wonder what is going on here?

            I had wandered into a church that offers communion to everyone, including             strangers.

            A woman put a piece of bread in my hand and gave me a goblet of some rather             nasty tasting sweet wine. I ate the bread and was completely thunderstruck by             what I felt happening to me.  So I stood there crying, completely unsure of what             was happening.

            I got out of the church as quickly as I could before some strange creepy Christian             would try to chat with me, and came back the next week because I was hungry,             and kept coming back and kept coming back to take that bread. I think what I             discovered in that moment when I put the bread in my mouth and was so blown             away by the reality of Jesus was that the requirement for faith turned out NOT to             be believing in doctrine or rituals, or knowing how to behave in church or             being   the right kind of person or being raised correctly… The requirement for faith             seemed to be hunger. It was the hunger I had always had and the willingness to   be fed by something I didn’t understand.

If we go to God hungry for anything less than God we will come away empty.

If we go hungry for God, we will come away with the deepest of all of our hungers filled.

So we keep praying. We keep coming to the table to be fed by God because at the heart of all of our prayers, God is what we are praying for… that is what Jesus meant when he said God will give you the Holy Spirit… Himself. Amen