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July 28, 2013 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10AM.
First Reading: Genesis 18:20-32
Epistle: Colossians 2:12-14; Gospel: Luke 11:1-13

"...how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.

Before I arrived in London, nearly 20 years ago, I lived in San Francisco. When I arrived there in January 1993, I went church-shopping. At Grace Cathedral no one spoke to me except the lady at coffee hour, who asked whether I wanted one or two sugars in my drink. At All Saints Haight-Ashbury, I sat right next to the thurifer-station in the centre aisle, and came down with bronchitis as a result. At St. Aidan’s, I arrived on their annual meeting Sunday. Their meeting was conducted between the Gospel and the Creed, and I was bored witless through listening to reports about events and people I knew nothing about. At Trinity, I was greeted, accompanied at coffee hour by a church member who introduced me to various people, and the Rector called me on Monday evening and invited me to a parish dinner at his residence. No prize for guessing which church I attended that year.

The Rector was a priest named Robert Warren Cromey, who was, and is, a powerful preacher and teacher in the Episcopal Church. He marched with civil-rights leaders in Alabama during the early 1960’s. He helped organise the first demonstrations for civil rights for lesbian and gay people in San Francisco. He was a perennial irritant to Bishops of California, who by turns ignored his letters to the editor in the local newspaper and tried to move him along to retirement.

Robert’s sermons were memorable, but for me, none were more memorable than the one he preached on this very passage. The theme was: “Prayer doesn’t work on God, it works on us.”

This was not original with Robert, and I’m unable to trace the source, but it’s worth examining in the light of this Gospel passage.

When I was a child, I thought of prayer as something like a private phoneline to God. I would pray for something like good grades on a test, or help with losing weight, or some other favour. God would listen to me at the other end of the celestial phoneline and either grant my prayer, or not. When it wasn’t granted, I thought it was because I wasn’t good enough to have my prayer granted, or perhaps God had been distracted by some other more pressing prayer, or perhaps there was static on the line.

I think that lots of people began their prayer lives in this way. And, even as adults, we continue to believe that, somehow, we can get through on that heavenly phoneline. Nowadays, it would be a mobile phone, of course, and God would be on Whatsapp, SMS text message, Facebook, and Twitter. So we would have multiple ways of getting through.

But, sometimes we don’t get through. A loved one, for whom we prayed, dies. A favour we need in order to be happy, doesn’t come about. It might be that, like Sam, the man who prayed for a Lotto win which he never got, we get angry at God for not granting our dearest prayer.

God then said to Sam: “You know why I haven’t granted your request, Sam? Do me a favour. Buy a Lotto ticket.”

God is not a heavenly jobcentre. God does not sit around waiting for us to ask for something. God doesn’t arbitrarily grant or deny our prayer petitions.

God listens to us. We are assured of that: in the Gospel Jesus says, “...how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Have any of you just sat or knelt and prayed at a time when life was giving you some hard knocks? I have. At those times when you’re feeling down, and put upon, and fearful, do you pray? I do. Some people try counting sheep when they can’t fall asleep. I pray, silently.

None of these prayers work on God. They work on us. Does prayer at a turbulent time in your life help you deal with events by calling God’s presence into your day? It does for me. If you pray when you fear for the future, does the presence of God help you face the future with courage and strength? It does for me. When you’re reminded through prayer of God’s presence when you sleep at night does that help you shrug off the cares of the day? It does for me.

Prayers of thankfulness for favours received often don’t get prayed. When some folks have passed through a terrible time, and come out on the other side, do they thank God for presence and understanding during those turbulent days? I try to, but often forget. When something good happens in our world, the uneventful birth of a child perhaps, do we thank God for it? I hope we do. And when we receive the Holy Spirit through our own prayers and the corporate prayer of the Eucharist, do we thank God for that? Let’s start, today.

Therefore may we always remember to give thanks in prayer to our listening God, and to Jesus Christ, who makes intercession for us all, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.