A Mission Rooted in God’s Will
By Bishop Chris Giesler
Preaching Texts: Luke 11:1-13, Colossians 2:6-15 [16-19]
Prayer is an essential part of the Christian life, but as I have worked with parishioners over the years, I have often found that their prayer lives have left them feeling empty. Most often, this happens because we make prayer a one-way conversation that consists mainly of us requesting things from God, even if they deserve to be lifted to God. Prayer is a two-way conversation that allows time for listening and sharing what we feel and need.
In our Gospel lesson for today, one of Jesus’ disciples sees him in prayer. This unnamed disciple has undoubtedly seen the fruit of Jesus’ connection with God in his prayer times and wants Jesus to teach him how to pray in like manner. In other words, I hear the disciple’s plea to be something like, “I see how prayer feeds your life; I want that as well. Teach me how.”
In keeping with his context, Jesus refers to God as “Father” as a loving parent. There should always be caution when we use human references to apply to who God is. Even the best of our earthly fathers are fallible. And unfortunately, some fathers have inflicted great harm on their children. With that in mind, we can see prayer as a personal dialog with one who loves you and has your best interests in mind for the short and long term. Jesus also intimates that while God is loving and kind as a parent, God must also be revered and honored. When we pray, it is not like talking to our best friend; we are connecting with the creator of the universe! God deserves to be honored, and we should humble ourselves when we pray, so we begin with, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
The rest of the prayer then flows out of this relationship:
- We ask for God’s kingdom to be made real among us
- We ask for our daily sustenance in bread
- We ask for our sins to be forgiven and the will to forgive the sins of others.
- We ask to be delivered from trial or temptation
We should not rush through these stages of prayer, checking them off the list, thinking that we have covered all the bases. We should instead pause between each petition, pondering how this prayer informs and empowers us to mission. Here, we focus our attention on these things:
- When we ask for God’s kingdom to be made real among us we should ask, “What can we do to make God’s love tangible to others?”
- When we ask for our daily bread, we should stop to ponder what we can do to help others have enough food to eat.
- As we ask for our sins to be forgiven, we should ponder how we can forgive the sins of others.
- As we ask to be delivered from trial or temptation, we should stop to ponder how our actions have caused pain in the lives of others.
Again, prayer is a two-way dialog connecting us with God and giving us time to hear God’s call.
Jesus underscores the teaching of persistence by advising his disciples to “Ask, Search, and Knock” because it will be given to the one who asks. The one who searches will find what they need. The door will be opened to the one who knocks. This is good news, but we must tread carefully here. At face value, Jesus seems to be saying that anything we ask for will be granted. Folks often interpret it this way and, as a result, get very disappointed when they don’t receive what they have requested. Believe me, it hurts when the loved one is not healed, when the money to pay the mortgage does not show up, and when the car breaks down again. God does answer prayer but does so in accord with a greater sense of justice and mercy that we can’t always understand. We see only the immediate future; God sees with eternity in mind. Prayer is not the spiritual equivalent of sitting on Santa’s lap and sharing what we want. Prayer is not about imposing our will on God but giving ourselves to God’s will.
While Jesus does not say it here, he will at the Garden of Gethsemane just minutes before his arrest. There, Jesus does pray earnestly and honestly that the cup of suffering might pass from him, but he ends his prayer with “Not my will, but your will be done.” Here, Jesus is finishing the lesson on prayer by ultimately placing himself in God’s hands and following God’s will.
This should speak volumes to us as we seek to discern our mission as part of God’s will for us.
From our reading of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we see that ultimately, prayer is essential in the process of being rooted and built upon Christ. As Paul so often does, we see there is a difference between following the ways of the world and being rooted in Christ. Again, prayer is a conversation that keeps us connected to God; it is essential to being rooted in God’s ways.
The problem is, without even thinking about it, we are bombarded with elements of mass media that tell us what we need to look like, smell like, act like, and live like. We hear it on the radio, see it on TV, drive by it on billboards, and can’t miss it on the sides of buses and pasted on the subway walls.
God has a very different message for us, and we can only access that through a life of prayer. Ultimately, God’s will is to love those around us unconditionally, lift up those who are bowed down, feed and give drink to those who are hungry or thirsty, and most importantly, remove the barriers that keep others from the kingdom of God.
In the very center of the Lord’s prayer is the petition: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And that is our call to mission. To make the kingdom of God present with the words we use, the money and time we spend, and the grace we extend. I would challenge you to begin each day this week by praying the Lord’s Prayer. After each petition, pause to ponder how you are being called to bring the presence of Christ into the world.
