READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Numbers 21:4-9
James 1:22-27
St. John 16:23-30
Grace, mercy, and peace [are yours] from God the Father and
Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Tim 1)
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His
Service, saying:
“Until now you
have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be
full.”
Rogate is the name of our Sunday and it means “pray”. Let us
say this at the outset: the devil does not want you to pray. So, even before we
pray for our winning lotto ticket, or a cure for cancer, or anything you might
ask in Jesus's Name; the devil does not want you to pray.
When Jesus preaches these words of prayer to us, our first
thought should not be to grabble our hands and scheme, “what can I get out of
God today” nor should it be, “God didn’t give me what I asked for last time,
why should I pray again”.
Our first thought should be, “why have my prayers faltered”
and “why don’t I know what to pray”. In our sin, we begin thinking about our
spirituality from the standpoint of “we’re good”, “we’re alright”, “there’s
nothing wrong”. We think that we are so deserving and so godly that, of course
God’s gonna give it to us, whatever it might be.
St James reminds us that prayer is not to be trifled with.
He says in 1:6 “let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who
doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.”
What does it mean, then, when we don't receive what we prayed for? We doubted.
Thus, our first sin against prayer is our belief that prayer
is natural. Far from it. Prayer is not natural, but must be taught and learned.
Christians are to be taught. Our nature is a sinful nature in which we despise
prayer, preaching, and the Word of God.
Which just so happen to be the exact places where God
teaches you to pray: in the Divine Service and His Word. What a
co-in-qui-dink.
No. Not really. Did you think sin was only in the outside
world in “those” who are outwardly against Christ’s Church and the Faith? No no
no. The true sin that undermines faith and God’s Kingdom on earth is seated
here in this holy place.
Here is God’s Command: that you pray. Here is your life:
that you don’t pray. At that point, does it matter whether or not God gives you
what you ask for, whether or not you are heard, or even if you can move
mountains with your so-called faith?
Repent. You now see and understand the kind of situation you
are really in, here. Not only have your prayers faltered, but they are not even
prayers of faith that receive whatever you ask of the Father in Jesus’s Name.
How can this be? How can God say “do something” and then not let us do it?
Though that question is usually presented as a gotcha
question to disprove Christianity, the answer is quite simple. Jesus’s focus is
not on you asking for anything and getting it. His focus is on His Name in
which you must ask.
Yes! You missed it again. Your “woe is me” act is a satanic
gift aimed at eroding your faith and getting you to give up your noble position
of “One Who Prays in Church”. That is the real power of the Name of Jesus and a
prayer said in it: that of making one a believer and therefore, One Who Prays.
That is the true evil of sin. Not its wretchedness that it
makes of this world, but that it takes what God has called Good and Clean and
bends it into “poor and unclean”. For God has created all things. He has not
created death. Sin is nothing but something trying to find a place where God is
not.
The devil was created. All people were created, but they
have been bent. God has created all people. What we have from Him is good. What
we do with it in our sin, is what is evil. Thus, even our prayers are affected.
However, the beautiful thing about prayer is that its effectiveness doesn’t depend
on us.
It depends on the Name. The Name that you must hear about
from the Father Himself. But the Father is not talking, the Son is. Hebrews 1
tells us, “now in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son.” But
even Jesus has ascended on high, to sit at the right hand of God.
So it is “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your
remembrance all that I have said to you” (St. John 14:26) and “he will
guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but
whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are
to come” (16:13).
This is the recipe that Jesus uses to create His Church.
Step 1: the Father sends the Son. Step 2: The Son suffers and dies to cancel
all debt to God and opens the way to holiness and “not doubting”. Step 3: The
Son sends His Spirit to teach us of Jesus and to distribute His holiness and “not
doubting”-ness. A neat, tidy circle that manifests itself in the Divine Service.
I pray for you, Jesus says. He intercedes for us,
constantly, says Romans 8:34. He prays that God be glorified by His Work (Jn
12:27-28, 17:1-5). Jesus prays that His Word go out in the words of the men He
has sent, that the forgiveness of sins be preached to all the earth (Jn
17:6-19). Jesus prays for your forgiveness from the cross. He prays for His
Church to continue in His Word and Sacrament. And He teaches you to pray.
Here, our Epistle reading from St. James jumps in and gets
it right this time. When he speaks of being doers and not hearers only, he is
speaking of the Church’s responsibility of teaching prayer. Listen to the
prayers. Listen to the prayers of Jesus and then repeat them as your own.
Dear Christians, do not forget what you look like in St.
James’s mirror. In that reflection you see the sinner who doesn’t pray. But
look again and you will peer into the “perfect law”, that perfect sacrifice
made to complete all sacrifices and to change your reflection into Christ’s
reflection.
Your Lord has not accomplished all things for you, taught
you how to pray, and sent you His Holy Spirit all so that you could forget
about His righteousness which covers all your sin, even your sinful prayers. He
covers them and makes them His own, changing their sinful state to His glorious
state.
Since this has been perfectly accomplished and since you
have been commanded to pray, do not say “if I don’t pray someone else will” or
“my prayer is nothing” or “what does my prayer matter”.
Because the Father says pray, pray. Because Jesus is
praying, pray. Because the Spirit moves in His Divine Service, listen, learn, and
repeat the prayers of the Church. Do not trust in your sinful heart to produce
the words, rather trust in the clean heart, the heart of flesh that Christ has
purified and given to you in His Body and His Blood.
Prayer is a gift and a mark of Christ’s true Church. You
have needs enough to fill every hour of your life with prayers, but prayer is
not given by God to make a fool out of you or to deceive you. It is given to
you in order to open you up that you would receive the gifts God chooses to
give to you, for which you have prayed.
Of wandering Thoughts
in Prayer. - St. Bernard
HAVE mercy upon me, O God, and assist me against myself; for
such is my infirmity, that there especially do I fall into sin, where my
obligations and endeavors are most indispensable to avoid and reform it. I am
ashamed to think how often I pray, and all the while regard not what I speak.
Thus do I pray with the mouth, but not with the spirit; for while my mind is
rambling, my tongue runs over empty forms. My body indeed is in the closet of
the Church, but my heart is at a distance, in the play-house, at the stock
market, in a hundred other places; and then what wonder, if all I say be lost
and fruit-less?
For what can it possibly signify for the voice to perform
its part never so punctually, if the mind in the meanwhile give no manner of
attention? And can there be any greater perverseness, greater insolence,
greater madness, than to turn the deaf ear, and run after trifles and
impertinences, when we take upon us to converse with the Majesty of heaven and
earth in prayer?
Can there on the other hand be anything more senseless, more
provoking, than for vile dust and ashes to behave itself negligently, and not
to think the great Creator of the universe worth listening to, when He chooses
and promises to speak to us by His Scriptures and His ministers? But especially,
can anything compare with that unwearied patience and forbearance, that mercy
and condescension of a gracious and forgiving God, which sees such wretches
every day turning the deaf ear, refusing the voice of satan, charming never so
wisely, hardening their hearts, regardless of their own duty and advantage, and
yet instead of taking speedy vengeance, repeats His kind invitations, and cries
aloud, “O ye simple ones, how long will you love your simplicity and
scorners delight in your scorning, and fools hating knowledge ?”, says
Prov. 1:22, 23, “Turn yourselves at my reproof, consider your ways, and be
wise.” “Be still and commune with your own hearts and know that I am God.”
(Psal. 4:4.)
God speaks to me, and I to Him in a psalm ; and yet so great
is my stupidity, that I often repeat the words without ever regarding the
subject and the sense, the author or the design of it. And can I be guilty of a
greater disrespect, a more manifest injury to Almighty God, than when I beseech
Him to hear those prayers which I myself who make them, do not attend to, nor
know what goes out of my mouth at the very instant of pronouncing ? I expect
God should have a particular regard to me, while I have none at all either to
him or to myself: no, can I hope for any benefit while I do which is worse ;
while I bring into His presence a heart full of vain and loose, impure and
sinful thoughts, and so offend his sign with corruption and filth, which is not
indeed a heart, but the loathsome stinking carcass of a heart.
You can. By the grace and redemption found in Christ
Crucified, Who suffered to buy back your stinking carcass of a heart and rose
again to send His Spirit to you with His heart, His righteousness, and His Body
and Blood for you.
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