READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Numbers 21:4-9
James 1:22-27
- St. John 16:23-30
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Rom 1)
Who speaks to you today, saying:
“Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”
God receives nothing from our prayers. We receive everything from our prayers, because we pray in faith. But faith is not just something we make up, it is a gift, a physical gift, given to us that we may see and understand prayer rightly, and thus be enabled to pray for all rightly.
As many times as this Gospel has been read, we have heard Jesus speak in this way. That, if we ask, we will be full of joy. That because we get to ask, because we get to pray to a God Who cares and listens and will answer, then we should be joyful little creatures, or else. That is how its popularly taught.
The promise of prayer that Jesus makes is unique to Christianity: to be worshipping and praying to a God Who is near enough to listen and answer. Though every religion has some sort of prayer, it is for them a magical formula. Say the right words, on the right day, at the right time, with the right offering/child sacrifice and your god may listen to you.
Of course, if its Crom you’re praying to, he will only laugh at you. But heard prayer is heard prayer, right?
Now we know! Now we understand! Now we believe, say the Apostles. Now that Jesus has related Himself, and by proxy, God, to other gods in this world, they get it. Now they know that God needs our prayers, just like other gods. Now they understand that God is not special and requires prayers to operate, like other gods.
Now they believe, because the things God asks for are spiritual, just in our imaginations. Now they believe that the God Jesus is talking about, is the God of their fathers Who commanded Moses out of a burning bush and from a pillar of cloud. Commanded to pray for the people, from our Old Testament reading, and also for Pharaoh, lest we forget to pray for our enemies.
Yet truly they do not, now, know, for the truth is the opposite. God does not need our prayers, we do. We like to think that we have a hold of prayer. That it is one of the easiest things, from God, to understand. So much so, that we have relegated it to “having a chat with God” or worse, something we only do every once in a while.
But you do not have a hold of prayer. Though you are commanded to pray, you do not comprehend the depths of the gift given to you. Jesus gives prayer and thanksgiving as one of the marks of His Church on earth, thus it is something much more than a phoneline open to Jesus.
The problem we have is we believe that when something is spiritual, or at least mostly in the hidden world, that it doesn’t have the least bearing on real life or faith. It’s not like prayer makes planes fly. Prayer doesn’t do anything real so I don’t have to take it seriously and I don’t have to make others believe it is serious.
Jesus gives us three other letters through St. John to follow up. In his first epistle, Chapter 3 says, “whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him” (1 Jn 3:22). Ah, the age-old goal of keeping the commandments. Let’s not forget James 2:10, “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” and Hebrews 11:6, “without faith it is impossible to please Him.”
This doesn’t mean don’t try to pray, it just means there is something more to prayer than making a crane game of God. His commandments must be kept and we must please Him, we just have to keep listening to find out how, instead of running with only half an answer.
1 John 3 does continue: “And this is His commandment, that we believe in the Name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another” (v 23). What Name? The Name you were baptized into, “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). What Son? The only begotten Who is the Only Beloved: “This is my beloved Son, Who pleases Me” (Mt 3:17), the cloud says.
Belief is the command required to receive anything we ask for in prayer. But its not just naked belief, as in “I believe Jesus is my Lord and Savior and my belief is mine so I get what’s coming to me”. It is belief in the Name. It is belief in any and everything Jesus has come to will and to do.
St. John goes on in chapter 5: “this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (v 14). According to His Will. What is His Will? John 6: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (v 40) and “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (v 29).
Belief gives eternal life. The Son’s Will and Work that He has come to do is to purchase and win eternal life for His creatures. He did not come to suffer for a hotline. He did not die to create a naughty/nice, prayer/no prayer list. He did not rise again in order that you gain spiritual control over Him through contract/covenant prayer.
‘Cause that’s what it feels like to us, when prayer is just spiritual. It is a virtual playground in which we get to imagine all sorts of answers from God, without proof.
But prayer is not bloodless, because faith, belief is not body-less. You may close your eyes to pray, you may say most of what you want in your head, you may even imagine God on the other end listening. But if you do not have the righteous blood of Jesus covering all of it, then you do not have prayer.
The prayer of the unrighteous is not heard, therefore the One, Righteous Man must pray for you. And He must intercede by way of His mouth, which is a flesh and blood mouth. He must Promise His Righteousness to you, which is only in His Body and Blood. He must give you faith, He must give you love and that requires a body.
This, once again, is the Easter lesson. Prayer, in His Name, means in the Body and Blood of Christ, literally. Moses was leading Jesus’s people through the wilderness, bodily. The people were not imagining snakes biting them and they did not fake their resulting deaths. There was a physical problem, with physical consequences, needing a physical remedy.
This, Jesus brings in full measure, so that there is no room for doubt. Jesus is made man in order to unite us to Him. He reveals Himself and His command that we pray. He comes in a body to teach us to pray the prayer He uses. He takes His Body and rational soul through suffering to death on a cross, then rises again.
And in that resurrection, He shows us the total and complete union of God and man, such that God comes into the world in our dying flesh, but ascends with undying flesh. Then, to make our joy complete, fulfilled, perfect, He unites His Body to our body, His Blood to our blood and promises faith and belief in that way.
This, then, is today’s prayer. Jesus is teaching another prayer. He is not only saying that when you pray you should be joyful. He is saying “pray for joy”. He is saying, when you pray, ask me to fill up your joy and you will receive it. Why? Because where true joys are to be found, there the resurrected Christ stands with His wounds, offering union in Word and Sacrament.
You cannot understand prayer without having first being united to Christ. You cannot begin to pray without beginning within His Body and Blood, washed over you in baptism and ingested by you in Communion with Him.
And though, in prayer, you will pray for many things, in many states of mind, and in many seasons of life, the One thing you are always praying for, in whatever words come out, is for the Crucified and Risen Christ to rescue you from this body of death and for Him to give you a new life beside Him, for all eternity.
This is the answer to every prayer and the words to every prayer. Rescue. Redemption. Joy. Only the promise of such things is found on the old earth. Thus, we are told to pray, we are told to hope, and we are told to rejoice in the Promise. So we pray, while we wait in our meat suits, knowing and believing that we will rise again to live, breathe, and have our being in complete, endless, and utter Joy.
Alleluia!
Amen.
Who speaks to you today, saying:
“Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”
God receives nothing from our prayers. We receive everything from our prayers, because we pray in faith. But faith is not just something we make up, it is a gift, a physical gift, given to us that we may see and understand prayer rightly, and thus be enabled to pray for all rightly.
As many times as this Gospel has been read, we have heard Jesus speak in this way. That, if we ask, we will be full of joy. That because we get to ask, because we get to pray to a God Who cares and listens and will answer, then we should be joyful little creatures, or else. That is how its popularly taught.
The promise of prayer that Jesus makes is unique to Christianity: to be worshipping and praying to a God Who is near enough to listen and answer. Though every religion has some sort of prayer, it is for them a magical formula. Say the right words, on the right day, at the right time, with the right offering/child sacrifice and your god may listen to you.
Of course, if its Crom you’re praying to, he will only laugh at you. But heard prayer is heard prayer, right?
Now we know! Now we understand! Now we believe, say the Apostles. Now that Jesus has related Himself, and by proxy, God, to other gods in this world, they get it. Now they know that God needs our prayers, just like other gods. Now they understand that God is not special and requires prayers to operate, like other gods.
Now they believe, because the things God asks for are spiritual, just in our imaginations. Now they believe that the God Jesus is talking about, is the God of their fathers Who commanded Moses out of a burning bush and from a pillar of cloud. Commanded to pray for the people, from our Old Testament reading, and also for Pharaoh, lest we forget to pray for our enemies.
Yet truly they do not, now, know, for the truth is the opposite. God does not need our prayers, we do. We like to think that we have a hold of prayer. That it is one of the easiest things, from God, to understand. So much so, that we have relegated it to “having a chat with God” or worse, something we only do every once in a while.
But you do not have a hold of prayer. Though you are commanded to pray, you do not comprehend the depths of the gift given to you. Jesus gives prayer and thanksgiving as one of the marks of His Church on earth, thus it is something much more than a phoneline open to Jesus.
The problem we have is we believe that when something is spiritual, or at least mostly in the hidden world, that it doesn’t have the least bearing on real life or faith. It’s not like prayer makes planes fly. Prayer doesn’t do anything real so I don’t have to take it seriously and I don’t have to make others believe it is serious.
Jesus gives us three other letters through St. John to follow up. In his first epistle, Chapter 3 says, “whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him” (1 Jn 3:22). Ah, the age-old goal of keeping the commandments. Let’s not forget James 2:10, “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” and Hebrews 11:6, “without faith it is impossible to please Him.”
This doesn’t mean don’t try to pray, it just means there is something more to prayer than making a crane game of God. His commandments must be kept and we must please Him, we just have to keep listening to find out how, instead of running with only half an answer.
1 John 3 does continue: “And this is His commandment, that we believe in the Name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another” (v 23). What Name? The Name you were baptized into, “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). What Son? The only begotten Who is the Only Beloved: “This is my beloved Son, Who pleases Me” (Mt 3:17), the cloud says.
Belief is the command required to receive anything we ask for in prayer. But its not just naked belief, as in “I believe Jesus is my Lord and Savior and my belief is mine so I get what’s coming to me”. It is belief in the Name. It is belief in any and everything Jesus has come to will and to do.
St. John goes on in chapter 5: “this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (v 14). According to His Will. What is His Will? John 6: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (v 40) and “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (v 29).
Belief gives eternal life. The Son’s Will and Work that He has come to do is to purchase and win eternal life for His creatures. He did not come to suffer for a hotline. He did not die to create a naughty/nice, prayer/no prayer list. He did not rise again in order that you gain spiritual control over Him through contract/covenant prayer.
‘Cause that’s what it feels like to us, when prayer is just spiritual. It is a virtual playground in which we get to imagine all sorts of answers from God, without proof.
But prayer is not bloodless, because faith, belief is not body-less. You may close your eyes to pray, you may say most of what you want in your head, you may even imagine God on the other end listening. But if you do not have the righteous blood of Jesus covering all of it, then you do not have prayer.
The prayer of the unrighteous is not heard, therefore the One, Righteous Man must pray for you. And He must intercede by way of His mouth, which is a flesh and blood mouth. He must Promise His Righteousness to you, which is only in His Body and Blood. He must give you faith, He must give you love and that requires a body.
This, once again, is the Easter lesson. Prayer, in His Name, means in the Body and Blood of Christ, literally. Moses was leading Jesus’s people through the wilderness, bodily. The people were not imagining snakes biting them and they did not fake their resulting deaths. There was a physical problem, with physical consequences, needing a physical remedy.
This, Jesus brings in full measure, so that there is no room for doubt. Jesus is made man in order to unite us to Him. He reveals Himself and His command that we pray. He comes in a body to teach us to pray the prayer He uses. He takes His Body and rational soul through suffering to death on a cross, then rises again.
And in that resurrection, He shows us the total and complete union of God and man, such that God comes into the world in our dying flesh, but ascends with undying flesh. Then, to make our joy complete, fulfilled, perfect, He unites His Body to our body, His Blood to our blood and promises faith and belief in that way.
This, then, is today’s prayer. Jesus is teaching another prayer. He is not only saying that when you pray you should be joyful. He is saying “pray for joy”. He is saying, when you pray, ask me to fill up your joy and you will receive it. Why? Because where true joys are to be found, there the resurrected Christ stands with His wounds, offering union in Word and Sacrament.
You cannot understand prayer without having first being united to Christ. You cannot begin to pray without beginning within His Body and Blood, washed over you in baptism and ingested by you in Communion with Him.
And though, in prayer, you will pray for many things, in many states of mind, and in many seasons of life, the One thing you are always praying for, in whatever words come out, is for the Crucified and Risen Christ to rescue you from this body of death and for Him to give you a new life beside Him, for all eternity.
This is the answer to every prayer and the words to every prayer. Rescue. Redemption. Joy. Only the promise of such things is found on the old earth. Thus, we are told to pray, we are told to hope, and we are told to rejoice in the Promise. So we pray, while we wait in our meat suits, knowing and believing that we will rise again to live, breathe, and have our being in complete, endless, and utter Joy.
Alleluia!
Amen.
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