Who hears my prayers?
Sermon for Pentecost VII, 2025, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Genesis 18:20-32 , Luke 11:1-13 If you, like me, heard the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel reading this morning, you may have thought, “This isn’t the Lord’s Prayer that I know. I don’t know what that is.” We’re so used to the version of the prayer in Matthew’s Gospel because it is part of every liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer . And honestly, this version in Luke looks more like the bullet points I put in my PowerPoint slides at work. Bullet points are great for outlining why you think your idea is a really good one, but it doesn’t work for prayer. And yet, that’s what it seems Luke has written. If we step back from the experience of prayer for a moment, what we see are theological points that Jesus lays out in response to a disciple asking how to pray. In Matthew, we’re given the prayer, but in Luke, we have to work toward prayer, understanding why we pray, and the illustrations in t...