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 the reading that follow the prayer help us with that understanding. Jesus is not going to give step-by-step instructions on how to pray.

Luke’s version of the prayer begins with addressing God, but then moves into requests, where we ask to be sustained, forgiven, and protected. This says something about what we believe about God, that God hears, provides, forgives, protects, and expects us to share with each other. Those are all theological statements, outlining our faith in God and why we follow Jesus, God’s Son. Those are the things we hope and long for, the things that bring us to prayer and give us the courage to open up to God, to be vulnerable in our weakness and disorientation. Jesus tells us about God by first asking if we would give a scorpion to a child asking for an egg. No, we wouldn’t do that. Jesus asks next if we would give a snake to a child asking for a fish. No, we wouldn’t do that, either, and neither will God treat us that way when we share our fears and doubts in prayer. Jesus also tells us that God does not get tired of hearing our prayers, and will listen just as the neighbor who gets out of bed listens and gives his friend some bread. God listened to Abraham as he negotiated saving Sodom and Gomorrah, and never lost patience with Abraham. God does not tire of our persistence in prayer, or for us asking for things over and over. We are free to pray as much and as often as we need or want.

But, what about that lottery ticket you bought and prayed over that you would have the winning number? Or, more seriously, what about your prayers that a loved one would survive a medical crisis, or that flood victims in Texas would be found alive? Our faith in God to take care of us is shaken when those prayers aren’t answered. If we continually pray for something that goes unfulfilled, we may fall into the hole of believing that we failed to pray hard enough, or often enough. We may lose faith that God actually hears us, or cares enough to relieve us from our troubles and pain. That is a dark hole to fall into, one where the hope from Jesus’ resurrection is hidden by despair, not despair that seems to come from God not hearing or caring, but despair coming from a situation that we don’t want to be a part of. And why shouldn’t we expect to be delivered from those situations? God had the power to create the world and lead the Hebrews out of Egypt. Surely God could make our difficult situations go away. 

We have to accept that maybe we’re not praying for what’s best for us. We pray to be removed from the difficult situation, rather than a prayer expressing our grief and anguish, to say to God, “I’m hurting!” If we think that God doesn’t hear us because our prayers go unanswered, maybe God is answering them in a different or unexpected way. The people who come to fill our needs, or ask us if we are ok, they have heard God calling them to reach out to us. But even that is unfulfilling because we still find ourselves in whatever situation we’re in. We can’t get out of it. There’s a third way to look at prayer, that it is primarily for ourselves, with God listening and knowing the reason for our prayers. When we look for answers to our prayers, it may be us answering them, through God, by finding peace while enduring our troubles. It may be that we find comfort knowing that we are being heard. We may find our prayers are answered through relief that people around us are coming to us. That is what answers to prayers often look like. Our prayers of need are all about us, as they should be, but the resolution, the answer, comes from God’s Creation and God’s people, including ourselves.

There are seven types of prayer: adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition. The Lord’s Prayer covers three of those: praise, penitence, and petition. But for all the types of prayer, we benefit from praying by expressing our love within a relationship, showing our gratitude, admitting sin and feeling remorse, committing ourselves to service, humbling ourselves by presenting our needs, and putting the needs of others ahead of our wants. These are all things we hear Jesus talk about throughout the Gospels, so to pray as Jesus did, starting with his prayer, we begin to understand the life Jesus has called us to live. So, we may search, and it might be us, through God’s nudges, who find what we are looking for. We may ask, and it is through God’s wisdom that we receive from looking inward. We may knock, and it is us, with courage from God, who opens the door. We might be the answer to some of our own prayers, and some of our prayers may ultimately be for ourselves despite what we pray for. It is another way to talk to God, to talk things through as a patient, loving God listens. Prayer doesn’t have to be full of fancy words or phrases and the Lord’s Prayer isn’t The Prayer to recite. It is a space to start talking to ourselves and to God; it’s a space for God and us to listen.