Sermon, St. John's Corsicana, July 27
In our usual hot and muggy Texas summer, starting a sermon with an ancient Christmas carol may seem odd, but here goes. In the Marian hymn ‘There Is No Rose of Such Virtue,’ we hear the verse that says that in her child Jesus was found ‘heaven and earth in a little space.’ Hold on to that idea for a moment, that everything you could know, or need to know, is contained in one spot, one person, the densest DNA of reality all there to be unspooled across centuries. Obviously that is Jesus, creator of the universe, judge on the last day, Son of the eternal Father, the new Adam. In him is the mystery of all heaven and earth found. This morning I want to take that idea one step further. When his disciples asked him how they should pray, He gives them what they want, one short prayer, what we call ‘the Lord’s Prayer.’ In it is told the mystery of the giver, Jesus.
Let’s unpack the prayer. First it is addressed to Abba, his Father, in a word of surprising intimacy- ‘Papa,’ a word unique in Judaism of the time. In three hundred years, down that trail, the Church would come to the doctrine of the Trinity we will recite this morning in the Creed. But Abba is also the name Jesus cried out in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the verge of his terrible and saving death- ‘Father let this cup pass…’ But it does not pass, and Jesus surrenders to the will of His Father, which of course is foretold, and now recalled, in the Prayer. It goes on to speak confidently of the coming Kingdom, and of the wonderful forgiveness of sins, both of which are in a certain sense ushered in on the cross and at the empty tomb which followed his Gethsemane moment. The prayer he gives us, echoes who He really and ultimately is.
It would take the Church and her theologians centuries to develop how it would teach all this- the atonement, the return and the last things, the keys with which the Church is entrusted to pronounce that human sins are forgiven. The Lord’s Prayer is beyond any seminary education in theology, for it assumes all those mysteries in this little space of a single paragraph of prayer. We might, in a different sermon for today, find this same theme of ‘in a little space’ in Paul’s claim in Colossians 1 that the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in this one Jesus bodily.
Before we move on let me add an aside. One way to understand what we are doing this morning in the Eucharist, is to act out, to make clear, what the Gospel says, namely that Jesus crucified and risen invites us to fellowship of the Kingdom in the presence of our heavenly Father. That is why we say this prayer just before communion, why the liturgy says we have the ‘boldness’ to make such a claim of access to the Father of all things.
The mystery behind all things in this little space- I have been describing how the giver of his prayer gift is that. But I want now to focus on what follows in Luke 11, as Jesus explains to the disciples how to think about the import of the prayer. He tells several stories. The first we might call the story of the inconvenienced neighbor. He and his family are all tucked in, but the next door neighbor comes to ask for bread for visitors arriving unexpectedly (as an aside, rather as the Lord may arrive). He will help, though he is put out. This connects with the verses that follow, about how we, flawed though we be, would never give our children a snake instead of a fish, or scorpion instead of an egg. If we the dubious can do the right thing, how much more our Abba, our loving Father? To these might be added the story, six chapters later, of the widow who has been wronged, demanding justice of the compromised judge. Even he will finally give in to her importuning, which means knocking, seeking, asking, so as to wear down the listener. As if often true, Jesus surprisingly compliments and rewards the importuning.
So here is my claim to you this morning- importuning can sum up the Christian life just as surely as the Lord’s Prayer packs our doctrine into a little space. We need first to back up a step. We all have some of Job in us. We have a cumulative complaint lodged against life, the universe, ultimately against God. This case includes our wounds, injustices, disappointments, as well as our own failings we may or may not own. It includes so much of the world around us that seems unfair. That we have such a running account is one thing, but why would I say that this has something important to do with our own Christian walks? First, I would claim that praying is central to our relationship with Him- acting, thinking, speaking, emoting fill the story out. Behind all our relations is the prime relation with Him. To be sure, the Scripture has various, sometimes surprising, ways to speak of our praying. Remember how Paul says in Romans 8 that the best we can manage is a groan. Or consider today’s passage from Genesis presents our patriarch Abraham driving a hard bargain with God for the few who are righteous, prayer as loving argument. Similarly I want this morning to follow the lead of our Gospel and subsume them all as importuning.
Think with me what importuning, calling out to the Father with our complaint, implies. It involves boldness, which Jesus always values in His parables. It is confident that, interposed clouds and darkness notwithstanding, He is indeed a loving Father, which we are confident of because of His Son, his perfect image. I am presently reading with my daughter the medieval meditation on prayer called the ‘Cloud of Unknowing,’ in which the writer hammers on that cloud with entreaties as with insistent arrows, ‘grace, grace, grace’, or ‘hope, hope, hope.’ We can do so only because we are confident of who He is, whether He will accept some dialogue, and how we know the story finally to end. Because of these, importuning has packed into it the assurance of faith.
We His fractious children are prone to importuning, and He makes room for this in Jesus, because of the confidence it implies toward Him. But He is always the active one. From his side He is taking and turning my importuning into something better, taking my dross and turning it to gold with His own kind of philosopher’s stone. This is what the verses in Philippians 4 mean: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
He is always taking and turning the little you and I lift up to Him. For there is indeed anxiety in our importuning, that it won’t work out, that injustice finally wins. But He takes and turns my anxiety into intercession, the same way ordinary bread is taken and turned into the bread of heaven. We see in ourselves importuning, but the Scripture teaches us to see more, to see what He is turning us toward. Mine is not so much a sermon in honor of importuning, as to what He would turn it, us, into, namely, sons and daughters of our heavenly Father by virtue of His Son. Amen.
