Genesis 18:20-32
Saint Luke 11:1-13
In the first church I served after ordination they had a long-standing practice that the choir would gather with the pastors before worship for prayer. The senior pastor always led those prayers and when he was called to another church the task fell to me as the DeFacto interim.
I had only been out of seminary less than six months, and I was full of ideas. One of those was that I thought it would be nice if a choir member, a lay person, led the prayer before worship. So, one Sunday I sprung my ingenious innovation on the unsuspecting choristers.
It was met with silence. Not just a short silence but a long... dreadful... elongated silence. You could hear crickets chirping and grass growing.
It was our first stand off as pastor and people. They were shifting from one foot to the other while I was smiling broadly like I had just invented the idea of lay-driven prayer. Our Quaker quiet time waiting for the “inner light” to dawn looked like it just might not arrive until Monday.
Fortunately, Mary Peterson, our wonderful organist piped up and announced that her prelude was five minutes long and it was already 1 minute before the hour.
I relented, prayed, and we all hustled to our proper places for the procession.
As you might imagine, Tuesday when I entered the office two of the more gracious choir members were waiting for me. Because of their tact they had been appointed as spokespersons whose job it was to tell me that it was not that the choir was against prayer it was just that they didn’t want to lead it.
They weren’t comfortable praying outloud in front of a group and the thought of extemporaneous prayer frightened them to death. I’m sure they prayed privately and maybe offered grace before every meal, but speaking a prayer in church was, for them, an entirely different matter.
I am glad to say that wisdom prevailed, and a compromise was struck. The choir would appoint people who would say the prayer before worship. They could write it out, find it in a book, or read the one in their morning devotional. It also inspired a series of Adult Forums of the topic of public and private prayer.
If memory serves, and it is doing so less and less as I get older, we titled our studies, “Lord, Teach Us to Pray” after the request of the disciples to Jesus in today’s Gospel.
It will come as no small measure of comfort to you, I hope, that even a Baptist pastor, Travis Norvil, of Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Minneapolis didn’t emerge from the womb praying soul-stirring prayers but struggled with this. He wrote:
When I was a teenager, I asked my parents how to pray. They replied, “Travis, just do it.” Since I didn’t know how to just do “it,” I asked my pastor. He looked at me with a suspicious side glance, like I was trying to trap him. He replied the same way as my parents did, “You just do it.” But I wouldn’t take that for an answer. He finally gave me a book on the topic of prayer that he had not read, but he thought it might help. It didn’t.1
The problem is that there are so many types of prayer for so many types of occasions. There is the formal prayer that we do here every Sunday which are well-written and well thought out. There are prayers before bed, around the dinner table, and spare-of-the-moment prayers that rise up at moments of frustration, despair, or even anger.
It is the angry prayers that give us the most trouble. We don’t like the idea of us, mere mortals, shaking our fist in God’s face, and telling God we are unhappy. When these prayers fall from our lips, we may be uncomfortable and, maybe, even feel a little guilty. We prefer “thy will be done” to what is going on between God and Abraham in our first reading.
Some are so uncomfortable with this scene from the Good Book that they don’t want to even call it a prayer, but in it Abraham is talking to God and God is talking to Abraham and it is one of those discussions that would make an eavesdropper want to say, “How about those Cubs?” just to relieve the tension.
Abraham is not even taking up a popular cause. He is arguing with God on behalf of the twin sin-cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Clearly Abraham is not going to let God’s desire to destroy these places go unchallenged. He is not going to “let God’s will be done” without some questioning. Instead, he is going to storm the barricades on behalf of the city where his nephew Lot and his family lived.
The problem with the city is not as simple as who lived there and how they lived out their private lives. The problem was is that it was ruled by mobs. It was ungovernable to the point that any visitors or residents of the city could be the victims of murder, robbery and mayhem at any time. It had become a madhouse.
God doesn’t see any other way out other than its complete destruction. Abraham objects in a most strenuous matter. His prayer is not “thy will be done” but rather “let’s make a deal.”
Unbelievably to us moderns he enters into a bidding contest with Yahweh on the city’s behalf. It is like an auction.
Abraham starts the bidding with 50 righteous. If he can find 50 good people would Yahweh consider sparing the city?
The problem is he can’t, so he reduces the number. “How about 45? 40?” Abraham bargains. “35? 30? 25? 20? Can I get a 15?” What is this? The “High/Low Game” on The Price is Right? Finally, Abraham and the Lord settle on 10.
Violence has so overwhelmed the two cities that Abraham can’t even meet that quota. He can’t find ten good people in two towns! His prayers for the communities are going to go unanswered with only his nephew Lot and some of his family being sparred.
Even after storming the barricades Abraham didn’t get everything he wanted but he did get what he really needed - the lives of his nephew and members his family except for Lots wife and for her disobedience became the first “salt girl.”
That is one model of prayer and is it any wonder why the disciples might have wanted another. What Jesus gives them and us is a prayer that invites us to trust God above all else for everything we need.
We are to trust God for the big things like the forgiveness of our sins and the coming of the kingdom. We are also to trust God for the everyday things like our daily bread.
That is a great place to be, but Jesus makes it even better. He says that with God we can be like that neighbor who shows up in the middle of the night banging on the door and yelling, “‘lend me three loaves of bread. An old friend traveling through just showed up, and I don’t have a thing on hand.’”2
Jesus says that, unlike God, while we may grouch a little bit and yell back at our neighbor, “‘Please don’t ask me to get up. The door is locked for the night and we are all in bed. I just can’t help you this time.’”3
But “‘I’ll tell you this, ‘” says Jesus ‘if you keep knocking long enough, (your neighbor) will get up and give you everything you want—just because of your persistence.’”4
Abraham didn’t get what he wanted. Sodom and Gomorrah were ultimately destroyed but Abraham got what he needed — safety for himself and most members of his family – because of his persistent prayer.
Every time I preside somewhere I always add this little charge to the benediction. It comes from one of my favorite preachers, Dr. Fred B. Craddock.
“Live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, serve faithfully, pray daily and then leave everything else up to God.“ Remember?
If this saying was original to Dr. Craddock, he should have copyrighted it because I have seen the words appear on plaques, coffee mugs, and numerous other tchotchkes in shops of towns both large and small.
The charge always reminded me of this great story that was told by The Rev'd Adam Fronczek, Senior Minister of Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati.
I have a minister friend who performed one of the most brilliant acts of parenting I’ve ever seen. When his son was four and going through a period of being fairly demanding about things, my friend taught his son some Rolling Stones lyrics. Every time little Michael demanded something that just wasn’t going to happen, his dad, said, “Michael, what do the [Rolling] Stones say?” And Michael would huff and puff and then would look at his daddy and say, “You can’t always get what you want.” And then [his father] would say, “What else, Michael?” And Michael would answer, “But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”5
Remember you may not always get what you want.
Your choir may never be able to offer “spare-of-the-moment” prayers right off the top of their heads.
Or, like Abraham, you may come up two cities short in your quest to save the world.
But, if you “Live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, serve faithfully, pray daily and then leave everything else to God” you’ll discover that, of all people, the Rolling Stones were right. “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”
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1. Travis Norvell, “Prayer Lessons,” Day 1 (Day1.org, July 20, 2022), https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/62c8308e6615fb108200000a/travis-norvell-prayer-lessons.
2,.St. Luke 11:5-6. (MSG) [MSG = The Message]
3. St. Luke 11:7. (TLB) [TLB = The Living Bible]
4. St. Luke 11:8. (TLB)
5. Adam Fronczek, ""Jazz at Four" Sermon" (sermon, 4 O'clock Worship, The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, January 20, 2013), accessed July 27, 2019, http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2013/012013_4pm.html.
Sermon preached at Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church
Chicago, Illinois
24 July 2022
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