Sermon

“JESUS said unto his disciples, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.”

Today is Rogation Sunday and Rogationtide includes Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as days of preparation for Ascension. This is the season, traditionally, when we would “beat the bounds” by walking the bounds of the parish (typically a whole area like a county) and ask for God to bless  the coming growing season for the farmers. The BCP calls it a season of solemn supplication and this makes sense because the word Rogation comes from the Latin rogare, which means to ask.

The Gospel lesson appointed for this morning is well appointed, because in it Jesus tells his disciples that whatsoever they ask the Father in his name, the Father will grant that request. This is an incredible statement and one of profound mystery and therefore one of much confusion. How many of us, when we were young heard this verse and immediately prayed to Jesus for that new shiny toy or perhaps a dog? We never had a dog when I was really young because my dad was highly allergic to animal hair. One day, though, before I was born, my mom was making lunch in the kitchen for my eldest brother Ryan. She received a phone call from a hospital saying that my dad had been hit by a truck on his commute to work. My brother asked my mom what the call was about, and, trying to hold back tears, she told Ryan what had happened. He responded: “Oh, so we can get a dog now?” HE thought, in a dark comedy sort of way, that his prayers had been answered! Well, my dad is still here.

This is, of course, an extreme example, but it does highlight a tension between or lived experience and the words of Jesus–that often what we ask of God never comes. So what is the meaning of this Gospel message? How can Jesus make such a bold statement?

To understand petition, which is the prayer of asking, we must understand the nature of prayer and how petition fits into a whole life of prayer. It is only one type of prayer and will only be understood if we see it in the context of the whole. Take a look at the Lord’s Prayer, the supreme example of prayer and what Jesus gave to us in order to learn how to pray. The LP is full of petitions–seven of them to be precise. Out of these seven petitions,  only one of them, give us this day our daily bread, is about temporal needs. And even that petition has a double meaning, including a petition for God to give us bread that is not of this world, meaning His very own Body.

The other petitions focus upon God Himself or God’s grace to help us live in Christ.  The first three–let thy name be hallowed, let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done–all focus upon God and that His will is accomplished in us and the world. What we learn from this is that all our prayer should start from adoration, an acceptance of God as He IS, not how we want Him to be. It is His kingdom in which we live, His Will that we follow, His Name that is truly Holy. Adoration recognizes God as infinitely greater but adoration does not arise from just pure submission to a powerful entity. Adoration recognizes that God is worthy of all praise and honor. He is not only reality but also Truth; not only power but also Goodness; not only Creator but Beauty Himself. All this we give expression in adoration/worship of God. 

The second set–forgive us our trespasses, lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil–focus on our need for God’s grace to live as St. James puts it: as doers of the Word. From our adoration comes an acknowledgement of our own dependency upon God and also our unworthiness of His Holiness. We can look back on our lives and see the manifold wickedness, but also across the history of humanity and see the terrible evil man has wrought in the world. And we can say with the Psalmist: “For I acknowledge my faults, * and my sin is ever before me. Against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight; * that thou mightest be justified in thy saying, and clear when thou shalt judge.” We must face this fact clearly and with courage for “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” And yet, John continues: “[1Jo 1:9 KJV] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is why we ask God for forgiveness and then deliverance from the evil one.

From the LP, then, we see that all of our petitions arise from a correct ordering of our desires. Jesus’ instruction in prayer teaches His disciples to desire God first and then desire our life in God next. Once we desire God as we should (that is, as our Father), and we worship Him only, all our other petitions start fitting correctly. The Sursum Corda is the great example of this! In order to enter into the Canon of the Mass, the priest turns around and asks the people to lift up their hearts. The people then assent that they will lift their hearts up to God. Then the priest reminds the people that when we turn our desires to God, we must start by giving thanks, which the people do by responding, “It is meet and right so to do.” This is the prime example of the nature of prayer. IT is the lifting up of ourselves to God, to give thanks to Him for Who He Is because of Who He IS.

Prayer is NOT calling upon God to descend and accomplish our desires! No! It is our job to lift up our desires and to shape our desires and change our desires to match His! Once I was at a dialogue between Jewish rabbis and evangelical theologians, and one part of this dialogue particularly stuck out to me. An evangelical pastor made some point about learning from Judaism the importance of the transcendence of God. One of the rabbis responded that, indeed, Christians needed this because Christians will pray for God to find a parking spot for them. At this point, all the Rabbis burst out in laughter thinking about how silly these prayers were while all the evangelicals nervously chuckled. But the rabbis were right! Prayer is about lifting our lives up into the transcendent life of God, not making God accomplish our desires.

Today is the feast day of Gregory of Naziansus who was one of the greatest theologians of the early Church. He lived in the 4th century and was the Bishop of Constantinoble. He would have agreed whole-heartedly with the rabbis. He writes in his treatise on prayer: “A person who comes to prayer without understanding does not lift himself up to the height of the Giver, but rather craves that the divine power descend to the low and earthly level of his own desires. . . All these present their petitions to God not to be freed from their enslaving desire but rather that their sickness might develop to its fullness.”

Therefore when Jesus says: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you,” he really does want us to ask the Father, and the Father really does respond, but it depends what we ask for and how we ask for it. If the focus of our petitions is a secure life, and by that I mean perfect health, financial stability, successful job, and little to no sadness, we are asking for the wrong things. These categories view the world from a strictly physical viewpoint–as if our purpose is our security here on earth. As we have seen, we must first lift our desires up to God and view our lives in His reality. All of our petitions should follows Jesus’ example of Thy Will Be Done. 

This is hard, of course, to accomplish, but God desires, and this is truly amazing, to work His Will in you. Romano Guardini, an author many of us admire, puts it this way: “My life is a point–the point which concerns me–where God acts; the workshop in which He creates. From me something new is meant to emerge. Christian conduct is man acting in harmony with the activity of God; acting with humility because God alone matters; with obedience because from this activity should emerge something which can emerge only through God; and at the same time full of lively confidence because every individual is a starting point for the divine creation.” What Guardini means by ‘ an activity should emerge’ is the kingdom of God itself! It is through men, through you, through your prayer that the kingdom of God will emerge! Here lies the great weight of glory in which we live and participate. 

We often settle in our prayers to pray for own goods rather than God’s glory to be lived out in our lives. Pray then that God gives you the right desires and the right prayers so that your life, which is wrapped up into the divine life, may show forth God’s love. As the Collect appointed for today says: “Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same.” Amen!

“JESUS said unto his disciples, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.”

“Grant unto thy people that they may love the thing which thou commandest and desire that which thou dost promise.”

I want you to imagine yourself, for a little bit, as a new convert to Christianity in ancient Rome. Perhaps you were a common Roman citizen who had grown up in pagan Rome as most people, with very little money but some personal possessions that perhaps had been passed down to you. You lived in a large apartment building with the rest of your family, and since the rickety apartment housed your family with grandparents and perhaps some extended family, you lived most of the day out on the streets of Rome. The magnificent public buildings, statues, and temples gave you an opportunity to take part in free theater shows, public debates, races and games, and grand feasts when the Emperor fed the common people lavish meals as well as simple handouts such as daily bread and cornmeal. One day you heard a man speaking, like they often would on a small stone pedestal, about something quite amazing and strange–a promise about eternal life. You realize that this man is part of a small group you had heard rumors about–some really strange but some good about this group’s way of life. They called themselves Christians because they followed a man who claimed to be Christ, a messiah, who had risen from the dead in order to save the world from death. Intrigued, you start talking to some of the members of this group and a couple of things stand out to you: first, they are not obsessed with power and even think that humility and caring for the sick and poor are a good thing. You also see these same people healing the sick, but not by sending them to the temple of Asclepius, but rather praying over them in the name of Jesus, the man they claim to be God Almighty. Their way of life, the miracles you witness, and the incredible teachings of Jesus, though, are so amazing that you decide to become one of them. It takes two to three years of classes and strict training, however, before you are baptized and during those years you learn the full story and identity of Jesus. Then on Easter, four years after you first heard a Christian preaching in the streets of Rome, you are finally baptized and able to receive the Eucharist. You now have a new identity and live off of new food and drink. As a new convert you listen to the Holy Scriptures as much as possible as you desire to live in this new identity, but it is not easy. Your family has been very suspicious of these new friends from the beginning. The Roman government from time to time sends out edicts to arrest Christians, and still all the pleasures of Rome are present and all the temples dedicated to the numerous deities still stand.

When James wrote his Epistle, he had Christians like this in mind, a Christian joining a small church amidst a bustling, pagan, and distracted world. We know from the ancient lectionaries and missals, that these readings (James, and John 16) had been appointed for the 4th and 5th Sundays after Easter for over 1600 years, and probably much longer than that. They were chosen because these readings would be so helpful to the newly baptized Christians at Easter.

You can still hear James’ sense of urgency and weightiness when he writes to the young Christian churches. In the first half of the chapter, James is focusing on the proper disposition needed for hearing and receiving the Word of God at baptism. Next week we will read the second half of the chapter, where James highlights the good deeds that should follow baptism. James’ sense of urgency comes from experienced knowledge of the sundry and manifold changes of the world. Only the engrafted Word, the Word that was planted in you at baptism, can save your soul, and so you must let that Word grow by putting away the abundance of malice (superfluity of naughtiness) and any other weed that might strive to take over.

One must, therefore, approach one’s baptism or one’s salvation with humility, but also intentionality. Humility to express thankfulness for this great gift and intentionality to live out the salvation. This is the result of our baptism, our unity with God, which the Gospel explains so well.

The Gospel shows the purpose of our baptisms in a Trinitarian light. We are baptized into Christ so that He may bring us to His Father. As in John 14: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” When Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus then responds, albeit a bit perplexed at Philip’s misunderstanding: “[Jhn 14:9-11 KJV] Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou [then], Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I [am] in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.” When we are joined to Jesus, then, we are truly joined to the Father as well because there is union between the Father and the Son.

Today is the feast day of St. Athanasius, and I have to add a quote from him who fought so hard to defend the unity of the Father and Son and the Holy Ghost. He writes: “”[Since human beings sought God in creation and things perceptible], the lover of human beings and the common savior of all, takes to himself a body and dwells as a human among humans and draws to himself the perceptible sense of all human beings, so that those who think that God is in things corporeal might, from what the Lord wrought through the actions of the body, know the truth and through him might consider the Father” 

Even more, in John 16, Jesus explains to his disciples how when he is gone back to the Father, they will still be unified because the Holy Spirit will be given to them: “[Jhn 16:14-15 KJV] [The Holy Spirit] shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew [it] unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew [it] unto you.” Again, as we are unified to Jesus, we are unified into the very life of the Trinity so that we may, like Jesus, worship the Father perfectly through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is needed so that the Church might be led into this way of truth. 

At every Mass, during the prayer for the whole state of Christ’s church, we still pray to God, “beseeching thee to inspire continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord.” That is the Holy Spirit, of course–the Spirit who guides us in all truth, unites us with our Lord, and brings peace to the Body. As members of the Church, though, this prayer can also be taken personally, since the Spirit works in each and every one of us to fix our hearts upon Christ himself. We no longer live in ancient Rome, and many of our ways of life and liturgies are different, but we still deal with the sundry and manifold changes of the world–we still must live out our lives in earnest dedication. May we always remember our own baptisms, the vows that we took or were taken for us then to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, believe the articles of the Christian faith, and keep God’s holy will and commandments. This is how the Holy Spirit works in our lives, we can pray knowing that the Holy Spirit will work to accomplish these ends. And so we pray with the Collect that the Spirit may guide us to “love the thing which thou commandest and desire that which thou dost promise.”