\u201cWhat\u2019s in a name?\u201d We\u2019ve all probably heard that phrase used many times. Or maybe we\u2019ve heard, \u201cWho\u2019s your family?\u201d In other words, where do you come from and who do you belong to? In the city of Philadelphia, if you ask Roman Catholics where they\u2019re from, 90% of the time the answer you get isn\u2019t the part of the city they\u2019re from, but their parish. Lots of times, it\u2019s not even the full name of the parish. For instance, people from the Kingsessing area would say \u201cMBS,\u201d and everybody, even the non-Roman Catholics, would know that stands for Most Blessed Sacrament. People from the Frankford area might say they were from \u201cthe Arc\u201d\u2013really St. Joan of Arc, 36th and Frankford Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Folks not from Philadelphia find this strange custom often confusing and usually funny, but the natives know exactly what it means. Now, at face value this custom is a regional expression, but deep down it\u2019s more than that. These people are claiming a place in a particular group, an extended family. It\u2019s a way they explain a part of who they are, and very often it also says something about how they behave, or ought to behave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s the same no matter what part of the country you\u2019re from. There are ways of claiming how you belong and of explaining how you act by just saying where you\u2019re from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what does talking about being part of a particular family have to do with today\u2019s Gospel? If we look at the Gospel only literally\u2013probably not much. If we look at it only literally, we\u2019ll be tempted to say that this Gospel gives us two things. It gives us the exact words of a prayer to say, and then it tells us that all we have to do is pray hard enough and long enough and we can get God to give us what we want. Reading those few verses of this Gospel literally can lead to real frustration and heartbreak when we come up against hard things in this life. \u201cI asked, but I didn\u2019t receive what I wanted. I knocked but that door wasn\u2019t opened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we have to realize that this reading isn\u2019t a \u201chow-to\u201d reading. It\u2019s not intended to give us a recipe of sayings that we can call on when we want or need something. We need to look deeper, to take a look at these few verses in the context of this whole section of Luke\u2019s Gospel, and then we\u2019ll see that we\u2019re getting a whole lot more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These few verses are part of a whole picture given to us in this Gospel, a picture that tells us something very important about what it means to be a part of God\u2019s family, to be the people of God. Remember the last two Sundays\u2019 Gospels? First, we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan. That story reminded us that it\u2019s through our actions, our works, the way we treat others, that we show we understand we\u2019re living in the kingdom of God. We do things in a certain way because we understand the lessons Jesus taught about how those who claim to be his followers ought to act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then last week we heard again the story of Martha and Mary. Jesus was not putting one sister above the other. He was reminding us that we must support our actions by prayer. We must also constantly renew and strengthen ourselves to do God\u2019s will by listening to God\u2019s word and sharing together in prayer, just as we\u2019re doing right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In today\u2019s Gospel, Jesus is continuing his teaching on what it means to be his disciples. These disciples have heard Jesus teach others; they may have heard him speak to Martha and Mary. Now they want Jesus to teach them to pray, too. Here\u2019s where things get interesting. Our English translation says, \u201cWhen you pray, say . . .. \u201d But remember that what we read this morning is a translation of the original Greek text. If we go back to it, we find that this verse could be translated, \u201cWhen you pray, you are saying . . .. \u201d That gives us something more to think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Remember that Jesus was talking to Jews, to his own people. The prayer that we have come to call \u201cthe Lord\u2019s Prayer\u201d is not an exclusively Christian prayer. It\u2019s certainly not a \u201cme-and-Jesus\u201d prayer. Any devout Jew could pray these same words today, and many did pray exactly this way in Jesus\u2019 time. Jesus was reminding his listeners that they already knew how to pray; they\u2019d been doing it all their lives. He was making them conscious again of the outline or the form of a prayer that maybe had become too familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then he went on to give them an example of how prayer ought to affect us. We mustn\u2019t make the mistake of turning the story of the neighbor and the bread into an allegory. We can\u2019t make God the neighbor and us the person who needs some food in the middle of the night. That\u2019s not the point of the story. The point is that, if we are members of God\u2019s family, we\u2019re bound to act in a certain way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take a good look at the verses we\u2019ve turned into contemporary hymns. The Gospel says, \u201cAsk and it will be given to you.\u201d Ask whom? \u201cSeek, and you will find.\u201d Seek where? \u201cKnock and it will be opened.\u201d Knock where? Too often we say blithely, \u201cGod is the answer,\u201d and then we try to set things up as a me-and-Jesus vertical line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What would it be like if we all realized that we have to be a part of this prayer, that if we\u2019re part of this family then we need to be the ones who are asked, and we are going to be the ones who are sought out by the needy, and we are the ones who must open our doors. What would it be like if we really opened our hearts and our doors not only to people in need outside the church, but to each other, inside the church, giving and receiving the same kind of love Jesus modeled for us? If we can say that this really is who we are, then we\u2019re working out what this Gospel means for us as people of God who happen to be Christians, who happen to be Episcopalians, living and working in this place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So this Gospel may be doing for you what it was doing for Jesus\u2019 hearers. It may be reminding you that yes, this is how we pray. We don\u2019t need to be doing anything outlandish or extraordinary. But we do need to keep our prayer in front of our eyes, as it were. We need to remember that God is the holy One. That means that we need to remember that, while God does provide for us, we need to reach out to others and mirror God to them. We need to forgive and be forgiven. We need to remember that, however good we are, we still fail, we are still sinners, all of us, but that God forgives us. If God forgives us, and we are God\u2019s people, then oughtn\u2019t we to forgive each other? When we are open to the unconditional forgiveness of God, then we will come to be known as a group of people who welcome the stranger and the sinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s exciting, really! We belong to the whole of the Gospel of Luke. We might see ourselves sometimes as Samaritans, sometimes as Marthas or Marys, even sometimes as priests and Levites, but above all we should see that we\u2019re a community of faith. We\u2019re people of prayer living in the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This kingdom, as Jesus constantly taught, is here\u2013now. By our baptism, we\u2019ve promised to live a different life\u2013the type of life God would live, the kind of life God did live in Jesus. A life that looks to God through praying together and reading the Scriptures, through our Book of Common Prayer, and through our sharing in the Eucharist. It\u2019s not an easy life, but as Paul said in Colossians, \u201cAs you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWhat\u2019s in a name?\u201d We\u2019ve all probably heard that phrase used many times. Or maybe we\u2019ve heard, \u201cWho\u2019s your family?\u201d In other words, where do you come from and who do you belong to? In the city of Philadelphia, if you ask Roman Catholics where they\u2019re from, 90% of the time the answer you get…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":201212,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43,52,33,3],"tags":[334],"class_list":["post-511441","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons","category-sermons-that-work","category-the-season-after-pentecost","category-worship-and-prayer-menu","tag-proper-12c"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":43,"label":"Sermons"},{"value":52,"label":"Sermons That Work"},{"value":33,"label":"The Season After Pentecost"},{"value":3,"label":"worship_and_prayer_menu"}],"post_tag":[{"value":334,"label":"Proper 12C"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":[],"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sermon"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951411,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511441\/revisions\/951411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}