A sermon preached by the Revd Dr Trevor Jamison at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, July 27th 2025
Genesis 18:20-33; Luke 11:1-13
Unfortunately, there were technical problems which prevented this service from being livestreamed.
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial. Amen
How do you feel about asking God for things? Other types of prayer are available, but how do you feel about asking God for things? After all, most of the Lord’s Prayer, in the version it comes to us in Luke’s Gospel, involves asking God for things.
Asking God for things might be a risky business. What if you request something you should not, and you annoy God? After all, who among us wants to annoy God? “Shy bairns get nowt” and “if you don’t ask you don’t get” in making requests of God, but might it also be a case of “be careful what you ask for.”
Abraham is clearly a member of the “shy bairns get nowt” school of prayer. He has entertained three strangers at his campground, ones who in some way represent God, and now they are going to go and pay a visit to the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. God speaks, saying, ‘How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.’ (18:20, 21)
The fear is that if things there are as bad as God has heard then, in fury, God will sweep them all away. This prospect leads Abraham into a spate of prayerful bold bargaining with God: ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?’ (18:23) he asks. ‘Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked … Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ (18:25) Abraham pressures God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if there are fifty righteous inhabitants, and, when that seems successful, proceeds to ask for more and more – for forty-five, for forty, for thirty, for twenty …’ (18:28-31) And then, ‘Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten [righteous people] are found there …’ (18:32)
If we take Abraham as our role model then we’re being encouraged to be bold in what we ask for when we pray to God. You might argue, after all, that there’s no point in trying to tone down your request because in any case God will know what you really think and want anyway. Note, though, that Abraham is bold in praying for the good of others, not for the things he might want for himself. True, Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and his family live Sodom and Gomorrah, but his bold prayer is still a prayer made with others in mind, not selfish individual self-interest. Still, it’s ok to pray for ourselves. That, after all, emerges from the teaching of Jesus.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus has been ‘praying in a certain place.’ (11:1) On several occasions the Gospels tell us that Jesus would remove himself from the company of others in order to pray. Now, ‘after he had finished’ praying (11:1), his disciples approach him with a prayer-related request: ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ (11:1) And in Luke’s Gospel this is the occasion for Jesus to teach his disciples through providing them with a model prayer, one that speaks of God and expresses human yearnings and desires. Jesus was not teaching them to pray – they were all Jews, so they already know how to pray – but how to pray in a certain way.
So how were they (and we) to pray?
- Father – pray knowing that God is a God who desires a personal relationship with you, as a parent might with a child
- hallowed be your name – yet that relationship with our heavenly parent is with a God whose holiness, whose otherness from us, is to be revered. When, in the Book of Exodus, Moses approaches a burning bush in the middle of nowhere to hear the name of God (3:13-14), he is warned that he is standing on holy ground (13:5) The God who gets personal with us is the same God who in holiness is far, far above us.
- Your kingdom come – we are to yearn for God’s kingdom to come; for God’s will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven, and if we are yearning for God’s kingdom then we should prioritise it over and above the demands made by earthly kingdoms and governments
- Give us each day our daily bread – we’re to be concerned for the bread of today and the bread of tomorrow; to think about the satisfaction of material human need for food, and perhaps to think about that biblical image of our ultimate future in terms of all the peoples of the world gathered together by God to enjoy one great heavenly banquet
- And forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us – in this version God forgives sins and we forgive debts! Except, of course, ‘debts’ refers to more than our money relationships with other people; it’s about wider matters
- And do not bring us to the time of trial – the testing, or trial of our faith is part and parcel of life. In the Bible God is known to test the faithful, for example, testing that bold pray-er, Abraham, concerning the fate of his son, Isaac. (Genesis 22:2) – so expecting testing but don’t seek it out
So Jesus teaches us to pray to a personal God, acknowledging God’s holiness; to put God’s kingdom before earthly governments; being people who are concerned about food for today for sustenance, yet also looking forward to God’s banquet tomorrow; ones seeking God’s forgiveness which inspires us to be as forgiving to others; and always seeking to refuse the temptations which inevitably come our way.
Which is quite a lot!
Yes, that’s quite a lot, but Jesus is not finished there. He goes on to present his disciples with a series of ridiculous scenes as a way to telling us something about God and how God sees our prayers.
First Jesus gives us a story (a parable?) where you have a friend turn up to visit at midnight. How often does that happen? It’s time for a midnight feast in the dorm but you have no food, so now you go and wake up your neighbour as well (and presumably a number of your neighbours), shouting out requests for bread. Your friend is shouting back – the neighbours must really love you by this point – that he won’t open the door because he doesn’t want to wake up the children in bed with him, but somehow sleeping through it all. You keep on shouting until he gives in and provides you with the requested bread.
That’s not how friends behave to one another. Instead, you enjoy friendly relationship with the personal God, known to you as Father and by other names, who only desires that you ask for help; that you should knock on God’s door with your requests. God would not give you bad things, anymore than a parent would give their child a snake instead of a fish, a scorpion instead of an egg, poison instead of their daily bread.
So to conclude, how we pray is important, so pray with boldness, and pray in the right way for the right things, and not forgetting to pray for other people.
Pray to a personal God, a holy God; pray for God’s kingdom before praying for earthly governments; pray for food for today and to dine at God’s banquet tomorrow; seek God’s forgiveness and seek to be as forgiving to others; and pray for God’s help to be able to refuse temptation.
Yes, pray, believing that your fatherly, motherly, parental, caring, loving God, is ever ready and willing to give you good things, not bad; life for today and life for tomorrow. Amen.