Audio of the sermon is here:

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Think about the first time you did something that now you’ve been doing for a while. Maybe it was when you got to college as a freshman, and you weren’t quite sure how things worked. Or maybe when you started your job, and you didn’t have a picture of the flow of things. You were working blind, without a map. Or maybe it was bringing home your first child. No one really knows what they’re doing when the hospital sends you home with your first child for the first time! Whatever you’re thinking of, maybe you can recall how you didn’t really know what you were doing, how they do things around here, how things go.

Of course, there are different ways of handling that situation. You could be timid, ask lots of questions so you don’t get anything wrong, ask many people how things are done, etc. Or you could take what little information you have at first, and charge ahead. Sure, you might make some mistakes or step on some toes, but that’s learning too. At any rate, it’s something like the second thing behind this word in Luke 11. We heard it translated this morning as “impudence.” Sometimes it’s translated as “persistence,” but there doesn’t really seem to be any evidence for that in the text itself. In fact, in Jesus’ description, the friend who comes to the door only asks once. There’s nothing persistent about his asking, at least in the text. So it’s impudence, impertinence. Maybe it’s something like, “he doesn’t know how things go around there.” Or, he doesn’t care about whether other people have a good opinion of him and his actions, or not. He simply asks, and that’s it.

We might have all sorts of questions about prayer: why pray? What does prayer do? Why should we pray if God knows everything already? What’s the point? And while those are all questions that have answers, Jesus’ words here are even stranger. When the man comes and knocks on his friend’s house, the man says that the doors are shut and locked, and his children are in bed with him. He probably just got them to sleep, so he doesn’t want to wake them up again! It’s too much trouble. And then Jesus says, “I am telling you, although he won’t get up and give him what he asks for because he’s his friend, because of his impudence—his discarding of the way people do things around there—he will rise and give him whatever he needs.”

That’s strange, right? We might think things would be the other way around: that he would do it in spite of his impudence, because he’s his friend. No, Jesus says, that’s not how it goes around here. This is the Kingdom of God, after all, not one friend knocking on another friend’s door, asking for bread because a traveler has stopped by his house. We should keep this in mind with Jesus’ parables, as well. The parables about the Kingdom of God are not just cute, earthly stories from which we can figure out a heavenly meaning. In fact, if you take many of the parables literally in terms of earthly things, you will end up with some strange things, like throwing seed everywhere, and not caring if it lands on the road, or among the weeds, or in bad soil. That’s the opposite of how earthly farmers plant.

So, too, with prayer. Jesus says, Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. But we always like to hedge our bets when it comes to prayer; just in case we don’t get what we ask for. We’re afraid to ask for the wrong thing, or we’re afraid to ask for it in the wrong way. And certainly James has some warnings about asking for things just to satisfy our own sinful and selfish desires. But consider Abraham: he seems like he’s a little afraid to ask God about the people in Sodom. God says He’s going to tell Abraham what he’s about to do, but Genesis doesn’t actually tell us that He did. In fact, God sends His angels to see if what’s happening is as bad as it seems. The spoiler is, yes, it is. But Abraham seems to have figured it out anyway. So he asks God, for the sake of who God is and what He’s promised, to spare Sodom if there are 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, or 10 righteous people. But he seems a little nervous: please don’t be angry…let me ask this one more time…etc. But God doesn’t seem worried. He just says, sure, if there are 50, or 45, or 40, or 30, or 20, or 10. Yes, I will spare the city for the sake of 10. Does Abraham know how things go around here? If your son asks for bread, you’re not going to give him a rock, are you? If your son asks for an egg, you’re not going to give him a scorpion, are you? Now, we know that there are, of course, fathers who give their children the equivalent of rocks and scorpions. And even though there are fathers who generally do their best, no father is ever going to do everything right for his children, just as children are not going to do everything right. Even so, Jesus says, if you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

Isn’t this whole thing about fathers and children and bread? Maybe the real question isn’t so much about prayer here, but about the one to whom you’re praying. That is, what kind of father do you have? To what kind of father does Jesus tell His disciples to pray? He tells them to pray to a “how-much-more” Father. This is not the sort of Father who gets tired of someone like Abraham asking Him to have mercy. This is not the sort of Father who says, You know, we have rules about how we do things around here, and if you don’t follow the prayer rules, I won’t listen to or answer you. That is often, I think, how we think God is. We’re more worried and anxious about prayer than impudent. We treat God like the neighbor who’s already in bed with the doors locked in the middle of the night. He’s probably busy. Does He have time for my problems? Maybe this isn’t important enough to pray about. It will be how it will be, so why pray?

But that’s not how we do things around here—not just in this building, but in the Kingdom of God. That’s not the sort of Father you have. What kind of opinion does He have of you? That makes the difference. And He is not like us earthly fathers, who manage to get it together sometimes to give good things to our children. How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him! That’s different from Matthew. Matthew has, “How much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him.” But what good things? Good things according to what I think is good? No, good things according to the goodness of the Holy Spirit. Because until the Father gives the Holy Spirit, we do not know what kind of Father God is. It is only as He gives you the Holy Spirit that you believe in Jesus, and believing Jesus, you can see what kind of Father Jesus has. It is the Father of Jesus to whom He says you can pray. Jesus is the only Son of the Father by right and by eternity and by nature. Every other child of God is a son by adoption. The word often translated as “adoption” actually means “sonship.” And this is the gift that the Son gives to those who were evil, but now are sons of God in Christ Jesus. Now, pray to the Father like Jesus prays to the Father, in full confidence, in full perfection, in full assurance. He can only do that if He’s the Son. And this sort of prayer, you can only pray if you share in the sonship of Jesus.

And so you do! As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ, and now you believers are sons of God, regardless of where you’ve come from, who you are, what you know, what your sins look like. Because God does not hide behind the doors of the house and say, come back when you’ve got it fixed, when you’ve figured out the rules, when you know how we do things around here. We’re still practicing, obviously. Sometimes we forget what kind of Father we have and so forget that prayer is exercising our faith in that Father. How we do things around here is not being worried about God’s opinion of us, because we know what His opinion is! We have seen it in Jesus: you have been washed, cleansed, forgiven, restored, made dear children of your dear heavenly Father. Ask! Seek! Knock! He has already answered, already found you, already flung wide the doors of heaven to you in the wounds of Jesus. How much greater is His giving and His goodness than our stinginess! Of how much more value are you than all the birds, who don’t have a care in the world! Of how much more value are you than all the flowers, whom God has clothed in all their splendor, frivolously, because they’re here today, gone tomorrow. This is how we do things around here: under the free mercy and love of God in Jesus Christ. That’s the sort of Father you have, always, always ready to show mercy, to 1000 generations of those who are following the Son into that eternal future. Pray freely, openly, abundantly, and your Father will not fail to do what is just and right, according to the promise He made to Abraham and kept in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. That’s how we do things around here.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 7/25/25