Sermon: July 27, 2025
Reading: Luke 11:1-13
"Lord, teach us to pray." This is the request that we hear the disciples ask of Jesus in today’s gospel passage. "Lord, teach us to pray.”
Sadly, in many instances, prayer has been reduced to a cliché at best. For example, after every horrific mass shooting, there are a lot of responses, especially from the leaders of our country, of “thoughts and prayers,” but nothing is ever done or resolved.
Oh, there’s a lot of finger-pointing and blaming, but no action is taken to prevent it from happening again. There are powerful and wealthy people and organizations that place a higher priority on profit and use fear to manipulate people into valuing their perceived right to bear arms more than another human being’s life, even if it is the life of a child.
On the flip side of that coin is the unwillingness to recognize and support proper mental health care, as the government continues to slash one health care program after another, which were meant to aid those in need and possibly help prevent devastating events like this from happening.
Or thoughts and prayers go out to end the conflict in the middle east, but we continue to funnel weapons and support to Israel. And in the meantime, there is genocide and mass starvation taking place in Gaza at the hands of Israel. While both sides of the conflict point fingers and blame the other, innocent people and especially children are dying. Hate and violence are becoming normalized as an accepted way to respond to others rather than following Jesus’ peaceful teaching of loving one another as he loves us.
Part of prayer is action; they go hand in hand. If we pray, if we listen and communicate with God, as Jesus said, we will be given the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit must be followed by a response and action based on the guidance we receive.
Jesus’ answer to the disciples' request to teach them to pray demonstrates two fundamental aspects of Christian life: prayer and action. Together, they are essential to bring about God’s peaceful and loving kingdom on earth. Prayer and action should never be separated but lived and experienced in profound unity and harmony. Prayer informs and shapes our actions, and our actions informs and shapes our prayer.
We should pray. We must pray. We need to pray and take action with a shameless reckless abandonment as we pursue our faith and our lives with the bold persistence that can’t be halted by human fears or demands, so that we may see God’s love and peace spread throughout the world – Lord, teach us to pray. May Thy kingdom come, and Thy will be done.
