Lenten Midweek I:
“Return to the LORD: A Call to Prayer”[1]
February 24, 2021
Text: Matt. 26:36-46
“Return
to the LORD your God” (Joel 2:13; ESV).
Return to Him in prayer. You
should pray. God tenderly invites you,
and when you think about what that invitation is, that the Almighty Creator and
Ruler of the universe wants to hear from you, about all your concerns large and
small, from world pandemics to where you left your car keys, one can hardly
imagine why you would refuse. But
whether or not you are inclined to accept His invitation, you should know that
God commands you to pray, and He expects it.
Just as it is a misuse of God’s Name to call upon Him falsely or
profanely, so it is a misuse of His Name not to call upon Him at all. Prayer should be easy, and we should want to
do it. Prayer is, after all, simply
holding converse with your Father who loves you, your Brother, Jesus Christ,
who has redeemed you, and the Spirit of the Father and Jesus who abides with
you. Prayer is the breath of faith. You inhale the life-giving and
life-sustaining oxygen of God’s Word, and you exhale your petitions,
supplications, and thanksgivings. And in
this way, prayer is really a two-way conversation. So prayer should come as naturally as
breathing. But it doesn’t, does it? It doesn’t come naturally to our fallen
flesh. It is a struggle. It is as Jesus says to His sleepy disciples:
“The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt.
26:41).
What
makes it so difficult is, first of all, Old Adam’s disinclination. Now, you’ve been redeemed from that by Jesus’
crucifixion and death which covers all your sins, and you are baptized into the
death and resurrection of Christ. His
life is in you and His Spirit is in you, so it is not that Old Adam reigns
supreme in this. Your spirit is
willing, as Jesus says, the new you, the New Creation in Christ that daily
emerges and arises out of the baptismal waters.
You do want to pray. But the
flesh is weak, and that is where the disinclination comes from. And you have to know about that in order to
fight it. Essentially, it is spiritual
lethargy. Laziness. Sleepiness.
I know I should pray, but I don’t really want to right now. There are other things I’d rather do. I’m tired.
I’m hungry. I’ll get to it later. But, of course, you don’t get to it later,
because later isn't a good time, either.
Or it can be a matter of misplaced priorities. I have so much to do, I couldn’t possibly
take the time to pray right now. Here it
is helpful to keep in mind what Luther famously said, that he had so much to
do, he’d better spend at least the first three hours of the day in prayer. For him, it may not have been an
exaggeration.
But
perhaps most serious are the doubts the devil plants into your heart and soul
regarding prayer. “Does God even hear
me? Does He desire my prayer? Will He answer? Does He care?
Surely God does not want to hear the poor petitions of a sinner like
me.” These are the very issues Dr.
Luther addresses in his Large Catechism, and here he is worth quoting at
length:
“we let thoughts like these lead us astray
and stop us: ‘I am not holy or worthy enough.
If I were as godly and holy as St. Peter or St. Paul, then I would pray.’ But put such thoughts far away. For the same commandment that applied to St.
Paul applies also to me. The Second
Commandment is given as much on my account as on his account, so that Paul can
boast about no better or holier commandment.
“You should say, ‘My prayer is as
precious, holy, and pleasing to God as that of St. Paul or of the most holy
saints. This is the reason: I will
gladly grant that Paul is personally more holy, but that’s not because of the
commandment. God does not consider prayer
because of the person, but because of His Word and obedience to it. For I rest my prayer on the same commandment
on which all the saints rest their prayer.
Furthermore, I pray for the same thing that they all pray for and always
have prayed. Besides, I have just as
great a need of what I pray for as those great saints; no, even a greater one
than they” (LC III:15-16 [McCain]).
And
then Luther calls our attention to the promises of God in the Holy Scriptures
concerning prayer: God “says in Psalm 50:15, ‘Call upon Me in the day of
trouble; I will deliver you.’ And Christ
says in the Gospel of St. Matthew, ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; . . . for
everyone who asks receives’ (7:7-8).
Such promises certainly ought to encourage and kindle our hearts to pray
with pleasure and delight” (LC III:19-20).
Our
Lord Jesus is our example in this. So
often, Jesus went off by Himself to a place of solitude to pray to His heavenly
Father (e.g. Matt. 14:23). He did this
regularly, but especially before major events in His life and ministry; for
example, He prayed all night before calling the Twelve to Himself to be His Apostles
(Luke 6:12). And here we find Him in our
Holy Gospel this evening, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, in great agony
before His sacrificial death, asking the Father to take the cup of suffering
from Him… yet not His will, but the Father’s be done. And He asked His three best friends to wait
with Him, and watch with Him, and pray with Him, but their eyes were too heavy,
and the flesh too weak. Just like us,
they were overcome by their sinful nature.
But Jesus was not deterred. Three
times He went back and fell on His face before God. Three times He petitioned His Father in
heaven. In His very worst moments, in
the Day of trouble, He called upon His Father for help and deliverance.
We
should follow His example of persistence in prayer. But even more, we should rejoice that our
Lord prays faithfully for us and in our place. Not only does He suffer and die for the
forgiveness of our faithlessness, He fulfills the Commandment where we fail,
and His perfect faithfulness is credited to our account. So we can approach the throne of God
confidently, covered by the sin-atoning blood of Jesus and by all His
righteousness, knowing that God will hear us and answer for the sake of His
beloved Son.
God
does not reject our prayer because of our sins or because prayer is a struggle
for us. He gladly hears us for Jesus’
sake. But He does know that in our
earthly life praying will always be a struggle.
So He gives us promises to sustain us and tools to help us, so that we
do not lose heart, but always pray (Luke 18:1).
We do not know what to pray for as we ought, and we so often have trouble
finding the right words. So the Spirit
of God helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us with groans that words
cannot express (Rom. 8:26). Jesus
Himself, who is risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father,
prays for us, and with us, and in us.
And He gives us words that are always the very best words to pray. He gives us His prayer, the Lord’s
Prayer. This is the most perfect prayer,
because it comes from the mouth of our Lord Himself, and includes every need of
body and soul. And because it is the
Word of God, it also serves as a means of grace. It preaches to us every time we pray it, and
gives us Jesus and His salvation.
And
there are other prayers our Lord gives us.
The Kyrie appears so often throughout the Scriptures: “Lord have
mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.” It is a prayer that is always right and
fitting, and should always be ready upon our lips and in our hearts. When we see something terrible, “Lord have
mercy.” When we hear that someone is sick
or suffering, “Christ have mercy,” and so forth.
Then
there are the Psalms, the prayers and hymns of the Old Testament Church now
fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who also prayed them (for example, on the way to the
Gethsemane and from the cross), and so they are now made the prayers of the New
Testament Church in the fullest sense.
There are Psalms that fit every occasion, and when you know them, they
become an inexhaustible spring of consolation.
That is why I recommend praying Psalms every day, because in that way,
you will come to know them, and you will know which ones fit whatever your
particular need may be at the moment.
And even when you are praying a Psalm that doesn’t seem to fit your
particular need that day, remember that you are praying for, and with, the
whole Church of God in Christ Jesus, and someone in that number does
need that prayer. And they are praying
for, and with, you, and so at any moment you can be comforted in knowing that
Christians you do not know, and who do not know you, are praying for you:
the Lord’s Prayer, the Kyrie, the Prayer of the Church, Psalms that fit your
very set of circumstances. And God in
heaven is hearing, and answering, and coming for your aid and deliverance.
Of
course, you can and should speak your own prayers, too, what are sometimes
called ex corde prayers, “out of the heart” prayers. Though I don’t really like that term, because
it seems to imply that the biblical prayers are somehow less sincere. But would you really ever argue that some
prayer you make up is better and more God pleasing than our Lord’s Prayer or
the prayers from Holy Scripture? Let me
tell you something, I’ve been at the bedside in dire circumstances and at
death, and in those moments, the last thing people care to hear is me making up
stuff out of my poor heart. But say the
Our Father and they are immediately comforted, and often even in great
weakness, dementia, or delusion, the Spirit brings those words to their own
lips, and they pray a mighty prayer that rattles the heavens and burns the
devil’s backside.
And
never underestimate the prayers of the Church, the liturgy, the collects, the
hymns, the prayer books, saturated as they are with Holy Scripture, that have
stood the test of time and circumstance.
The fact is, we do often struggle to find the words to pray. And so, here are words. Pray them. Pray them individually, and join your voice
with others to pray them here in the Christian congregation. The Spirit will help you in your weakness,
and these words will enrich you and sanctify you, and your Father in heaven
will hear them, and answer for Jesus’ sake.
If
you find that prayer is a struggle (and my guess is that you often do, because
the flesh is weak), here is what you do.
Set aside a specific time each day, in a specific place, so that this
becomes a habit. Take your Bible and
your hymnal, or some compendium of the two, like the Treasury of Daily
Prayer or the Catechism. Open the
book and pray the words God has given.
This will inevitably lead to the Spirit opening your lips for the people
and needs in your life as you converse with your Father in heaven. And God will not forsake you in this. As you return to the LORD your God in prayer,
you will find that He is right there with open arms and open ears, to hear your
prayer, answer you, and help you. “Our
Father who art in heaven,” we are given to pray. “What does this mean? With these words God tenderly invites us to
believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children, so that
with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear
father.”[2] In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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