There are lessons to be learned about how to pray in both readings appointed for the 6th Sunday after Trinity (Proper 12C). This sermon explores what it means to pray like Abraham and Jesus. The readings are Genesis 18:20-32 and Luke 11:1-13.
I want to begin, as I so often do, by saying how much I love preaching that brings the scriptures back to life. Surely that is the point of preaching — to let these ancient words breathe again, so they speak into our lives with all their surprising grace and challenge.
Today we have lessons in prayer.
One from Abraham and one from Jesus — both treasured in scripture,
both handed down through generations as pearls of love.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more and more aware of something about our scriptures.
They are not the comfortable writings of comfortable people.
They are the scriptures of a people who know what it’s like to be beaten,
to be hated, to be exiled and poor.
They are the treasures of those who have discovered the good news of a kingdom
so different from the kingdoms that rule over them —
kingdoms of injustice and indifference.
I had a small taste of that kind of indifference this week — two and a half hours on the phone with the TalkTalk supposed helpdesk, after an engineer had supposedly fixed our broadband the day before.
It was one of those maddening, circular conversations where no one seems able to help and your time seems to mean nothing.
And I found myself thinking: in the empires we live under today, it’s often shareholder profits that come first — and customers, ordinary people, come last.
It’s a small thing, a First World problem, but it reminded me how easily we’re made to feel powerless, unheard, even invisible.
The kingdoms of this world haven’t changed that much.
And that’s what makes the scriptures so precious.
They are not polite reflections from the powerful. They are the prayers and stories of those who know what it’s like to be last — and who dare to believe that in God’s kingdom, the last are first.
A kingdom that lifts up the last, the least, and the lost.
A kingdom that puts the bullies and tyrants last and sends the rich away empty.
It’s against that background that we hear Abraham’s prayer and the prayer we have always said Jesus taught us.
Think of Abraham’s life.
It was no easy road.
God singled him out and called him into migration — forced him to leave everything he knew for a future he could not see.
He endured famine.
He had to make his way, as many migrants still do, with deception and lies just to survive.
His faith was tested to its limits.
And here we see him in conversation with God about Sodom —
a violent and corrupt city, a city whose sins cry out to heaven.
Abraham could have said, “Yes, Lord, wipe them out. They deserve it.” But he doesn’t.
Instead, Abraham pleads for Sodom.
He bargains with God for the sake of any righteous people who might live there.
“What if there are fifty righteous? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?”
Each time God agrees to spare the city for their sake.
Do you see what’s happening?
Abraham stands in the gap for a city most would have written off.
He prays out of love — even love for an enemy city.
This is no detached, polite prayer.
This is bold, persistent intercession.
Abraham dares to hope that God’s mercy might outweigh God’s judgment. And God listens.
This is how the beaten, hated, and poor pray:
not from a place of superiority,
but from within the mess of the world.
They pray not only for themselves
but for their neighbours, even their enemies.
And then we come to Jesus.
His life, too, was marked by difficulty.
Born into a world ruled by empire,
he knew poverty, rejection, and violence.
When his disciples ask him to teach them to pray,
he gives them words shaped by that reality:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us … for we ourselves forgive.
Do not bring us to the time of trial.”
This is not a safe or sentimental prayer.
It is a radical act of trust and love.
It longs for a kingdom where tyrants no longer rule,
where the hungry are fed, where debts are forgiven,
and where the trials of this world are ended.
And notice: it’s not “give me my daily bread” but “give us our daily bread.”
This is the prayer of a people —
a community that knows its dependence on God and on one another.
This is the prayer of those who, like Abraham, refuse to give up on the world.
And Jesus doesn’t just teach this prayer — he lives it.
From the cross, he prays, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
Even in the moment of his own suffering, Jesus intercedes for his enemies.
He shows us that to pray in the midst of trouble is to love in the midst of trouble.
So what do we learn from Abraham and Jesus?
We learn that prayer is not for the strong and self-sufficient but for those who know their need.
Prayer is not an escape from the world’s mess but an entry into it.
Prayer is where we bring the beauty and the brokenness of the world before God and ask for nothing less than its redemption.
This is the radical love at the heart of prayer:
love that prays for the beaten and the poor,
but also for the violent and corrupt.
Love that does not give up on God’s mercy, even for Sodom.
Love that says, “Your kingdom come,”
even when the kingdoms of this world seem unshakable.
So today, as we join together,
lifting our voices in the prayer Jesus taught,
let us remember:
this is not a polite religious exercise.
This is the prayer of Abraham bargaining for Sodom.
This is the prayer of Jesus calling down the kingdom of heaven.
It is the prayer of those who dare to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.
It is the prayer of those who believe that God’s mercy is wider than we can imagine.
It is where we have a say, particularly those who come first in the kingdom of God –
those who otherwise have too little say in anything else to do with them.
These are the pray-ers we join when we dare to pray as Jesus and Abraham have taught us.
So let us pray boldly.
Let us pray persistently.
Let us pray with hearts full of love –
for the world, for our enemies, for the kingdom that is coming.
Let us be one with those Jesus counts first –
joining the last, the least and the lost in their prayer.
Amen.
Grits and Grains 