Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on July 27, 2025

[sermon begins after three longish Bible readings. The Psalm is at the end of sermon]

Luke 11:1-13  [Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”² So he said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, may your name be revered as holy.
May your kingdom come.
³ Give us each day our daily bread.
⁴ And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
⁵ And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, ⁶ for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ ⁷ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ ⁸ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
⁹ “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ¹¹ Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? ¹² Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? ¹³ If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Colossians 2:6-19 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
⁸ Watch out that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental principles of the world, and not according to Christ. ⁹ For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, ¹⁰ and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. ¹¹ In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by the removal of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; ¹² when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. ¹³ And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. [
¹⁶ Therefore, do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food or drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths. ¹⁷ These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the body belongs to Christ. ¹⁸ Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, initiatory visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, ¹⁹ and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with a growth that is from God.]

Genesis 18:20-32  Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! ²¹ 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.”
²² So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord. ²³ Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? ²⁴ Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? ²⁵ Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” ²⁶ And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” ²⁷ Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord, I who am but dust and ashes. ²⁸ Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” ²⁹ Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” ³⁰ Then he said, “Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” ³¹ He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” ³² Then he said, “Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.”

[sermon begins]

Have you ever texted someone and waited days for a reply? Okay, not just me then. I can conjure up many reasons why they might not be texting back. Sometimes I tell myself that my text really isn’t that urgent in the scheme of things. I don’t have to text the double question mark to make sure they saw the first text. OR maybe you’ve been the person who’s taken days to text back. There could be any number of good reasons for the delay. You justify your delay with those reasons. The silence is just hanging out there and we fill silence by imagining things that may or may not be true because the silence is deafening. This is kind of like when we pray. We pray for all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons at all kinds of times. We often pray as if we’re texting God. When we interpret prayer as unanswered, it’s like screaming into a void asking, “Why isn’t God texting me back?!!”

How we pray says a lot about our unexamined, embedded theology. Theology is the fancy word for who we think God is and what we think God does. There’s a lot that reveals our theology without revealing a thing about God. Prayer is one of them. The Bible is an often-confusing guide in this regard. Take the Sodom and Gomorrah story in Genesis 18 this morning. It was likely paired with the Luke reading to show persistence in prayer as Abraham negotiates with God for the lives of the righteous. But it’s a horrific story that’s fueled religious retribution and wrongly used to justify much harm against humanity throughout the centuries. It’s way better to go after this story in a Bible study than a sermon because the layers of historical interpretation are painful, problematic and complicated. One problem is that these kinds of Bible stories get conflated with our own impulse for punishment and revenge. Another problem is the content of Abraham’s negotiations. Let’s scoop up this story and set it over in the more-study-needed box. Moving on…

Hanging out with Jesus as he teaches his disciples to pray may be more fruitful. The promise here is that God is listening. God listened to Jesus pray. And Jesus taught his disciples to pray because God is listening to them, too. The first posture and promise of prayer are God’s. God loves us first. God speaks to us first through the word made flesh in Jesus.[1] As Jesus teaches prayer, what we now call the Lord’s Prayer is aligning us with God’s kingdom and will, a kingdom and will that have to do with daily bread and forgiveness, a kingdom and will assured by God’s trustworthy promises.[2]

Jesus taught his disciples and said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Asking, seeking, and knocking is a posture of trust that there’s something to be found.[3] Asking, seeking, and knocking goes way beyond what I think I need or want or wish for—although we certainly pray for needs, wants, and wishes all the time. And, of course, we should. I pray for all kinds of things and for all kinds of reasons. Censoring my prayers doesn’t make any sense to me if God already knows the joys and concerns on my heart.

Theologians and church-types love to talk about what happens when we pray.  Dissecting it into parts and giving us theories on how prayer works and how it doesn’t work and how God works in the midst of prayer. Out of all of those theories, some which come from tangling with our text in Luke today, I haven’t found one that is intellectually satisfying. I have prayed desperate prayers and silly prayers and everything in between to all kinds of outcomes. So the outcome of prayer is simply a mystery to me. The mystery of prayer is especially true when my or someone else’s world is torn apart by loss. And yet…and yet…I pray.  I continue to pray desperate prayers and silly prayers and everything in between. If there’s any agreement about prayer, it’s that prayer is part of the Christian life. And if it’s part of my life as a Christian, then God’s grace is certainly extravagant enough to cover a few errant prayers of dubious content.

Prayer is a mind-bender in the best sense of the word. As I ask, seek, and knock, prayer bends my mind towards God’s future, towards the will of God regardless of the ways prayers seem to be answered. One argument against prayer by non-praying types is that the outcomes of prayer could just as easily be explained by random chance as by the power of God. But surrendering to the Holy seems to be about leaning into God no matter what is happening around us. God isn’t much more than a vending machine if we reduce the power of prayer to an equation between our quantity of faith and getting what we ask for. But bending our minds towards God’s will through prayer and being given the Holy Spirit holds a promise that no one can take us captive or disqualify us as cautioned in the Colossians reading. We’re so tempted to disqualify others based on what captivates us as right or wrong or who’s in or out. People were apparently puffed up without cause and disqualifying each other in the Colossian church based on who was and who wasn’t captivated by visions of angels, self-abasement, and initiatory visions.

Disqualifying people is a lot like the modern-day tendency to announce who is and who isn’t a Christian based on whatever we think a Christian looks like or sounds like. The closest I get to it is when I’m asked whether I think “those people” or “those churches” are really Christian. I’ll say that their actions or theology don’t fit into my understanding of Jesus’ teachings or the way of Jesus. The risk in disqualifying people is that we confirm ourselves and judge others according to our own notions of worthiness, captivated and puffed up by a human way of thinking. But our head is Christ. The Christ, as Paul writes to the Colossians, who nailed to the cross the record of our trespasses, disarming rulers and authorities.

Christ is the head of the church. Seems almost silly to say it out loud on a Sunday morning but there you go. The prayer that Jesus teaches the disciples is the church’s prayer we pray together as “The Lord’s Prayer” during worship.  It is a corporate prayer; meaning that all of us, the whole body of Christ, pray this prayer together and on each other’s behalf. Some of us widen the net a bit with this prayer and pray it in the morning before we get out of bed or on airplanes when the weather is bad. This is a go-to prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer has served the faithful for over 2,000 years and will continue to serve the faithful long after we’re gone. We pray this prayer with our ancestors in the faith and with those yet to come, leaning together into God’s will and future. This is THE most persistent prayer of the body of Christ. It is a prayer that positions us for action into God’s will on behalf of each other—for daily bread for us and for those being starved by famine, war, or genocide; for forgiveness for ourselves and for others who need our forgiveness. We pray for God’s kingdom to come as we consent to playing our part in its inbreaking. God gives us the Holy Spirit and no telling what the Spirit will work in us as we’re reoriented to God’s kingdom and will.

Have you ever entered a room or an office where someone is already there and you quietly say, “knock, knock,” to get their attention? Or you pick up your phone to text someone and there’s already a text there from them? God’s promise to us in prayer is that God is already listening. Thanks be to God. And amen.

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[1] Rolf Jacobson, Professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Commentary of Bible readings for July 27, 2025. #1034: Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 17C) – July 27, 2025 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary.

[2] Matthew Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Commentary of Bible readings for July 27, 2025. #1034: Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 17C) – July 27, 2025 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary.

[3] Skinner, ibid.

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Psalm 138

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart;
before the gods I sing your praise;
² I bow down toward your holy temple
and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness,
for you have exalted your name and your word
above everything.
³ On the day I called, you answered me;
you increased my strength of soul.

⁴ All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O Lord,
for they have heard the words of your mouth.
⁵ They shall sing of the ways of the Lord,
for great is the glory of the Lord.
⁶ For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly,
but the haughty he perceives from far away.

⁷ Though I walk in the midst of trouble,
you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies;
you stretch out your hand,
and your right hand delivers me.
⁸ The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;
your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.