A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. As Jesus drew near Jericho, that's down in the valley by the Jordan. It's an oasis. Beautiful place. A blind man sat at the side of the road begging.
Hearing a crowd go by, the blind man asked, what is that? The answer came that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. The blind man shouted out, Jesus, son of David, have pity on me. Those in the lead sternly ordered the man to keep quiet, but he cried out all the more, son of David, have pity on me. At that, Jesus halted and ordered the blind man to be brought to him.
When the blind man had come close, Jesus asked him, what do you want me to do for you? Lord, he answered, I want to see. Jesus said to him, receive your sight. Your faith has healed you. At that very moment, the man was given his sight and began to follow Jesus, giving God the glory.
All the people witnessed it, and they too gave praise to god. And this is the gospel of the lord. Lord In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. A number of years ago, I had a very stimulating argument. They the very sincere young couple were questioning why we should pray to god in the sense of asking him for favors.
That is the prayer petition. And their argument was this, God is you admit that God is omniscient, that is he knows everything. And God is all loving and he is all powerful. Now, put those three things together, why do I have to go and tell him, God I need a pair of shoes today, I need a good job. Now, philosophically, I can take either side.
I can argue both ways and enjoy it immensely. It's a very good argument, and you're going to wind up nowhere. Because that's a very sound objection, very sound. Why in the world should I go to God if he knows everything, and say, God, I need this, I need that, I need another thing. Why?
Well, if you if you rest your case as we were debating this subject, it was very interesting. One way of spending a snowy afternoon, you get nowhere tall. Because as I say, you can argue both ways. And I would say the argument against it is stronger. On the other hand, if you happen to be a Christian, and remember the Lord's Prayer is a Christian prayer, it's not in the Old Testament.
It's a prayer that Christ gave us. And who is Christ? Well, how about that? Of course, these this young couple didn't accept Christ as the Messiah by no means. They were rather, I guess you would describe them as good humanists.
Now, when you come to Christ and raise this issue, there's no argument. None whatsoever. First of all, he gave us the lord's prayer, and part of the Lord's prayer is, give us today our daily bread. Well, ye gods, don't you think God knows I need my daily bread? Why do I have to go and tell him about it?
Well, the answer to that is his son told me to do it. And he not only told me, he commanded. He said, when you pray, pray as follows. So Christ gave us the model of all prayer. Now we may not like it, we may love it.
The point is Christ gave it to us with a command, this is the way you should pray. Furthermore, there are any number of instances in his life where you where he prayed, that's point number one, where he definitely prayed himself plenty of times, where he asked God, his father for favors. But one of the strongest arguments, if you want to call it an argument, I would rather call it a fact, is how our blessed lord himself behaved. And today, we have just one instance of it. Can you imagine, here is a man who was born blind and everybody knew it.
And he makes a he makes a mess out of himself, he causes causes a disturbance, he's disrupting a very decent afternoon. He breaks the monotony of being solemn by crying out, son of David, save me, help me, cure me. And these good God fearing people say, shut up. Yet you're you're disturbing the peace. You're annoying us.
You're a scandal. But he he hollers all the louder. And then finally, Christ says, well, bring the guy over. Let me look at him. And when the man comes over, Christ says, what do you want me to do for you?
What a silly question. Absolutely silly. And yet Christ asked that question, what do you want me to do for you? Asking the blind man who thought he could say could give him back his sight. You see how you'd say on on reasonable grounds, this is an absurd incident.
And it is. Let's face it. But that's the way our lord acted. That's the way he did it. That's the what he wanted from the blind man.
He wanted the blind man to say, I want you to cure me. I want you to give me back my sight. Now don't ask me why our lord wanted it. I'm dealing with facts, not with motives. And the fact is that's the way our blessed lord acted.
Acted. So let us not in the least as Christians now if you're a pagan, that's different. If you're a good god fearing atheist, that's different. Then we'll have a nice argument about it. But if we're Christians, there can't be any argument about it.
None at all. That the prayer of petition has a very decent place in our prayerful religious life. Prayers of petition. Now, petition is just a fancy way of saying begging, begging, begging. We beg God.
Now, don't ask me why God wants it this way. I don't know. That's the way he wants it. I know that for sure. I know that for sure.
And it's indisputable. And say, let so let us not hesitate or feel embarrassed or feel that is demeaning to go to God and say, God, you know everything. You know I need a job. You know I need this help. You know I need this courage.
You know I need your grace. Well, give it to me. God knows it already. You've you've told him he knows it already. But he's told you, what do you want me to do for you?
And the wonderful example is our blessed Lord. He in today's I said I say, when you look at this, when you take it apart a bit and analyze it, it comes out as a as a rather peculiar situation. But that is just exactly what our Lord did. He asked the man who was blind, what do you want me to do for you? It's like looking at a person who's dying of thirst and say, son, what do you want?
But that's our Lord's teaching us something here. And therefore, we should have confidence. Now I know as soon as soon as you mention the prayer of petition, as soon as you mention it, at least in my mind, as soon as I even think of the the prayer of petition, I remember two things. Two facts. The first is that our blessed lord said you should pray, and that if you had the faith of a mustard seed, if you had the slightest kind of faith, you could move mountains with your prayers of petition.
Notice our lord said that. Now the second thing is an equal equally indisputable fact, that a lot of our prayers of petition, as far as we can see, are not answered. That's that's an absolute fact. But that's a separate that's a separate situation. That's a separate consideration.
The what I wanna face up to this morning is simply this command of our lord. Give us this day our daily bread. But when we pray with a prayer petition, let's be reasonable. Let us be sensible Christians. I'm not telling any god anything.
I'm not informing him. I'm not giving him information that he doesn't have. I'm dealing with a mystery. And the only reason that justifies me in saying, God, give me this, give me that, give me something else. The only thing that justifies such a a rather absurd thing is God himself, who spoke to us with his son, give us this day our daily bread.
And so with confidence, I this is a mystery. Prayer prayer petition is a mystery. I am the first one to agree with that. But because it's a mystery, that doesn't mean we get we get weak about it, that we're in a doubtful state about it. It just means we don't know all about it.
And that can be said about anything in this whole living world, and in the dead world too. We don't know everything about anything. All we know is what we need to know. And all I need to know to be a good Christian is what our Lord not only has told me to do, commanded me to do, but has shown me that I must do it. We must go to him on our knees and ask him for what we need.
Lord, that I may see. Lord, that I may hear. Lord, that I may do anything worthwhile. I need you. In the name of the father and the son, holy spirit.
Amen.