A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. Jesus said to his disciples, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer you from within his house, don't bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything at this time.
I tell you, though the man will not get up and give his friend anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give his friend whatever he needs. Now I tell you, ask and it will be given you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds.
And to him who knocks, it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will the father give him a snake or a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Well, my friends, here we have another excerpt from Saint Luke of a parable, two of them as a matter of fact, put into our Lord's mouth, and we assume he know he knew what he was talking about, presenting a message to us.
And message is perfectly clear. We can't this is one text where what our Lord is saying is absolutely translucently clear. He's telling if you want something, be persistent. Persistent. Don't give up.
Don't take no for an answer. Keep hammering on the door. May hurt your knuckles, but keep at it. And then he our lord ends. Matter of fact, there are three here.
Then he goes on to say about the father and the son, and he winds up with the holy spirit. Now the point that raised here is this, as I say, we can't escape it. Our lord is telling us to be persistent, not to take no for an answer, to keep begging god for what we want. Now one of the most difficult problems of being a believer in God and believing that God's running the universe, and at the same time believing in prayer and the power of prayer to get results. Putting all of this together raises an insurmountable question, and I say it's insurmountable.
I've been exposed to it since I was a kid. One of the I admit it's a high level objection, but you see people will attack Just the other night we had Bill Buckley and Mugridge, It was a splendid program, they were talking with each other. Notice I didn't say dialogue y. So Mugridge and Buckley were talking, and Mugridge, you know something about him, he was the editor of Punch, which was the best known humor magazine of of maybe of the world, of the English speaking world. He was a a good, God fearing, sincere atheist.
Mugridge, not Bill Pugley. And mister Mugridge changed. He changed abruptly and is now a fervent Christian, not a Catholic, but a fervent Christian. And as far as I can see for the most part, his theology is about as Catholic as it can get. Well, he and Buckley were discussing King Lear, and the point came up where Margaret was saying how God's running the world, and he emphasized this.
So, of course, Buckley came back and he said, well, mister Mugridge, if that's true, you are you are a a moral determinist. What what happens to free man's free will and his power of self self determination? This is the perennial question. How do you reconcile god's governor governance of the world and man's responsibility, autonomy, his power to dictate his own actions within a very restricted area. Now the third part factor which you put in there when you talk about prayer, this this exaggerates situation which was already awfully difficult.
Because now you're telling me that not only does god run the universe, not not only does a not only is every single hair of my head numbered and not only and not not a single sparrow falls from the sky without my heavenly father's permission and knowledge. You're telling me that. Then you're telling me at the same time that I I I have a certain autonomy over my over some of my actions. And how do I reconcile that with gods running the show? Now you tell me, pray, and you can move them out.
Am I changing God? Whom am I changing? How does it work? Well, I I I can argue this. I've done it for a long time.
But after all, War and Peace was written on this problem, remember. Tolstoy wrote that War and Peace to try to work this problem out. How God is running the universe and yet man has his own responsible role to play. How do you put this together? And then when you bring prayer into the situation, you're bringing a third factor in there which certainly doesn't help to clarify it at all.
Now, you can debate this till doomsday philosophically, but if you're a Christian and if you accept Jesus Christ and take seriously what he said, then you have this text today and you can't escape it. When people talk to me today asking me how can you believe in prayer, that is the prayer petition now. We're not talking about the prayer of adoration or other we're talking about the prayer where I'm praying to get something. And notice when our blessed lord talks about prayer, almost invariably he's talking about that kind of prayer. Look.
Can you can you think of a more dramatic spectacular way of telling us to pray than this text from Saint Luke this morning? And notice that we even have an answer here to the problem of why God doesn't answer my prayers. Christ says, now look, you go and ask your father, but is he when you ask for a snake, is he going to give you a certain something that's going to hurt you? So he's say he's telling us, look, when you pray, you're praying to a benevolent, heavenly, loving father. And if what you're asking for is going to be to your harm and hurt, he's not going to give it to you.
And so as Richard Cabot pointed out years ago, and I only mentioned him because he was a well known and respected thinker, thinker, Richard Cabot of Harvard. As he pointed out, he said, no prayer can be unconditional. In other words, we we can never go to God and say, God, give this to me absolutely. We can never do it. Every prayer we offer has to be in the line of prayer as Jesus Christ prayed, not my will, but thine be done.
Now, Clive Staple Lewis in his book on love has a great deal on this about prayer. When you when you beg God, ask God for something. Watch out. He may give it to you. Just remember the other morning, we prayed that we will share in Christ's suffering.
Do you really mean that? Do you wanna suffer? We prayed supposing god answers that prayer. When we when we said that, I ask you to notice. We prayed and suffered with Jesus Christ.
So this is a big I'm I'm up here just throwing out bits. It's an enormous question, but it's not really big for a Christian. There's no a Christian, he may he's not a Christian isn't remember, Christ was not a philosopher. Christ didn't come down here and appeal to reason. When Christ stood up in the synagogue, what did the people say?
Not that he spoke with a great deal of learning, not that he was one experienced in the law, not that he knew a lot of the Greek philosophers, which of course it anteceded him, predated him, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates. He never even mentions those guys. What was Christ noted for when he spoke up to speak? He spoke with authority. He didn't throw a book at anybody.
He didn't ask you to read anything. Anything. He He told told you. You. And so when we come to this tremendous problem of god's governance of the world, free will, and prayer, There's no problem here for a Christian.
We do not ask to understand when we talk to Jesus Christ and to God Almighty. We pray to believe. That's Saint Paul in the first reading today. Faith comes by hearing. He didn't say by reading.
And so our blessed Lord, this is just one example, but this is one of his dramatic examples where our blessed Lord says, look, pray. And I'm telling you, don't just pray off and on. When you want something, be persistent. Keep on knocking on the door and God will get irritated with you and maybe give it to you to shut you up. That's what he's saying.
That the the guy who's gone to bed with his children, now that's a beautiful sight. Anyway, here he is. So he gets up and gives them his friend the bread, not because he's a friend, because he wants to sleep. Everybody wants their rest. Guess God does too.
He rested, you know, on the seventh day. So all of this stuff about free will, do you reconcile prayer with free will, how do you reconcile free will with God's governance of the world, I'm not minimizing these problems. They are tremendous problems. But my first question is, who says that I'm supposed to understand everything? That's the point number one.
And secondly, look what I have from God's son telling me what to do. He's not telling me how to understand. He's telling me how to act, what to do. And he says, when you pray, say our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Give me today what I need.
Help me to forgive my neighbor. Don't put me into trouble. Keep me out of it. And so today in this passage, our lord is bringing out two things about prayer that should pray. We've had that.
Secondly, be persistent and have confidence that god is your benevolent, loving father. He won't give you a snake when you ask for bread. Name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.