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 knew what he was talking about, presenting a message to us. And the 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. Don't give up. Don't take no for an answer. Keep hammering on the door.
It 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 they're raised here is this, and 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 the Mugridge, There was a splendid program.
They were they were they were talking with each other. Notice I didn't say dialogue. So Mugridge and Buckley were talking. And Mugridge well, you know something about him. He was the editor of Punch, which was the best known humor magazine 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. As far as I can see for the most part, his theology is about as Catholic as it could get.
Well, he and Buckley were discussing King Lear. And the point came up where Mugridge 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 a moral determinist. What happens to free man's free will and his power of self determination?
This is the perennial question. How do you reconcile God's 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 exaggerates a situation which was already awfully difficult. Because now you're telling me that not only does God run the universe, not not only does that 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. How do I reconcile that with God's 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 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 of 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 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 saying 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. 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 want to suffer? We prayed supposing God answers that prayer. When we when we said that, I asked you to notice, we prayed and suffer with Jesus Christ. So, this is a big 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 had 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.
He told you. 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. 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 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 his friend the bread, not because he's a friend, because he wants to sleep.
Everybody wants their rest. Yes, God does too. He rests, you know, on the seventh day. So, all of this stuff about free will, how 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.
So, today in this passage, our Lord is bringing out two things about prayer, that you 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. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit.
Amen.