Pentecost 21 Year C
A sermon based on Luke 18:1–8 .
In the name of Jesus; amen.
For the past few weeks we have been praying for a woman named Karen who has been added to our prayer book. Karen was one of my brother’s friends in college. Because he and I went to the same school and graduated at the same time I knew Karen a little bit. She was a bubbly blonde who was in the service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, with one of my roommates and so we often hung out in the same circles.
Karen is only a year or two younger than I am and is married with two children ages 4 and 14 months. Two weeks ago she had a double mastectomy only to return to the hospital because she spiked a fever. While in the hospital her doctors gave her the news that the cancer had spread throughout her body.
You are between a rock and a hard place with very little wiggle room, her doctor told her.
My brother has been keeping me updated about Karen’s progress through emails. The subject line of his last email about Karen, when he shared the news of her cancer spreading, was “Get the prayer warriors out again.”
I mention this story for two reasons. The first reason is that October is breast cancer awareness month. Karen suffers from a form of breast cancer that is very hard to treat and was recently featured in an article on the ABC News Web-site. It is important that woman take care of their bodies and October is set aside specifically for us to remember to do that.
The second reason I want you to hear Karen’s story is so that you will pray for her and her family and friends who are scared, but haven’t yet lost hope.
In today’s gospel Jesus tells a parable about prayer. Luke tells us that he told the disciples this parable to explain their need to pray always and not lose heart. If an unjust judge will eventually listen to and grant the request of a bothersome widow, how much more will God come to the aid of the chosen ones who cry out to God day and night?
There are a great deal of rationales and imperatives for prayer. Martin Luther, who was the founder of Lutheranism, said that the 2nd Commandment, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.” was a commandment for us to pray. “We are to fear and love God,” he wrote in his explanation of the commandments in his Small Catechism, “so that we do not curse, swear, practice magic, lie, or deceive using God’s name, but instead use that very name in every time of need to call on, pray to, praise, and give thanks to God.”
Jesus, himself, went off to pray often and even taught the disciples how to pray using words we still use today, “Our Father in heaven…”
But today Jesus teaches that we should pray so that we do not lose hope.
I do not know Karen’s odds as she fights the cancer that is seeking to destroy her body. I imagine they are pretty bad and yet she still has hope.
Hope and prayer are linked to one another. We pray because we have a certain hope that God listens to us and cares about what we need and prayer keeps our hopes from falling apart and dying in the face of certain disaster.
I don’t know if God will cure Karen of her cancer; I do know that God will be quick to be with her and those who love and care for her and that our prayers are not in vain.
As we prepare for the ritual of laying on of hands and anointing with oil I want to ask you all to do something. I’m going to ask that you turn to the person sitting behind you or in front of you or if need be to get up and find someone else to sit with.
Share your name with that person (even if you think they already know it) and then share something that you would like to have prayed for. And then I’m going to ask you to pray for one another. Just a simple prayer, like… Dear God, let your will be done for___ or Dear God, take care of ___, or whatever might come to you. Don’t be afraid you won’t be eloquent; God doesn’t care about eloquence and when you say “amen” think about what Martin Luther said in his explanation of the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer.
“I should be certain that such petitions are acceptable to and heard by our Father in heaven, for he himself commanded us to pray like this and has promised to hear us. “Amen, amen” means “Yes, yes, it is going to come about just like this.
A sermon based on Luke 18:1–8 .
In the name of Jesus; amen.
For the past few weeks we have been praying for a woman named Karen who has been added to our prayer book. Karen was one of my brother’s friends in college. Because he and I went to the same school and graduated at the same time I knew Karen a little bit. She was a bubbly blonde who was in the service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, with one of my roommates and so we often hung out in the same circles.
Karen is only a year or two younger than I am and is married with two children ages 4 and 14 months. Two weeks ago she had a double mastectomy only to return to the hospital because she spiked a fever. While in the hospital her doctors gave her the news that the cancer had spread throughout her body.
You are between a rock and a hard place with very little wiggle room, her doctor told her.
My brother has been keeping me updated about Karen’s progress through emails. The subject line of his last email about Karen, when he shared the news of her cancer spreading, was “Get the prayer warriors out again.”
I mention this story for two reasons. The first reason is that October is breast cancer awareness month. Karen suffers from a form of breast cancer that is very hard to treat and was recently featured in an article on the ABC News Web-site. It is important that woman take care of their bodies and October is set aside specifically for us to remember to do that.
The second reason I want you to hear Karen’s story is so that you will pray for her and her family and friends who are scared, but haven’t yet lost hope.
In today’s gospel Jesus tells a parable about prayer. Luke tells us that he told the disciples this parable to explain their need to pray always and not lose heart. If an unjust judge will eventually listen to and grant the request of a bothersome widow, how much more will God come to the aid of the chosen ones who cry out to God day and night?
There are a great deal of rationales and imperatives for prayer. Martin Luther, who was the founder of Lutheranism, said that the 2nd Commandment, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.” was a commandment for us to pray. “We are to fear and love God,” he wrote in his explanation of the commandments in his Small Catechism, “so that we do not curse, swear, practice magic, lie, or deceive using God’s name, but instead use that very name in every time of need to call on, pray to, praise, and give thanks to God.”
Jesus, himself, went off to pray often and even taught the disciples how to pray using words we still use today, “Our Father in heaven…”
But today Jesus teaches that we should pray so that we do not lose hope.
I do not know Karen’s odds as she fights the cancer that is seeking to destroy her body. I imagine they are pretty bad and yet she still has hope.
Hope and prayer are linked to one another. We pray because we have a certain hope that God listens to us and cares about what we need and prayer keeps our hopes from falling apart and dying in the face of certain disaster.
I don’t know if God will cure Karen of her cancer; I do know that God will be quick to be with her and those who love and care for her and that our prayers are not in vain.
As we prepare for the ritual of laying on of hands and anointing with oil I want to ask you all to do something. I’m going to ask that you turn to the person sitting behind you or in front of you or if need be to get up and find someone else to sit with.
Share your name with that person (even if you think they already know it) and then share something that you would like to have prayed for. And then I’m going to ask you to pray for one another. Just a simple prayer, like… Dear God, let your will be done for___ or Dear God, take care of ___, or whatever might come to you. Don’t be afraid you won’t be eloquent; God doesn’t care about eloquence and when you say “amen” think about what Martin Luther said in his explanation of the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer.
“I should be certain that such petitions are acceptable to and heard by our Father in heaven, for he himself commanded us to pray like this and has promised to hear us. “Amen, amen” means “Yes, yes, it is going to come about just like this.
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