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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
As human beings, we spend a great deal of our lives interacting with others. God created us to be in relationships; not only with Him, but also with our fellow creatures. Some of these relationships are individual connections like marriage, parenting, or friendships. Other relationships connect us to groups or organizations which are more complex, such as classes or companies, teams or clubs, churches or governments.
Whenever two or more individuals are somehow connected, the dynamics of these relationships mean that those involved are going to have some sort of influence on one another.
In some situations, the influence is somewhat passive; a person sees or hears what the other is doing, and responds in some way, without the doer consciously intending to generate that influence. In other cases, there’s a deliberate attempt on the part of one individual to cause the other individual or the group to respond in some way. Sciences such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology are based in part upon such principles and realities.
Many Christians in contemporary America—particularly those of church bodies who don’t have a good grasp of the doctrine of the two kingdoms—often lament the fact that the Church as an institution, and biblically-based Christian values, no longer seem to carry the influence upon our society they once did. To be sure, our lives as Christians would be far easier if the majority shared our values instead of rejecting them, and if we influenced them more than we find ourselves and our children influenced by them.
Yet influence is a funny thing, isn’t it? Even when we attempt to exercise influence toward biblically-sound, God-pleasing ends, there are risks to our own spiritual health. Some adopt the morally-indefensible stance that “the end justifies the means,” and find themselves grossly violating God’s Law and their Spirit-formed consciences to pursue an otherwise-noble objective. Even if we don’t go that far, exercising influence can lead us to using worldly, sinful techniques that call for pressure, deceit, and manipulation.
I remember that during my twenty years in a different career, I’d often come across offers for various self-improvement books or audio training tools or seminars. Perhaps you’ve seen them, too. Many of these promise to give the reader or hearer some secret advantage over others in achieving success. Usually these supposed advantages are techniques of presenting one’s self or one’s ideas in such a way as to influence others to accept, like, hire, promote, or buy.
Some even go so far as to claim that the ideas and techniques they suggest are Christian in nature, or at least that the author or instructor is a Christians.
In most cases, we should distance ourselves as fast and as far as possible from these sorts of methods and approaches toward influencing others. Many are based upon the same sort of logic and reasoning as the suggestions our ancestors once heard following the question: “Did God really say?” They recommend flattery of others, only telling them the positive aspects of the outcome, minimizing or ignoring the negative, using words that evoke a positive emotional response.
Sadly, such techniques have made their way from the secular world into the church. When they do, the church’s reliance on the Holy Spirit’s sure and certain promise to work through Word and Sacrament to grant faith, sustain faith, and guide the Christian life often shrinks or even disappears.
We have to be aware of these dangers, and careful not to let them creep unchallenged into our midst, too.
For example, it is not without a great deal of prayer and care that I, and Pastor Nuckols, and the elders, and the other leaders at St. Paul bring before you matters such as worship attendance, participation in congregational life and service, and financial support. We ask one another to review our words and to give us feedback. We want to be sure that what we communicate about the needs of the congregation and about your needs to be here in God’s house—to be blessed, and to give, and to serve—are founded upon Law and Gospel. We want you to be Spirit-led to seek to receive His gifts and to bless others with them, not to be guilt-driven or manipulated. The Lord will judge how well we have met these hopes. May He have mercy on us all.
If it is only with the greatest caution and trembling that Christians ought to seek to constructively influence and not to manipulate the will of fellow Christians and the actions of the world around them, then how much more fearful ought we be about any attempts to manipulate almighty God?
At the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells His disciples, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”
These verses cause a variety of reactions in believer and unbeliever alike. For the unbeliever who is a staunch atheist, they are complete foolishness. “Asking some imaginary being for anything is ridiculous,” he thinks. “If you want something, you ask the person who has it, or you work to get it with your own efforts and resources.”
To an unbeliever who is at least open to the idea of a divine being, such words can make Christianity seem somewhat attractive, even though his motives in considering it are wrong. “That’s pretty cool,” this sort of unbeliever thinks. “You mean if I become a Christian, I’ll get everything I want? I can ask for riches, or health, or intelligence, or the sort of relationships that I want, and this Jesus guy is the way to fulfill my every wish and wildest dreams? Where do I sign up?”
To the believer who has an undeveloped or underdeveloped sort of faith, with limited understanding of the nature and workings of God, this statement can have similar effect. This sort of believer trusts in God for his salvation through the forgiveness of his sins for the sake of Christ’s suffering on the cross. He believes in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Yet he really hasn’t fully surrendered his life into God’s hands.
This sort of believer doesn’t fully trust that God works through creation and through the vocations of himself and others to provide everything he needs for this body and life—as well as what others need, and what his church needs. He doesn’t buy into Jesus’ words elsewhere about not worrying about food or clothing or other things of this life, and forgets the Savior’s gentle chiding about, “O you of little faith.” And so, when he prays, this sort of believer forgets that his heavenly Father knows all his needs, and forgets that God’s will is done even without our prayers. This immature believer becomes convinced by his own weakness and through the temptations of the devil and the world that it’s his own responsibility to figure out everything he needs and wants, and that he must ask it of God in just the right words, at the right times and places.
The danger of this approach to prayer, of course, is that while we know what we want—or at least we think we do—only God knows what we truly need. When this Christian’s desires and expectations aren’t met in a timely fashion, it can lead to frustration, fear, anger, and despair.
Isn’t God listening? Is He angry with me over something? Did I ask Him in the right way, often enough, long enough, sincerely enough? I’ve been asking in Jesus’ name; why isn’t He giving it to me? This prayer stuff isn’t working! What’s wrong with my prayers? What’s wrong with God?
The Bible is, after all, full of directives to pray. There are many examples of faithful believers praying to God and receiving not only what they’ve asked for, but blessings far above and beyond them. So, when our prayers don’t seem to generate similar outcomes, there’s a sinful tendency for us to begin to question prayer’s value and effectiveness. And in doing that, we undermine the very basis of prayer: Faith!
You see, Jesus knows that we will often ask for the wrong things. He knows that we will sometimes ask for good things, but with the wrong motives. He knows that we will frequently ask for the right things, with the right motives, but that sometimes we don’t really trust that God would or could provide or satisfy them. He therefore gave His disciples instructions to pray “in my name.”
Praying in Jesus’ name is a lot more than simply mouthing those words, “in Jesus’ name we pray,” at the end of the prayer, though. Properly speaking, to do something in another’s name is to take on an identity and a responsibility to represent them truly and faithfully. It’s to assume a status of not looking out for your own desires, but to surrender yourself and your wishes to the interests of another—like an attorney or an accountant or a diplomat is to do when representing someone.
Yet even as Christ’s own through baptism and faith, we cannot do this fully and consistently. Our prayers, influenced as they are by our sinful flesh, may be asked with mouths that voice Christ’s name, but not with hearts that fully know and fully trust Him.
For this reason, we must realize that we cannot rightly pray on our own, and that we ought not expect or insist that God will give us what we think we are asking for in our conscious thoughts. But we can be confident that God does give us what He knows is right for us, and what our innermost being truly desires in Him. It’s just that our minds and bodies seek other things, because they are weak.
How thankful we can be that God does not abandon us in this weakness, but gives us aid in overcoming it!
As Paul wrote in Romans 8, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
It’s difficult to comprehend the profoundness of that explanation, and how beautifully it meshes with Jesus’ statement in the Gospel lesson today. Jesus is going to leave the disciples to return to the Father, but He will send them the Spirit. Jesus tells them to pray and ask anything in His name, but knows we cannot know what to pray for as we ought. Jesus knows that in the emptiness of the world’s attractions, we won’t always ask for the right things or use the right words, but He fills us with the Holy Spirit who expresses the will of God in groanings too deep for words.
Baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, it is our Gospel privilege as His brothers and sisters to pray to our heavenly Father, asking Him to fulfill all our prayers in Jesus’ name. Yet even when the prayers of our minds and our mouths are as scattered far from Jesus as were the disciples when they abandoned Him to the world, the Spirit prays within us. The Spirit sustains us and gives us the faith to trust in God’s perfect will even when we aren’t getting what we want or expect, when and how we want it. The Spirit guides us to recognize that our prayers don’t manipulate God to see and do things our way. Rather, the Spirit moves and shapes us to be conformed to God’s will, so that what we ask for—consciously or not—is more fully compliant with the path He has chosen for us.
Your privilege and your ability to pray to the Father in a God-pleasing way is all part of a great exchange, an inexplicable redemption. For you to be able to pray to the Father in Jesus’ name is completely wrapped up in the reality of everything Jesus has already accomplished for you in your name: Resisting all the temptations of the devil and the world. Perfectly pleasing the Father by living a sinless life in human flesh. Obediently suffering rejection, torture, and an undeserved death at the hands of sinners like us.
To be sure, Jesus did these things as God made flesh, according to the will of God, and in the name of God. But in putting Himself in your place, He did these things in your name, too—doing those tasks that were rightfully expected of you; suffering all those things that justly should have had your name written all over them. The sign on the cross read, “Jesus of Nazareth,” but it could’ve been—should’ve been—your name there instead.
All this He did, and all this He has told you, so that in Him you may have peace. In this world you will indeed have trouble, He said, including trouble praying and trouble trusting that your prayers are heard and answered. But by His death and resurrection, He has overcome the world once and for all—including all the worldliness in you that would lead to unworthy prayers. For that great gift of sacrifice we bless and praise Him, offering prayers to the Father through the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
