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Faith is expecting something, hoping in something, relying
on something. It is not just the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who
is believed in. We have faith in all kinds of things. We have faith in our car,
for example, that it will work. We have the expectation that when we go out to
the car we will be able to get in it, turn it on, and go where we want. But
sometimes our expectations turn out to be wrong. We come outside and see that
there’s a flat tire. We turn the key and it doesn’t turn on. It is nice when
what we believe in turns out to be reliable. It is painful when what we believe
in fails us.
Cars are just one example. The fact is that we believe in so
many things. If we were to conduct a poll, I suspect that most people would say
that the last several years have not been too nice. Why is that? Is it because
COVID has killed so many of our family and friends? I don’t think that’s the
true source of our pain. What hurts is that the stuff we used to believe in
hasn’t been working. We used to believe in the news. Now there’s this camp’s
news and that camp’s news, and the news sources say totally different things.
We used to believe that we could get along with each other. But one person
believes that this and that is true, while another person believes that those
very same things are literally lies or conspiracy theories. It’s like the tower
of Babel all over again. We can’t understand someone from a different camp. We
don’t want to work together. We are being driven apart. Our faith in the
reasonability of one another has been broken.
Other things are failing too. We used to believe that we
could afford to buy gas. We used to believe that the grocery stores would
always be fully stocked. We used to believe that our elections would always be
fair and free. It is painful, and perhaps frightening, when the things that we
used to believe were so reliable that you could set your watch by them are
going wonky. It is as though the sun, the moon, and the stars are no longer
following their normal courses. People are about to be fainting in fear and
foreboding of what is coming upon the earth.
Although it is painful to have our faith shattered in the
things that we used to believe in, it certainly need not be the worst thing
that could ever happen to us. Folks can use this loss of confidence for their
eternal good if they quit believing in the things of this world and come to
believe in the one true God, but not everybody is going to do that. The
break-down of things that we believe in can serve as a wake-up call. It can
serve as a call to repentance. But it is certainly possible for people to hit
the snooze button and go back to sleep.
Although it is painful and disheartening and inconvenient
and scary to have the things that we believe in break, this is by no means the
worst of God’s wrath. The Bible is full of examples of God sending painful,
disturbing things even on his own people. These things can serve to turn people
away from believing in created things toward the Creator. That is not bad. That
is good.
The worst of God’s wrath is when he gives us what we want.
What we want is to push the snooze button. What we want is for everything we
believe in always to work. But all this other stuff that we believe in is not
God. All this other stuff dies and decays and disintegrates. Even we
ourselves—it feels good to believe in ourselves—but what is to become of us? We
get old. The time we have on this earth grows shorter and shorter. All it takes
is one disease or another and we are gone. In the very midst of life snares of
death surround us.
Nobody wants to believe that. The faith we have in ourselves
and in other created things has to be broken against our will. That is always
painful. So it is always tempting to turn away from the harsh reality, to take
a narcotic and slip off back to sleep.
But there is another option available to those whom the Lord
God reveals himself. Those who are blessed to hear the good news, the Gospel,
know the only true God. Not only do they know who the true God is, but they also
know the will of this true God. It is God’s will to redeem us poor, mortal
sinners by Jesus Christ, who has risen from the dead. It is the will of this
true God that all be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. We are
redeemed from death and we will live in the new heavens and the new earth, the
heavenly Jerusalem, that was described in our second reading. We are to see
God. Everything else falters and fails. The one true God, and Jesus Christ whom
he has sent, will not let down the one who trusts in him. Eternal rest and
perpetual light is what is given to the faithful departed.
Knowing the true God, his revealed will, and the end-point
that is in store for those who believe in him is important for understanding
what Jesus says about prayer in our Gospel reading. If we place our hopes and
dreams in earthly things, then we will hear his words one way. If we learn to
look for the things of the life to come, then we will start to hear them
another way. What we are hoping for matters. Jesus says in our Gospel reading,
“Whatever you ask the Father in my Name he will give it to you… Ask and
receive that you joy may be complete.”
As soon as we hear that many things can come to mind. Immediately
we probably believe that it can’t be true. I’ll prove it. I’ll ask the Father
to turn stones to bread, tacking on the magic words, “in Jesus’s Name.” When
the stones don’t turn to bread we can all see that this doesn’t work.
Immediately we are prone to put the Lord our God to the test.
Interestingly the kinds of things that come to mind when we
hear that anything we ask for in Jesus’s Name will be given to us is the kinds
of things that we hear about in fairy tales or comic book heroes. We think this
is like the genie from the lamp. Rub the lamp, make your request, and voila. Or
we might think of superheroes with super-human abilities. We can zap this or
that. We can change this or that. It’s easy to think of Jesus’s Name as being
magical. Just say, “Abracadabra,” and let your will be done.
But perhaps you remember that Jesus resisted the devil’s
temptations in the wilderness to engage in magic. The devil said to Jesus, “You’re
hungry. If you are the Son of God command these stones to become bread.”
But Jesus said, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
The devil took Jesus to the top of the temple and said, “Throw
yourself down, for it is written that he will command the angels to prevent you
from striking your foot against a stone.” But Jesus said, “You shall not
put the Lord your God to the test.”
The devil took him to a place where Jesus could see all the
kingdoms with all their wealth and power. “Just bow down and worship me and
they shall all be yours.” Jesus said, “It is written, ‘You shall worship
the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”
When we hear that the Father will give us whatever we should
ask in Jesus’s Name we very quickly and easily slip into wanting to perform
magic. It’s in our bones. We believe that we know what is good and what is evil.
What is good is whatever I desire. What is evil is whatever is against my will.
So gimme what I want, and let whatever I don’t want be gone! The way that the
devil tempted Adam and Eve was by telling them that God was holding out on
them. God didn’t want them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil because then they would be like God. If only they would take in hand the
magical power offered in the fruit, then their joy would be complete. Then all
things would be subject to their will. Ever since then we have been infected
with the desire to practice magic.
Ever since then, by nature, we have no desire to know the
only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. By nature we have wanted to
make a paradise for ourselves by discovering and manipulating the things of
this world. We want to believe in the things of this world. We want them all to
work for us and to work like clock-work. When we hear Jesus say that whatever
we ask in his Name the Father will give us, it is very easy to want to test
that out by asking for things that would restore our faith in the broken things
of this world. We want to be gods. We want to bend everything to our own will.
We want to zip and zap, harnessing the power of prayer, and putting it to work
for us.
It is not God’s will, however, that we should replace him as
God. It is not God’s will that we should believe in ourselves, or in our
spiritual powers, or in our faith, or in the power of our praying. Those are
idols. How could God want us to believe in created things—impotent, rusting,
and rotting idols—even very spiritual looking idols such my power of praying?
We are to believe in him and his good and gracious will.
To pray in Jesus’s Name means that we are praying according
to what Jesus has done and accomplished. Jesus did not die and rise and ascend
into heaven in order to alienate us from God, in order to make us not believe
in him, but to believe in ourselves instead. He did not do what he did to
restore our faith in the things and the experiences of this world. Jesus did
what he did to show us God’s will, that we should believe that God is for us,
that we should believe that there is a place that is prepared for us with many
rooms, and that Jesus will come to us to bring us there.
By nature we believe that it would be quite something if, by
the power of our prayer, we could, without fail, remove someone’s illness or
move a mountain into the sea. There are much greater things than these. Much
greater things have already been given to you. It is much greater to be raised
together with Jesus. It is much greater that we have been justified so that the
Law, which otherwise cries out for justice to be done against us, is silenced.
You have Christ’s own righteousness. Paul says of the heaven that is to come
that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of
the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him. In Jesus’s Name
these greater things are yours.
So we must not let magical thinking deceive us or mislead us
into false belief or despair concerning Jesus’s words. Jesus really means it
when he says that whatever we ask in Jesus’s Name the Father will give us. We
are not thereby turned into gods or superheroes. We have already been made
children of God. We have conquered death and every sadness. Neither death nor
sadness can forever maintain their grip on us. We have an incredible future in
store for us in this life as the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, and in the life to
come when we will be completely holy. Asking God to forgive you for but one sin
is of greater and more eternal consequences than possessing the entire earth
with all its kingdoms. Although that is so great a thing, you know full well
that God hears you and grants your prayer when you pray, “Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
It seems to be standard operating procedure for the devil to
tempt us with what is lesser so that we give up on what is greater and better.
The knowledge he promised to Adam and Eve was much less and turned out to be a
lie compared to what they had prior to that. Often the devil tempts us to reach
out and grab what has not been given to us. Ill-gotten gains in terms of money
or sex are supposed to make our joy complete. The truth is that God has better
things laid up for those who live according to his will—even in these areas of
life that prove to otherwise be so tempting to us. God will purify and fulfill
whatever kernel of good there be in the lusts that harass us, so the devil is
lying when he says that obeying him is the only way to be happy. When it comes
to prayer we are misled to believe that what is truly great is manipulating the
things of this world. What is greater, however, by far, is the eternal rest and
perpetual light enjoyed by the faithful departed.
Jesus means what he says. Believe him. Believe in the
Father. Do not believe in yourself or your own magical powers. Ask the Father
in Jesus’s Name and he will give it to you—the things that are good for you in
this life and for the life that is to come.
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