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"God's Perfect Hospitality"
Good morning. Greetings from me, Vicar Jurchen, and my wife
Debbie. We thank you so much for this opportunity to serve
here at St. Luke’s and we pray that God will use us and grow
us in His ministry here. If you don’t yet know I hail from
the small town region of Beaver Crossing, Nebraska. And if
you may have already guessed, yes, Oviedo is really very
different from Beaver Crossing. It’s green here, there are
lots of people here, it rains here…and how. Palm trees,
Spanish moss, alligators. We are so grateful to be here,
in this beautiful place with a beautiful house, yet needless
to say there has been more than a little culture shock for
me in adjusting to this new locale. Thanks be to God there
have been so many people here that have greeted us and
helped us out. Thank you.
Even though the physical help from the congregation has been
comforting, in all this change I’ve still found myself praying…
a lot. You know, there is so much to pray about when life seems
out of your control, and I found it only fitting that the Gospel
reading for today had to do exactly with Jesus teaching His
disciples how to pray. And I was excited to prepare for preaching
on this particular section of Scripture. After all, the Lord’s
Prayer has been a staple of Christian worship since Jesus
commanded it, and I always found Jesus’ teachings on prayer
comforting to me when life gets overwhelming. And the Lord’s
Prayer is good and important, but today it will not be the
focus for the sermon.
You see this time around reading this
passage in Luke, I ran into some trouble. In verses 5-9 in
the Gospel Jesus tells a story about an annoying man who is
completely unprepared for surprise visitors and nags his
neighbors in the middle of the night for help. Jesus then
states that the neighbors, even though they’re perturbed
with this annoying man, give him what he asked for not because
they felt a great desire to out of the goodness of their hearts,
but because they wanted this obnoxious man to leave them alone
so they could get back to sleep. I read this and thought “you
know, I’ve been praying a lot lately, much of the time because
I feel unprepared for life…am I like that nagging neighbor to
God? Does God only answer my prayers because I annoy Him?” This
is where I get worried. In the lesson for today Jesus commands
His people to pray, but then inserts this story about the annoying
neighbor. Does Jesus add this story to the section on the Lord’s
Prayer because He wants us to know just what God thinks about our
nagging prayers? When we pray, can we annoy God?
Let’s analyze this problem together. The reading for today
speaks of a neighbor who is unprepared for guests and asks
for help. The initial response of the needy man’s neighbors
is “no, go away, you’re interrupting my sleep. If you were
only prepared, you wouldn’t be in this mess. You brought
this upon yourself!” But, the needy man seems to get what
he needs in the end because of his persistence, impudence,
and overall annoying character.
Is this how we are to God? From the reading it sure feels
like it. After all, we all know what it’s like from human
experience, don’t we? We all know what it’s like when someone
persistently bugs us at work or at home about something and
we give in just because we can’t stand the nagging anymore.
Sometimes when this happens, though, we just can’t or don’t
give in to that persistent voice. Sometimes we can just get
fed up. Sometimes voices can just get too annoying. We put
our foot down, and say “enough’s enough! Leave me alone!”
That’s just the way we are, right?
If you are like me, however, you know there’s a catch here. We
all know deep down that at times each one of us become that
annoying person to someone else. We know that at times we
all are needy, and rely on the hospitality of others to get
what we don’t deserve when we’re not prepared. That’s just
the way we are, right? And God? We know we humans act this
way, so why shouldn’t God? We are fallible human creatures.
We are so often unprepared for life. We often disregard each
other, we break each other’s confidence, we think nasty
thoughts of our neighbors. We deliberately choose not to
do good to our coworkers, neighbors, and friends. We give
to God and each other out of selfish intent. You know, the
old “I did this or that for you now you owe me.” We are the
ones who come to church and constantly ask God for forgiveness
for the vast amount of sin we’ve gathered over the week. With
how we live and the kinds of things we ask for, the selfish
burdens we bring before God, you know we must just be an
annoying buzz. Like an obnoxious fly in the ear of God that
just won’t leave Him alone.
What if God, like us humans, just decides one day that enough’s
enough, and stops listening to our prayers? After all, of
anyone He has the right to. Why couldn’t He? That’s just the
way things are, right? If this is how the hospitality of God
works, then, how can we be assured of salvation? How can we
be assured that God won’t just one day stop listening to our
prayers and stop forgiving our sins?
But does it have to be that way? We’ve just together focused
on one snippet of the whole lesson for today. There are other
aspects to this passage, though, that shed a different light
on the hospitality of God. For starters, when the disciples
asked, Jesus told them how to pray. This can be seen in verses
1 through 4. The prayer both acknowledges God’s supreme place
in heaven and asks for God to provide what we need for survival
here and now as well as in eternity: Namely daily bread,
forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from temptation. If
God could get annoyed with our constant prayers, why would
he go so far as to command us to pray for those things we
so desperately need for survival?
It gets even more confusing by Jesus’ comment that we will
receive what we ask for for His sake in verses 9 and 10. Here
Jesus doesn’t sound like the man in the story who yells
“Go Away!” when the needy neighbor knocks on his door. No,
instead here Jesus says “Knock, and the door will be
opened to you.” I’m getting confused here.
Finally, Jesus finishes off this section by again stating
a ridiculous proposition in verses 11 through 13. Here a
father gives dangerous items to his son when the son was
asking for understandable, useful things. Here God isn’t
even portrayed as a neighbor anymore, but instead a loving
father who gives to His child what he needs. How can we
reconcile the story of the annoying neighbor and the loving
Father within the same section? Through this whole lesson,
what is Jesus telling us here about the hospitality of God
and how we are to approach Him?
But there’s a “missing piece” to this puzzle…something that
will tie this disjointed section together and makes it work.
Jesus speaks in verse 13 “If you then, who are evil, know
how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will
the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask
Him!” Don’t you see? The passage about the neighbor
isn’t about how God works as we assumed. It’s exactly the
opposite. This story is about how we work. It is just about
the way things work for us sinful humans, not for God. Jesus
gives us hope here in stating that our human hospitality is
tainted with the evil of sin. As broken, sinful people, we
can still be hospitable even though our intentions are
selfish. How much more, then, will our purely good and
loving God be hospitable and loving to His people becuase
His intentions are always pure, perfect and good.
Don’t you see? The passage about the annoying neighbor is
just another illustration in this entire section on prayer
that shows us just how different our ways are from
God’s. And thanks be to God for that! God is holy, God is
the provider of all good things, God’s intentions are for
the good of His people, God loves His kids, God opens the
door and gathers us inside, God wants us to constantly
come to Him in prayer, and God hears us and gives us the
Holy Spirit, the Comforter, who resides within us.
The power of this section where Jesus shows us to pray is
staggering. Jesus says here that “your Father in heaven
gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” This Holy
Spirit is the most incredible answer to prayer ever
imagined! The Holy Spirit comes to us, creates and
sustains faith within us. This faith, this undeserved
gift of God, is greater than any petty earthly things
we pray for or problems we face. This faith changes our
perspective on everything. This gift of the Holy Spirit
connects us eternally with the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus. And we know and experience the hospitality of
God through this Jesus. The Father sent Jesus to a broken
humanity that did not understand Him to demonstrate the
hospitality of God to His people.
Jesus is holy, Jesus is the great physician, Jesus is the
way the truth and the life, Jesus is the gate, and through
the Cross we are now the children of God forever because
God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal
life. We are now God’s children, loved by God, and promised
the eternal safe haven of God forever because Jesus is God -
He is perfect hospitality in human flesh. Rejoice Christians!
Throughout the last couple weeks I’ve personally experienced
a lot of change. I’m in a new place, relying a lot on the
hospitality of others and continual prayers to God for guidance
and strength as I learn to be the best vicar I can. What a
comfort it is to be reminded in this section on just how God’s
hospitality is so much greater and more remarkable than our
own. God has promised to never leave us or forsake us, and
He will never get annoyed with our prayers. In fact, God
wants us to continually come before Him in prayer. Just as
Pastor Abel said last week, God wants us to come to Him,
engage and experience Him daily through prayer and Bible
Study. Though we will at times annoy each other, nothing
can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus,
not even our seemingly annoying, nagging prayers.
And as we all go out this next week, in our own lives with
our own problems and expectations in life, we go with the
Holy Spirit pulsing through our whole being connecting us
to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, knowing that
we are His forever.
Amen.
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