Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (John 16:23-30)
Until now you have asked nothing in my name.
Ask, and you will receive, that you joy may be full.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
In our reading today, Jesus teaches us about prayer. And prayer is such a difficult topic to preach on. Because there are those people who think that they have a great “prayer life”, and think that they know everything about prayer. They know all the techniques, they know how to make a prayer go on for hours. And on Sundays, when pastors preach about prayer they say, “Good for you, pastor! You tell those other people who are lazy in their prayer life what they should do.”
But then, much more commonly, there are those who feel quite burdened whenever they hear the word “prayer”, because they know that they should “pray without ceasing”, and simply put: they don’t. They don’t feel as though they pray enough or as much as they would like. They struggle in prayer, they struggle in life, they struggle with sin and with sickness, and say: if only I could pray more, and pray better!
So when I, as a pastor, sit down to write a sermon on prayer, what am I going to say? Am I going to make the self-righteous people more self-righteous, and those who despair despair more? You can see how difficult it is to preach about prayer.
That’s why it’s so important to preach and proclaim the words of Jesus, and not to preach my own words and opinions—because Jesus is a much better pastor than anyone who has ever lived, and he knows best how to give us encouragement. The very fact that he rose from the dead means that his words are particularly worth listening to.
Before we get to our gospel reading today, one of the other things which makes preaching on this topic difficult, is that we as pastors never get to see the results of our preaching. We plant the seed but very rarely see the harvest—because in Matthew 6, Jesus says: “When you pray, go to your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”
If pastors tell people to do what Jesus says here, what does this mean for pastors? It means that we can’t tell people to pray, and then go around with a notepad, ticking people off to see that they are doing it. Why? Because Jesus tells you to pray in secret! – if not in the privacy of your own little room, then in the privacy of your own heart.
So when pastors preach on this topic, we never see the results. The only satisfaction that we can ever receive is the satisfaction of knowing that the word of God has been preached. If the words of Jesus have been put out there, then we know that we’ve done our job. Someone else can reap the harvest!
But then, this is the same as with prayer – there are so many problems that we all face every day -- the devil is roaring around like a roaring lion, the world is active in trying to crucify Jesus again and again, and our flesh is constantly needing to be tamed! And so, together, as Christians, we are fighting a battle every day. Pastors fight the battle through preaching – the lies of the devil, the world and the flesh needs to be silenced, and the death, resurrection and forgiveness of Jesus needs to be spoken. But every Christian fights the same battle through prayer – and prayer is what changes the world, it is what changes lives, and it makes the devil run a mile.
A world without prayer is like a body without a soul. If it weren’t for prayer, the world would be choking to find its life. People often say that prayer is the last resort of a desperate man. But it’s precisely in those desperate moments in life when we discover what it really means to be human – to talk and enter into conversation with the God who created us.
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Our Gospel reading today are words which Jesus spoke on Maundy Thursday night, just like our gospel readings from the past few weeks. In our reading today, Jesus says: In that day you will ask nothing of me. 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.
What’s Jesus talking about when he says: “In that day you will ask nothing of me?” We pray to Jesus, don’t we? So what’s he talking about?
Well, listen to the next part, where Jesus says: “Whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.”
Sometimes, people have come up to me because they know I am a Christian, and say: “Can you say a prayer for me?” or “Can you put a word in for me to the man upstairs?” This might have happened to you every now and then.
Now, this would have happened to Jesus all the time. People wanted to ask Jesus to pray to God for them and put in a good word to the Father for them. They recognised that Jesus was a good man, a holy man, and they thought that God was more likely to listen to him than to them. But here Jesus is saying: When I have risen from the dead, you will ask nothing of me. You won’t need to ask me to put in a good word to God for you. Why? He says: Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you. You will be able to go to God the Father and ask him yourself. You will have full access to God’s throne-room. God the Father will give you his full attention—not because of yourself, or because you have deserved it and earned it, but because Jesus has died for you and risen from the dead for you. You are baptised and washed in his blood. So when God the Father looks at you, all he sees is Jesus, and all of his purity and holiness. So Jesus says: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name—not in your own name, but in Jesus’ name—whatever you ask in my name, he will give it to you.
And so Jesus says: Until now you have asked nothing in my name. This is a new way to pray, says Jesus. There is going to be one way to pray to God that makes every prayer perfect—and that is to pray in the name of Jesus, so that Jesus blood covers up every stammering word, and every strange request and desire, and presents it to God, just as if Jesus himself were asking it. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Can you see what Jesus does for us here, and what a wonderful Saviour he is? Can you see what a privilege it is to pray, what a joy it is? You know that you can make absolutely no mistakes in prayer when you pray to the Father in Jesus’ name! There’s nothing wrong with your prayers – at all – if they are prayed in Jesus’ name! There’s nothing at all wrong with your prayers, not because you are perfect, or because your words are perfect, but because Jesus is perfect and his words are perfect.
By the way—sometimes people don’t know what to say when they pray. If you don’t know what to say, then say nothing, and let Jesus pray for you. He knows how to talk even if you don’t. But also, Romans 8 says: The [Holy] 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.
Isn’t this a wonderful passage? Even when we groan and sigh, and don’t know what to say, we know that this is the Holy Spirit’s work, and that he is bringing a prayer to God for us. You see—prayer isn’t our work, it is God’s work in us, it is God’s work through us. When we pray, we are simply joining in with what Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are already doing—in us and for us. I remember reading a book once where a story was told about some sick people at a nursing home who were put out in the sun every day, and it actually did them a lot of good, not because the patients did anything, but simply because of the sunshine. Prayer’s the same: when we pray, we are simply putting ourselves out in God’s sunshine and letting him do his work on us, and bring about some good in us. Jesus simply enjoys our company—and he brings us with him to his Father’s house.
But also, Jesus teaches us the words to pray. I won’t go into detail about this now, but if you want to pray, pray the Lord’s Prayer. Learn the Lord’s Prayer, and study what each piece of it means. The Small Catechism is brilliant for this—it’s so incredibly useful and gives so much help. Then there’s heaps and heaps of psalms—all of which are brilliant prayers for every situation in life. God knows what your needs are: he knows you’re pretty hopeless when it comes to prayer. He doesn’t mind. So he gives you the Holy Spirit to groan for you, he gives you the psalms and the Lord’s Prayer as a school to teach you. Even the words “Our Father” teach us that we never come to the Father by ourselves. It doesn’t say “My Father”, but “Our Father”, because we only come in prayer to God together with Jesus.
But later in our reading Jesus says: In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.
So you see here that Jesus says much more explicitly what we have already said. Jesus says: “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf.” Jesus prays with us to the Father—he comes and stands with us. We have full access to God the Father. And God loves us and he listens to our prayers, because we love Jesus and believe in Jesus.
Jesus says: The Father loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
What a wonderful thing it is that right at the end of this marvellous sermon of Jesus from Maundy Thursday night, he wants to teach his disciples how to pray. And what better way to encourage them to pray than to tell us that the Father loves us? Because who would want to pray to God, if we didn’t know that he loved us? And if you want to know that God loves you, look to Jesus—he died for you, didn’t he? He loved you to the bitter end, didn’t he?
Jesus says: Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, in your Son Jesus Christ, we have peace. In this world, in this flesh, we have tribulation, we have all kinds of suffering and problems. But we take heart, because your Son Jesus Christ has overcome the world, and we offer our prayers to you in his name. Abba, Father, teach us to pray, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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