"PRAYER THAT IS HEARD"
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 18, 2018
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence.
Hebrews 5:7 (ESV)
There has always been a lot of debate among fundamentalist and charismatic Christians in particular about what it is that makes a person's prayer effective. Some think that, in order to be effective, a prayer must be very specific, stating in great detail exactly what the praying person is asking for. Others are of the opinion the greater the number of people praying for the same thing, the greater the chances are that the thing that they are praying for will come to pass. There are some who feel that your prayers are more effective if you fast while you are praying and in this way show God that you are really serious about your prayer. And, I feel constrained to add, in this computer age there are apparently some people who believe that prayers are granted on the basis of how many people you forward an e-mail prayer to in the first fifteen minutes after you open the e-mail.
But if we really want to know what makes for effective prayer, it might serve us well to look beyond all of the people we know and all of their theories and to fix our attention on the divine example of Jesus. Certainly His prayer was effective. What was His "secret"--what was it that made His prayer effective? In the passage before us this morning the writer to the Hebrews speaks about the effectiveness of Jesus' prayer. He attributes the effectiveness of our Savior's prayer not to any of the things that I've already mentioned, but he simply says of the Lord: "Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence." As we focus our attention on these words of Scripture this morning, let's listen especially for what they have to say to us about how we should pray and to whom we should pray.
If we're going to use our Lord's prayer life as our example and guide, it quickly becomes clear to us that we are to pray fervently. We read of Jesus in the text that He "offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears." It's not any kind of manufactured emotion that we are being told about here; it is rather the constancy and the intensity with which Jesus prayed. Prayer is hard work. It is hard work because it is not merely a matter saying "gimme" followed by a recitation of whatever it is that we've decided we'd like to have, nor is it a matter of trying to "win God over" to our way of thinking. Genuine prayer is an honest seeking after the will of the Lord--a wrestling with our own desires in order to bring them into harmony with the good and gracious will of God. Prayer is a struggling--most often with ourselves--as we seek not necessarily what we want, but what we need--what will bring glory to the God of heaven and earth. This is the kind of prayer that we see so clearly when our Savior prays to His Father in the garden as He awaits the arrival of His betrayer and the host of His enemies.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us something else about the prayer life of Jesus: "He was heard because of His reverence." "His reverence" was the submission of His will to the will of the Father. What we are being told about here is what we ourselves say every time that we pray the Lord's Prayer: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 5:10). When Jesus, in Gethsemane prayed the words: "not as I will, but as You will" (Matthew 26:39), it wasn't a mere formality as it all too often is with us. When the Savior was facing the cross, according to His human nature He was genuinely terrified. He was about to undergo unspeakable agonies--agonies more intense than any of us can even imagine--agonies that came upon Him not only as the result of man's cruelty but also (and most especially) as the result of God's justice. His human desire to avoid all of this was submitted to the divine will of the Father to redeem sinners. We too, if we are really serious about praying in faith, must be willing to submit our will to that of our heavenly Father.
But even the most fervent and humble prayer in the world will be to no avail unless it is offered to someone who has the power, ability, and willingness to help. Jesus, we are told in the text, prayed "to Him who was able to save Him from death." It makes absolutely no sense at all--not even on a purely human level--to place your trust and confidence in someone who is powerless to help you. That's why we address our prayer to God alone--and not to some generic or politically correct divine entity that everyone can call "god," regardless of whatever he or she may believe. Our prayer is to be addressed to the only true God--the one God who has revealed Himself in three Persons as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--the God who took on human flesh and blood in Jesus Christ to save sinners. He and He alone is able to help us in our time of need.
This God to whom we pray hears and answers our prayer not because we pray with such eloquence or because of the number of people we have recruited to pray with us or because of our fasting or because of anything else that has to do with us. He hears and answers us for the sake of His Son--the One who reconciled sinners like us to God so that we might be His dear children and gave us the privilege (that's right--prayer is a privilege, not a "right") to come to our heavenly Father in prayer, as Luther puts it, "with all boldness and confidence" (Small Catechism, explanation of the introduction to the Lord's Prayer). "The power of prayer" that we hear so many people talking about so much is nothing other than the power of the name of Jesus--the same Jesus who lived and died and rose again to enable us to pray and to guarantee that God will hear and answer us. "There is one God, and there is one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a Ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time" (1 Timothy 2:5, 6). It is exclusively in this sacred name of Jesus that we pray to God, if not verbally then at least with the understanding that God hears us and will answer us because of Jesus.
The "secret" of offering up prayers that will be heard by God is really no secret at all. God hears and answers our prayers for the same reason and in the same way that He heard and answered the prayers of Jesus. He hears and answers because of what Jesus did for us and He hears and answers according to His good and gracious will. Jesus' prayers "to Him who could save Him from death" were answered by His death. To some that might seem like a failure, but it was His death through which God saved all of us from eternal death. In the same way, our prayers are answered maybe not always in the way that we would like them to be, but certainly always in the way that is best for us and for everyone. Remember that the cross of Calvary is followed very closely by the empty tomb in Joseph's garden. That victory of the slain and risen Christ assures us of the effectiveness of our prayers, no matter how inadequate those prayers may be. That is His promise, and He keeps His promises.
Amen.
May the One who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, making us kings and priests before His God and Father, lead you to a life of repentance and trust. May He also be glorified in the lives of you, His people. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.