Sixth Sunday of Easter - Rogate

St. John 16:23–33

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The biggest problem we have with saying our prayers is that we don’t do it. Our Father is already listening before we even speak. He’s ready to answer and give before we even ask. He’s got loads of good gifts for us, it’s ours for the taking. All we have to do is ask and stand ready with open, empty hands.

Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He will give it to you. Whatever’s included in the Name of Jesus is yours for the asking. This is the gift of the Second Commandment. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. God has a name and He wants you to use it.  You’ve got His name which means you know Him, you can talk to Him, call on His name, ask Him and receive. The Second Commandment protects the gift of God’s name for you, and so it protects the promise that you can ask for anything that’s in God’s name.

God’s name is how He blesses. It marks where He is found and who belongs to Him. God’s name is your gateway to all the gifts God has in store for you. So, it might help your prayers to use the various names of God depending on what you’re asking for. The name of “Jesus” means “Savior,” so it’s the perfect name, especially when you need mercy and forgiveness. “Christ” or “Messiah” tells us Jesus is the promised one, so it’s good to use when you’re asking God to keep His promises. “Father”—call on Him when you need a father, or when you pray for your kids. After all, by baptism they are His kids now and you can tell Him what they’re doing when they drive you nuts. Ask the “Good Shepherd” for guidance and protection. Talk to the “Great Physician” for healing. Pray to Jesus, the “Light of the world” when you’re surrounded by darkness, when you feel lost or depressed or in doubt. Cry out to the “Lamb of God” when you’re suffering. Ask Jesus who is the “Resurrection and the Life” when you long for heaven and a blessed death. Do you see how much good stuff is stuffed into the name? And you can ask for whatever’s included in the Name of Jesus, and the Father will give it to you.

But here’s what you can’t have, what you can’t pray for: you can’t pray for anything that’s not in the name. So that means… No revenge on the person who wronged you. That’s not your business, God will sort it out. No asking that your enemies suffer. Instead Jesus tells you to pray for them. He’s forgiven them, and He wants you to as well. No praying for any kind of sin, or for God to bless your sin, or to get away with your sin. Instead, learn from Jesus and His Spirit how to pray for justice and holiness. Remember, you’re praying in Jesus’ name. That’s the only way your prayers can be heard and answered. So your prayers can’t do anything that Jesus can’t do, and He can’t do evil.

But praying in Jesus’ name means great comfort and certainty. Not only can you get what’s included in the name, but you are in Jesus’ name, so when God looks at you He sees Jesus. When God hears your prayers He hears Jesus. Your prayer gets sent to God, tucked into the envelope of His promises and stamped with Jesus’ blood, so the Father says, “Oh it’s from Jesus, and look, He has friends.”

What’s more, we know our prayers are not perfect, and sometimes that bothers us so much it keeps us from praying, and all we can manage is to sigh, “Lord have mercy.” But Jesus makes our prayers perfect, and He brings them to the Father. He doesn’t ask for us, but He brings us. This is why Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are important for prayer. Baptism puts you in Jesus, and the Lord’s Supper puts Jesus in you. So, you’re on His level, with His name, equal to Him before the Father, ready and worthy to pray, even if you yourself don’t feel like it.

All this gives freedom in prayer as well. You don’t have to worry about your prayers and make sure they’re perfect because Jesus takes care of it, and the Holy Spirit sorts it all out, and the Father knows just how to answer. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are already talking about you in love. And when you pray, they turn and say, “Oh! We were just talking about you!” You see, God wants you in on the conversation. He wants your input, your participation in this thing He calls life. He wants for you to receive His love, and He wants your love and trust freely given in return. As much as God wants you to listen to Him, He wants to listen to you. What a kind and loving God we have.

Here’s a quick story: A man goes out into the desert to get advice from one of the hermits who lived a strict life of prayer and self-denial. He asks the holy man, “Why do you keep praying? Nothing ever changes!” And the old man replies, “Just imagine what would happen if I stopped.” 

God wants your involvement, your input on things in the world. And the world would get much worse if we stopped praying. Whether it looks like it or not, prayer does change things. Prayer either changes things in the world—God gives you what you ask for or something better. Or prayer changes you—Thy will be done, we pray. So we’re asking there that whatever God does we would recognize it and receive it with joy. 

Whatever God’s answer is for your prayers, His answers are all found in the name of Jesus, and so all His answers are good for you. That just might mean that you need to get on board with what He knows is good. He’s not going to answer prayers to make you powerful or important or wealthy or have it easy. Listen again to what Jesus says comes from asking in His name: Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. All of God’s answers have this goal in view: that your joy may be full. He wants your life on earth to match His life in heaven. When God’s holiness comes down from heaven to earth it’s called glory. When holiness spreads among God’s people through the Word and Sacraments, changing them for the better and then returning to Him as praise, it’s called joy.

So, the more we pray, the more we speak to our Father and ask for the good things He gives in Jesus’ name, the more we see and hear His answers, and our joy gets more full. In John 11, right before He raises Lazarus from the dead, Jesus prays, and He says, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me” (John 11:41). See, the first answer to prayer is that God hears it. And the Father showed that He heard Jesus when He raised Him from the dead. All God’s answers are bound up in Jesus, in His name. So, the resurrection of Jesus is God’s Yes answer to every single one of your prayers. Whatever you ask of the Father in Jesus’ name, He will give it to you. It can’t be otherwise, because Jesus lives. He’s already given His Yes to you in Jesus. So already He’s giving His gifts, and heaven is on earth, and joy is getting filled up. And God’s final answer to your prayers, His final Yes, is on its way in your resurrection and in the life of the world to come.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Inspired by notes from Rev. Scott Bruzek’s Bible Studies on Prayer (St. John, Wheaton Podcast)

Sixth Sunday of Easter - Rogate & Confirmation

Confirmation of Nathan C. Lorenzen 

James 1:22–27

St. John 16:23–33

In the Name of the Father and the + Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In his Epistle, James tells us to be doers of the Word, and not hearers only. That means being a Christian is more than just going to church or claiming to believe in God. You can’t just nod your head and smile on Sunday, and then do whatever you want the other six days of the week. Listening to God’s Word is important, but there’s more to it. You need to do what the Word of God tells you. You must put your faith into practice.

Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only. What’s implied here is that you do have to be a hearer of the Word first. In order to know what you should do, you also need to listen and learn. That’s what a Catechumen is—one who is instructed in the Word. This Christian learning must be the basis for our Christian doing. This is a good message for Nathan, on the day of his confirmation—a day when he begins to put into practice what he has heard. And this is also for all of you, if you call yourself a Christian: hear the Word and do the Word.

James’ Epistle warns us though about how easy it is to forget what we have heard: like with looking in a mirror—the image doesn’t stick with us. It makes me think of how I check my phone to see what time it is, and then two seconds later I realize I don’t remember what I saw and I still have no idea what time it is. These are human examples, but forgetting what we’ve heard from God is a far deeper problem. And it’s not just a natural forgetfulness, as in a symptom of old age. It’s not just something to shrug off and say, Gosh, I’m so forgetful, oh well. No, forgetting God’s Word is a sin, and it comes from a sinful heart that does not want to remember what it has heard and does not want to do what it has heard.

This sinful forgetfulness means we must never stop being hearers of the Word. We don’t graduate from the Catechism. We need to hear God’s Word of Law and Gospel again and again, spoken in different ways and at different times of our lives. What we heard one day might strike us in a completely new way another time, because each time we hear God’s Word, the Holy Spirit is at work using the Word to create and nurture our faith. We need to be instructed by God more and more so that we remember what to do, so that we know how to do the Word in our lives.

Being doers of the Word means more than just being nice. Maybe that’s it for some man-made religions. But the Christian religion is more than that. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. Serving others who are in trouble—not when it’s comfortable or convenient for you, but when your neighbor needs you—that’s one of the ways to be a doer of the Word. And staying away from the temptations of this sinful world—saying no to what the people around you are saying yes to, standing up for what you believe, living differently, living the way God tells you to live—that’s also how to be a doer of the Word.

Turns out being a Christian is not exactly easy. Being a hearer and doer of the Word is a struggle. It’s a struggle against the devil and the sinful influences in this world. And it’s a struggle against yourself and the sinful desires you come by naturally. But if you are doing this struggle, then that is a sure sign you truly are a hearer and a doer of the Word. Christians have a new attitude on life. We are not perfect, but we have a different perspective. We don’t want our sin, in fact, we hate our sin. And when we do desire and enjoy our sin, we hate that. Christians want to be hearers and doers of the Word. We want to hear and do what is right. We want to struggle. But it’s hard, and we could never do it on our own.

In a little bit, Nathan will be asked to make some promises that every confirmed Christian has made: Do you intend to hear the Word of God and receive the Lord’s Supper faithfully? Do you intend to live according to the Word of God, and in faith, word, and deed to remain true to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, even to death? Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it? (LSB p.273) And the answer for each question is: I do, by the grace of God. Only by God’s help can we keep these promises. And only God’s grace can cover us when we fail to keep them.

Being a faithful hearer and doer of God’s Word is not easy for a poor miserable sinner. But Jesus tells us, Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. Here is your Lord’s command to pray and His promise to answer you. So, in the face of difficulty, in view of how hard it is to be a Christian, recognizing that you need so much from your heavenly Father—pray. Pray, lest you fall into temptation. Ask for the strength to resist sin and choose what is good and right in God’s eyes. Pray that God would keep you in the faith that He has already given to you for free. He gave His only Son into death to save you, so it is His desire that you stay firm in the faith of Jesus Christ. Pray that you would be His servant in this life, His servant for the others around you. Ask for His blessing and protection as you do the tasks He has given you to do in your place in life.

And then, once you have prayed, be ready to receive God’s answer. Jesus promised that you will receive so that your joy may be full. So go to the places where God delivers His grace and help and joy. Go to your Pastor to confess, get the burden of sins off your shoulders, and hear the Word of forgiveness spoken by the pastor as from God Himself. And go to the Supper that your Lord prepares for you, where He meets with you, gives Himself to you, to cleanse you and make you holy by His true body and blood. These things are some of God’s answers to prayer, if we would but receive them. And if we receive these answers to prayer, these gifts will help us to better recognize God’s other answers to prayer. In the Means of Grace, He gives us the free gifts our Lord won for us by His death and resurrection. In the Word and the Sacraments, our Lord shares His victory with us so that we may live like Him.

Being a hearer and a doer of the Word is not easy. Jesus said, In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world. Jesus’ death conquered our sin, our death, and the devil. His resurrection has brought His life and light to all who believe. Nothing can overcome Jesus. And nothing can overcome those who trust in Jesus.

So, when Nathan gets confirmed today, we recognize that it was the Lord Jesus who has been teaching Him, making Him a hearer of the Word. And it is the Lord who will be helping Him to continue as a doer of the Word. The same goes for all you Christians. It is the Lord Himself who will keep you unstained from the world. He forgives and He makes holy. As you continue to be hearers of the Word you will be reminded and strengthened to know that it is the Lord who began a good work in you. So, He will also give you the power to be a doer of the Word, for He will bring His good work in you to completion.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

            He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.