Genesis 18:20-32 and Psalm 138 * Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19) * Luke 11:1-13

“What’s in a name?”

A question that many of us will have heard many times. But I wonder, do you know where that question was first asked – or at least first written down?

Of course, you may guess when we add the words that follow –

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”.

The well known line, spoken by William Shakespeare’s character Juliet when expressing her view that the feud between her family and that of her Romeo (the Montagues and the Capulets) should not prevent their love for one another.

But for some people, their family name proudly identifies who they are, which tribe they belong to and can even hint at the values that they will most probably uphold.

Family names such as Baker, Taylor and Smith hint at a profession in a family’s history, whereas Windsor, Thornton or Stanford claim a historic family connection with a great estate.

But what does talking about being part of a particular family have to do with today’s Gospel?

If we look at the Gospel only literally – well, probably not very much.

If we read it only literally, we’ll be tempted to say that this Gospel gives us two things. It gives us the exact words of a prayer to say, and then it tells us that all we have to do is pray hard enough and long enough and we can get God to give us what we want. But reading those few verses of this Gospel literally can lead to real frustration and heartbreak when we come up against hard things in life. “I asked, but I didn’t receive what I wanted. I knocked but that door wasn’t opened.”

But we should realise that this reading is not actually a “how-to” reading. It’s not intended to give us a recipe of sayings that we can call on when we want or need something. We need to look deeper, to take a look at these few verses in the context of this whole section of Luke’s Gospel, and then we’ll see that we’re actually getting a whole lot more.

These few verses are part of a whole picture given to us in Luke, a picture that tells us something very important about what it means to be a part of God’s family, to be the people of God. Just think back to the last two Sundays’ Gospels? First, we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan. That story reminded us that it’s through our actions, our works, the way we treat others, that we show we understand we’re living in the kingdom of God. We do things in a certain way because we understand the lessons Jesus taught about how those who claim to be his followers ought to act.

Then last week we heard again the story of Martha and Mary. Jesus was not putting one sister above the other. He was reminding us that we must support our actions by prayer. We must also constantly renew and strengthen ourselves to do God’s will by listening to God’s word and sharing together in prayer.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is continuing his teaching about what it means to be his disciples. These disciples have heard Jesus teach others; they may have heard him speak to Martha and Mary. Now they want Jesus to teach them to pray, too. And here’s where things get interesting. Our English translation says, “When you pray, say . . .. ” But remember that what we read this morning is a translation of the original Greek text. If we go back to it, we find that this verse could be translated, “When you pray, you are saying . . .. ” And that gives us something more to think about.

Remember that Jesus was talking to Jews, to his own people. The prayer that we have come to call “the Lord’s Prayer” is not an exclusively Christian prayer. It’s certainly not a “me-and-Jesus” prayer. Any devout Jew could pray these same words today, and many did pray exactly this way in Jesus’ time. Jesus was reminding his listeners that they already knew how to pray; they’d been doing it all their lives. He was making them conscious again of the outline or the form of a prayer that maybe had become too familiar.

Then he went on to give them an example of how prayer ought to affect us. We mustn’t make the mistake of turning the story of the neighbour and the bread into an allegory. We can’t make God the neighbour and us the person who needs some food in the middle of the night. That’s not the point of the story. The point is that, if we are members of God’s family, we’re bound to act in a certain way.

Take a good look at the verses we’ve turned into contemporary hymns. The Gospel says, “Ask and it will be given to you.” Ask whom? “Seek, and you will find.” Seek where? “Knock and it will be opened.” Knock where? Too often we say, “God is the answer,” and then we try to set things up as a me-and-Jesus vertical line.

What would it be like if we all realised that we have to be a part of this prayer, that if we’re part of this family then we need to be the ones who are asked, and we are going to be the ones who are sought out by the needy, and we are the ones who must open our doors. What would it be like if we really opened our hearts and our doors not only to people in need outside the church, but to each other, inside the church, giving and receiving the same kind of love Jesus modelled for us? If we can say that this really is who we are, then we’re working out what this Gospel means for us as people of God who happen to be Christians, who happen to be Episcopalians, living and working in this place.

So this Gospel may be doing for you what it was doing for those who were gathered listening to Jesus. It may be reminding you that yes, this is how we pray. We don’t need to be doing anything outlandish or extraordinary. But we do need to keep our prayer in front of our eyes, as it were. We need to remember that God is the holy One. That means that we need to remember that, while God does provide for us, we need to reach out to others and mirror God to them. We need to forgive and be forgiven. We need to remember that, however good we are, we still fail, we are still sinners, all of us, but that God forgives us. If God forgives us, and we are God’s people, then shouldn’t we forgive each other? When we are open to the unconditional forgiveness of God, then we will come to be known as a group of people who welcome the stranger and the sinner.

So it’s exciting, really! We belong to the whole of the Gospel of Luke. We might see ourselves sometimes as Samaritans, sometimes as Marthas or Marys, even sometimes as priests and Levites, but above all we should see that we’re a community of faith together. We’re people of prayer living in the kingdom of God.

This kingdom, as Jesus constantly taught, is here and now. By our baptism, we’ve promised to live a different life – the type of life God would live, the kind of life God did live in Jesus. A life that looks to God through praying together and reading the Scriptures, through our liturgies, and through our sharing in the Eucharist. It’s not an easy life, but as Paul said in Colossians, “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”