THE PRAYERS OF THE BAPTIZED
The Text, St. John 16:23-30 (v. 23-24). “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. Lord Jesus, give us the light and power of Your Holy Spirit, so we can pray in Your name and taste Your joy. Father, help us to believe, and teach us to pray in faith, for Jesus’ sake. Pour out Your love in our heart by Your Holy Spirit, that we may keep Your command and remain in Your love. Amen. (Book of Family Prayer, p. 342, 346)
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ, who sends His Holy Spirit: Grace be unto you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
This wasn’t the first time Jesus taught about prayer. He previously taught His disciples about prayer answering the request, “Lord, teach us to pray,” and His answer was to give them the Lord’s Prayer. He taught them at other times, and in some parables, about praying persistently, to keep praying. That was teaching prayer in peaceful times.
But here in John 16, it’s the night He was betrayed. This is a very different context for His teaching. Not a peaceful time. Jesus is under duress, and so are His disciples, for His words about needing to “go away” fill them with sorrow and confusion. So this is about prayer under pressure.
We can relate to these disciples. We tend to mostly pray under pressure. When things are good, you can forget to pray, praise, and give thanks. But it’s when you’re in a time of trouble that you call upon the Lord.
It may be a worry or a fear. It might be a health scare. It may be the safety of your child. It may be a worry about your job or a lack of money. It may be a dating relationship, or troubles in your marriage or home, or strained relationships in your extended family. It may be the desire for children, or a desire to find a marriage partner. It may be worry about the nation or the world. It may even be for God to overcome your foolishness, that you did something wrong or made a mistake and fear what will happen; we pray for God to work good and take care of us despite our sins, failings or mistakes, when we don’t take good care of ourselves. It can be big things or little things in life that bring us to pray, but it’s always our daily needs.
This is good to talk about on Mother’s Day; I just read about some nuns who go into their chapel at midnight to pray for others; someone who saw it thought they were praying for mothers and their worries and burdens. They became known as the nuns who pray midnight prayers for mothers. Now moms from all over send them e-mails with prayer requests. It isn’t that dads don’t worry and pray; but mothers especially carry the worries and wear themselves out praying – calling upon the Lord in the day of trouble.
This is praying from our need, which is what God wants and what Jesus says to do: In the Lord’s Prayer He tells us to ask for our daily bread – our daily needs. St. Paul writes: “Be anxious for nothing, but … let your requests be made known to God” (Phi 4:6). God wants our worries and needs to be turned into prayers. God wants us to pray from our needs.
But according to the catechism, this is the second thing that is to motivate our prayers. The first thing is that God commands us to pray. This is not what it sounds like, that God is harshly judging how we obey His command, and if we don’t pray then He chalks it up as one more failure.
No, instead we look at it this way: that of the two things that should bring us to pray one is about God and one is about us. Often we jump to ourselves and our needs, our prayers start and end with that in our thinking. And it is understandable, that under pressure that’s all you can think about.
But this brings up one of the problems we have in prayer: that I visualize it as me praying down here, by myself, in quiet or in the dark, speaking to God who’s in heaven way up there, at a distance. The distance we sense also reflects separation from God due to our sins. He’s up there; we’re down here. He’s great and holy; we’re unworthy and sinful. That can be how many of our prayers start: “God, I know I’ve asked you this over and over,” or: “Lord, I know I’m not the most important one for You to be dealing with,” or the old “It’s been too long since I’ve come to you in prayer, but I hope You’ll still listen.”
The problem is that if our prayers start and end with ourselves and our needs and problems, it brings it back upon our sinful selves. So the fact that the first thing motivating us to pray is not to be our need but God’s command just means that prayer starts with God and what you expect from Him. He says to pray, He says: “Ask,” as Jesus does. And it starts with His name – how He has revealed Himself, what you know of Him, what He’s really like.
This is what Jesus starts with: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.”
Those three words, “in My name,” are important. They should remind you of your baptism: the first time you heard “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Notice, this is how the church service begins. We begin the service with the baptism words, we come before Him as His baptized, saying “in the name of …” The prayers that we say in church are the prayers of the baptized, gathered here.
Your baptism is when the name of Jesus was placed on you, when you received the sign of the cross on the forehead and on your heart. This is when the Triune God put His name on you. He revealed to you who He is: the Father who made you, the Son who redeemed you, the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you. This God, who’s so personal that He has a name, you can know Him by name just as He knows you by name, he claimed you as His own in baptism. We say that Jesus “has redeemed me … that I may be His own.”
When you were baptized, you were brought into the fellowship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You were brought into the life of the Triune God. When Jesus says, “ask the Father in My name,” it brings you into the relationship of the Father and His beloved Son. The Father won’t deny His Son; if you ask the Father in His name, the Father won’t deny you.
Jesus tells His disciples that it’s “not that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.”
Jesus is teaching how the wall of separation between us and God, the separation due to our sins, has been torn down by Jesus. Previously the disciples would ask Jesus, and He would ask the Father on their behalf. They had to have a go-between to pray to God, just as God’s Old Testament people offered prayer with a sacrifice, the priest being the go-between. Inside the temple was a curtain that separated the people from God’s glorious presence, inside the Holy of Holies, where the high priest could only go in once a year.
But when Jesus, our great High Priest, made the sacrifice of His own life for our sins, when He shed His blood on the cross, at that moment the curtain in the temple ripped in two – symbolizing that “the way is now free to the Father’s high throne/ Where I may approach Him in Thy namealone” (ELH #182:8).
Even this is about our prayers! As Jesus says, His disciples don’t need a go-between. Jesus’ blood has cleared the way, taken down the wall. There is no separation because of your sins! He takes away all your unworthiness in God’s sight. Jesus’ blood makes you and your prayers acceptable to God.
This brings us back to our status as the baptized. It all started with that, and as far as our prayers go it all starts with that. When Jesus says to “ask the Father in My name,” He means that you ask Him as His baptized child. You are always “in His name,” always one of the baptized. That’s who you are. There are all these “in-My-name’s” running around, who are His Church. As soon as you pray, asking in Jesus’ name and for His sake, the Lord hears it as this way – “Oh! This is from one of the In-My-Name’s.”
Praying as the baptized, starting with your identity as His baptized child, changes what you expect of God and how you relate to Him as you pray. He isn’t far off, but He came near, came right to you in your baptism. You aren’t praying in the dark but walking in the light, His light. He isn’t judging how you pray or how often you pray; you have an ongoing discussion that began with Him speaking to you, the words spoken in Baptism that made you His child and brought you into His kingdom, He called you by the Gospel.
So in prayer you aren’t crying out in the darkness – even if it feels that way. Prayer in the name of Jesus is a gift of God in which Jesus ushers you into the Father’s presence, into the light. When you stand before Him you aren’t alone. Jesus is with you. He presents you to the Father in His name, holy and unblemished and acceptable.
So there’s no wall between you and God, no distance, no separation. Then you’re free to say whatever’s on your mind and heart. Jesus says this is so “your joy may be full.” Your prayers are said in the midst of troubles of this life, but by faith you’re with God where there’s joy and peace.
This is true confidence in prayer. It’s not your feeling of confidence. It’s the confidence – faith and trust, really -that Jesus has paid for all your sins, you are pleasing and acceptable to God, because you’re His child – the baptized – and He’s your Father who wants to hear you. So you can ask for anything.
The least, littlest, most insignificant thing, feeling or need – little as the world defines it – He wants to hear about it. It isn’t little to Him. It’s important to Him because you are. He doesn’t listen like we do. He isn’t getting impatient, thinking you go on for too long; He isn’t measuring whether His time could be better spent not listening to you. But rather, He only has time for you. You have all His attention. His eye is on you. His ears are open to you. This is the gift of prayer in Jesus’ name, as one of those who are baptized in His name. Amen!