Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 – Ash Wednesday – February 22, 2012
Our Father Who Art in Heaven

Our Father who art in heaven. 

What does this mean? 

With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.  

There are two good reasons to pray to God.  First, He commands us to pray to Him.  “Call upon me in the day of trouble.”  Second, He promises to hear our prayer.  “And I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:15).   If God didn’t give us His command and promise, we wouldn’t know whether or not we could or even if we should pray to Him.  But in His word He teaches us that indeed we can and indeed we ought to.  He also teaches us how. 

To pray means to ask.  We don’t tell God to give us anything.  We ask Him.  And we do so on the basis of His own kindness toward us.  Everything we have we receive from Him as a gift out of His fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us.  It is as we confess, “we are by nature sinful and unclean” and “we have justly deserved [God’s] temporal and eternal punishment.”  When we pray to God, we’re asking Him to give to us sinners things that we don’t deserve to have.  And He does, He gives them.  We should thank Him for what He gives, and pray that He would continue to give it.  And we do. 

We pray with boldness and confidence.  That is, we pray knowing that He wants to hear us, and knowing that He is pleased with what we say.  Think about that!  By His invitation, we pray to God Almighty as children asking their dear father.  In order to do this, we must find God where He reveals His goodwill toward us as His children.  And so we go to Jesus in order to learn how to pray.  And He teaches us – not only by the words of the Lord’s Prayer that we will be considering every Wednesday evening between now and Easter, but He also teaches us to pray by His example.  Most of all, though, Jesus has taught us to pray by giving us the permission and the power to do so. 

“Whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you” (Jn. 16:23). 

Whether or not we actually say the words – “in Jesus’ name” or “for Jesus’ sake” – all true prayer is prayed by faith in the Son of God.  It is prayed on account of Jesus’ suffering and death for unworthy sinners.  Prayer that is offered to God in heaven that does not claim the merits that Christ earned on earth is not true prayer.  God won’t listen to it!  If we want to approach the Father, we must first be joined to the Son.  Only in Him may we have boldness and confidence toward God. 

Jesus is the eternal Son of the Father.  We are the adopted sons of the Father.  We have the same access to God.  But the access that Jesus has is by nature – begotten of the Father from eternity.  The access that we have is by grace through faith – called by the Gospel here in time.  A relationship with God necessarily includes prayer.  This has always been so. 

Listen to these words from Psalm 2 that the Father spoke to His Son in that eternal Day before time began:  “You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance” (Ps. 2:3-4).  “Ask of Me,” the Father says.  This command to pray was given to Christ from eternity.  But where do we find God answering this prayer?  Where do we find the Son of God receiving all nations as His inheritance?  We find it where He redeems all nations by dying for all nations, and rising from the grave to which all nations are destined.  We find it in our Baptism where God makes disciples of all nations by joining us to that same death and resurrection that made us sons of Most High.  As St. Paul tells us, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:26-27). 

As surely as God has accepted the sacrifice that Jesus offered for the life of the whole world, so surely will God accept the prayers of those who find their life in the death of Christ His Son.  What makes your prayers acceptable to God is the same thing that makes you acceptable to God. 

We are Christians.  We know how to pray, because we know our status with God.  The Lord’s Prayer teaches us the status we have with God by teaching us what things we can expect to receive from Him.  Jesus doesn’t teach us to ask for things that He’s unsure will be given.  “Ask and You shall receive,” He says.  Notice in the explanations to almost all the petitions we pray that we admit that God gives these things even without our prayer:  God’s name is holy in itself; God’s kingdom comes by itself; God certainly gives daily bread; God tempts no one; and so on.   And yet, God still commands us to pray.  Even while He intends to give it, God commands us, so to speak, to ask nicely. 

Lately, when Monica and I tell our daughter Nadia to ask politely for something, she’ll say in her adorable little accent, the word ‘politely.’  Well, we usually let that suffice.  She at least understands that she has to ask on our terms, not her own, and so she uses the very word that we speak.  But if Nadia says, “I want” something, then – if she were listening right now she could tell you – the answer is ‘no.’  Now, to be honest, if it’s something she needs, the answer is really ‘yes’ – eventually. 

We love our children, after all, and obviously have no intention to deny them any good thing.  But we teach our kids to say please and thank you, not so that they might actually get what they want.  We give it all to them because we love them.  But we teach them to be polite so that they might know and recognize who it comes from, and so that they might be grateful to receive it.  In the same way, God teaches us to pray – not so that we might earn what we request with our proper words and gestures, but so that we might know who has earned it for us by His holy life and death.  And this is the purpose of prayer – that we receive from God with a trusting and grateful heart.  All true prayer is a prayer for faith. 

But prayer does not give us faith.  Prayer is not a means of grace.  It doesn’t give us what we need in order to be acceptable to God.  It asks for it.  Of course, prayer is a fruit of faith.  All Christians pray.  If you don’t pray, you’re not a Christian.  But our prayer is not what makes us Christians.  Jesus makes us Christians.  Jesus, who has taught us to pray, makes us Christians by cleansing us in His own blood through water and the word.  He makes us sons of God, and co-heirs with Him of everything that He inherits – and what does He not inherit?  This means that there is nothing that we cannot ask for.  There is nothing that God will say no to.  He might not give it to us when and how we want it, we may have to wait until heaven, but in God’s good time, He will show us that His good will is always done for those who are bold and confident to ask in Jesus’ name.  

Our boldness and confidence is toward God.  We are not bold and confident in order that others might see how strong our faith is.  That’s not the purpose of prayer.  Jesus warns us about such hypocrisy in that portion of St. Matthew’s Gospel which we heard earlier.  But there is a reward for such a display of piety.  It’s a huge reward.  After all, people are impressed by spiritual discipline and devotion.  And how nice it is to impress people!  But the prayer that seeks this earthly reward that passes away so quickly cannot be prayed from true faith.  Because true faith seeks another reward.  True faith seeks a reward that we do not merit and that lasts forever.  But first, true faith must recognize what we do merit.  True faith begins in repentance, and so does true prayer. 

In a little bit we are going to confess our sins together, and together receive our sins forgiven.  We will pray to God our Father for mercy and pardon and we will receive it for Jesus’ sake.  We will confess what we have deserved; and we will ask that God not deny our prayers when we ask for things we don’t deserve.  We will pray and confess and receive, and everyone will see everyone else doing it all.  But we will all have our own individual distractions, our own regrets, our own guilty consciences.  I don’t know what you have done.  I don’t know what filthy, judgmental, or shameful thoughts have run through your mind.  I don’t know what burden you need Jesus to take from you.  Nobody does.  But God does. 

He sees it clearly.  He sees your sin.  He sees your heart – what you do not see, and what you successfully hide from others.   But you cannot hide it from God.  That is why you must repent of it – “Lord cleanse me even from secret faults.” 

That is why each one of you – each one of us – must repent of what no one else can see.  We do so in our heart of hearts.  We do so alone in our room, with tears for no one but God to see.  We do so, out in the open, well composed and somberly quiet in this building right here.  We do so as individuals who have merited the death that our individual sins and doubts deserve.  But we always do so together. 

We do not pray “my Father.”  Only Jesus does.  We pray “our Father,” because what we receive here, that is, that which gives us the right to address God with boldness and confidence is the common possession of us all, which we each receive from the same Lord Jesus.  He is the Lord of the Church.  And so we pray as the Church, because we pray for the sake of what we receive as the Church.  We pray for the sake of Him who taught us how.   He taught us how because it was for this purpose that he came – to replace our distrust and enmity towards God with confidence and love.  This is found in faith alone.  Indeed it comprises faith, namely, that for Jesus’ sake the Father’s face shines on us with approval.  His Son joined himself to flesh – your flesh – in order that he might join himself to his Body, the Church.  Here is where he gathers you through that word that justifies the ungodly and works new powers – the greatest of which powers is this: that we together cry out, Abba, Father, Our Father. 

It is personal.  Yes.  Precisely because it is universal – precisely because Christ is faithful to his whole Church and will never leave her.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.