Luke 18: 9-14 with references to Matthew & John
Offered to the Kitchell Memorial Presbyterian Church, October 26, 2025
Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA
Now it would be easy in today’s message to do some Pharisee bashing. But instead, I want to begin my message today by sharing with you something that happened to me just a week or so ago. I was in the waiting room of the cardiac testing unit in Dover. Sitting close by was a woman who was there because she was experiencing palpitations and required testing for diagnosis. We chatted and she shared with me this story. For twenty years she had been diagnosed with lupus. She told me that on a day after returning home from a checkup where it was confirmed that she still had the disease, she went into a quiet room by herself and prayed. And she continued to pray for many of the days and months after for remission of the disease.
Six months later when she returned for a follow-up visit with her doctor, he looked at her in amazement and asked, “what have you been doing.” She asked, “what do you mean?” “What have you been doing about your lupus?” She shrugged her shoulders and answered, “Nothing. Why?” The doctor told her that her disease was gone. That there were no traces of it in her blood work. She was in remission.
Later in our conversation as she told me about her prayers and her faith, she told me when people ask me where I am from, I tell them that I was born a citizen of Columbia but that now she is a citizen of San Savior. When they ask her, “What do you mean?” She tells them that she now belongs to San Savior, her Savior, Jesus Christ.
It gave and still gives me chills. I smiled at her and told her, “You just gave me my sermon for this Sunday.”
So today, instead of beating up on the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, I thought that I would talk to you about what Jesus teaches us about prayer and what prayer should look like when we pray.
First, I want to look at what the ancient Jews thought about prayer. It is important to do this because Judaism is the faith tradition that Jesus came out of and it is important to understand what prayer meant to Jesus.
Jewish prayer tradition would tell you that God encourages prayer and that its purpose is to build a deeper, more dependent relationship with God. Prayer strengthens faith, prayer provides guidance, and prayer allows time for personal reflection and an opportunity to express our gratitude. I got that from Google Ai.
It went on to say, “While God already knows our needs, God uses prayer to develop us, to make us more receptive to God’s blessings and to help us align our wills with God’s Will.”
That’s the backdrop, the tradition of prayer from which Jesus came. And we need to understand that so that we can dive deeper into what Jesus tells us about prayer.
So, let’s look at what Jesus teaches us about prayer beginning with Matthew 6. In Matthew 6, Jesus is warning his disciples about being pious in public – which was a tactic of the proudful Pharisees who often paid trumpeters to announce to crowds that they were praying or fasting so as to call attention to themselves and their piety. This very much characterizes the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable praying out loud about how good and righteous he is. The purpose of his prayers were not about developing a deeper relationship with God but on putting his piety on public display.
In verse six, Jesus tells his disciples “…when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
In other words, prayers to God are not to be a public showcase. Prayers to God are not meant for self-aggrandizement. The Pharisee got the reward he sought – adulation from people in this life. He might have succeeded in impressing the people surrounding them with his piety, but God was not impressed. Note the Pharisee asked for nothing of God – and that is what he received. Nothing.
Jesus points to the humble tax collector who confessed that he was a sinner. The tax collector asked for mercy and he received it. He is the one that Jesus tells us went home justified.
What Jesus is saying is that our prayers should be about praising God and not about ourselves. We should approach God in humility looking to build a stronger faith relationship with God and not seeking to present ourselves as being pious.
In answer to our prayers, God will reward us with God’s Spirit to provide us with guidance, wisdom, mercy and well-being.
The point of all of this is to deepen our relationship with God. Prayer offered in quiet reflection can make us more receptive to God’s blessings, better able to see and understand God’s blessings and what God’s plan for us is – why it is God pours out God’s blessings upon us. As we quietly sit with God, it allows us to align our wills with God’s Will.
Jesus also speaks of persistence. Jesus tells us in Matthew to search and we will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you. The righteous relationship that we seek with God is available to us if we are persistent in our search for it.
In Luke 11, Jesus tells a parable about a man in need of some bread for a late arriving guest, and he goes knocking on a neighbor door, but the neighbor’s family is asleep, and he doesn’t want to answer the man’s call for help. But the man persistently knocks at the door until the neighbor relents and opens it.
In Luke 18, in the verses just before today’s lectionary, Jesus tells a parable about a woman who persistently petitions an uncaring judge for justice against an accuser. She persistently petitions him until he relents at gives her the justice she was seeking.
Now, the obvious meaning is that Jesus is telling us to be persistent in going to God with our prayers. But as always is with Jesus’ parables, there is more. Perhaps, what Jesus also means to tell us is that it is God who is persistently knocking at our doors asking to be let in; that it is God who is persistently demanding justice of us so that the brokenness of creation can be healed. So, yes be persistent in going to God in prayer because in that quiet time we can open the doors to our hearts and let in the God who is persistently knocking to be allowed in. Then maybe we can respond to God’s persistence and do the justice God desires.
In Matthew 6:7, Jesus tells us, “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them for your Father knows what you need before you ask.”
Now this is a dicey verse. Because what follows is Jesus giving us what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Many faith traditions have turned Jesus’ prayer into a stand-alone icon of prayer – one (though it has not so many words) is prattled off in rote without conscience thought. That is something we cannot do when we pray.
Now, I am NOT saying that you should stop using the Lord’s Prayer as a personal prayer. If you are one that struggles in finding the words to speak with God, then by all means use Jesus’ words. But I think that Jesus gave us much more in the verses that follow: 9-13. What I think Jesus is giving us is a model for how to pray. Let’s take a look at how Jesus is teaching us to pray.
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” First, the tone of this prayer is total humility and sincerity. There is no self-righteous piety; there are no trumpets announcing to God that we are here to pray. No. In humbleness, Jesus tells us to go to God and pray. And to begin by first praising God’s holy name. In Jesus’ model for prayer, the first thing we should do in our prayers is to praise God and God’s holy Name.
And notice, too, Jesus is telling us that we can go DIRECTLY to God in prayer. There is no need for intermediaries or go-betweens. No. God desires that we go directly to God.
Next, “…your kingdom come. Your will be done.” Here Jesus tells us to submit to God’s Will. Here is where we pray that our wills align with God’s Will. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, where Jesus is struggling with the path that is set before him. He asks that God remove it. Jesus’ human self senses the agony that is to come, and he is not anxious to endure it. But still, Jesus closes his prayer by submitting his will when he prays “…yet not my will but your Will be done.” Submitting to God’s Will is how God’s Kingdom comes onto the Earth.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Many people pick out this phrase and criticize Christians for having the audacity to ask God to stoop to feed our hungry bellies. But that is not what is happening here. We believe that Jesus is the Word of God. And Jesus tells us the Word of God is the bread of life that feeds and sustains us spiritually. This is what Jesus is telling us to ask for each day as we go in prayer before our God. Ask for God’s Spirit to guide us by increasing and building up our faith. The Spirit feeds us the Word which is the bread that sustains our spiritual lives.
“And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” This is key. We cannot come before God while harboring ill will, prejudice, or hatred of any kind for any other. We must approach God with a forgiving heart. Note how Jesus describes the Pharisee who prayed, …I am better than this tax-collector. This kind of ill-will and prejudice raises a barrier between God and us. That kind of haughty attitude prevents us from being able to walk humbly with our God.
I might almost suggest to you that the phrase might be reversed. It might read, …we forgive our debtors as we ask to be forgiven by God. Either way, Jesus makes it clear to us that his disciples should having forgiving hearts. Then we become examples of God’s steadfast love and mercy. Another way that our wills can align with God’s Will.
“And do not bring us to the time of trial but rescue us from the evil one.”
When I looked for some meanings for this verse, I found there to be many different interpretations. But, for our purposes today it would suffice to say, in times of trial, testing or temptation, we should be asking God to use those times to purify us; to help us to shed from our hearts those things that cause us to keep the doors to our hearts locked. When we ask that God purge these distractions from us, God’s Spirit builds us up and makes us stronger in our faith. Locking God out is the same as leaving an open door for evil to enter in.
These fives verses in Matthew’s account of the prayer that Jesus gave us can be a stand-alone prayer or it can be a model for how to pray. Use them however you feel you need to as you are drawn to go before God in prayer in your quiet place.
In closing, I want to say one more thing about prayer. I have repeatedly used the phrasing, as you come before God in your quiet place. I don’t want to give you the impression that personal, solitary prayer is the only prayer that God requires of us. Certainly, Jesus is placing a high value on desiring that we go to God in quiet without spectacle or showcasing. But Jesus also calls us to join in prayer in community.
Make note of the pronouns that Jesus uses:
- Give us this day our daily bread
- Forgive us as we forgive
- Do not bring us to the time of trial
- Rescue us from evil
Certainly, the underlying tone here is that we are also to be praying together in community. Remember, “…whenever two or more are gathered in my name…
Jesus is not saying that God only hears solitary prayers. He is most certainly telling us that communities also need to come and bow before and confess to God, as well. So, our corporate prayers as praying communities are equally important ways in which we can build our faith relationships with God.
So as you reflect this week on the examples in today’s lectionary of prattled showcased prayer born out of ego and self-aggrandizement versus quiet reflective prayer born out of humble hearts thirsting for the God that loves you, take a moment while in your quiet space to hear the wee small voice of God speak to you and when you hear it praise and honor it, submit your will to it, ask for the Word of God that will sustain and give you new life each day, promise to forgive, and pray that God will use the trials of this life to purify you and make you stronger – stronger in your faith and stronger in your relationship with God.
May it be so.
Here are three Ai generated quotes on prayer not used as a part of this message.
“It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without heart.”
“Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst to love us with our thirst for God.”
“Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of God’s self.”
