St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Welland, Ontario, Canada

“Bishop Susan emphasizes prayer as part of our calling as people of faith. I invite you to read her sermon about prayer and the Lord’s Prayer in particular. Imaging the church being “all about” the business of prayer!”

Bishop Susan Johnson’s sermon can be found HERE

Prayer of the Day
Almighty and ever-living God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and you gladly give more than we either desire or deserve. Pour upon us your abundant mercy. Forgive us those things that weigh on our conscience, and give us those good things that come only through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

The Gospel – Luke 11:1-13
1 [Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”2 So he said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

5 And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7 And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? 13 If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

REFLECTIONS
I invite you to look at the sermon Bishop Susan Johnson prepared for the Sunday Sermon series. She shares her personal experience with prayer and then a reminder that we as people of faith are in the ‘prayer business’. And topping that off, she offers a rich variety of ways we can pray. As Thomas Merton, a revered figure in prayer and contemplation circles liked to say, “In prayer, we are all beginners”.

Lord’s Prayer… The Lord’s Prayer: Talk about taking a swipe at ‘the powers that be’! In a meeting this week I repeated a bit of writing I had seen about the

Praying in ‘we/us’ language repudiates our present cult of the individual ego.

Praying for God’s will and realm is a rejection of Caesar’s agenda.

Daily bread and wellbeing is God’s provision…temporal rulers don’t create anything (or even wealth) they merely distribute—some more fairly than others

Forgiveness is divine and contrasts a world celebrating vengeance and quid-pro-quo relationships. Finally, God alone spares us from the ultimate trial of despair and hopelessness.

The disciples’ request to learn a prayer reflected the relationship between rabbi and follower. The followers patterned their lives after the rabbi they followed—knowing the prayer and living the life identify followers of a certain way (or teacher).

“Knocking late at Night”

Our world is all about learning how to get what we want. Jesus’ points us to God’s giving nature and de-emphasizes our skill as ‘petitioner’. Imagine someone willing disturbs one’s own household to provides bread to someone in immediate need.

“Ask, seek and knock”

Again we’re speaking of the quality of relationship Jesus says we have with him and with God. And if people we know and love give appropriate and needed gifts, imagine how much more God gives!

The Pietist writer O. Hallesby says that when we think we ‘should’ pray or want to pray that’s God knocking at OUR door.

Is God interested in the quality of our prayers (Luther says the shorter the better)?

There is a story hasidic folk tell that your pastor loves to repeat (in paraphrase). Once a woodcutter made it a practice to go deep into the forest, light a fire and recite treasured prayers. As he aged and life wore him down, this ritual became complicated. Once he walks into a clearing and says to God….”I am a foolish woodcutter” I no longer remember the path to the sacred site. Today, I have forgotten kindling to start a fire. And this foolish old woodcutter can no longer remember the words to the special prayers. So today, I am going to speak and trust in your Divine wisdom to arrange the prayer in the right order—and the woodcutter prayed aleph, bet, gimmel, dahlet (a, b, c, and so on). The tale concludes by saying of all the prayers the Lord heard that day, the wood cutter’s prayer was the Almighty’s favourite.

Finally, a true story from nearly 40 years ago: A young man visited a monastery and one day at lunch prattled on about all he thought he knew about prayer. One of the brothers, reddened with indignation, fired back at the gobsmacked youth “I am tired of people like you coming here and talking about prayer. I wish you would just do it!”

So church, getting down to the business of prayer becomes the thing we do because the God who created us yearns to live in relationship WITH us.

(To download worship video, click HERE)

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Worship Guide

SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST July 20, 2025

Prayer of the Day Eternal God, you draw near to us in Christ, and you make yourself our guest. Amid the cares of our lives, make us attentive to your presence, that we may treasure your word above all else, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

Gospel Reading: Luke 10:38-42 38Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Reflections on the Gospel Text: It’s now passé, but long ago the journalistic credo was “don’t bury the lede”. Jesus tells Martha it’s possible that doing what’s good and right can sometimes distract you from some of the most important things in life. Martha isn’t experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out) she doesn’t know what she’s missing because she’s fixated on what Mary is not doing—serving their guests.

The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Wyant from the Candler School in Atlanta Georgia wrote the book (OK one book) on Mary and Martha. Dr. Wyant says that following Jesus is both doing and quiet contemplation. She recounts a legend popular in churches during the Middle Ages in which Martha goes out to slay dragons and Mary founds monasteries. Beyond Mary or Martha: Reclaiming Ancient Models of Discipleship (Emory Studies in Early Christianity):2019. Dr. Wyant reminds Working Preachers that Martha isn’t wrong; she’s distracted by either or she doesn’t see how learning and serving go together. It’s noteworthy that many Christian denominations have deacons and in our own denomination we phrase their ministry as a call to Word and Service while pastors are called to a ministry of Word and Sacrament.

Let’s rotate the interpretive lens a little so we can appreciate how distraction causes us to miss out. Sir Kenneth Robinson interviewed Paul McCartney about his years in music school when he was a youth in Liverpool. Sir Kenneth asked Paul whether the music teacher thought he had any talent. Paul answered ‘no’, he wasn’t considered especially talented or expected to show much promise. “What about George Harrison?”, Sir Kenneth asked. The music teacher didn’t think George was particularly talented and didn’t expect him to have much of a career in music. Sir Kenneth concludes, “Imagine…having two of the four Beatles in your music school and you miss their talent!” The teachers weren’t bad. They just missed what was in front of them. We all fall prey to being oblivious to what’s right in front of us.

Now let’s reflect on what churches miss when they get distracted. Tons of trees have been felled to produce the paper on which critiques of churches becoming fixated on budgets, buildings and church attendance. Meanwhile such fixation blinds us to our neighbours in need. We stop listening for what God might want to teach us because we are so keen on issues of sustaining our church buildings and programs.

Someone once likened the cycle of the church’s gathering to worship and learn and its scattering to serve to breathing. Imaging inhaling and never exhaling or only exhaling and never taking in a breath! The trick in following Jesus isn’t choosing between Mary’s way and Martha’s (though its just such a choice Martha asks Jesus to make) it is in integrating doing and being—learning and serving—-action and contemplation.

Gospel and Sermon Video 

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Worship Guide

Prayer of the Day
O Lord God, your mercy delights us and the world longs for your loving
care. hear the cries of everyone in need. Turn our hearts to love our
neighbours with the love of your Soon, Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord.
Amen

Gospel: Luke 10:25-37
25Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must
I do to inherit eternal life?” 26He said to him, “What is written in the law?
What do you read there?” 27He answered, “You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” 28And
he said to him “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will
live.” 29But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my
neighbour?” 30Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to
Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him,
and went away, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was
going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other
side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him,
passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan while traveling came near
him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34He went to him
and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he
put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and
said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever
more you spend.’ 36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to
the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who
showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.

“Bits and bobs”: Reflections on the Gospel Text
What do you suppose Jesus’ questioner did after Jesus told him to Go and
be radical in neighbourliness? Luke never tells us and maybe that’s by
design.

We so love the story of the Good Samaritan and have told it so often that
the real sting of the story has faded. Remember Jesus is speaking a
parables which are designed to transform more than they in-form. You
might remember hearing how the teacher Pastor Dan Erlander liked to
describe them….the story comes straight at you…and part of it sneaks into
the back of your mind and sits there…at some unknown moment the ‘truth
bomb’ detonates and you’re knocked off center; ripe for a transforming
moment.

The story comes at us straight; formulaic even. Man gets mugged. Two
righteous people pass by and we’re already expecting a third person to
arrive on scene. If the first two passersby were religious leaders, the third
person might be like a messiah or something.

And we get a Samaritan. A Samaritan? Really? Samaritans and Judeans
were sworn enemies and had been for centuries. The person mugged could
have died in the ditch if either person asked about racial or religious
identity. And there is the miracle. As it happens this particular Samaritan’s
care far exceeds First Aid and extends to providing for every need the
person attacked might have while convalescing.

So, Perry Mason, who is the helper in the story? The lawyer can’t even
bring himself to use the word “Samaritan”. It’s not hard to imagine this
person mumbling the response “the one who showed mercy”. Did the legal
scholar go and do likewise? Who knows. But the parable now sits in our
noggins too.

What might happen when its truth bomb detonates? Even as our church
met in convention this week, we re-examine where we’ve been wrong and
we start chipping away at the barriers we’ve often put in place—-the end
game that we treat each other as human and when we can help, we help.
Isn’t that the whole point of “do likewise?”….Both the Samaritan and the
person robbed and left for dead ignored race, religion or social standing—
one person gave help and the other accepted. That seems to be
neighbourliness encapsulated.

Due to the extreme heat warnings this weekend, we will be worshipping in the air conditioned Fellowship Hall this Sunday at 11am. We return to the sanctuary next week for our service, including a baptism.

Due to the extreme temperature weather forecast for tomorrow, several activities have been moved inside to the air conditioned Fellowship Hall area.