Three stories, but first an introduction to them. Today’s Gospel is all about prayer: to whom we should pray, how we should pray and even for what we should pray. We heard Luke’s version of the Lord’s prayer, which is a little bit more concise than the version found in Matthew’s Gospel. We heard a parable about a persistent beggar, were told that we should be just as persistent in prayer. Then we were told that whatever we ask of God, God will give, only to be told that is true if what we ask of God is what we truly need. Sounds a little confusing, doesn’t it? So maybe my three stories can make some sense out of all this.

The first story is about a rural farming community here in Iowa that was very, very religious. A terrible draught came upon the land and the corn and soybean crops were dying everywhere. In desperation, the local pastor announced that the whole community would gather at the edge of one of the fields and pray for rain. Once the large crowd gathered, the pastor climbed up on a tractor and surveyed the flock.

After a long pause, he said in his deepest, Pentecostal, soul-saving voice, "Brothers and sisters, you have come here to pray for rain." "Amen!" shouted the crowd. "But, brothers and sisters," he demanded, "do you have sufficient faith in God?" "Yes! Yes! Amen! Amen" they shouted back. "And do you believe God will answer our prayers and make it rain?" he shouted. "Yes! Amen!" they shouted back. "All right, All right," said the preacher. "Then I have a question to ask you." The crowd stood silent, puzzled, and yet expectant. "Brothers and sisters," shouted the preacher, "where are your umbrellas?"

Prayer is meaningless if we don't believe that what we pray for is a possibility. Why pray for rain if we don't believe our prayers can or will be answered. Belief that God will listen and respond is a vital ingredient to prayer. When we take it to the Lord in prayer, as the hymn says, and we pray for rain, for instance, if we believe that the Lord will listen and respond, should we not demonstrate that belief by carrying an umbrella?

Like the man in the parable we must be persistent in our prayer even as we believe God will answer that prayer. Even though God knows our needs before we ask, we still must ask. Persistence is a measure both of our desire to have God answer our prayer and how important we believe our request really is. We persist and persevere in our prayer both because we do not ask lightly and because we believe God will answer our prayer.

Second story: A priest parked his car in a no-parking zone and attached the following message to his windshield: "I have circled this block 10 times. I have a very important appointment to keep and I am already late. Forgive me my trespasses." When he returned to his car, he found this reply attached to his own note, along with a ticket: "I've circled this block for 10 years. If I don't give you a ticket, I lose my job. Lead me not into temptation."

Prayer is serious business, something, again, that we must not take lightly. Often we do. We rattle off one prayer after another, hardly thinking about what we are saying. What is worse, we often do not understand what we are asking for. The priest may have thought he was simply asking that the policeman give him a break. What he was really asking the policeman to do was break the law.

Often our prayers are simply selfish. We ask for what we want and do not consider the affect our request might have had on others. In the parable the man pounds on God’s door, if you will, because he wants some bread because he is embarrassed that he had none to serve an unexpected guest. He does not care that it is midnight, that the man and his whole family are sound asleep. He wants what he wants come hell or high water. As Jesus reminds us, we are to prayer to "Our" Father, not "my" Father. When we pray, we must be concerned about the good of all and not just our own good.

The third story is about a woman who was very religious and devout and filled with love for God. Each morning she would go to church for the daily Eucharist – it was a very Anglo-Catholic parish. She would spend much time afterwards in prayer. On the way to church children would call out to her, beggars would accost her; but so immersed was she in her devotions that she did not even see them. And when in church, she dutifully and devotedly said her prayers, especially saying the Lord's Prayer over and over again.

Now one day she walked down the street in her customary manner and arrived at the church just in time for service. She pushed the door, but it would not open. She pushed it again harder, and found the door locked. She became distressed that she would miss the Eucharist for the first time in many, many years. Not knowing what to do, she looked up. And right there before her eyes, she found a note pinned to the door. It said, "I'm out here!"

Or, as it was said of a saint each time he left home to go and perform his religious duties, "And now, Lord, goodbye! I'm off to church." Or as a friend of mine says at the dismissal after every Eucharist: "The Worship is over. The Service begins."

Prayer is to bring us closer to God. But it only brings us closer to God as we become closer to one another. We find God and we find God's response to us not simply in church or in the depths of our heart but wherever we are. Wherever we are, wherever we find ourselves, becomes our church, our place of worship, our heart, our place to live out our faith in God in love and service to one another.

As "Matthew 25…and all that jazz" reminds us, Christian ministry is what we do where we do it using the gifts of time, talent and treasure with which God has blessed us. We come to church to be refreshed and renewed to be enabled to do that ministry once we leave this place. Christian prayer helps us to understand what that ministry is and helps remind us that the way God responds to our prayer more often than not is in and through our ministry.

Prayer may be said in church, in the silence of our rooms or the silence of our hearts, in a corn filed or on a street corner, wherever we are. Yes, we must be persistent in our prayer and we must prayer for what we really need, what the world really needs. Yes, only God can make it rain. And, yes, a sign of our faith in God's ability to answer our prayer for rain is to carry an umbrella. But God's real concern is our response to what happens after it rains, after the crops grow, after it floods, or after whatever happens or does not happen. And that should be our concern as well.

Prayer keeps us attuned to God. That is why we must pray and pray daily. But prayer also keeps us tuned in to what our response should be to whatever God's response to our prayer is. Prayer never ends. We pray. God responds. We respond to God’s response. God responds to our response. And on an on. The more we pray the deeper our prayer and the closer our relationship to God becomes – which is the real reason why we should pray anyway and always.