July 26, 2026 | Word Out!
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READINGS
First Reading: 1 Kings 3:5-12
5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” 6 And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you, and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. 7 And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. 8 And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. 9 Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil, for who can govern this great people of yours?”
10 It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 11 God said to him, “Because you have asked this and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or for the life of your enemies but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, 12 I now do according to your word. Indeed, I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you, and no one like you shall arise after you.”
Second Reading: Romans 8:26-39
26 The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Gospel: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
31 [Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
33 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
51 “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” 52 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
SERMON— Pastor Dan Peterson
On Prayer
Grace to you and peace from God, the source of life, and from Jesus the Christ, who is that light and life in the world. Amen.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been focusing on the Gospel readings in our sermons, the sermons of which have been based on the Gospel of Matthew. Now, the Gospel of Matthew, and I want to put this delicately, is my least favorite Gospel in the New Testament. Let me explain why. With the exception of the Sermon on the Mount, which appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, as well as with the exception of what Jesus says in Chapter 25 when he refers to the need to take care of the less fortunate and identifies with what he calls “the least of these,” roughly 90% of all references to “hell” in the New Testament appear in the Gospel of Matthew.
The Evangelist, the writer of this Gospel, was hell-bent. This is the gospel where parables of Jesus end almost invariably with a word of harsh judgments. Today’s Gospel reading is, as you heard, no exception. Jesus says, “"So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” to which we respond by saying, “This is the Gospel—the good news—of our Lord.” Now I don’t know about you, but hearing about people being thrown into a furnace of fire is not good news to me!
But not only that, Jesus’s sharp distinction, according to Matthew, between evildoers and righteous people, seems to collide with Paul, who says in Romans 3 that “all sin and fall short of the glory of God.” It seems to collide with Saint Augustine, who several centuries later describes the church not as an abode of the righteous, but as a hospital for sinners. It seems to collide with Martin Luther’s talk about how Christians are saint and sinner simultaneously; and finally, it seems to collide with the Book of Acts, which talks about how we are being saved.
That’s a quote: being saved in Christ, rather than presumptuously assuming we’ve been saved in Christ, and everyone else is going to hell. In other words, it seems to lend itself easily to an attitude of self-righteousness—that I am saved, and those who are unlike me, or those who don’t profess the beliefs that I profess, are going to hell.
Now, there are ways of reading Matthew that obviously differ from mine, but I’m not going to spell those out here. Instead, I’d like to pivot to our First and Second Readings and focus on a topic that doesn’t appear in our gospel reading for today.
I’d like to address this topic by conducting a straw poll: By a show of hands, how many of you have ever had difficulty praying?
Okay, for those of you who didn’t hear me the first time: By a show of hands, how many of you have ever had difficulty praying?
Now that surprises me. I thought there would be a few outliers. I even included that in the sermon. Now I don’t quite know what to say. It seems like for most, if not all of us, prayer can be difficult.
That said, for those who don’t ever find it challenging, I think you are very lucky. Perhaps you have received what Paul calls the gift of faith, the gift of the Spirit; perhaps because of your disposition or personality, prayer comes easier to you than to the rest of us. Prayer is always, perhaps for you, something that always brings comfort, to which you say, or rather, to which I say, “Thanks be to God!”
But for the rest of us, for those who find prayer at least sometimes difficult, I have surprising good news. You are not alone. You are not alone. Not only does most of the congregation here agree with you, but beginning in our Second Reading for today, Paul says, “In our weakness, we do not know how we should pray.”
Isn’t that remarkable? The most widely-read author in the history of Western civilization, the man who gave us in many ways the faith we now cherish, acknowledges that we do not know how we should pray!
That was also true of Jesus’s disciples. The Lord’s Prayer wouldn’t exist, except for the fact that they had to ask him how to pray. According to Luke 11, when Jesus was praying, after he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray” as John’s disciples taught him. And so Jesus taught them, and by extension us, how to pray. He gave us the Lord’s Prayer accordingly.
And so again, for those who have ever had difficulty with prayer, let me reassure you: whether it’s other members and friends of Queen Anne Lutheran Church, Paul, or the disciples of Jesus, you are not alone, and that is good news.
So, what makes prayer difficult? Why is it so hard for some people sometimes to pray? Well, I imagine there are lots of answers to this question, but for the sake of brevity, I’m only going to name three. I’m keeping this sermon to 15 minutes, hopefully.
Number one: Why is prayer difficult? Because many of us know that often our words fall short. Our words fall short. Consider the recipient. When we pray to God, we are not simply talking with another person. We are not having a conversation with an imaginary friend. We are communing with the Sacred, with a mysterious reality that ultimately transcends language.
Think about it: when Moses asks for God’s name, according to Exodus 3, God doesn’t reply, “Hi Moses, I’m Jack. It’s nice to meet you,” or, “Hi Moses, I’m Leslie. It’s nice to meet you.” (For some reason, in my head, God having the name Leslie is really funny.) God doesn’t give either of these names. In fact, God doesn’t even say “I have many names.” God says, and most of you know this, “I am,” or, according to other translations, “I am what I am,” or according to still other translations, “I will be what I will be.” God resists objectification—that is, being turned into an object or person out there whom Moses can control by naming God.
God simply says, “I am.” This explains why some of us know instinctively or intuitively that in prayer, words fail; they fall short of their target. We might experience God personally, but God, as the encounter with Moses shows, is more than a person.
That is why we have Jesus Christ. He makes God personal for us, which explains why we often end our prayers with “Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” Let me repeat that, because it’s very important. God makes Jesus personal for us, which is why we often end our prayers “through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
That’s number one. Now, apart from intuitively knowing, then, that our words fall short of their intended recipient, prayer can be difficult. Also, because, sometimes it feels like we’re using God to get what we want. Maybe a few of you have felt that way before. I certainly have. In other words, because God knows the human heart, God knows we often pray for things we shouldn’t have, or only in times of need. At its worst, this turns God into a kind of “cosmic butler,” whose only purpose is to do what we ask.
But maybe the purpose of prayer isn’t to be served, but to help us serve others. Have you thought about that? Maybe the purpose of prayer is not to change our situation, but to change us, to make us more mindful, more grateful for what God is already doing in our lives, and to empower us to do God’s work with our hands—according to the denomination slogan. Maybe the purpose of prayer is to cultivate our relationship with God, such that we love God for God, instead of what God might do, or give for us.
Martin Luther addresses this beautifully in his Small Catechism. “When we pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’” he explains, “God certainly gives daily bread without prayer, even to all the wicked. But we pray in this petition that God would lead us to acknowledge this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.”
So the purpose of the Lord’s Prayer is not to force God’s hand to give us a loaf of bread, it’s to cultivate within us a spirit of gratitude, a spirit from which we can be God’s feet and arms by bringing bread to others.
Now, the third, and related, reason prayer can be difficult, is that we know that we pray for the wrong things. Indeed, we know we shouldn’t be praying for material things at all. This does not reflect what matters most in the life of the Spirit. Unfortunately, a lot of people do it anyway. Myself sometimes included.
But according to our first reading for today, King Solomon was not one of them. Instead of praying for things, Solomon prays, and this is a quote, “for an understanding mind to govern God’s people as its new king, as well as for the ability to discern between good and evil.” This is why King Solomon was regarded as wise, and God praises him for it, as we read at the end of the First Reading.
“It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, ‘Because you have asked this, and not have asked for yourself long life or riches or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed, I give you a wise and discerning mind. No one like you has been before you, and no one like you, (except the people of Queen Anne Lutheran Church!), shall arise after you.’”
Naturally, even understandably, it makes sense, especially in the context of suffering, that we pray for our situation to change, and God knows there are millions of people across this world who are praying for their daily bread because they don’t have enough to eat, but the life to which we are called in the Spirit is not a life centered on possessions. The life we’re called to is one where God, through prayer, changes our dispositions, so we are freed, in this case from the need to have possessions.
Okay, I’ve given three reasons for why prayer can be difficult. We sometimes know how our words fall short. We sometimes know we don’t want to use God simply to fill our needs, and we know sometimes that being in relationship with God should compel us not to pray for material things, but what Paul calls gifts of the Spirit.
So how then should we pray? That’s the million-dollar question. Well, the Apostle Paul offers a great answer in our Second Reading. We can start prayers by acknowledging, as he did, that we do not know how we should pray, but that God graciously hears us anyway, bad grammar and all. Indeed, as Paul confirms in our second reading, nothing—not even the worst of prayers—can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ.
This is why, before I go to sleep at night, instead of rattling off prayers, the wording of which I hope God would accept, I let it go. God doesn’t measure me by the words I use. That’s hard to hear, as an English major. I even say to myself, “You need hold nothing to be true,” or “you don’t need the right words.”
And then sometimes, because this is not an exact formula, sometimes when the Spirit is in the neighborhood, guess what? Sometimes, in that moment of grace, being freed of the need to appease God with the right words, sometimes, when I let go, I experience that “sigh too deep for words” that Paul mentions in our Second Reading. After which, the words just show up. That’s because I’m no longer trying to plague God with the right words or the right intentions.
That, in my experience, then, is how to pray. Know the dangers of prayer, but at the same time, let this warning and all these things go. Experience that grace, and then, in some cases, the words simply flow.
It’s true, prayer can be difficult. We know our words fall short. We know our motives are not always right, and we know we ask for things when we should be asking for gifts of the Spirit, but that’s what’s so wonderful about grace. God doesn’t judge us by these things.
So, let go when you pray. Acknowledge that your words fall short, and then pray whatever comes to mind. For nothing, not even less-than-perfect prayers, can ever separate you and me from God’s love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.