Rogate, the 5th Sunday after Easter + John 16:23b-30

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

Jesus gives us a great and precious promise in today’s gospel lesson. “Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will received, that your joy may be full.” Christ promises you that the Father will hear your prayers prayed in His name. And note that Jesus doesn’t call Him, “my Father’ but “the Father.” He is Jesus’ Father according to Jesus’ divine nature. Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God of the same substance as the Father. But by faith in Christ He is your Father as well. Paul says, “You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:15). Through Holy Baptism you have been regenerated, rebirthed, and born again so that you are sons and daughters of God the Father and co-heirs with Christ of every heavenly blessing. You have the Spirit of adoption by which God the Father almighty is your dear Father and you are His dear children. And your dear Father has tenderly promised to hear your prayers prayed in Jesus’ name.

That’s more than a formula for prayer, more than a termination and closing to tack onto each of your prayers. “Whatever you ask the Father in my name,” means to ask the Father for Christ’s sake and not your own. By nature you deserve nothing for which you pray. By nature you don’t even want to pray! But you most certainly don’t deserve any of the things for which you ask. That’s why you don’t ask Him in your own name, for on the basis of your merit or worthiness. You have none. But Christ has plenty of merit and worthiness and He offers all of it to you in the Gospel and you receive it all by faith. To pray in Jesus name is forsake your own merit and worthiness. To pray in Jesus’ name means to ignore the fact that you don’t deserve anything from God the Father. It is to pray because of what Christ has done for us. It is to ask God for good things based on Christ’s merits and worthiness. To pray in Jesus’ name requires faith because “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6). So we pray in Jesus’ name, trusting in Christ’s merits, that He has earned forgiveness for all our sins, and we pray trusting in Christ’s promise that the Father will hear us for His sake.

When we pray in faith, confident that the Father hears us and will gives us whatever we ask in Christ’s name, Jesus says our joy will be full. We heard the verses right before today’s appointed gospel two weeks ago on Jubilate. Jesus taught His disciples that He would leave them for a little while and during that little while they would have sorrow. But He consoled them with the promise of His resurrection in verse 22, “I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.” The Christian’s joy is that Jesus lives. The Father has accepted His atoning sacrifice for our sins so that by faith in Christ we are forgiven and reconciled to God for Christ’s sake. The world can’t take that joy from you because God is the one who gives it. The joy of the resurrection is complete, or full, in this: that because Christ lives we not only have the forgiveness of our sins and the promise of everlasting life, but that we can pray to the Father in Christ’s name for whatever we need. This is a bold promise “whatever you ask the Father in my name He will give you.” By this He means to spur you on to pray for the things you need. His promise is meant to inspire you to pray, being fully confident in His Word, “whatever you ask.”

But we’ve all been around long enough to have prayers that go unanswered or answered so that we receive the opposite of what we prayed for. Someone else got the job you asked the Father for. The relief and hardship you prayed would pass have remained and grown heavier on your heart and in your body. The health you prayed for in yourself, or someone else, deteriorated further. This is something we can’t deny nor should we sugarcoat it. Some want to make it your fault when you prayers don’t get answered the way you want. They say, “You just didn’t have enough faith.” Others make God out to be a liar and charlatan, promising things He never intended to deliver. But none of this is comforting and none of it is true. St. John, the same John wrote today’s gospel lesson, wrote this is His first epistle, “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14). The simplest answer to why is seems God doesn’t give us whatever we ask for is this: those things are not His will for us.

The flesh hates that answer, but the flesh wants a God who will give it whatever it wants when it wants it. But you are not driven by the flesh. You are sons and daughters of God, born again through water and the Word, who have the Spirit adoption. Christ also teaches you to pray to the Father, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Only faith can pray this. Your sinful flesh wants your will to be done because it thinks your will is good. But faith knows that “no one is good but One, that is, God” (Matthew 19:17). It is because He is good, the only One that is truly good, that we cast our prayers on Him in the first place. If He is good, that means His will is good. And His will is not good just some of the time. It’s not good only when it aligns with our will. It is always good because God Himself is good. When Jesus says, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name He will give you,” He is not turning God into a heavenly vending machine or a divine Amazon Prime. The baptized child of God tempers all his prayers with these words, whether spoken with the lips on in the heart, “Thy will be done,” because we know that God’s will for us is truly good whereas our will is not. The flesh recoils at that answer and calls Jesus a liar, or says that John is contradicting Jesus by qualifying His promise. But faith understands that both are true, for faith can never ask for things that are contrary to God’s will. When someone else gets that job, when relief and hardship aren’t removed, and when health isn’t restored, Christ consoles our hearts by telling us that the Father loves us and only gives us what is truly good for us and our salvation. Part of your struggle, and mine, is to subdue the flesh, so that we might more confidently believe this and continually cast our anxieties on the Lord, firmly believing that He cares for us.

Even when God’s will is different from ours and He answers our prayers differently than we had hoped, there is still joy. It is the joy of knowing that our Lord’s will is always good and gracious to His baptized faithful. Everything He gives us is good for us, especially for our eternal good. God always has the preservation of our faith in mind so that we endure unto the end in true faith and repentance. We hardly ever have this goal in mind. Typically our prayers are rather short-sided and bent toward earthly concerns. When the Father gives you something different than that for which prayed, rejoice that He has given you what is good for you and for the exercise and preservation of your faith. Don’t say, “God didn’t answer my prayer.” Say, “My Father has answered me according to His good and gracious will and given me this for my good.” This is true joy, to be able to call God “Father” and ask Him for whatever you need. Your joy will be full as you remember that as an earthly father wouldn’t give his son evil things, your heavenly Father won’t either. Pray, therefore, and pray confidently, for your Father’s will for you is always good.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!