A sermon on John 16:23-39 for the Sixth Sunday of Easter. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.

One of the most heartbreaking scenes in one of my favorite movies is in Forrest Gump when he’s recovering in the army hospital. When he was fighting in Vietnam, he wrote almost every day to his sweetheart back home. But when he’s injured and recovering in the hospital, he receives this thick stack of mail. Every one of his letters, return to sender. Every message that he thought he was sending was not only unanswered, it was never even received. So all that time, he had no contact with someone he loved.

Today we conclude Jesus’ farewell discourse. We get one last look at the themes that we’ve been circling around these past couple weeks. Jesus speaks again of His departure, that He will leave the world and go to the Father. But before Jesus departs, He gives His disciples a way to stay in touch as He teaches them about the power of prayer. Although so often prayers seem to be unheard or aren’t even offered in the first place, Jesus promises to mediate our prayers and that the Father will grant them in His name. We always need to be reminded that our Savior promises to answer prayer.

I. Prayers Unheard or Unoffered

Now prayer can be a difficult subject because, to be honest, we’re not all that good at it. Paul says, “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought” (Rom 8:26) and even Jesus’ disciples needed to approach Him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk 11:1). Prayer doesn’t come naturally to us. It needs to be taught, we need to learn how to pray properly.

Our problem with prayer isn’t that we don’t know we should pray. The solution to a poor prayer life isn’t to look at Jesus’ commands to pray and say, “Okay, I guess this is something I should do.” Because this command isn’t a “do this or else” kinda thing, it’s a Gospel command. “Do this because this is so great, because there are so many promises and blessings attached to it.”

We know we’re supposed to pray. So why don’t we? Not praying isn’t a result of not knowing we’re supposed to, but it’s a symptom of a bigger problem. It’s a symptom of not knowing what prayer is supposed to be and what prayer is supposed to do and what we should be praying for.

I think our big problem when it comes to prayer is that our experience doesn’t match with what Jesus says. “[W]hatever you ask the Father … He will give you?” Has that been your experience with prayer? It’s not mine. “Ask, and you will receive.” Then why does it feel like so many prayers are unanswered?

What are our expectations for prayer? What do we think it should do? And does that line up with what Jesus says? A simple diagnostic is to look at when we pray and what we pray for.

Do you “pray without ceasing,” as Paul instructs the Thessalonians (1 Thess 5:17)? Is prayer the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night and something that saturates every moment in between? Or is it, “Well, when I get to it.” “First I need to do this and then…” But that then never comes?

Do you pray for everyday things or only the big things because, well, I can take care of the small stuff myself? Is prayer the first thing you turn to or the last resort, a Hail Mary, if you will? Do you pray for earthly things or heavenly things and what does that reveal about your priorities? Is prayer just a checklist of everything that’s stressing me out right now without any understanding of the bigger picture? Do we treat prayer as a glorified to-do list for God? Is any of this how Jesus treats it?

Are we even asking for the right things in the first place? Jesus frames that statement, “[W]hatever you ask the Father … He will give you” with that small, but vital phrase, “in My name.” That doesn’t mean that we need to sign off every prayer “in Jesus’ name” for it to work, but it does inform us how we should be praying and what we should be praying for. Whatever we ask for in His name, whatever we ask for in accordance with God’s will, He will give it. How often do we only ask for things according to our will? Every petition that glorifies God will be fulfilled. How often do we only pray that we might be glorified? James writes, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss” (4:3). If prayer seems to be unanswered, maybe the problem isn’t with God. Maybe it’s with us and how we pray.

II. Prayers Mediated and Granted

If we are ever tempted to take prayer too lightly or to make it all about us, here Jesus impresses upon us the great privilege of prayer. That we even can pray at all is a great blessing.

Jesus tells His disciples, “Until now you have asked nothing in My name.” That’s not a rebuke, it’s just that up until this point they’ve been praying like good Jews and if they needed something from Jesus, they would just ask Him, He’s right there. But now, since Jesus has gone to the Father, we pray in His name. What does that mean?

Well, He clarifies, “I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you.” It’s not like we have to pray to Jesus and then Jesus will turn around and offer these prayers to the Father. No. There is no longer any disconnect between us and God. “[F]or the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me.” Because of Jesus, we have a relationship with the Father. Because we have been brought to love Jesus by faith, the Father loves us and has placed Himself in a relationship with you.

Jesus is our great Mediator. That’s what “in My name” means. Not that He’s this middleman between us and the Father, but rather, we have direct access to the Father through Jesus. Jesus is our Mediator because it is only on the basis of His death and resurrection that we now have access to God. That’s what He’s getting at here, now He can say this, now He can tell them to pray in His name because the work of redemption is almost complete. Because Jesus died for you, you have direct access to God. Our sin, which was this obstacle, has been removed. Because of what Jesus has done, we have this precious relationship with God. We have been adopted as sons. We can call the Almighty our Father. We can bring any and every request to Him who holds the universe in His hands at any time. What a great privilege we have in prayer. Because it is based on the relationship that Christ was won for us by His death and resurrection.

That we can pray at all is huge. It shows that we are right with God. What a blessing. So when prayers seem unanswered, we can take comfort in that they are filtered, if you will, by the will of God, by what truly is in Jesus’ name.

God promises to hear our prayers, it’s not as if they’re not being delivered. And He promises to answer every prayer. But every answer to prayer will be a blessing for us, will be what God knows is best. Every prayer is answered, just not always how we think they should be.

So if you’re struggling with prayer because it feels like your prayers aren’t being heard or aren’t being answered, maybe we need to adjust how we pray and what we pray for. In this, I think we can learn a lot from our liturgy. In the Divine Service, when we pray, when we address God, what are we doing? Well, we start by confessing our sins and asking for forgiveness. We probably do a good job of that on our own when we’re feeling guilty, but this is something we need to do every day. Throughout most of our liturgy, when we speak to God, it’s praise and thanksgiving. I think we could do with a lot of that in our prayer lives as well.

And yeah, we do ask God for stuff. But that’s only one part among many. And the things we ask God for are primarily spiritual blessings and then, secondarily, the matters of this world. It’s not wrong to pray about what’s stressing you out, that’s a good thing, a good impulse. But if that’s the only thing you pray about or you only pray when you’re stressed, that’s missing out on a lot of what prayer is and what prayer does.

So if it feels like your prayers aren’t being answered, maybe an easy solution to that is to pray for things that God has promised. He has promised for certain, no doubt about it, to forgive your sins, to strengthen your faith, to guide you through this life until you are with Him. Those are freebies. We can pray for those spiritual things and know that God will give us exactly what we ask for because those are things He has promised.

When it comes to other things, things that aren’t so clear, things that might not seem to be answered, we can still take comfort in knowing that God answers every prayer, maybe just not how we would envision it. So every prayer is in Jesus’ name, not my will, but Yours be done (Lk 22:42), not as necessarily something to tack on the end of a prayer, but as this attitude of knowing that God’s will will be done, He will give us every blessing as He sees fit, and that we have this great privilege of prayer, that we can freely approach our heavenly Father.

We can learn how to pray and what to pray for from our liturgy, but in our liturgy there’s also this recurring phrase that teaches us about the theology of prayer, how prayer works and how it happens. Almost every prayer in the service ends the same way: “through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever.” And in this conclusion to prayer, we see exactly the kind of stuff that Jesus is talking about. We pray to the Father, through the Son. Jesus is our Mediator. On the basis of His death and resurrection, we have access to God and because we have been adopted as sons, we can call Him our Father. And the Holy Spirit is there as well, not just being tacked on, but that prayer happens in the Spirit. Throughout this entire section, Jesus has been talking about the work of the Spirit and here we have this most intimate working in prayer.

So although prayer is something we often struggle with, we see the entire Godhead active when we pray. To the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. What a privilege we have, what a great power we have, by the promise of our Savior that He hears and answers our prayers. Amen.