In the name of God who created us, Jesus who died for us and the Holy Spirit, who gives us life, Amen.

Our readings today are about prayer.

In the first reading, Abraham pleads to God for the righteous people of Sodom who would have perished with the wicked in the destruction of their city.

In the psalm we hear the song of a grateful person, giving thanks to God for prayer answered.

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul reminds them and us of what God has accomplished through Jesus' death on the cross and how we make that our own through faith in Christ, while the Gospel not only contains the greatest Christian prayer, but also two important parables about prayer.

It is good for us to spend some time thinking about prayer. It is one of the privileges and duties of Christians to pray to God. Followers of other religious traditions pray also, and it may be that we can learn from their habits and discipline. I admire the Moslems for their discipline of prayer - at the times of prayer they stop what they are doing to pray. I am afraid that Christians generally are much less ready to interrupt their lives to spend time in prayer.

Prayer, of course is time spent in deliberate and purposeful communication with God. Our reading from Genesis recalls Abraham praying for the lives of the good people of Sodom. In his prayer he speaks to God of justice, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" As we read the passage it sounds rather as if Abraham is bargaining with God, as if God was a trader in the market place and Abraham was intent on getting a good deal. I think that in this prayer Abraham is wrestling with one of the great issues of God's justice and mercy. On the one hand God's justice requires that sin should have its consequences while on the other, God is always gracious and merciful, always ready to forgive. In the end, of course, the final decision is God's. The reading ends, "The Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place." In the end, Abraham must trust God to do what is right.

Another way to put this is that Abraham, with all those who pray, must say to God, "Your will be done." We say this, not because we hope God will look after us, but because we know that God will always do what is right. If God fails to satisfy us, it may be that we have been asking the wrong question.

And I guess that this sort of thing was troubling the disciples when they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Both Matthew and Luke record this conversation, and it is from Matthew's gospel that we get our version of what we call the Lord's Prayer. Luke records a much simpler prayer. As we read it we can see that it is a prayer of trust in God. The prayer begins by calling God our Father. Not our Father in Heaven, just Father. By doing this we declare a childlike trust in God as a caring parent. We could call God our Mother, remembering the words of the prophet Isaiah where the prophet declares that God is like a mother who can never forget the children she brings to birth. The important thing is that our relationship with God is seen as intimate and trusting; in the knowledge that God will never let us down. Such a God is to be loved and worshipped, so we use the words, "hallowed be your name." By this we declare how much we value our relationship with God.

The next words, "your kingdom come" are also words of trust. The fulfilment of God's promises is surely something to be looked forward to with hope and joy. All the struggles we have with our faith, all the prayers for which we have seen no answer, all these will be gone and we will understand at last what it means to be loved by God and to love God in return.

But that is in the future and we are still faced with the mystery of life. Jesus' parable of the friend who turned up at midnight and the teaching which follows here reminds us to be persistent in prayer.

Perseverance is in prayer is a good thing because we need to understand. God knows us and understands us and God does not need to be asked again and again like the householder in the parable.

It is we who need the perseverance, we need to be like Abraham, who was persistent in his prayer for Sodom until he understood God's justice and mercy. Jacob was another person who wrestled in prayer. In that famous story, he wrestled with the angel until he was given a blessing. And the supreme example of persistence in prayer we need look no further than Jesus himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. According to Matthew, Jesus prayed to God about his forthcoming crucifixion. He spent a long time in prayer, so long a time that Peter and James and John fell asleep. But after this time of prayer he saw the way forward. He knew that he must be "betrayed into the hands of sinners" and crucified, but he also knew that this is how he would fulfil God's will for him.

I hope that none of us will face any such terrible decision, but there is no doubt that talking the whole thing through with God can clear the vision for us. When I had to decide to come to Sydney, a place I had never lived in, I spent a great deal of time discussing the decision, worrying about it, and praying. In the end, it became obvious that the only way forward was to make a decision and trust God like Abraham did, and like Jesus did, who is our example, our Saviour and our friend. Amen.