Easter 6 Rogate
John 16:23-33
May 17, 2020

“Prayer – What Is It?”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I tried to find out where the expression, “I smell a rat”, came from. There doesn’t seem to be any consensus on the origin of that phrase. It means to sense that something suspicious is going on here. Something not quite right. “I smell a rat.” I thought it came from when a rat or mouse died and started to stink but you weren’t sure where it was. Sorry to be so graphic. But our house and all the barns growing up had mice because we were surrounded by fields and cows. And you learned that smell of a dead mouse. And sometimes you couldn’t find it but you knew it was there. You smelled a rat. Something not right.

I’m very afraid that people are smelling a rat with us Christians when it comes to prayer. See we say and we act like we’re doing it all the time. It’s one of our favorite things to text to someone or to post on Facebook. One of our favorite answers when someone has problems, “Just pray about it.” All the politicians love to say it whenever any tragedy happens, “Our prayers go out to the victims.”  We have all these phrases, “My prayers are with you. I’m praying for you. You’re in my prayers.” Yet many people smell a rat in there. They can see through the rest of our words and actions if we’re not truly praying as often as we say and act like we are.