369 Kiss Cam

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Kiss Cam”, originally shared on July 23, 2025. It was the 369^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   When the world says it’s OK to judge others, is it OK? When the world mocks offerings of “thoughts and prayers”, are prayers meaningless? Today, we’re going to find out.

   A short video of a couple caught on a Kiss Cam has gone viral online and in all other forms of media.

   It shows couples on the “Kiss Cam” at a Coldplay concert near Boston last week. A camera frames a couple who look like they’re together, displays their picture on the stadium’s jumbotron and lingers on them until they kiss, and then it moves on. It’s standard entertainment at professional sports games and now, apparently, at Coldplay concerts.

   Only this time one couple was both together and not together. They were both cuddling but one of them was married and had children, and the other was divorced. Both were senior executives and co-workers for the same company.

   It took a moment for them to realize that it was them on the “Kiss Cam” and when it hit they both ducked for cover, like maybe Adam and Eve when God comes down and asks them why they were ashamed. The band’s lead singer pointed out that either they were having an affair, or they were very shy. The audience continues to laugh.

   Why?

   “Schadenfreude” is a German word that has found its way into many languages. It means pleasure that one has at someone else’s pain or misfortune. Maybe that’s why.

   “Boundaries” might be the closest word to “sin” in our increasingly secular Western culture, and maybe some thought that it was funny that the couple might have been caught crossing them.

   Maybe it’s because, even today, we are happy when the guilty are made to look ridiculous in a moral slapstick comedy.

   Maybe it was the looks on the faces of those immediately around them, the looks that suggested an open secret had now been exposed, followed by the now familiar aggressive preemptory laughter, i.e. “This is so funny and entertaining. But, we’re cool. Nothing is wrong here.”

   Maybe we like it when others are judged and brought low because it makes us feel better about ourselves, our current culture’s primary personal virtue.

   Maybe.

   But none of these reactions are rooted in Christian values. They are rooted in our increasingly Post-Christian culture, and we see why in the Gospel text that will be read in the vast majority of churches this coming Sunday, Luke 11:1-13.

   It’s about prayer and the nature of it.

   Do you know how you ought to pray? I guarantee that you don’t.

   Do you know how to breathe? Maybe yes and maybe no, but today we’re going to learn how.

   Jesus tells us about prayer and how it is connected to breathing in Luke 11:1-13. He was teaching his disciples on his way to Jerusalem to die. Jesus had been praying when they make what seems to us a strange request, in verse 1.

11¹He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

   First, we learn from this that his disciples, who had been with him for almost three years, seeing him pray, worshiping in synagogues and in the Temple, didn’t know how to pray themselves, or at least they believed that Jesus could teach them something about how to pray.

   Second, we know that John the Baptist had his own disciples, separate from Jesus’ disciples. We know that he taught them how to pray, and we know that Jesus’s disciples wanted the same curriculum.

   And Jesus answers them in what seems to us to be an odd way. He doesn’t give them a class on how to pray. He gives them a format. He might as well have said, “Just do it!” He says, “When you pray,” in verse 2,

 ²He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

   He doesn’t offer a manual or a seminar. He offers us a model.

   I used to run for fitness and competed in 5k and 10k road races from time to time. I ran a couple of marathons in the 1970’s, though I think that I only ran the second one because I had forgotten how bad I felt after the first one.

   One of the first magazines specializing in running was Runners World, and I subscribed.

   Dr. George Sheehan, one of the first sports doctors and himself a runner, wrote a column answering runner’s questions. One of them had to do with how to breathe!

   In the mid-1970’s, there was some controversy over whether it was better for a runner to breathe through their mouth or to breathe through their nose.

   Someone sent the question to Dr. Sheehan and his answer was something like, “Breathe through your nose. Breathe through your mouth. Suck it in through your ears if you can. Just get it in there!”

   Jesus offers a similar answer to the question of how to pray. His answer begins, “When you pray.”

   He continues with what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, going on with verses 3-4,

 ³Give us each day our daily bread.

 ⁴And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

   So, can we only pray for bread? And, on what basis can we ask God to forgive our sins, big and little, and the separation from God that they produce? Does God lead us to the time of trial, or “into temptation”?

   I’m glad you asked, and I’m not going to answer these questions myself. 😊

   I’m going to recommend that you buy a copy of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, a pamphlet-sized book in which he provides answers to the basic questions of the Christian faith. Kind of a “What Every Christian Needs to Know” book.

   You can buy a copy online or download one for free from the Google Play store or from the Apple App Store. Concordia Publishing has one online now and Augsburg Fortress has a free web app version available through their web site. Project Guttenberg has an eBook version.

   The Christian life is not just knowing the answers, though. It’s living them.

   We are sinners and deserve to experience the just consequences of our Sin. But God is merciful. We see how, beginning with verses 5-6,

 ⁵And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; ⁶for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’

 ⁷And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ ⁸I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

   So, is prayer about wearing God down to get what we want, like a child begs to go to the beach, “Pleeease….pleeeease….pleeease….? Until their parents relent because they are so annoying? No. Jesus encourages us to pray with confidence in God’s power and goodness, starting with verses 9-10,

 ⁹“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 

   So is prayer a magic formula? Is it like in Harry Potter, where you just have to wave a wand and say something in Latin and it happens?

   Some people say so. At least that’s the way they act. They think that God is like their personal cosmic bell boy. Their servant. And they are grossly disappointed when God doesn’t come through. They say, “God didn’t answer my prayer!”

   The thing is, though, that “No” is an answer, too. “Wait until the time is right” is an answer. “Yes” is an answer, but, unfortunately, for some it is the only acceptable answer. “Entitlement” can be the attitude of some Christians, too.

   Ruth Graham, Billy Graham’s wife, once said, “God has not always answered my prayers. If He had, I would have married the wrong man -- several times!”

   How does God answer our prayers? Jesus answers in verse 11.

¹¹Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?

   Maybe a filet-o-fish sandwich or some fish and chips would be more appetizing, but you get the idea. He continues in verse 12,

 ¹²Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 

   No parent would do that.

   So, what do those things tell us about prayer? He answers in verse 13.

¹³If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

   Pope Francis, the pope before the current one, was once being interviewed by Italian media and mentioned that he sometimes fell asleep while praying. The interviewer, amused, asked if that was “allowed”. Pope Francis answered that fathers love it when their child falls asleep in their arms.

   That is the love of our ‘heavenly father’, and what does Jesus say God would give us if we asked? The Holy Spirit.

   What? I was hoping for something more practical. Is that what people actually pray for? Is that what you pray for? The Holy Spirit?

   The thing is that we are all God’s saints, but we are also sinners, separated from God by our Sin. We naturally only pray for what we think that we want and need. We don’t know how to pray as we ought As Paul writes to the church at Rome in Romans 8:26-27,

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

   We don’t know how to pray, but the Spirit helps us in our weakness. And how does the Spirit pray? “According to the will of God.”

   God knows what we need before we ask. When we pray, we aren’t telling God something that God doesn’t already know. We only ask for God’s will to be done.

   As Pastor Rick Warren once said, we don’t pray that God will bless what we are doing. We pray that we will do what God is blessing.

   Praying is talking with God. With God.

   I once heard of the South Korean pastor of what was then the largest church in the world, Rev. Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho saying that he routinely got up before dawn and prayed for several hours a day. (He required his assistant pastors to pray for three hours a day.) An interviewer commented that he wouldn’t know what to say for three hours. Pastor Cho said that he wouldn’t either. At some point, he said, he needs to stop and listen.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th Century Church reformer once said something similar: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”

   What do we do when we talk with people? We don’t talk all the time.

   What we say and what we hear depends upon our relationship with them. How close we are. Do we trust them? Do we have a past together? How familiar are we with one another?

   That is how to pray. Prayer is an expression of our relationship with God.

   So people pray based on how they believe God to be. Some believe God to be a stern judge, a punisher, displeased, angry, and strict.

   Jesus portrays God as a Father. A good father. A father who knows how to give the best gift: the Holy Spirit, the key to everything good, to his children.

   That’s why I believe in the power of God not in the power of prayer itself. Faithfulness is an expression of who we are, a new creation, and not of what we do. Faithfulness in marriage is an expression of God’s faithfulness. One relationship is an expression of the other.

   That’s why sharing our faith with others gets better as we open our hearts to allow God to change who we are, to make us a new creation, more and more in God’s image, and not by depending on pastors to do it, or on programs. It flows naturally.

   You may have seen the bumper sticker or the bracelet or the slogan that says, “Prayer changes things.” I don’t believe that.

   I don’t believe that prayer changes things. I believe that God changes things. In fact, we are so changed it is like we are born again! We are made new! We are a new creation in the living relationship with the one true living God for which were made through the Holy Spirit!

   Have you ever been talking with someone and then come to silence when everything that needs to be said has been said and you are content just to be with them?

   Likewise, prayer doesn’t even require words, heard or spoken. Sometimes prayer is just being with God.

   The world scoffs at “thoughts and prayers” in answer to life’s catastrophes. We sometimes even scoff ourselves when we say things like, “Well, all we can do now is pray.”

   Likewise, the world is quick to judge Christians as being “too judgmental”, while not being willing to be held responsible for any moral code at all, outside of themselves.

   That’s another reason that the world was so fascinated by the probable adultery and public humiliation on a Kiss Cam last week. They saw themselves on full display.

   When I was teaching on the meaning of Sin, I sometimes asked my Confirmation class students if they would be willing to walk around all day with a monitor above their heads that would show everyone what they were thinking about all day long? No one volunteered. 😊 Would you?

   And yet, God became a human being in Jesus Christ for us. He was fully God and also fully human, because he loved us. We are no longer fascinated by sin, but by the love of God.

   Last week, we looked at what is probably the most memorized verse in the Bible, John 3:16,

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

   But have you ever considered John 3:17?

¹⁷ “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

   That is the answer we have to the Kiss Cams of this world, and to everything that defies God and condemns us: God desires a living, eternal relationship with us through a living faith.

   Think about all the things that the disciples had seen Jesus accomplish over the three years that they were with him in his public ministry. What is the one thing that they asked Him to teach them how to do? Pray. To grow in a living, eternal relationship with God!

   That right there is a significant lesson on the importance of prayer and the power of Jesus.

   Do you know how you ought to pray? No. But we have God’s answer for that in the Holy Spirit, and we see it for us on the cross.

   Believe it, live it, and share it today.