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Lord, Teach Us To Pray |
Luke 11: 1-13
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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INTRODUCTION We began with a song that is a prayer for sunshine; our second hymn was a prayer for rain. If we think prayer is hard to understand, how do you think God feels when our jumble of prayers swirl up to the throne? Does even God need some sort of device to unscramble our confused petitions? In the film Shadowlands, C. S. Lewis comes back from London to Oxford where his wife, Joy, is dying of cancer. An Anglican priest, who knows only of his marriage, nor of his wife's terminal illness, says, "I know how hard you've been praying....Now, God is answering your prayer." "That's not why I pray," Lewis answers. "I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God; it changes me." Thomas Long comments, "`It doesn't change God; it changes me.' Prayer is not a message scribbled on a note, jammed into a bottle and tossed into the sea in hopes that it will wash up someday on God's shoreline. Prayer is communion with God. We speak to God, but God touches, embraces, shapes, and changes us. Whether we pray for rain or pray for sunshine, our prayer is answered, because in the act of praying the receive the gift we really seek - intimacy with God."[1] (emphasis added) Reynolds Price, writer advising others who like himself have been struck with great tragedy, says the question is not "Why me?" but rather "What next?"[2] Whatever is next, the presence of God is the answer to prayer, according to Jesus' final words in today's text about the gift of the Holy Spirit from the heavenly Father (Luke 11: 13). THE LORD'S PRAYER REVISITED But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's back up to the model prayer, to the Lord's Prayer. Do you remember when you learned the Lord's prayer? For me it was in the Beginners Sunday School Class in the Grinstead Annex of the Highland Baptist Church. The teacher was Miss Frieda Freyman, who told us that while we were very young, we were now old enough to learn the Lord's Prayer. I felt ten feet tall! She gave each us a sticker with the familiar picture of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. We plopped it on some pink construction paper and then pasted to it the words she had typed out for us. She provided yarn to pull through a hole in top. With Germanic thoroughness she made us put gummed ring reinforcements on both sides of the hole. Miss Frieda was not teaching us the Lord's Prayer to have it fall off the wall. Granted there was a wonderful innocence in that experience. And I supposed I prayed the prayer as best I could. There was and is the danger that the Lords Prayer will become merely a memorize script, recited on cue. Before we take a look a several important elements in the Lord's Prayer, let's get some superficial matters out of the way. A. Which versus Who People here occasionally ask me, "Why do we say, `Our Father which art in heaven,' when God is a person. Shouldn't we say, `Our Father who...'?" We say "which" because that is what the King James Version says in both Matthew 6: 9 and Luke 11: 2. B. In versus On Now those who are very, very particular (and you know who you are!) will pounce on a bit of inconsistency since we pray "on earth as it is in heaven" when the good ol' King James Version says "in earth as it is in heaven." I can only fall back on Ralph Waldo Emerson's dictum, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." C. Debts versus Trespasses versus Sins Then there is the old issue of "debts" or "trespasses" or "sins." And let's not forget the emphasis should be on the first, not the middle syllable of "trespasses." It's tres'passes, not trespass'es. D. Say versus Pray And the last item in this exercise is the "say" versus "pray" the Lord's Prayer. This one is easy - both are ok. "when you pray, say..." according to Luke 11:2) while we read "pray like this..." in Matthew 6:9. Dust off and look at again "with eyes that have seen too much, yet want to see more; with a heart more tender and less rational" (Yeager, pp. 32-33) "a prayer we are not yet ready to pray" Like the disciples, let us ask Jesus to teach us to prayer. They had seen what he could do - calm the raging sea, feed the hungry, heal the blind, raise the dead. We have seen what he can do - change the course of history, change our lives. Like them, we long for such power. We confess like the king in Hamlet, "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go."[3] OUR FATHER The first word is tremendously important. It is "Our Father," not "My Father." This is a prayer of "us," "our," "we," and "ourselves" not "I," "me," and "mine." It is a prayer for the community, the fellowship, the whole body of Christ. Even when we pray this prayer by ourselves we connect with the Church in our time and across the centuries. OUR FATHER In the plethora of books on the Lord's Prayer one recent book stands out, N. T. Wright's The Lord and His Prayer. In it he makes the often made point that the word for "Father" which Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic would have been "Abba." For some time interpreters have enjoyed pointing out that this is a word implying intimacy, a certain quality of relationship (not gender). God is not so much like a stern Victorian father, the autocrat of the breakfast table, as he is a modern dad who gets down on the floor to romp with the kids. We've heard all that before. What is fresh in Wright's book is this insight: "The first occurrence in the Hebrew Bible of the idea of God as Father comes when Moses marches in boldly to stand before Pharaoh, and says: `Thus says YHWH: Israel is my son, my firstborn; let my people go, that they may serve me.' (Exodus 4: 22-23). For Israel to call God `Father,' then, was to hold on to the hope of liberty....The very first words of the Lord's Prayer therefore...contains within it not just intimacy, but revolution."[4] The word "Father" suddenly takes on even more power. God is as close to us as a daddy, but he is also a liberating power for liberating experiences. God is at hand to set us free from from routine that does not nourish the soul, to liberate us from the shallow comfort of lives with no challenge, to lead us on an exodus from sarcasm and detachment and into a struggle to find a place where we can engage, endure and transform. The word "Father" causes me to remember my own father at prayer with me as little boy, his humility, his unpretentious spirit, his sacrifices as a traveling salesmen to insure food, shelter and education for me, his delight in making his family happy, and our prayers when he was away. Mother and I knew he was praying the same prayers we were praying - to pray the Lord's Prayer was to be close both to the heavenly Father and my dad. WHICH ART IN HEAVEN But not everyone has such good associations with the word "Father." Our eighth pastor, Clyde Atkins, told me that in the inner city setting of the last years at Eutaw Place, teachers had to be careful in declaring that God was like a father. For all too many father meant that man who gets drunk and then hits mother and the kids. This is the point where we want to counterbalance all that "Abba" intimacy with its potentiality for misunderstanding with the powerful, transcendent, holy language, "which art in heaven." This is the God who is high and lifted up, whose thoughts are not our thoughts, and whose ways are not our ways.[5] The good news is that this holy God pities us as a Father pities his children.[6] THY KINGDOM COME "Thy kingdom come" may summarize the whole of this greatest of prayers. It contains remarkably challenging ideas. According to Stanley Hauerwas in Sojourners these three words teach us not of an earthly kingdom with borders and boundaries, checkpoints and crossing guards but of God's kingdom with no boundaries. David Yeager quotes Hauerwas: Nationality? - It doesn't matter. Ethnicity? - It doesn't matter. Language? - It doesn't matter. Skin color? - It doesn't matter. Political affiliation? - It doesn't matter. Economic status? - It doesn't matter. Liberal? Conservative? - It doesn't matter. Theological perspective? - It doesn't matter. The kingdom boundaries encompass those held by cords of grace, who profess faith in Jesus as Lord. [7] "Thy kingdom comes" means openness to the future, another thing to pray very cautiously for those of us who are very comfortable with things as they are, who resist change with grumpy spirits. And remember this prayer is about "we" and "us" not "me" and "my." That means that "Thy kingdom come" "is not about solving all of our problems with good feelings, nor creating a megachurch out of our congregation. Jesus' Prayer is not so much concerned about fixing the present but in being open to the future."[8] That great teacher of the Spirit filled life, Thomas Merton, said we pray, "Your kingdom come" but we mean "Give us some more time." A Baptist evangelist who used to descend on my home church each year during my adolescence, Chester Swor, said we pray, "Thy kingdom come" but be mean "but not yet." If we pray, "Thy kingdom come," we are asking for a realm where there is no bitterness, no wrath, no anger, no evil speaking, no malice but a place where all gladly obey the command, "be ye kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you" (Eph. 4: 31, 32)"[9] SCIENCE? Let's take a short "time out" from our look at some of the leading ideas of the Lord's Prayer and consider briefly the question of science and prayer. Many people doubt that there is any space for prayer for be effective in a universe which they understand to be mechanical, rather like a clock. Their argument runs along these lines: if our thoughts and feelings are controlled by inexorable physical laws, if everything from the movement of stars to the biochemistry of our emotions is determined, why bother to pray? There are flaws in this line of reasoning, starting the beginning. The very model, a clockwork mechanism, is the model of an outdated science. Contemporary science pictures life not as an inexorable machine but as a complex process of change; there is order but there is also openness, a place for what some call "chance" or "randomness," an openness for intervention and freedom of choice by creatures and Creator. Let me give you two reasons for believing in prayer in this late 20th century scientific age: (1) Many scientists are members of this church; every man and woman of them is a person of prayer. Our knowledge of them and our respect for their intellectual rigor and spiritual integrity persuade me to take prayer seriously. (2) Even more compelling is the knowledge of the God whom we address in prayer, the God who answers prayer. Our God is not the Great Engineer of the cosmic clock. "God is the Fellow Sufferer as revealed by Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord. God is shaping out of human tragedy the reign of God by sharing in the tragic.[10] BUT DO WE REALLY BELIEVE IN PRAYER? I suspect that most of the people in this room would declare that you believe in prayer. But I would have to ask of all of us, "Do we really believe in prayer?" To pray is to throw off the cloak of self-sufficiency and to look toward a larger meaning," to a love and hope which embrace us through the cold and the darkness. Do we really believe in it? A minister named John Rutland-Wallis tells us story that confronts us with our mixed feelings about prayer, our tendency to believe in it but to hold back. It seems that the proverbial travelling salesman runs out of gas in the middle of the night. He must get to the next town for a meeting on the next day. His company's survival depends on his presence. As his car coasts to stop, he is in despair until he sees a distant light. He walks toward it and discovers that it is a farm. Surely the farmer will have gasoline! But it's the middle of night, and he is a stranger. The farmer will likely be angry at some unknown fool who didn't have sense enough to buy gas. The salesman reaches the door and knocks. There is no response; he knocks again harder. Finally he hears sounds upstairs from the bedroom. To the salesman they sound like angry sounds. He hears steps on the stairs; they sound angry; he hears the lock on the door turn, and it doesn't sound friendly. Through the window the salesman thinks he sees a scowl on farmer's face. Jut as farmer opens the door, the salesman shouts out in anger and disappointment, "I didn't want any of our stupid gasoline anyway!" We want what we need; we ask but we are afraid we will look foolish, afraid we will not get what we want in the way we want it. But Jesus says, "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will fine." He invites us to stop trying to protect ourselves from disappointment and to risking with what he will give us. Jesus invites us to pray even as we say, "Lord, teach us to pray."[11] OUR DAILY BREAD Even something as simple as "our daily bread" can be a confrontation between the values of God's kingdom and our own. If daily bread means the basic necessities, the bare minimum, we must in all honesty ask if we are indeed satisfied with having our basic needs met. To tell the truth we want more than our daily bread. Isn't it closer to the truth to confess that we want not bread, but bread pudding with a French sauce and a dessert coffee with a splash of a liqueur? In addition to this "bare necessities" issues, there is the matter of how on earth can we pray for our bread when there are so many with little or no bread. The Lord's Prayer is not easy. It get even tougher when we engage in word play with contemporary use of "bread" as a synonym for "money." How expansive a vision do we have to what we can do with our bread, our money. My prayer for Woodbrook is that we will have a broader vision of all the good we can do with our money. In 1792 a British Baptist cobbler named William Carey launched the modern mission movement in a sermon on the text, "Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strength thy stakes."[12] In it he urged, "Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God." We need to handle our money, our bread, our giving in such a way that we expect great things from God and attempt great things for God. I believe there is a missions-money-prayer-evangelism-growth continuum. We need to get on board with our bread and our prayers, and God will bless our expectations and our efforts. THE POWER OF PRAYER There is much more to say about the Lord's Prayer. There will be other occasions. Now let me close with two stories of the power of prayer. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was at Memorial Church at Harvard University while on his way to Oslo to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize at a time of special anxiety in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was still in prison. DeKlerk was not yet president. Old Boers were still in full and brutal charge. Harvard Chaplain Peter Gomes reports that the church was full of young activists with a high moral and political temperature. The archbishop rose and after cheers that lasted for some time, in his lilting, musical almost hypnotic voice said, "I'm going to tell you what you most need to hear, the single most important thing you can do for South Africa." The sanctuary fell silent; the crowd waited with bated breath, ready to follow him anywhere at any cost. "Pray," he said softly..."Pray for my people. Pray for us and with us, daily. Pray. That's what you can do. That will change the world."[13] A Methodist pastor in Lincoln, Nebraska, Rex Bevin, tells of woman in Africa who received the light of Christ in her life and knew she had to do something audacious for Jesus and his Kingdom, but she was old, blind, uneducated and poor. She asked the French missionary to underline in red her Bible at John 3: 16 She took her Bible and sat in front of a boys' school every afternoon. When school was out, she would ask a boy or two to come over, and say, "do you know French?" And very proudly they would say, "Yes." Then she would say, "would you please read to me these words underlined in red?" They did. And then she would ask, "do you know what these words means?" They would answer that they did not. And then she would tell them the story of Jesus. Twenty-four young men became Christian pastors due to one elderly, blind, whose prayer was to help the kingdom come, who bent her will toward God to do something audacious for Jesus and his kingdom.[14] "Our Father, which art in heaven,... thy kingdom come,... give us this day our daily bread...Amen." Notes: [1] Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics [Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Co.] 1955, quoted by William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, July, August, September 1998, Vol. 26, No. 3, p. 18) [2] Reynolds Price, A Whole New Life [New York: Atheneum] 1994, p. 185, quoted by Willimon, op. cit. [3] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene iii, line 97 [4] N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer [Wm. B. Eerdman's], 1996, pp. 14-15, quoted by C. David Yeager, Homiletics, "Not Ready for Prime Time," July-August 1998, Vol. 10, No. 4, p. 33 [5] Isaiah 6: 1; 55: 8-9 [6] Psalm 103: 13 [7] C. David Yeager, "Not Ready for Prime Time," Homiletics, July-August 1998, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 33-34 [8] Lectionary Homiletics, July 1998, Vol. IX, No. 8, p. 27 [9] Charles L. Allen, God's Psychiatry [Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co.] 1953, p. 102 [10] Lectionary Homiletics, op. cit., p. 12 [11] John Rutland-Wallis, Lectionary Homiletics, op. cit., p. 28 [12] Isaiah 54: 2 [13] Peter J. Gomes, Sundays at Harvard [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Office of the University Publishers, Harvard University] 1995, quoted by William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, July, August, September 1998, Vol. 26, No. 3, p. 18 [14] Lectionary Homiletics, op. cit., p. 32 |