Lord, Teach us to Pray

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost    Church of the Good Shepherd

Text: Luke 11:1-13      The Rev. Ross M. Wright

      “Lord, teach us to pray.” This request is a confession that we are not able to pray on our own. We need to learn to pray. The claim that we must learn to pray may strike us as a strange idea. Doesn’t everyone pray? Isn’t prayer as natural to us as breathing? Who hasn’t at some point cried out: God, help! God never turns a deaf ear to the genuine cry for mercy and help, even if we are complete rookies at prayer. He hears the inarticulate groan, just as a parent or spouse comes when we cry out for help. But if our communication with God consists only of desperate cries for help in extremis, then we miss the full range of communication that God intends. In prayer, we are invited to explore the unique language of our relationship with God and to discover the full range of possibilities when we speak to him. “Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty. No [one] can do that by himself. For that [we need] Jesus Christ.”¹

      We learn to pray be being in the presence of people who are able to pray. You may have had the experience of being with someone who knows how to pray. Somehow, you are caught up on that person’s prayer. Her prayers carry you along with them. Pope John Paul comes to mind. Do you remember the photographs of the Pope, praying in public places, such as Treblinka – eyes shut; body leaning in; a look of rapt concentration and determination on his face. There was a man who meant business with God. I remember a comment of a filmmaker who made a documentary of the Pope. He said that as Jew, he did not believe in Christ, but to be with John Paul at prayer was to be in the presence of God. 

      But what if Jesus himself “takes us with him in his prayer”?² What if we have the privilege of praying alongside him? What if he lets us accompany him as he prays to the father and teaches us to pray? 

But that is precisely what Jesus Christ wants so do. He wants to pray with us and have us pray with him, so that we may be confident and glad that God hears us. When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ, then we pray correctly. Only in Jesus Christ are we able to pray with him we also know that we shall be heard. ³

      Jesus gives us words, his words, to enable us to pray. When you pray, say: Father, let your name be honored. Let your kingdom come, that is, God’s interests, God’s rule, platform, and program. Give us every day just what we need to live for tomorrow. And that includes the forgiveness of our trespasses, as we forgive those who are indebted to us in any way. And do not abandon us to the tempter’s power, but deliver us from evil.

      When we pray to God with these words, we can be confident that Jesus is praying with us. These words direct our prayers and lead us to pray in ways other than the prayers which flow naturally from our hearts. 

      “Father.” Prayer is personal address – the way you speak to someone you know well, someone you call by name: Mom! Dad! And when you know someone intimately, all you have to do is say the person’s name for him to recognize you. Jesus knows the Father intimately enough to call him, “Abba, Father.” And as we pray this prayer, we are invited into the intimacy which exists between the Father and the Son. 

      Jesus’ prayer begins by asking that the Father’s name be hallowed. We pray that his honor, his reputation be recognized and that our heavenly Father not be spoken about casually, as if his name were like just any name or some kind of concept. And in the same breath, we pray for the coming of his rule on earth – his influence, his justice. The rule of God touches every area of life – the commonweal, economics, relationships among different ethnic groups, as we as the life of the congregation and the personal concerns we have brought to this service today. To pray for his kingdom to come is to ask to be drawn into the sphere of his power and influence, much the way you might come under the influence of someone you admire. So prayer begins, not with our needs or desires, but with God and his reputation. We don’t always know what Jesus would do in a specific situation, but we can always seek for the name of the Lord to be glorified. 

      Do you see how these words take us out of ourselves. They direct us to God and to the world around us. 

      But Jesus also invites us to pray for our own needs: for what we need to live, one day at a time; for the forgiveness of sins and for the ability to extend grace to those who have hurt us. And for deliverance from whatever temptations, dangers, or trials may meet us in the course of the day. 

And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet bemuse of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask and it will be given you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

What is it with this person in the parable who stands outside and knocks and will not take no for an answer? Jesus commends him for his “importunity,” or “shamelessness.” The word means breaking conventions or social norms, because you are unconcerned about what people think. It is brashness, which makes unreasonable demands on a friend, like waking him up in the middle of the night and persisting until he gets what he asks for. Perhaps you know someone who does not hesitate to make himself or herself a complete pain, because of incessant and outrageous requests. Such a person would never say: “I don’t want to bother him” because of social conventions. It’s the quality that drives people to sit in an admissions office and make themselves obnoxious until the institution admits them. 

      Jesus invites us to a kind praying that makes big demands and which refuses to take no for an answer. Notice how this elevates the significance of prayer and its effectiveness. Most of time, this pulpit emphasizes God’s radical grace and the triumph of his grace over all human plans. But Jesus emphasizes human activity here. Prayer sets things into motion. This parable cuts through all the fog about prayer’s alleged uselessness on the grounds that God already knows what we need. No, prayer with Jesus accomplishes things. And the flip side is that certain gifts are not given; certain doors are not opened, certain treasures are not found apart from bold, shameless, persistent prayer. Prayer is the ultimate form of action for the believer. It thrusts us into the world. 

      But you may object, Is God really like the friend in the story who does not want to be bothered? Must he be badgered? Is he reluctant to get up? Is he asleep? Jesus ends this teaching on prayer by pointing us to the character of God. Even bad parents know how to give good gifts to their children. Is it possible that God is a pale shadow of human goodness, generosity and wisdom? This is a serious question. There are plenty of times when our prayer appears to go unanswered, or worse, he answers in a way that makes us wonder if he is really good. In these moments, we may say: O, so this is what God is really like! He has ultimate power but chooses not to exercise it or to do so to our detriment.

      Jesus meets this objection head on:

What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If 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.

God is good and he brings forth good. Even when the cup he gives “is filled to brimming with bitter sufferings, hard to understand, we take it thankfully and without trembling out of so good and beloved a hand.”⁴

      I think the most appropriate way to end this sermon is to be still for a while and ask that the risen Christ, who always stands to make intercession for us before the Father, will pray with us and join our prayers to his. Then, we will say the Lord’s Prayer. 

 

¹ Dietrich Bonheoffer, Psalms, the Prayer Book of the Bible, trans. James H. Burtness (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1974), 9-10. In this section, I follow his exposition of the phrase, “Lord, teach us to pray,” 9-12.

² Bonhoeffer, 10.
³ Bonheoffer, 10-11.
⁴ Hymn 696.