Living on a Prayer

Proper 12C: Luke 11:1-13

“Teach us to pray,” the disciples ask in this morning’s Gospel. Jesus usually teaches his disciples without their asking to be taught. But with prayer here, it’s different. In this case, the disciples know that they don’t know how to pray, at least they don’t know how to pray like Jesus, so they ask him for instruction.

And his response is, in a way, surprising. In one of his books, Frederick Buechner says, “everybody prays, even when they don’t know they are praying.” That delighted ‘Ahh…’ when you see fireworks light up a night sky, that desperate “Why me?” that you ask when something bad happens to you—that’s prayer, says Buechner. And yet when the disciples ask Jesus how to pray, he doesn’t say, 'Ah, you guys know how to pray. Everybody is born knowing what to say to God. Just tell Him whatever’s on your mind. That’s prayer.” No, Jesus said, “Pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…’”

This prayer, which we know as the Lord’s Prayer, is a prayer that Christians from every nation in every age have been reciting ever since Jesus taught it to us, in our Sunday worship, in church meetings, in our daily prayers. To the point where we can righty say that what Christianity is about, what being a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is about, is being part of a people who pray, who pray as Jesus taught.

Saying that, we have to recognize how odd that makes us. I mean, it’s not just that we pray—that makes us strange enough—but that we pray a certain way, that we follow a tradition, and don’t just do what comes naturally, make it up as we go along, but need to have to learn how to pray. That’s really strange. It stands at odds with our culture, which exalts individual freedom, autonomy, and self-sufficiency. It offends the common notion that one way is just as good as another.

But this morning, the disciples and Jesus acknowledge that when it comes to prayer, we don’t know what we are doing. Which is why, when Jesus is asked how to pray, he didn’t tell them to go off and sit quietly until something spiritual came to their minds or ask them, Well, how do you feel about God? He said pray like this, use these words. And he provided them with a simple, straightforward prayer. Indeed, Jesus elsewhere warns us not to heap up a bunch of empty words when we pray. But there are no empty words here!

We are to pray that God’s holy name be upheld, honored by all people–-which I take to mean that we aren’t to drag God’s good name into our pet crusades and causes, as if our will is God’s will.

We are to pray for God to bring his kingdom, for God’s reign to be in all and over all, his will, not ours be done.

We are to pray for bread, but not enough bread to invest and squirrel away, only daily bread, what we need for today, which considerably limits the material goods we can pray for. And it means we have to keep coming back to him for what we need.

And we are to pray for forgiveness of our sins—but only insofar as we forgive everyone who has wronged us. Meaning, that praying in Jesus’ name, like Jesus taught us, we are signing on to live as Jesus lived—forgiving others for their wrongs against us. For, if we hope to receive extraordinary gifts from God, we have to be willing to share them with others. For that is how things are in God’s kingdom.

Lastly, we are to pray that God would save us from temptation. We need not here get into the perplexing question of whether it is possible for God to lead us into temptation. It’s enough to say that, to pray this prayer, we are being at least honest about our capacity to fall into temptation and our vulnerability to evil, and so we ask God to save us from both.

That’s it. That’s all. Just a few verses, six short petitions. Clearly, to pray as Jesus taught us is to pray for a few basic things—God’s Kingdom, daily bread, forgiveness, deliverance. Perhaps Jesus keeps his prayer short to point out to us that so many of the things that we think we must have if we are to go on living, and many more we already have right now, are superfluous, unnecessary, or unobtainable. For here we have a prayer for protection from evil, but no prayers for ever-abundant health. A prayer for God’s coming reign, but no prayers for happier, easier, stress-free lives for us. A prayer for daily bread, but nothing that asks for material prosperity beyond basic sustenance. 

As the model for our relating to God, this prayer challenges much of our assumptions about God and about prayer. For examples, it’s clear that prayer, the way Jesus taught us to pray, is not a matter of “putting coins in a vending machine”: Put your prayer in the right slot, push the right button, and wait for the vending-machine God to spit out exactly what you want. Jesus’ prayer challenges that way of thinking. It calls into question what we think of as being important, as being central to our lives and well-being.

And so, praying as Jesus taught us is different from how we wold naturally pray if left to our own devices. Spilling your guts, enumerating your wounds, delivering your wish list: heck, anyone can do that. Learning this prayer, taking Jesus’ words on our lips, we do something different, something that goes against our nature. What comes naturally is to pray for the fulfillment of our desires, for us to elevate our desires to the level of “need,” and to think of prayer as the way we get those “needs,” our wants, met. What’s not natural is to want what God wants, to pray for the fulfillment of God’s will rather than ours.  Which is why we have to be taught to pray this way, because otherwise we wouldn’t.

“One thing I like about being an Episcopalian,” someone explained to a colleague of mine a few years back, “is that we are Prayer Book Christians.” My colleague asked what she meant. “My church doesn’t trust me to know how to pray as I ought. Therefore my church thrusts this ancient Prayer Book at me and says, ‘Who gives a rip what’s on your heart? Pray like this!’” Why does she find that helpful spiritually? “Do you think I’m going to pray for the President, much less pray for my enemies, unless the church forces me to do so?” She makes a good point. Which makes me wish that we more often prayed “by the book” than “from the heart.”

Praying like this doesn’t come naturally, so we have to be taught to pray this way. And we have to keep practicing it, to be persistent in praying. Which is why when the disciples ask how to pray, Jesus told them to pray “in this way,” like some poor man who kept pestering his neighbor at midnight, beating on his door until he got out of bed and gave him the bread he needed. We ought to be similarly persistent in our effort to pray.

For, in the process of praying as Jesus prayed, our lives are bent towards God in a way that is not our natural inclination. Wanting what God wants, praying that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, doesn’t come naturally. That’s why we say the Lord’s Prayer Sunday after Sunday, until we know it and say it “by heart.”

Now, this is not to say that we can expect God to immediately grant our requests. Some of our prayers are contrary to God’s will, either because granting them would not be good for us, or because God has something better in store for us. In other cases, it’s simply not the right time. But Jesus nevertheless encourages perseverance, for if nothing else, perseverance, coming to God again and again, seeking his will, relying on Him day in and day out, is good for us.

It's like a story I heard. There was a man who was asleep one night in his cabin when suddenly his room was filled with light and the Savior appeared to him. The Lord told him He had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock, explaining that he was to push against the rock with all his might. This the man did, and for many days he toiled from sunup to sundown; his shoulder set squarely against the massive surface of the rock, pushing with all his might, but it never moved. Each night the man returned to his cabin sore and worn out, feeling like his whole day had been spent in vain. Discouraged and disheartened, the man considered easing up in his efforts. But instead he decided to take his troubles to God.

“Lord,” he said, “I have labored hard and long, putting forth all my strength to do what You have asked of me. Yet after all this time, I have not even budged that rock even half a millimeter. What is wrong? Why am I failing?''

To this, the Lord replied, “My child, when long ago I asked you to serve Me and you accepted, I told you to push against the rock with all your strength, and that you have done. But never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. At least, not by yourself. Your task was to push. And now you come to Me, your strength spent, thinking that you have failed, ready to quit because you think you’ve been wasting your time. But is this really so? Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled; your back sinewed and brown. Your hands are calloused from constant pressure and your legs have become massive and hard. Through opposition you have grown much and your ability now far surpasses that which you used to have. Yet still, you haven't succeeded in moving the rock; and you come to Me now with a heavy heart and your strength spent. So, my child, I will move the rock for you. Your calling was to be obedient and push, and to exercise your faith and trust in My wisdom, and this you have done.''

As this story suggests, prayer is in the end not so much about changing God as it is about changing us.

Indeed, by praying as Jesus taught us, saying the same words out of habit, repeating them until we know them by heart, we find ourselves gradually bent towards God. We are made over in a way, inclining our hearts away from our wants and towards God, until we come to embody in ourselves the petitions of the prayer, until God’s will is done in us here, now, on earth, as it is in heaven and we become what we are, Christians. And so until that happens, we continue to push, to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…” Amen.